My my you busted me! Like a robocop...

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE SOMETHING SPECIAL THIS MONTH FROM ME, PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR ADDRESS. THANK YOU!

(mine is posted below if you wanted to know)

So, first I would like to share with you all the brilliance that is Of Montreal. The header of this entry is from one of my favorite songs of theirs. This weekend, I saw them in concert and now I feel that my life is complete.

The opening band, Casio Kids, was really really cute and I totally would have gone nuts dancing in the pit if all the lame French dudes next to me weren't stiff as a board (light as a feather! hahahaha) because they're apparently too cool to prove they have rhythm. Seriously, how do you not dance to a band (that is a mix between Ratatat and some really good 80s band that I can't think of), especially when you're in the friggin pit???? But I danced as much as possible and it was super awesome, especially watching Dude in Green Shirt on the keyboards, now aptly renamed Future Husband. He was just soo adorable with his goofy smile the entire time and he had these really fun gradiose gestures with his hands that got the audience going.

Anyway, after Casio Kids, Of Montreal's tiger man came on the stage to make us all growl, I guess? And they played She's a Rejecter (the aforementioned song) first and it was phenomenal!!!! They have these outrageous costumes (especially lead singer Kevin Barnes who changed into a more wild outfit about every 3 songs) and interpretive dancers/actors who are very bizarre and usually masked with animal heads or stretchy fabric (sometimes ninja-style!). The dancers(?) were really entertaining when I could see them over the super tall, annoying guys who kept elbowing me in the face during this one song. But when I couldn't see them, I could usually see Kevin Barnes who is insanely attractive for some odd reason (I guess I have a thing for guys with travestite-ish tendencies...) and whose voice is amazing! Just like the CDs! They played most of my favorites and a bunch of other brilliant songs I didn't know and for the encore they played Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" which made me almost pee my pants with excitement.

Too bad I couldn't because while everyone was jumping during the song, I lost my old black jacket. I don't think it dropped...I think someone ripped it out from my purse over which it was hanging. I looked on the floor while people were going (pardon my French...haha) ape-shit in the finale, but alas, I couldn't find it. Probably because it was stolen. Julia stayed with me a long time after looking for it, but no such luck. But man oh man does Julia have my bizzack. She looked through some girls' stuff by the stage (making them glare at her angrily) and asked some guy who had a black coat tied around his waist if he was wearing my coat. And she lent me her surprisingly very helpful scarf/shawl to wear on the very cold way home.

Really though it was my own fault. I had told Julia earlier that day how literally stinky my old black jacket was and how I wished I could wear my red one more (I don't because the French don't believe in color, so it seems). I think God is trying to tell me something. But the lesson I got out of it was...time to buy a pretty new black jacket?

Other things I did with my birthday buddy this weekend in Paris:

We went to the Musée d'Orsay and saw this fantastic Picasso/Manet exhibition - Le déjeuner sur l'herbe - which had a ton of amazing Picasso variations on Manet's original painting titled the same thing. Then Julia, her friend Michael and I took on the rest of the museum (or as much as we could) seeing some really cool Renoirs, Van Goghs, Monets, etc. From all this I found out that processing too much art makes my brain hurt, my art history background is severely lacking, my new favorite neo-impressionist is Henri-Edmond Cross and I want to take a drawing class.

Here are some pictures of the Musée d'Orsay:

Anyway, the visit was very pensive, but fun and after that we went to meet up with Julia's friend, Maryse, who lives in the red light district of Paris, before eating delicious pizza and going to the concert. On our way to Maryse's, I saw the very lame exterior of the Moulin Rouge and tons of sex shops/places? that all had English titles like, "Sex O!" and "The Sexodrome". We decided they were named in English to make it look like the French were merely catering to tourists and weren't really that pervy themselves. Yeah. Right.

On Sunday, Julia and I went to the Notre Dame for mass. They called it an "international mass" but it was still mostly in French with a few of the main prayers in Latin and one reading in English. But it was beautiful. I only wish that I could understand more (still couldn't get a French mass book...) and that I could have explored more of the cathedral.

But afterwards we went ice skating at the Hotel de Ville where I found out that I suck at ice skating in two countries. Thank goodness for Michael, though, who held my heavy travel bag that I took with me so I could go home right after (they didn't have any place to put purses and such). If it hadn't been for him, I think I would have just watched the little kids push each other around in mini-sleighs on the kiddie rink the whole time, instead of trying miserably to make a few circles around the main ice rink. It was still pretty fun though and I treated myself to a honey crepe after!

Here's my attempt to take a photo with Julia, Maryse and Michael at the Hotel de Ville.

Why aren't there crepe vendors on the streets at home? That is my question for the week.