File under: you can’t make this stuff up. In July 2011, a Serge Gainsbourg impersonator stabbed a Johnny Hallyday impersonator in the neck. This being France, the rivalry was over the creative merit of their respective performances. The verdict in the trial comes Monday.
On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 – nine months ago – the Iraqi-born Saad Al-Hilli was shot to death in Haute Savoie (Upper Savoy) in France. He, his family – wife, two small daughters and his mother-in-law – were on holiday in this very beautiful area of France. His wife and mother-in-law were also shot dead [...]
This anti-gay backlash in France mystifies me. The US looks more tolerant than France on this issue, which is rare. The latest: Movie posters for L’Inconnu du Lac have been taken down after bigots protested its image. The a-holes contacted JCDecaux, which rents out the billboards across the region, and the company caved. This is [...]
It is the law in France that no street, square, or building may be named after a living person. Mrs, Thatcher having passed away, a UMP – Union pour un Movement Populaire – councillor, Jérôme Dubus, motioned at a Paris municipal meeting that a street or square in Paris should be named after her: Rue or Avenue [...]
The recent release of two films starring Vincent Cassel about the notorious French killer, kidnapper, and bank robber Jacques Mesrine plunged me into an obsession for French criminals. So the timing was perfect (for me, at least) for Ravencrest Books to release Die in Paris: The True Story of France’s Most Notorious Serial Killer. (Full [...]
The country’s most beautiful actor. And its most notorious criminal. Why has Alain Delon never played Jacques Mesrine?
La Miroiterie, probably the oldest art squat (or “squart”) in Paris, may soon close down. It started in 1999. From my admittedly American standpoint, I find the squatters’ resistance to city support (and regulation), in order to keep it going, to be childish and utopian. Should artists be allowed to live there sans rent in [...]
Did you know there are two kinds of cops in Paris? The gendarmes, who are part of the army, and the Paris police, who are unionized. The police are national, not local, and most of the cops you see in Paris are not from Paris. If you ask them for directions, they’ll puzzle over the map [...]
In 1991 during the First Gulf War France created something called Vigipirate. Odd name we all agreed. Since then France’s government has put the country on Vigipirate three times: in 2003 during the Second Gulf War, in 2005 during the terrorism attacks in Central London and in March 2012 during the Merah Affair when a young [...]
It seems incredible, but each year smokers here in France throw 30 billion butts on to this country’s sidewalks, parks and beaches. If one sets them out, they would go around our Mother Earth 22 times. As for Paris, half a million butts are thrown down on our sidewalks. If gathered together they would fill [...]
