Jenna’s Model Life

Some aspects of French life I can adopt with eagerness. Whether it’s the news shows interviewing philosophers instead of spin doctors/other journalists when they’re looking for a spot of analysis or commentary, the genius television that is Star Academy, or the way Homer Simpson’s voice sounds when it’s dubbed into French (kind of sing-songy and fey), I can accept these as different, potentially invigorating, approaches to common problems. I also enjoy buying meat from an actual neighbourhood butcher and being able to press a button on the TV remote to change the language of any imported show back to English. And I could definitely get used to buying delicious, handmade, organic, slow-raised, whole wheat bread for $1.30 a loaf. Some days when I don’t even get out of my pajamas, I’ll still put on shoes and a coat and brush my hair because of the superb motivating power that is the Pain Quotidien baguette.

But then there are the parts I don’t like so much. It has come time to catalogue the errors and inelegances of certain of my gentle host nation’s citizens. Read on for a list of egregious crimes against order, efficiency, good manners, intelligence, and common sense. For I am about to name my Obtuse French Person of the Week!

First, the candidates.

The Accused: One of the women in accounting at my agency

The Charge: Unacceptable failure to properly explain distance and directions to a model in dire need of accurate ideas of same

The Evidence: Friday afternoon, I turned out my pockets and found only 5 centimes and a handful of McDonalds receipts (now, whose could those be?) Cellphone bill to pay, baguette dealer’s kids to feed, beer to buy in order to legitimise my free couscous meal, fur coat to purchase to show off my modelishness/double as Margot Tenenbaum Hallowe’en costume — you know how it is. What’s a model to do but go to her agency and beg a small cash loan?

After my last casting wound up at 2 p.m., I steeled myself to face down the dragons in accounting (and when I say ‘dragons’ I mean that they are extremely nice women, but they control vast sums of money and understand the French tax code, which are pretty close to being superpowers in my mind, and that makes me only appropriately fearful). I asked to see my account (and the dragons found that I owe them less money than I had imagined!), and to borrow 80 Euros.

At this point, the dragon to whom I was speaking asked, in her mildest voice, if I had ID on me. I always carry my nifty Iowa non-driver’s card. She asked if I wouldn’t mind taking a cheque, since it was the end of the week and her stores of cash and gold ingots had been depleted by scores of petulant Ukrainians pleading broken hair-dryers, angry baguette-makers no longer extending credit, and urgent depilatory needs.

Sure, said I, easy-going Kiwi: I’ll cash a cheque, you can do that at any bank, right?

The dragon leaned across the table and began to lie. Oh, it’s not complicated at all, she said with a smile. But you do have to go to this particular bank. The address is right here on the cheque. It’s a couple blocks from here, we use it because it’s so close by. You’ll need to get this signed by your booker and then go downstairs and turn right at the next intersection.

Right at the next intersection? I orienteered as a kid.

Half an hour and many right-turns later, I had walked every street in the neighbourhood. I took to methodically heading up and down tiny streets that lay vaguely rightward of the agency in the hope of glimpsing the street sign I sought. Methodical soon became difficult, since Paris never met a gridded street plan it liked. I started asking strangers, but because I was near the Champs Elysées, and down the end by the Ferris wheel, found only visitors to the city. I started looking desperately for a Metro station, for they often have maps of the local streets on their signs. Then for any kind of map at all. I’d been trying “go downstairs and turn right at the next intersection” for half an hour and was thoroughly lost.

Finally, I spotted a Vélib stand — a depot for the silver-coloured bikes that Parisians with microchipped credit cards can borrow and return to other city depots, but which Americans and other bearers of magnetic-stripped credit cards can only look at with longing — which had a map about the size of an A4 page tacked above its credit-card slot. Perhaps one block of the street I sought was visible in the upper right corner, some five blocks straight ahead of me. I rejoiced, walked the five blocks, and realised I was at the wrong end of the avenue: I needed number 80, and the building I was standing outside of said 32.

By the time I reached the bank, the bank that was go downstairs and turn right at the next intersection, it was 3:59 p.m. I’d been walking for over an hour. And I was then about 100 m from the Arc de Triomphe. Two Metro stops from my point of departure. If the dragon had told me to go back to the Champs Elysées, walk the 1.5 km to the other end, and then turn left onto the appropriate avenue, I would have found it in half the time — and given her points for honesty! But she didn’t.

Punishment: Sent to Johannesburg with no map, no command of any local language, and no shoes.

The Accused: The sole teller of the F0rtis Bank still working at 4 p.m. last Friday

The Charge: Inexcusable preference for office systems that go above and beyond the descriptor Kafkaesque

The Evidence: I arrived at the bank to find a note helpfully sellotaped to the door. It read:

Due to the Metro strikes taking place today, the bank will close at 4 p.m. We thank you for your understanding.

They hadn’t closed the blinds and there were still two people inside who looked like workers — I could tell by the way they were standing so listlessly, drinking coffee from the tiny plastic cups that are universal accessory of French office espresso machines — so I rang the doorbell. Then I rang it again. They looked at me, registered the white-knuckled hand that currently gripped their door handle, and buzzed me in.

I actually thought that signified a certain change in my afternoon’s luck. How naïve.

The woman worker, faced with the prospect of a customer, turned on her heel and returned to the bowels of the bank. The man teller seated at the counter said, Oh, you’re so lucky, we are just about to close, because of the strikes, you know! Terrible. And I could tell he didn’t mean it — who thinks getting off work early on a Friday is terrible? And when does a Parisian smile? — but I said appropriately thankful things in response, while he got up to walk to the front window and lower the blinds in case of other latecomers.

I produced my cheque, signed the back, and handed him my ID. He pressed a button and the woman worker reappeared thirty seconds later. He handed her the ID and the cheque and asked her to make two photocopies of each.

While she’s doing that, he continued, let me just see if I can get this computer to work. The main program’s freezing. I think the computer, he is on a strike!

Two unforgivable comments about the Rugby World Cup later, the woman worker reappeared with a sheaf of photocopies. The man teller asked her to call for Etienne, since the computer was still frozen, and perhaps they were going to have to do something manually. Or perhaps Etienne would do something in the back. Either way Etienne was needed.

Etienne appeared, looking more tired than anyone who works a 35-hour week (when not striking) has a right to be. I think the computer, he is on a strike! said the man teller, again. Etienne frowned, took one of the photocopied cheque-and-ID packets the man teller had stapled together, as well as the original cheque and ID, and walked slowly back where he had come from.

The man teller asked how long I’d been a model and if I enjoyed it. I wanted to say, This morning I was sent on a lingerie casting despite the fact the boob fairy dropped my name from her list, never to be recovered, and then I was asked if I had any cellulite by someone whose job description should be designer of hideous coats. What do you think! But instead I said that simply that I did.

Etienne returned. The computer is down, he said, we will have to do this manually. He gave the man teller the cheque and my ID back, and took Photocopy Packet 1 to be filed somewhere in back. The man teller sighed and went on a filing expedition of his own. I sat there very quietly for perhaps another five minutes. Finally the woman worker reappeared and left a small plastic ATM card on the table. It said This card is for in-bank use and must be returned to the teller after your transaction.

The man teller came back, cheque- and Photocopy Packet 2-less, and gave me my ID to put back in my wallet. He picked up the in-bank ATM card and gestured for me to follow him to the cash machine in the front wall.

See, isn’t this simple? he said. I put in the card, and the balance read 80 Euro. I selected my bank-note denomination preference, and out came the money. The man teller grabbed the card as the machine spat it back out. Good luck getting home, he called as I proceeded out the door. As it turns out, because of the Metro strike, I had to walk.

The Punishment: Sent to launder money for the Russian mob until he learns that a simple transaction does not require 3 adult workers, four photocopies, a single-use ATM card, and 20 minutes of anyone’s time. I was willing to consider a week of being towel garçon for the French rugby team until the in-bank ATM card entered the picture.

The Accused: The sour-faced middle-aged cashier at my local Ed! grocery store

The Charge: Love of argument without prerequisite love of reason; fondness for narrowed-eyes suspicious looks and self-righteous postures

The Evidence: One of my favourite things to do is to grocery shop on Saturday afternoons. Everyone is out and about in my neighbourhood, keeping the bakeries, butchers, delis, and fruit merchants of the quarter in business. I enjoy auditioning new places to buy homemade pasta, comparing the produce at the two produce stands that face each other across the Rue Rambuteau, and buying cheese at the fromagerie. But for certain staples — dry goods, milk, bottled pasta sauce and premade soup — cheaper is better, and cheaper necessitates a trip to an actual supermarket.

I’ve tried the Franprix, I’ve tried the Monoprix, I’ve tried the 8 à 8 in a pinch (yes, France’s version of a 7-11 only stays open from — you guessed it! — 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.) But I kept on passing this place called Ed! and I was intrigued by the name. Plus it advertised supercheapbargainbasement prices on the Metro, and my main criterion in any purchase I’m willing to relegate to a supermarket is price.

So after I picked out 400 g of fresh ravioli at my Italian deli, bought ten slices of freshly cut salami at my charcuterie, and picked up a couple clementines, William pears, Braeburns and a nice-looking Nashi at the fruit stand on the south side of Rambuteau, I headed to Ed! for toilet paper, tea, soup, and milk. I bypassed their puny produce section where a few abused-looking Jerusalem artichokes lurked, mastered Ed!’s confusing aisle format (clue: don’t expect aisles to have more than one egress/access point in Ed!), impulse-bought some cheap turkey breast, and scored 100 tea bags for 95 centimes.

Then I found the queue for the checkout, and stood behind a wino who coughed up 2.50 Euros for 2 l of red cooking wine. Everyone appreciates Ed!’s commitment to low price points on necessities.

The mouth-breathing cashier frowned as she scanned by items. And the fruit? she said, pointing at one of my many shopping bags.

Oh no, that’s mine, I got it at the fruit stand around the corner, I replied.

We have the same products, she countered. Though I wondered how she could tell what products I even had through an opaque white shopping bag, a bag noticeably different from the clear, flimsy things Ed! offers in its produce aisle?

But this is how I do my shopping, see, I said. I went to the Italian deli, and then the charcuterie, and the fruit stand, and the bakery — I buy a few things at each place. I bought this fruit already. And you don’t have Nashi pears.

She started to tell me that I should have left my bags at the door of the store. But someone might steal them! I said. (And note I have receipts for my purchases, and there’s no sign saying to leave any bag anywhere.) You should just know to leave them there, she said, we don’t have to put a sign up!

I offered to let her look through my bags and compare my items with the ones listed on my receipts if she had any doubts, but all she said was, We have the same products!

(Ed! — now offering home-made ravioli with 12 choices of fillings, hand-cut salami, and individually-wrapped imported pears!)

She frowned at me, looked me up and down one last time, and barked out my total for the goods she’d scanned. I paid and she shoved the receipt over to me with a grunt.

Ed! charges 3 centimes for plastic bags. I only needed one, so I gave her 5 centimes. She didn’t give me any change.

The Punishment: Forced to grocery shop with and for her five screaming brats without the aid of a shopping trolley, basket, vehicle, or any of her selection of grandmotherly handicarts, for one month.

The Review of the Assembled Suspects:

I think it’s entirely possible the man teller has simply never imagined a bank where every single transaction need not be photocopied in triplicate and checked by two superiors, and while it’s hard to read the dragon-lady as well-intentioned — she knew damn well where the bank was, and just wanted me out of her office before I made her get out of her chair and find someone to give her the key to the super-super-backup cashbox, I’m sure — at least she was totally forthright but friendly in discussing the main financial issue of the day, that of my debt to my agency, and at least she wanted me to have the 80 Euros I needed.

But that cashier. She was mean-spirited, small-minded, wrong-headed, and hide-bound. An ugly combination. Which makes her my Obtuse French Person of the Week.

Awesome French Person of the Week goes to the curly-haired model I met at the lingerie casting (who also didn’t fill out their Barbie-shaped sample sizes!) and who gave me a lift afterwards. She drove a Smart Car! Its simple, cute dashboard arrayed with friendly knobs and dials made driving look like something almost within my own future realm of possibility. And she had a calendar tucked into her cupholder with a nude beefcake model holding coils of rope in his giant fists because it’s an inside joke with her room-mate (Actually, I hate these kind of guys, she said, I mean he’s so ugly it’s funny! See that look on his face! And what is he holding rope for, does he work on a boat? Who thinks women like this crap!) And brought the Smart Car to a halt at a station just a couple Metro stops away from my apartment, the doll.

The Australian told me last night that once she gave the Rejection Hotline number to a magazine editor who wouldn’t stop hitting on her on a job. I fell in love with her a little bit just then.

Yesterday I spent thirty-five minutes on the metro to reach a run-down apartment building in a very tony Parisian suburb, managed to open a security door whose buzzer probably last reliably worked during the Fourth Republic, took my life into my own hands inside a tiny wheezing coffin of a lift, and emerged to meet a petite overweight woman with dark roots, who took one look at my book, asked how long I had been modeling, then recoiled in horror and said, “Oh no, you’re new! We can’t have anybody new! This is too important a job. It’s in île Maurice and a new girl, that just isn’t possible.”

She closed my book and pushed it back across the table towards me, then took a phone call while I sat there looking at the other casting agent, who just smiled nervously. My hopes of going to Mauritius the first week of December were receding rapidly.

I took my time to collect my things after the casting, since the next girl hadn’t arrived and the casting agents were looking over the cards they’d collected from models so far that morning. The woman had chosen to ignore my French introduction and proceed in English, so I’m not sure she knew I could understand what she was saying, but I kind of reveled in a rare and perfect opportunity to witness fashion industry candidness. This self-important woman with the bad dye-job went through every single card on the table, catalogueing its bearer’s errors while her partner listened silently. She’s too fat, she’d be perfect if she were two inches taller — what is it with all these agencies sending me short girls? do they think they’re making some kind of a point? — and my God, she is just perfectly ugly. How they could even send her is beyond me. I don’t even know how she could get signed with a face like that. Look! Too old, too old. And barely been modeling two weeks! What do they think this is, some Paris show? I have no idea what to even do with this one…

It got to the point where I couldn’t linger any longer without it seeming weird. But she was still going strong when I left.

My next casting was for a French teen magazine owned by the Hachette group (which owns a tonne of other publishing houses worldwide, including Little, Brown) and held in Hachette’s impressive, mannered, steel-and-glass building complex in the Défense district. The casting agents were much nicer — my Emanuelle Seigner comparison score hit three — but that’s not necessarily an indication that the casting went well.

I had a lovely lunch with my booker today, and, astoundingly, the head booker came up to me in the office un-prompted and said my hips look “much better.” So for lunch I had spring rolls, crispy roast duck, and a flourless chocolate cake with spiced caramel sauce for dessert. Ha!

I exchanged numbers with a chatty, brassy Australian the other day at a casting — within minutes of meeting me, she was telling me about the creepy guy who followed her around her neighbourhood for two hours one afternoon while she tried to lose him (finally she went into a bar, pretended to order a drink so he would order one, then ran out — he got chased by the proprietor for not paying his tab, and she could go home), her diet (no dairy, lots of soy milk, “because the hormones give you boobs!”), and the job she’s on option for this December in Greenland. “You know, the aaar-tic!” She shared some choice words about designers who told her she was too big for their shows — something about woman-hating self-important gays who wish they could show their collections on the backs of pubescent boys — and I liked her immediately, all trans-Tasman brouhaha aside. We’re meeting for a drink in an hour and I have this warm-fuzzy feeling all like I hope I’ll make a friend.

Three-hundred New Zealand police officers and members of the armed offenders squad (the kind of NZ police officers who carry guns) arrested 17 people on terrorism and firearms charges yesterday. They seem to be primarily members of Maori separatist and environmental groups, and they’re all being charged under brand-spanking-new terrorism legislation.

Tumeke, a blog attached to a magazine of the same name, has been covering this story and has links to numerous other news sources’ stories. Tumeke is co-run by the only New Zealander convicted of sedition in 40 years, and an old acquaintance of mine, a journalist who goes by Bomber, but I consider it a pretty reliable source.

When the Terrorism Suppression Bill was under consideration in parliament — ostensibly it was put forward to toughen NZ’s defenses against foreign terrorists who might seek to attack the country — Maori protest groups said they felt it was just a matter of time before they would be targeted under its provisions. It appears they were right; although from what I’ve read the police seem to have ample reason for concern over at least some of these groups’ activities.

But that “terrorism” appellation irks; I’m not sure if, philosophically, this case will move the legal threshold between civil disobedience and terrorism a little closer to the former, and I’m not sure if, practically, the terrorism case is going to be a necessary or easy one for the police to make. (In NZ, the police arrest and prosecute all cases; there are no “district attorneys” and there is no civil court system.)

It definitely appears that these groups have violated the firearms act, a longstanding but thorough piece of legislation. Most of the sites raided had, the police say, small arsenals of illegal guns and, in come cases, bomb-making equipment. (The raids were prompted, according to the police, by the practice detonation of a napalm bomb eight days ago at one of the groups’ headquarters.) In NZ, where gun ownership and use is subject to a raft of restrictions, these kinds of violations, if proven, could send anyone to prison for a long time.

The terrorism charges seem to rest on reports of threats made against the Prime Minister. That’s serious enough, especially when coupled with the presence of illegal weapons. But why are the police so keen to have a terrorism test case against a whole bunch of environmentalists and disgruntled Maori, when they already have an open-and-shut case on the gun charges? What legal precedent are they trying to establish in regards to the Terrorism Suppression Act? It’ll be very interesting to see how the police play this in court.

Some very prominent activists are now in custody, including this guy, Tame Iti, of the North Island’s Tuhoe tribe.

By profession he’s an interior decorator and restaurateur. And it’s actually an old photo; When he turned up to his bail hearing, he was wearing a mohawk.

I’ve always thought of Iti as a perhaps sincere activist with a consuming flair for media stunts (the man designed and sold Tuhoe passports, set up a “Maori Embassy” in Wellington, and has a habit of mooning the police) more than as any kind of seditious element.

I suppose we’re about to find out which it is. His bail was denied, for now.

In other weekend news, I turned into a sobbing mess, and then a tear-stained frantically blog-scanning mess, when I broke Peter’s camera. I somehow accidentally pushed it off my bed, and it fell onto the hardwood floor. I didn’t think it had had that bad of a knock — it fell with more of a solid thwuck than a brittle or sickening smack — but when I slid back the lens cap, the barrel wouldn’t budge, and the machine would make only pathetic little bleeping noises at me. The LCD screen was undamaged and showed me the normal start-up image — a nature photo with a bird and the words Canon PowerShot — before fading to black with the ominous message E18.

Turns out that is code for any problem when a Canon’s lens won’t extend or retract, and they are so common there is a cottage web industry devoted to defeating the scurrilous E18. Enchanted by strangers’ stories of resurrecting their cameras by attaching them to their TVs, by recharging their batteries, by pressing down on their lens barrels until they clicked back onto their tracks, by hitting them on their AV/USB hookup side while their lenses tries to move, by running a spatula around the gap between their lens barrels and their body casings, and by taking them apart step by step to manually re-calibrate their lens barrels’ motors, I tried all except the latter (too scary. And I might, like, break a nail trying to loosen those teeny, tiny screws!).

Nothing worked. So I’m afraid I have no pictures of the Montmartre wine festival I went to on Saturday, not of the charming fair I found there, full of stalls representing each of France’s départements, not of the delicious things I ate and the foie gras I almost bought and the terrible, terrible rosé I drank, and not of the fireworks I watched, with my friend Scott and a couple hundred other people, from the steps of the Sacré Coeur. (To be fair, the Canon probably wouldn’t have captured the fireworks, it tended to freak out when shooting at night.) But still. Having no pictures is bad news.

I was also disappointed by the Alsatian stand at the food and wine fair that filled the streets around the church. When Limousin brings the boudin with chestnuts, and Languedoc brings the cassoulet cooked in goose drippings, and Brittany brings the damn crêpes, where does Alsace get off thinking it needn’t provide a big vat of choucroute garnie à l’alsacienne? No offense to my Uncle Doug, who makes a pretty mean sauerkraut, but it’s a simple fact that Alsace makes the best sauerkraut — or “choucroute” — in the world. They fill it with all the right parts of the pig and add three kinds of sausage and spice it with juniper berries, cloves, onions, black peppercorns, bay leaves, goose fat, apples, and white wine, and it takes days to make and it’s just unforgettably, heartbreakingly good. I’m sure choucroute garnie was one of the main reasons France wanted Alsace back so badly after the Prussian war; it’s just that delicious. If I’d been chowing down on the stuff since 1648, I’d certainly miss it badly enough to feel scrappy.

But Saturday, the Alsatians were withholding. I had to go south to Savoy and console myself with a tartiflette — a kind of cheesy scalloped potato recipe flavoured with a hint of cloves, dotted with fragments of ham, and served with a big sausage. I mean it was good. But it was no Alsatian paradise-food.

Sunday I spent most of the day trying to remedy the camera situation. First step: Online research to find a replacement. (Easier to fess up to Peter if I can show him a link to his new camera!) I went to this site and then this one and then I found this one and I spent a while jumping screen-to-screen and finally I asked my friend Nick. Nick’s a photographer.

We talked for a while about Leicas we lust after and DSLRs and the Pentax MZ-50 I had and loved in high school and about Nick’s new Olympus point-and-shoot (which is so tough he can take it snowboarding). Finally we found The One.

It was a sweet moment.

Now I just have to book some more jobs so I can afford it. Last week was slow — the shows hangover — but tomorrow I’m back up to speed, kind of, with three castings.

I really missed having a camera today, when I sat and waited for my sole casting on a banquette upholstered in zebra. Real zebra. Mane and all. Zebra is itchy, in case you were curious. But ordinarily I’d consider Zebra also photoworthy. Sigh. My first paycheque can’t come soon enough.

The housing market correction seems not to be in effect in my neighbourhood, where a burned-out shell of an efficiency that looks for all the world like a former meth lab/bomb workshop is on the market for USD 326,000. It has high ceilings!

Also, sometimes the French take their art-of-perfect-food just a little too seriously. I love lobster. But I’m not sure I could bring myself to eat these ones.

They just look a little too much like that plastic food they put in the windows at sushi restaurants. And are these salmon cakes for real? And who, when making deviled eggs, puts the yolky compound into a pastry bag before refilling the egg’s cavity? What the hell is the point? And…just stop it, French people. You give me kitchen-skillz envy. Go eat a perfect little shrimp tart. I hope your lemon slice squirts you in the eye.

Yesterday I was invited to the French finals of the Elite M0del look competition. (A modeling contest that launched the careers of a bunch of supermodels, including Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Gisele Bundchen.) So I went to the Ritz with the Model Room-mate, where we met an Australian model represented by our agency and accompanied by her mum, and a man who wore a snakeskin suit and snakeskin hat. No, I didn’t just mistype “sharksin”: He was wearing the skins of snakes, tanned and dyed a chocolate brown, and stitched together into an outfit. I was hoping he would be some kind of amazing wild-child designer, or a film director, or a very lost rodeo clown. But he was just an actor from L.A.

The models walked, the emcees made light filler conversation while the models changed, and then the models walked again. Then they picked three to win big bouquets of flowers, and scooters, and something else I couldn’t translate, and we filed out to the Ritz lobby.

Model Room-mate and I procured champagne and set out to talk to the strangers who’d amassed there. At first the night seemed to be going well: We found an Evian exec who offered Amsterdam travel tips, a couple who did marketing for a new perfume and who kept on looking at me and saying how I had a lovely, 17th Century kind of look, and I souvenired a sweet champagne glass (because I figure, the Ritz is kind of like the White House in respect to its brand).

It turned out to not be real crystal.

And my evening goals quickly shrank to comprise: Get out of here without being too sexually-harassed.

I don’t mind talking to people of different generations — growing up, I always felt more comfortable around adults, generally speaking, than children my own age — and I’m not even intrinsically opposed to participating in a “scene” if it helps my career. It’s not misery to dress up, stand around, and eat hors d’oeuvres if you’re meeting interesting people, listening to good music, and “getting your face out there.” But the dynamics of last night quickly shrank to: Old men with a tenuous connection to the fashion industry and visible wedding bands trying to get as close as possible to very young models. At one point, I found myself trapped talking to a short French actor, an ugly restaurateur whose establishment had an unforgivably stupid name, and a fleshy businessman. They had the gall to ask if I was faithful to Peter, the man I’ve been with for almost three years. They laughed out loud when I said that of course I was.

(Perhaps this is a cultural thing? This is a country where the incumbent first couple met when he officiated her first wedding, and spent most of 2005 living in different countries with his ‘n’ hers lovers.)

Nonetheless this was quite a come-down from being compared to a Mme. de Sévigné heroine.

But my favourite was the owner of a talent agency. He told me I spoke French like a diplomat and seemed absolutely astonished when I told him it was a career I’d considered (briefly, during one of those self-serious high school moments). Then he told me he knew Krav Maga (nothing like the whiff of pure physical threat to entice the ladies!) And then he kept on asking me what perfume I was wearing. Every single time I told him I don’t wear perfume, he would say, “Really?” and lean as close to me as he felt he could get away with and take another long sniff. “You smell so good. Are you sure you don’t wear perfume?” You know, I always thought I just never bothered with that particular beauty ritual. But more likely, you’re right — I am wearing perfume, and I’d love you to identify it! Sniff again, jerk-face, by all means. And then tell me why I should be an actress or a television presenter, despite my demonstrable lack of any dramatic talent. Please, it’s music to my ears.

I went and found the Model Room-mate, who was talking to Greg Basso, a builder who was the French Joe Millionaire in 2003. It was almost witching hour for the Métro, which closes at around 1 a.m., so we beat a hasty exit. The day’s earlier rain had faded and the whole city looked and felt fresh and quiet, especially after the hot, smoky, noisy private party. By the time we got to the station, the last train had left, and we had to walk. Honestly, it was really nice to decompress before getting home — I liked the walk, it was through a good part of town and we had the chance to ponder the mystery of why it is never the nice men who might want to talk about museums or linguistics or music — or who might even have nothing to say at all, but who would at least say it with respect — who waylay you at parties. Why it is instead always the jerks with no concept of personal space or conversational skills. Model Room-mate regards these parties as work and attends them with all the expectations of enjoyment that implies. I enjoyed the walk home because we made each other laugh swapping stories of nasty superficial conversationalists, but then I wasn’t wearing 5′ platform DKNY heels, like Model Room-mate, poor girl.

Today I stopped by my agency and I got the contact sheets from the two tests I mentioned doing last week in digital form. These photos are enlargements from the contact sheets: They haven’t been retouched yet, and when I have proper hi-res shots I’ll replace these for them. But I know you must be curious to see what I’ve been up to, so here goes.

Once I squeezed into the very brief, Brazilian-made crochet maillot, it was fun to pose for these shots.

This almost looks like a dress — you can just see a sliver of skin around my back that shows it’s actually a bustier and a high-waisted Versace skirt. I kind of love how it looks like I have an awesome bowl cut as well.

These shots were fun. I don’t think I’m ready to go all Caroline-Trentini and shoot entire Vogue editorials while using my model-powers of levitation, but I think this shot came out okay.

Then, I dressed up like a boy.

Luckily, I already had the shoes!

But, see, I’m diverse. I can do lingerie.

And colour!

But it’s true I do like the cross-dressing. Oh, little brother, I seem to recall you having one of these Eisenhower jackets lying about the place. Next time I come home, watch out or I just might steal it.

Here I model an up-to-the-minute Renaissance Faire look (the fashion is so far forward, my head needed another second to catch up with my body). Pay heed, wenches! Billowy sleeves are back, so sayeth I.

I really like this one.

First seven images by Sol Sanchez, remainder by Cynthia & Philippe Barigan. Supremely talented folks.

That is all for now, thanks for watching.

Every first Sunday of the month in Paris, almost all of the museums and tourist sites dispense with their admission charges and let the masses in. This gives you an idea of the pandemonium that ensues — the line stretched all the way to the end of the entrytube at the Centre Georges Pompidou:

I didn’t even attempt the Louvre, or the Musée D’Orsay, or the Musée Picasso (where the line stretched out the door, out the courtyard, and around the block).

But I like the Centre Pompidou. They aren’t kidding when they say they’re a museum of modern art — this is not the kind of place where the curators wait for what was once shocking to ripen into respectability before daring to acquire it. You’re as likely to find the exact room that optical artist Yaacov Agam decorated in the Elysée Palace (and which President Pompidou’s successor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, swiftly removed) as you are to rest your eyes on some pretty Matisse. The question of “What is art?”, inchoate in more sedate museum settings, is brought to the fore without shame or awkwardness at the Pompidou, where even the building (”like an office block that threw up on itself,” someone behind me in the line to get in said) makes one ponder the definitions and boundaries of art and architecture.

Not that a yen for the new has always well-served the museum. Apparently this plastic bubble, air-as-medium stuff was very big in the 1970s.

But I like Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui’s repurposed bottle caps and gum wrappers (for my San Francisco friends, there’s a similar Anatsui piece in the permanent collection of the De Young, so you ought to hop along some first Tuesday of the month). This, to me, recalls Klimt — except with Klimt all you get is gaudied-up, demi-monde surface, and with Anatsui I’m forced to think of materials, economics, nationality, history, and the meaning of choice under the constraints of circumstance.

I like this, too. I’m a sucker for expressive line — painters who really let loose with their strokes, like Egon Schiele and Toulouse-Lautrec, always pull me in more than their more conservative, neatly-executed cousins. Here, the line is all there is, and it has a kind of sympathetic simplicity.

And thankfully the Centre Pompidou had the grace not to hang it too close to its obvious point of departure:

I’ve had this Jean Dubuffet installation, “Le Jardin d’Hiver” (”The Winter Garden”), in the back of my mind since my last visit to the Pompidou, in 2002. It’s somehow disorienting — a pockmarked, uneven grotto with no straight lines, and no light source other than a small, roundish door set high in one wall — and comforting in its extraordinary simplicity. There’s not much to look at, but it’s hard to keep your eyes from tracing the thick, black, topographical lines that define the cave’s bulges and negative spaces. Last time I was here, a sad, sad, music was playing, and I spent quite some time just standing there.

I’ve decided that one day, like Yves Klein, there will be a colour named for me. Not sure what it will be yet, but if an artist can get his models to roll in paint and stick his name on the shade, surely a model should be able to get something.

Tonight I ate dinner with my college friend the Scientist, who lives in Montmartre.

The ground floor of the Scientist’s building has cherubs sculpted into the plaster. Not that the electricians mind working around them.

The Tibetan place where we ate served the kind of red wine I would have gladly turned into a calimocho, and the Scientist’s chicken curry was neither bad nor good.

But out of pure culinary curiosity, I ordered “steamed ravioli with vegetables and cheese” — and received six fat wontons full of carrots, coriander, mint, a gentle-flavored cheese, and spinach, with a mint-and-tomato dipping sauce. They were delicious! I’m not sure if I’ll be ordering Tibetan bread anytime soon again, though — it looked like a raw cinnamon roll, and tasted smooth and and wet, dismayingly like a kitchen sponge.

Nonetheless, the Scientist and I highly recommend butter tea. Like popcorn in a cup.

This is what happens when one day you decide cleaning the graffiti off your truck just isn’t worth it anymore: Pretty soon you’re the mobile gallery for a whole quartier of charming Basquiats who just want to remind everyone that they are, in fact, sexer than you are, truck-owner-who’s-given-up.

After we’d finished the last of the lhassi, the Scientist and I went over to my stomping grounds to find a certain gelato shop that shapes its products into roses before serving them. And you thought making the Dairy Queen curl was hard! I ordered the smallest cone and the bloom was wider than my fist.

Then we found one of those charming French places — they’re either cafés that serve alcohol, or bars that serve coffee, I can’t decide, and in any case they all do it in well-lit, no-too-loud surroundings that just make them a so much more pleasant option than either a straight and boring café or a dingy and blaring bar. How is it that these brafé cafbar hybrids have never taken off in the U.S.? I would spend all night typing on my laptop ordering beers and teas in succession if I had the option, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

A quick discussion of U.S. foreign policy, energy policy, and Hillary Clinton later, we each went home.

This is the best piece of Internet flotsam I’ve seen in some time:

“And now, our soap opera of Terror and Fashion, SIGNÉ ANNA! So, what’s new in the life of Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of U.S. Vogue, the most POWERFUL woman in the world?

This incredible week, Anna showed her bare arms in the front row. Even more unusually, the woman whom colleagues call “the Ice Queen” smiled.

[Ominous music]

What odious plot was in the air? She was even…laughing. Why these unnatural expressions? The answer lies in this camera, which followed her everywhere, and this microphone boom, which captured all of her conversations. She is being filmed for a documentary, a work which promises to be more frightening than Ben Hur and Deep Throat combined. But as soon as she thought the camera was no longer filming, she relaxed her zygomaticus.

[Brief flash of a pink-and-white striped test pattern]

But who was this woman with the same hairstyle as Anna? A body double?
No, it was Amy Astley, the editor-in-chief of the high school version of U.S. Vogue, Teen Vogue. AMY! NEW CHARACTER!

[Black screen with Amy waving]

[Amy explains in English interview footage that the idea for her magazine came from Anna's daughter, Bea]

Anna, who continues to extend her empire with the launch of the American version of Vogue Men — which contains on page 184 an excellent article on safes — is now launching Vogue Living, a home-decorating magazine so atrociously chic that the editor-in-chief is Hamish Bowles, whom our experts have spotted in the party scene in Marie Antoinette.

[Marie Antoinette clip]

HAMISH! NEW CHARACTER! In this saga of furious whim!

So what’s up with Vogue USA after its cover where Renee Zellwegger looked like she was having a number two? Anna then gave her first page to Dreamgirls actress Jennifer Hudson — the 11th black woman on the cover since 1892.

Most importantly, she’s also the first “curvy” — perhaps we could even say “fat” — woman to get the front, that is, the first woman who was not required to submit to an anorectic’s diet prior to the photo shoot. And on the cover for the “Embrace Your Shape” issue? It’s Scarlett Johanson! Inside are plenty of puffed-up articles.

[Image of model with padded chest posing beneath car]

But nothing, NOTHING, nothing!

Prepared us for the enormous SCANDAL which erupted this week, in fact, on Sunday morning. At the Nina RICCI show, see our exclusive images!

Miss Agnès was absolutely floored by SHOCK when she discovered that:

‘Anna Wintour, she’s wearing the same dress she wore to Balenciaga…’

SUNDAY! [image of Wintour in the dress, blaring sounds]

TUESDAY! [image of Wintour in the dress, blaring sounds]

SUNDAY! [image of Wintour in the dress, blaring sounds]

TUESDAY! [image of Wintour in the dress, blaring sounds]

In fact, our footage shows how the scandal erupted: Tuesday morning, she wore the same dress to Balenciaga that she would wear Sunday to Nina Ricci!

SAME DRESS! SAME PRINT! SAME NECKLACE SAME SUNGLASSES SAME JACKET!!!!!!

We are so disappointed. Either everything at Vogue has gone to hell and Anna’s star is no longer in the ascent,

OR,

Our theory — she may have worn the same dress for continuity reasons relating to her documentary, making the entire exercise an IMMENSE and vain fraud! They haven’t even finished the film but we are already demanding our refunds!

See you soon. For the next in our soap opera of Fashion and Terror, remember to tune in to SIGNÉ ANNA!”

Loïc Prigent, the voice you hear, is an excellent straight documentarian — this is the first funny piece I’ve seen from him. The work he’s parodying here is his own superb Signé Chanel, a five-part series that followed the creation of Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2004 couture collection. I recommend it because Prigent and his team chooses the wise option of following the actual seamstresses more closely than he concentrates on Karl Lagerfeld, the designer. Sure Karl Lagerfeld is a crazy genius, but he’s not particularly interesting in his filmed scenes, and I’d take listening to the couturières share their age-old catalogue of workroom superstitions over watching Lagerfeld sketch the detail of a pocket, crumple the paper, and toss it in one repeated robotic motion any day.

Plus Signé Chanel has almost a whole episode on the 75-year-old farmer who makes the trim on all the Chanel tweeds. She is one of the few trim-weavers left in France, and the only person on earth who understands the loom she designed and built herself: Chanel has sent 10 assistants to her to learn her method, and she’s dispatched each empty-handed. In her first scene, a Chanel lackey drives a package of the new season’s cloth all the way out to her farm so he can hand-deliver it (she needs the fabrics so she can tease out threads and create perfectly matched custom trims). The trim lady looks incredulously at at the henchman, watches him drive off, and then dumps the cloth so she can go bale hay. “Chanel can wait,” she says, “it’s going to rain tomorrow and then what will I do about the hay, eh?”

Plus there’s an awesome scene where Lagerfeld, in his booming Teutonic monotone, tells André Leon Talley that an immense Chanel flower-shaped ring has a compartment that can be used to hide “Cocaine, condoms, whatever.” And when Prigent catches the seamstresses crying over rejected dresses and slippery fabrics, it makes me cry, too.