26 April: WeeFee
Being the cheap bastard (as well as a supporter of independent business folk), I made a list of only those free wi-fi (wireless; pronounced "weefee" here in France) hotspots that I found in the neighboring area via Jiwire. But it turns out that these "free" spots are not as free as I've come to expect from independent coffee houses in Seattle.

The hotspots listed as free on Jiwire all seem to be run by HotCafe. When you turn on your laptop's wi-fi connection at one of these establishments and try loading a Web page, you're greeted by their welcome page, which beckons you to get a card with a security pass from the bar or waiter. This seemed like a quaint way to keep things secure, but it's also a bit of a gimmick: you're limited to 15 to 30 minutes (depending on the establishment) of free connectivity. After that, you're out of luck, unless you decide to purchase the SmartPass option, which provides connectivity at 0.15 euros per minute.

There is one completely free wi-fi hotspot: McDonalds. Mrs. F and I haven't felt desperate enough to try this out, but I hope to at some point before we leave just so I can check out the user experience.

Oh, by the way, whenever Mrs. Facade and I whip out our dueling laptops, we're typically the only people at the cafe to do so. It seems most on-the-go Internet connectivity is done via storefronts that have full desktop PCs (which can be used for about 3 to 5 euros per hour). And there are cafes that are signed up to other corporate plans, but we haven't been to any of them yet to see if the wireless laptop usage is any more prevalent. Perhaps if we were in a more business-oriented part of the city (but I would have expected just as many wi-fi connected laptops in this university-oriented district).

 
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26 April: Punishment
My wife is a vegetarian, so we knew our trip to Paris was going to be challenging. She recently decided to give fish another try, so it hasn't been as tough as it could have been. And we did some research into vegetarian and veg-friendly restaurants before arriving. The first from the list that we visited was Le Grenier de Notre Dame, just a few blocks away from our Latin Quarter apartment. While not as showy (or devine) as Seattle's two haute cuisine vegetarian restaurants (Carmelita and Cafe Flora), our meals were well prepared and very tasty (mine, a vegetarian cassoulet; veg lasagna for Mrs. F) and we finished with a flourish with a very nice (and surprisingly vegan) lemon tart.

We were not so enamored with our second attempt at a veg restaurant, this time with the macrobiotic-advertised Les Quatre et Une Saveurs (which should have been our tip-off). We'd read good things about it from our Internet resources as well as one of our guide books. Unfortunately, it was the prototypical vegetarian restaurant that every food-loving French man and woman fears: gastronomic punishment. We ordered the assiette (variety) plate that came with a main course (tempeh with ginger for me; tofu for Mrs. F) surrounded by a garden of shredded raw vegetables (cabbage, beets, carrots under a wan vinegrette), unflavored blanched vegetables (carrots, courgette, green beans), and two small lumps of starch (brown rice and bulgur). Luckily, as our waitress pointed out, we had a small dispenser of shoyu (soy) sauce on the table, which we both used liberally.

This is the type of meal that used to be served in health food restaurants back in the 70s in the United States (and occasionally today, such as at Seattle's recently defunct Gravity Bar). Now, this type of restaurant certainly serves its purpose as there seemed to be many satisfied regular customers in the establishment. But I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be that way (even if you're going for the vegan lifestyle). I guess it's all macrobiotically balanced and all, but it was far less than satisfying. So we headed to one of our favorite cafes--the St. Severin--and proceeded to finish the evening with a Kir and a creme brulee. Ahhhh... magnifique! Now that we've put in our penance for our binge-cheesing at the raclette/fondue restaurant, we can get back to a better balance of French cuisine.

 
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26 April: French Frozen Food
Much is made about the love affair the French have with their open air food markets and corner grocery stores so they can get the freshest ingredients for cooking a meal. Well, we ran across a rather peculiar store today: the all frozen food Picard. Unlike the frozen food aisle in your typical American grocery store, the cooly modern Picard creates an Ikea-like maze of low-profile, top-lifting freezers (which look like the Mercedes Benz of freezers) that run the gamut from individual ingredients (artichoke hearts, couscous, mushrooms, individual chops of meat, steak tartare, fish filets) to prepared meals (meat on skewers, quiches, curries, etc.) to a wide range of desserts (including creme brulee). I guess it's not so weird to see all this frozen food, but it's fascinating to see all of it in a single store devoted solely to the freezer.

 
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26 April: And Justice For All...
While I've certainly not been as news-hound-y as I typically am during this Honeymoon in Paris, there was one political happening back in the US that I was curious about how it was playing out. In our trip to Le Buci to check in on email and Web news stories today, I grabbed as much as I could about "Justice Sunday -- Stopping The Filibuster Against People of Faith"--the rally that The Right Rev. Dr. Bill (I'm Really a Medical Doctor) Frist (in 2008) lent his videotaped time to. I mentioned it in a previous post, but here's a refresher from Salon:

The message of Justice Sunday was that the Senate's filibuster of some of Bush's judicial nominees constitutes discrimination against "people of faith." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who delivered a speech by video, tried to distance himself from this inflammatory assertion, but his participation spoke much louder than the wan caveats offered in his remarks. He lent his authority and credibility to the parade of right-wing celebrities who are using the parliamentary stalemate over judges as an excuse to tar Democrats as, essentially, enemies of God. Thousands crowded the megachurch in Louisville, while others watched via satellite in hundreds of churches nationwide. Still more tuned in online and through Christian TV and radio. They heard from Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Watergate felon turned evangelist Chuck Colson and a handful of others.

And let's remember, folks, the rumblings over this possible Holy War are over seven judges (though 10 is the number used most--10 judges were blocked by Democrats during Bush's first four-year term; the President has renominated seven of them for this term).

The language on Sunday was consistently apocalyptic. Dobson, the avuncular culture warrior, declared, "I think this is one of the most significant issues we've ever faced as a nation, because the future of democracy and ordered liberty actually depends on the outcome of this struggle." After all, the Supreme Court is responsible for "the biggest holocaust in world history" -- the legalization of abortion. "For 44 years, the Supreme Court has been on a campaign to limit religious freedom," Dobson said. He continued, "We do have a right to participate in this great representative form of government." From the way the crowd cheered, you'd have thought someone had told them they didn't. Conflating the right to participate with the right to evangelize, Mohler said, "We are not calling for people to be moral, we want them to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ." That's a valid position for a religious figure to take, perhaps, but since Mohler also argued that Christians can't separate their public responsibilities from their spiritual obligations, it seemed as if he was arguing for the right of judges to impose Christianity. If so, the real problem isn't discrimination against "people of faith." It's the claim that "people of faith" have the right to discriminate.

The AP article on Justice Sunday soft-peddaled Frist's involvment a bit:

A potential candidate for the White House in 2008, the Tennessee Republican made no overt mention of religion in a brief address taped for a rally Sunday evening in Louisville, Ky., according to a text of his remarks released before the event. Instead, Frist seemed intent on steering clear of the views expressed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and other conservatives in and out of Congress who have urged investigations and even possible impeachment of judges they describe as activists.

To which Hunter at Daily Kos notes:

I'd like to point out, yet again, that whether or not Frist "makes mention of religion" in his taped endorsement of the event doesn't enter into it, and you'd have to be a special kind of stupid to think that that somehow represents moderation. The point is that the entire event is branded around the false and extremely offensive notions that the objections to these particular judicial nominations are based on religious prejudice, and that Americans who don't subscribe to this one particular subcult of far-far-right Schiavoism are therefore not religious, not Christians, and not legitimate voices in the theocracy-to-be that the Dobsons of the world demand America become.

As this story gets out in the public more and more, the public seems to be turning on the Republicans. Here are some numbers from the Washington Post:

The Senate has confirmed 35 federal appeals court judges nominated by Bush, while Senate Democrats have blocked 10 others. Do you think the Senate Democrats are right or wrong to block these nominations? Right 48 Wrong 36 Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush's judicial nominees? Support 26 Oppose 66

Which is making the Republicans turn to the Frank Luntz playbook of changing the terminology of an issue to better sell it or to avoid negatives (back to Salon:

The Republicans like to call their plan to kill the filibuster the "constitutional option," and they're trying hard to distance themselves from the less savory term by which the move is generally known. On Sunday, Frist said that if Democrats in the Senate continue to "obstruct" votes on the president's judicial nominees, the Republicans "will consider what opponents call the 'nuclear option.'" But it's not just "opponents" who call the nuclear option the nuclear option. As Atrios notes, Frist seems to have used the term "nuclear option" pretty regularly as recently as November. And as Josh Marshall points out, the New Yorker says that the term was invented not by the Democrats but by none other than former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who understood the explosive nature ofg ending the filibuster. As John McCain, who opposes the nuclear option, once said, "It's not called 'nuclear' for nothing."

And this from Hunter at Daily Kos:

Straight from the bowels of the usual GOP strategists, the Constitutional Option is indecipherably vague, and presented in such a manner as to practically require stapling an American Flag to your forehead while saying it. This is how the GOP has approached national politics for the last few elections: no matter what your agenda is, (1) give it an impossibly abstract name, and (2) hide the actual issue behind that name -- bringing us things like the I Love Baby Eagles Initiative, or the Free America Freedom Liberty Freedom Act to Preserve Freedom. And it's utterly effective, except when the American public already knows about the issue in question. That's why the GOP Social Security initiatives are bombing -- no matter what they call it, the general public is already keenly aware of what Social Security is and what it does for them.

Despite the fact that Frist now disavows usage of the "nuclear" terminology, he wasn't shy about using it previously (via Atrios):

On November 14, 2004, there was the following exchange on Fox News: WALLACE: Well, let me ask you about one of them, because some Republicans are talking about what they call the nuclear option, and that would be a ruling that the filibuster of executive nominees is unconstitutional, which would require not 60 or 67 votes but only a simple majority of 51. FRIST: Yes. That's right. WALLACE: Are you prepared to do that? FRIST: Oh, it's clearly one of the options. I've always said it's one of the options. What it basically -- it's called the nuclear option. It's really a constitutional option. And what that means is that the Constitution says you, as a Senate, give advice and consent, and that is a majority vote. And then you vote on that, and that takes 50 votes to pass. On November 16 he said to NPR: Sen. FRIST: If we continue to see obstruction where one out of three of the president's nominees to fill vacancies in the circuit court are being obstructed, then action would be taken. One of those is the nuclear option. The Constitution says advice and consent is the Senate's responsibility; the president's responsibility to it is to a point, and therefore, if the Constitution says `advice and consent,' by 50 votes you can decide to give advice and consent. Will we have to do that? I can't tell you, but I can tell you if obstructions are to continue like they have in the past, that clearly is an option that we have on the table.

Well, enough about scary theocratic American politics--back to the wine and cheese.

PS - this might have been our last trip to Le Buci. The waiter who served us on Sunday was being rather snotty with the wi-fi access card (more on that in another post), so we'll probably try another establishment (which was probably his true aim).

 
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25 April: At Least I Didn't Eat a Whole Plate of Meat, Too
That was uttered by my wife, Mrs. Facade, tonight as we finished a fine dinner in our neighborhood/arrondisment, the Latin Quarter, spent at a fondue/raclette establishment. You probably have a concept of what fondue is, but if you're not familiar with raclette, it's a French variation on fondue where you warm a thick slab of cheese on some kind of platform elevated over heat, then tip the melted goo over a boiled potato that you've just cut up yourself. It's kind of like the gastronomic version of tilting boiling oil over a Medievel castle wall onto an encroaching enemy.

So, Mrs. F and I had plans to go to a fine dining establishment on a street lined with gourmet shops on the Ille St. Louis. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we resorted to our second choice of raclette. I will say for the record that Mrs. F kept trying to sway our attentions to other restaurants on the way back to the Latin Quarter. But once the idea of raclette entered my noggin, there was no going back.

Now, having melted cheese isn't so bad a meal, especially if you mix it, say, with a salad. But if you combine a raclette with, oh, I dunno, a fondue of goat cheese, you're just asking for trouble. And don't forget that the fondue comes with a plate of hams and sausages (which were left all to me by my vegetarian wife). Should I have a myocardial infarction someday, I'll be able to look back on this evening fondly as the tipping point to the strangulation of my arteriers.

Tonight's dining experience follows last night's dinner at Le Reminet, which was one of the best dinners we've had in a long, long time last night. A perfect example of a truly French bistro with wonderfully white table cloths and helpful, attending wait staff, it features traditional French meat and fish dishes. I had the steak with camembert and extra large frites nicely built up on my plate like building blocks, while Mrs. F had an absolutely delightful piece of pan-fried salmon. This and the bottle of Pinot Noir would have made this a meal to remember, but we put the gastric pedal to the metal to get the true French experience of the meal. So we followed up our main courses with a cheese course, and the dessert, which brought possibly the Greatest Creme Brulee I've Ever Tasted. When it was gone, I wanted to weep. I'm not kidding.

Postscript: As I enter this post at one of our wi-fi outposts, we've just finished off a lunch of salads, ordered in an attempt to regain some healthy equilibrium to our systems. Unfortunately, I could not entirely get away from the cheese in my salad, which was chock full of small pieces of emmental cheese. Might be time for a gelato, now.

 
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