More Cock Please!

Probably due to the fact that I spent the past 8 weeks in North America, you may have noticed lately that my blog posts have veered a bit far from the topic of living in France. I want to give you my word that at least for the rest of the summer I will try to stay on topic. Until September I will give you more cock talk than you can shake a stick at.

To prove I mean business, a little cock trivia for you:

A capon is a castrated rooster. In this procedure the testes of the cock are completely removed; a surgical procedure is required for this as its sexual organs are not external (most birds, the rooster included, do not possess a penis).

This procedure produces a unique type of poultry meat which is favored by a specialised market. As caponized cocks grow slower they accumulate more body fat; the concentration of fat in both the light and dark areas of the capon meat is greater than in that of the uncastrated males; overall, it is often thought that capon meat is more tender, juicier and more flavorful than regular chicken.

Not enough you say? You need more cock? Try this:

Happy now?

Yet Another Lovely French Weekend.

Well for the first time in what seems like a very very long time we were actually home in France for the weekend. And friends Jean-Jacque and wife Noelle were kind enough to invite us over for a Sunday Bar-B-Q. ( I am sure I have once again miss-spelled all of their namesas well as BBQ.)

We LOVE being invited to eat at Chez Noelle because she stuffs us full of great, food and wine and then lets us drink as many Nespresso coffees as our nervous systems can handle.

At Lunch we also met Annick and Bruno who were accompanied by their lovely daughter Zoe.

Now usually after a few drinks my French miraculously improves. I thought I was following the conversation just fine until the Frenchboys started this heated exchange:

Whaaa? huh? WTF just happened? If you speak French, please be kind enough to translate this for me in the comments section. Seriously. I don't understand a word that was said.

Anywayz, after lunch the ladies took the kids out for a bit of French cow watching.

Ok, mostly they were riding their bikes and we were watching the cows.

Eventually the French Boys joined us and fun was had by all as we practiced making our favorite farm noises.

"Mooooo!"

"Coo-ca-doodle-dooooo!"

On the way home we walked by this mailbox, which doesn't seem at all out of the oridinary ...except for the fact that it's a US mail box. If you look close enough you can actually read the imprint.

Now, my friends, I have seen it all!

Everybody Hurts...even in France.

"Willow Rosenberg" 2004. Cross-stitch. 7" X 8."
Subtitle: I love you, but this is something I just have to do.

I know I’ve said this 20 times by now, but the greatest thing about the doing a residency is all the other artists you come into contact with. Stacia Yeapanis , a mixed-media artist from Chicago, lived in my house while at VSC, but we really connected over episodes of Freaks and Geeks in the Red Mill lounge. Stacia was incapacitated due to a water accident with her laptop, and I was temporarily out of commission due to a bad case of the 48 hour flu.

And thus our mutual TV love affair began.

"Fox Mulder" 2006. Cross-stitch. 10" X 14." Subtitle: We all have our faith.

Stacia is a mixed media artist who uses everything from TV watching to gaming and crafting as a way to explore the “psychological significance of entertainment practices”.

"Waking Up Transparent" From Glitches Are Signs, 2006.

Along side her ongoing umbrella project “My Life as a Sim”, which uses the popular computer game The Sims 2* as a medium in making art, Stacia has constructed this great website --EverybodyHurts.org which is all about the emotions that TV watching can influence.

"Wife and Mother" From Glitches Are Signs, 2006.

The best part is that you can write your own testimonial about being moved by a television character, or contribute something about your emotional response to a specific TV show and Stacia will post it to the site.

So for what it’s worth, here’s what I'm contributing to EverybodyHurts.org:

I started tearing up when Carrie Bradshaw screams at Mr. Big: “I don’t live here anymore!” Never has a goofy TV sitcom made me as emotional as “An American Girl in Paris I” episode of Sex and the City.

No doubt the episode was all the more moving because so many scenes echoed what the last six months of my life had been like. Having just recently moved to France from New York, I too was off on a great French adventure. I’ll never forget the scene when Carrie finally steps out onto the hotel room balcony and squeals with delight at the sight of the Eiffel tower. I know exactly how she felt. I too had had that exact moment, and in that moment, I was laughing and squealing along with her.

From there it was all downhill.

A few hours later I found myself sobbing in my car, in a McDonald’s parking lot, trying to explain to my poor sweet French husband that like Carrie said “It’s hard. It’s harder than I thought.” I missed my girlfriends, I missed my apartment, and I missed New York! All this between ice-less lukewarm gulps of “Coca light”.

Carrie Hurts.

All sobbing aside, the reason that episode got to me was because for that 20 minutes I was invested in the character’s life because I felt like in some way it was my own. If Carrie could somehow have a happy ending then hell, maybe I could too.

You can send your TV testimonial to: stacialy@yahoo.com or go directly to EverybodyHurts.org.

Video from the road #1

A cool video from our trip. If you haven't already visited Toronto, you're really missing out.

Toronto has a huge Art community, affordable housing, great public transportation, and some of the best cheap sushi I've eaten since Tokyo. What more could you possibly need?

Honey, I'm home!

We finally got home last night after many many delayed flights.

For the record: I hate London Heathrow Airport and will never go back.
Never, ever, ever. Not even if you pay me. Not even if Lenny Kravitz offered to have hot monkey sex with me right there in Terminal 5. Forget it. Never! Ever!

Also, I'm pretty sure I caught a cold from someone on one of the 3 planes we took.

*blowing nose*

Frenchboy and I are both brutally jetlagged. Last night we were up untill 3 AM trying to fall asleep. And since I'm way too freakin' tired to do a coherant blog post I thought I'd just pick my favorite photos from each of the cities I've visited in the past 6 weeks:

Brooklyn

Johnson, Vermont

Montreal

Toronto

Niagra Falls

Chicago

and last but not least...Indianapolis