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I was hoping to write this (tongue in cheek) Europe update to you
from the Eiffel tower, but it just didn't work out that way . . .
more on that later.
(Note: Those who signed up for the J/V program in March of 2004,
see alert at the bottom)
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Europe trip update
I think these people in Europe must be a bunch of wild animals.
They care about culture and quality of life instead of instant
worldwide communications . . . no wonder American split off from
here. . .
Not only have I been fighting to find Internet connections
where ever I can, . . . when I get one it's outrageously
expensive. . . . More on that later too.
Anyway, everything over hear is old. I just came back from the
musee du Louvre where I saw my old (and I mean old) girlfriends
Mona and Venus . . . not the tennis sisters for you Wimbledon
fans.
How about a little glue or something?
I think there must have been more than 3000 sculptures in that
place and every single one of them had a crack in it or some toes
or ears missing. ....Where's the quality control? I mean I knew
Venus had some problems with a couple missing limbs, but you
would think they would have a ceramic shop or something with some
spare parts.
I'll bet I saw 100 missing toes in that place and I'll also bet
ya they have an entire room devoted to missing toes and everybody
is too lazy to match a few up. . .. So what, if it's not a
perfect fit. Who's going to notice?
And it's not like you can't get Elmer's glue over here. Most of
the statues are white anyway . . . for the gray ones you could
mix up some paper mache stuff like we used every
Thanksgiving in grade school to make Turkey bodies out of
newspaper strips covering balloons. You aren't allowed to touch
the statues anyway, so no one would know it was fake.
Can't we have some modesty here?
And another thing . . . quite frankly I'm a little embarrassed
for all those Greeks and Romans who apparently were only allowed
to be sculpturized in the nude.
If you've ever seen one of these sculptures, you know they took
exacting detail to reproduce every single muscle fiber just like
the real person.
With that being said, none of these guys seemed like they had
much to write home about in the . . . well let's just say the .
. .
"give-em-one-for-the-gipper" department . . . if you know what I
mean.
Don't you think if you knew somebody was going to dig your
sculpture out of hole in the ground in about 1000 years, you
could exaggerate a little bit and give your entire race a little
something to brag about. . . I sure would and who's going to
check up on you? These must be incredibly honest people or maybe
those guys were just really cold from standing there for years at
a time as models.
Wimpy says, "I'd gladly pay you Tuesday . . . "
Now you might be wondering why I am reporting on Mona and Venus
today when I was supposed to get my one chance to see them last
Tuesday. . . . Well, who'd a thunk it? The Louvre was closed last
Tuesday, and the Tuesday before that and the Tuesday before that.
--- The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays! ---
Every travel guide on Earth says, "The musee du Louvre" is closed
on Tuesdays. Do you think anyone had the courtesy to tell me
about it? Noooooooooo!
It reminds me of the guy who would run out of his apartment
straight to the pool at his complex, jump on
the diving board and do a perfect jack knife into the pull all
the while screaming, "Gee. I wish it was Thursday!" He did this
every single day, until one day his neighbor asked him why he
jumped in the pool every day yelling, "Gee. I wish it was
Thursday". The guy said, "Because Thursday is the day they put
the water in the pool."
I asked one of the attendants at the Louvre why they were closed
on Tuesdays and he said, "No speak anglais. Go home Yankee Dog!"
My girl Mona
Now we get to the hottest girl I've ever been with . . . Mona
Lisa . . . which is short for Mona Lisa Gerkowitcz. She dropped
the Gerkowitcz part because her publicist said the Louvre
attendants would never get it right.
This lady knows how to draw a crowd and the Louvre management
knows how to get you to look at all their street fair paintings.
Mona is at the end and around the corner of about a 2 mile
hallway filled from floor to ceiling with a bunch of wannabe
painters like Renoir, and Gauguin (again that was Reno Finkelman
and Gerry Gribaldi who both had the same publicist as Mona) . . .
You really had to be in good shape to get to her.
You got a neck workout too. Some of the paintings in the hallway
were 18 feet high. They must have been on a ladder to paint them.
When I finally get to Mona. Everyone was panting. The EMS people
were there working on a stroke victim who was still snapping
photos and wiggling around on the stretcher to get a better
angle.
Then on the way out, of course, you have to buy pictures of the
picture. Let's think about this. I spent $400.00 dollars plus
tax for my camera to "take" pictures of the picture and 45 euros
more at the gift shop to "acquire" other people's pictures of the
picture.
....I've got to get that publicist to help me sell my stuff. . .
Back at the really tall ranch . . .
The official website of the Eiffel Tower clearly states you can
send email from the tower because they have an Internet cafe.
NOT ONE WORD AT THE KIOSKS WAS IN ENGLISH . . . I mean how rude?
Like Steve Martin said, "Those French people don't even have the
courtesy to speak English."
Not only that,. to make the Kiosk work you had to have some kind
of phone card only sold on mars or from a vendor located on the
tower's rotating beacon.
Throw in the fact that these are standup kiosks and carpal tunnel
disease is guaranteed. They even had a French attorney standing
there to help you file an ergonomics suit against the French
government for your injuries. . . . I don't know why he keeps
trying because every jury verdict in the 2000 cases he's tried
said, "You lose. Go home Yankee Dog!"
Could someone please tell them about the Internet?
So that's why I'm here in the Paris Orly Hilton typing this to
you for only $30.00 extra a day for Internet access. . . . Well,
at least I can use it any time I want . . . unlike the last hotel
in Nice, France.
For $12.00 a day U.S. citizens could use the Internet from 9:00
PM to 9:00 AM the next morning. This is designed to make you stay
up all night to get your Internet work done, which pretty much
ruins the daytime activities of your vacation which drives those
Yankee dogs back to Hell where they came from.
Well, at least that was better than the last hotel I was in in
merry old England where I could get no cell phone or PDA signal
and could only connect from my room if Superman came back from
the dead.
I will say this for them. Unlike the Louvre, they took a Sabbath
day off instead of a random work day off where they didn't allow
any Internet at all. . . I'm not kidding. Sunday, the Internet
connections were locked off.
The rest of the week you had to walk to another building and pray
to the Internet gods that the two Internet computers they had
(which any normal person would think was more than enough for a
massive business conference center with no connection in the
rooms) were unoccupied.
Go south young man
While I'm on a roll, let me tell you a little about my time at
Nice (French "Nissa") the cote d' azur, and "capital" of the
French Rivera.
I will say that this place is so beautiful it makes Santa Monica
California look like Watts after the riots.
It does have a few quirks that you probably should know about if
you ever go there. . . .Being buried deep in the south of France,
they speak . . . you guessed it . . . FRENCH! The signs are in
French. The menus are in French and you can't turn on the TV
without hearing FRENCH! .. . . You are pretty much surrounded
with French speaking people.
And they're all liars too! I must have said 3000 times, "Excusez
moi. Vous parlez anglais?" Every one of them said in French, "NO.
Yankee Dog! Suffer along with the rest of the pig tourists who
rape our gorgeous coastline and butcher our romantic language
passed down from generation to generation for centuries."
Now don't you think if you lived and worked in the most exclusive
vacation spot on the planet, that you might pick up a few words
to help your big money spending clientele a little?
They certainly know how to say, "That will be 400 euro for
dinner." at the Intercontinental Hotel in Cannes during the film
festival.
Well, I beat them at their own game. I ate at McDonalds between
Antibes and Nissa and sat on their balcony overlooking the Baie
des Anges. . . .total tab . . .6 Euro . . .
Well, it could have been more when I pointed to the sign and held
up 6 fingers to tell them I wanted the 6 Euro value meal. . . .
a few minutes later they delivered "six" 6 Euro value meals to
the counter instead of one claiming they didn't understand my
perfectly clear sign language.
Well, time to get some real work done. Hope you enjoyed some of
my exploits and despite all my crazyness on the trip, I loved it and
can't wait to return. Tom Antion
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