Le Franco Phoney

It’s that time of year again, when movie buffs, media students and animation geeks from all over the world swarm to Annecy for the week-long International Annecy Animation Film Festival. This year, the fashion seems to be badges on bags, although I did see one guy sporting his badges all over his jeans. Yes, his jeans were entirely covered in badges.

The festival is great fun, with outdoor freebie screenings most nights of the week, and lots of animation styles to keep everyone happy. I favour the shorts: a movie-length screening of around six or more short animations. That ten minutes or so when people are entering the cinema involves more than just a hum of chatter: it’s an opportunity to throw lots of paper planes. So, on top of walking up stairs while scanning the rows of people for a few empty seats, you also need to dodge the papers zooming around the room. Long paper plane flights get a round of applause and a cheer! I saw one guy last night collecting as many as he could from the aisle beside him to relaunch, while the guy in front of me ripped off another sheet from his notebook to start folding another plane.

In fact, the planes are so common at the festival, that they’re an integral part of this year’s animated trailer for the festival, which you can watch below (and yes, that’s the actual cinema at the end).

Thankfully, the planes stop flying as soon as the first animation starts. However, between animations, the “done thing” is to make a popping sound with your mouth. You know, when you were a kid and you’d stick a finger inside your mouth near your cheek, then flick it out to make a pop? That’s the sound that gets made between movies. This is a whole separate set of cultural norms that seem to exist in Annecy purely for the animation festival.

I guess it was nice to escape some aspects of French culture for the evening, but by the time I left that cinema, I was looking forward to a crepe and seeing men in stripy shirts and berets riding bikes with baguettes under their arms and saying “ooh la la” a lot to the background sounds of a piano accordion.

My Australian heritage is often lost here in France because I apparently have the same accent when I speak French as an English person. Lots of French people talk about how this cloudy weather must be like being back home. Except, of course, “back home” for me is Melbourne, which has been suffering from drought for close to ten years.

So, when this pamphlet came through my letterbox the other day, it made me giggle. The word for “kangaroo” in French is pronounced the same, but spelt differently, and often when I explain to someone that I’m Australian and not English, the word “kangarou” is bandied around. It’s one of the first French words that I instantly understood and it got me through many moments with strangers before I could speak any French: I could at least explain to them where I was from with one word that we both understood. Saying word was often accompanied with arms raised to the chest, like a kangaroo — sometimes mine, sometimes the French person’s. Everyone loves kangaroos!

In case you’re interested, this brochure was for courses run by a learning institution. It says: “my future is in the pocket”, referring to the kangaroo’s pouch for offspring I guess. What really surprised me was “DZOÏÏÏNG”. I don’t know if those umlauts are used in any French words or whether it’s made up as much as the word. A French friend has told me that “BOING” would be the more common usage in French — the same as in English, but after seeing “DZOÏÏÏNG”, I think I prefer it. Let’s see if I can bring it into common usage in English.

French imagery in advertising, roundabouts and even pizza boxes is something I’ve discussed many times on this blog, but this image is the most provocative I’ve seen in a public place. Apologies for the lack of quality: I took the picture temporarily on my phone a few days ago and the poster has since disappeared.

So, here we have a poster for the Lalu nightclub in Le Grand Bornand, featuring smurfs (called ’schtroumpfs’ in French). I remember Papa Smurf there in the red, and Lady Smurf is of course the woman next to him. The post says ‘Smurf me’ in French (they’ve made ’smurf’ into a verb), so I guess it’s a party where people dress up as smurfs. And what is that smurf doing below that, with the scissors and the comb? Is that hay being taken away? No. Look more carefully, and if you’re pre-teen, just skip the rest of this entry: it will only add to the teenage angst that you’re destined for.

I’d say to look closely, but you don’t really need to. Can you see anything amiss in this poster? Anything slightly wrong, considering the poster was placed at the height of a kid’s eyes? That’s not hay that the smurf is carting off. It’s pubic hair. That’s not a hill with a house in the distance, it’s a breast. As you can now see, there isn’t much left up to the imagination in this poster.

Admittedly, I stared at this poster, pointed out to me by my friend, for a good minute or so without noticing anything odd. If this poster was in the nightclub itself, I wouldn’t even blink an eye; but it was placed outside the lift ticket office in Le Grand Bornand, right by the ski stand, where parents tell kids to wait with the skis, and as I mentioned, right at kid height, with all these cute, lovable smurfs on display to attracts kids’ attention. Perhaps most kids just overlook this for the love of smurfs the way I did. Still, could any other country be so open to Hairdresser Smurf giving a human an alternative Brazilian? And is that really how you make a human into a smurf? I reckon Painter Smurf with his can of blue paint would have a strong opinion about that.

First of all, I’m very sorry about this image, but it wasn’t fair that my eyes should suffer it alone, and my blog has been a bit barren of images of late, so I’m sharing it. Once again, I have French junk mail to thank for finding me a topic for my blog.

What we have here is a whole rabbit, skinned, and apparently ready for cooking and eating, with pleasant garnish. But I can’t help but see a human backside on this bunny. My overactive imagination has been aided by the hidden head and lack of paws, which would have made this meat more identifiable as a dead rabbit instead of something resembling a human. Is it just me or is this actually quite gross?

It’s that time of year where snow lovers in the Northern Hemisphere are getting anxious about the upcoming ski season. Speculation has already begun on how good a season it will be, based on the lateness of red berries, the colour of autumn leaves, and which ways the cows prefer to face. Mushrooms, summer temperature, frost, the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, and bird activities are other indicators that I’ve heard of to describe how cold or warm, snowy or dry a winter will be. I’m still confused as to how each works and I vehemently question the accuracy of such methods, but they provide good banter nonetheless.

Anyway, if it’s a bad season or if you just can’t wait any longer, there’s always pine needle skiing. Yep. You ski on pine needles. I first found out about this a few months back when I took this snap by a bank ATM/teller in a town far away from the mountains. Next to this poster was some information about the sport and some contact information, so I had a look at their website (update July 2010: website no longer around) which has (edit: had) a great video, showing just how…errr…easy pine needles are to ski on. The video includes skiers on kickers, trunk slides, trunk tricks, and even a skier going switch mid-ski. The problem is that he then comes to a stop because he’s run out of hill. And then he has to walk back up because there are no ski lifts.

The video also shows footage back in the days of black and white film of people skiing on the pine needles with old wooden skis. Indeed, the poster says: “Ski all seasons. Why not? For 40 years, people from the South Basin have been able to do so.” What strikes me is that if people were doing this forty years ago and it still hasn’t caught on, then maybe there’s a reason.

Me, I think I’ll wait until winter, but if anyone reading this tries it or has already tried it, I’d be very interested in hearing how it was.

On my last road trip, I came across this signpost in a lovely little village called Aignay-le-Duc. As you can see from the big photo, that’s actually three layers of sign posts, plus a couple facing a different direction. Want to get to Echalot? If you’re approaching from the road in front of these signs, you’re going to struggle: the close-up, side-on photo below shows how well it’s hidden in the main photo. The village has, perhaps, decided that placing directions to their own local shop signs might distract tourists. I can see it now:

Driver: “Hmm, which way to Echalot?”

Passenger: “Oh who knows, but look, there’s a patisserie to the left!”

…and then they’d be heading in the wrong direction. But at least they’d have happy bellies and the locals would be a bit richer.

Something else you might notice in the close-up photo is that one place is listed twice, but written differently. Not only is there an accent on the newer sign for Etalente, but an ‘e’ has been replaced with an ‘a’, making the place Étalante.

As for those villages listed below Etalante and Echalot on the old sign (somewhere ending in ‘Les Juifs’ and somewhere else on the Seine), I can only presume that at least some tourists have put their faith in the ‘Autres Directions’ (other directions) sign pointing left — and ended up in entirely the wrong place. Not to worry: they can always find the patisserie and stop in for a snack while they try to figure out where they are.

Ahh, the French. Walk down any street in any town big enough to have its own baker and you’ll see French people looking stylish, no matter what they’re wearing. I often look down at my own baggy jeans, hooded jumper, or long a-line skirt and wonder where I went wrong. I want to look elegant and stylish, but I just look out of place with these uber-stylish French all around me. Even now, with my wardrobe full of clothes bought here in France, I just can’t match things up the way the French do. I’m in awe. I’m envious. I dream of the day when elegance hits me on the head like a Fairy Godmother’s wand.

Sometimes, however, there are gaping holes in their style, as shown in these two catalogue photos. Yes, those clothes are lovely, aren’t they. Those kids look really cute in such well-cut fabric in such pretty colours. But what on earth is going on with their lips? Do they all have lipstick on? Okay, I know that photo shoots usually require models to wear more makeup than usual so that they don’t look washed out in the photos, but these kids look like they’ve just eaten either fluorescent ink or far too many raspberries. There’s natural, and then there’s this. Fluoro Girl here on the left seems to have licked of the lipstick from one side of her top lip!

And what’s with the boy on the right? Apart from the red lips, has he suffered sunburn because his mate on the left nicked his hat? Maybe the kids did look natural in the photo shoot, and then the graphic designer who put the images into the catalogue decided their lips and cheeks weren’t colourful enough. Perhaps there’s some very angry photographer out there who has seen the end product in the catalog and is now banging his or her fists on a table screaming “Ah la vache! Non, non, non!” — their reputation in France now in ruins.

Either way, I feel just a little bit smug that sometimes the French do get it wrong. Less smug, of course, when I admit that I’m typing this with a bright green bikini top straps alongside my peach-coloured halterneck top straps, unsuccessfully matched with my favourite dark purple skirt.

Check out these two photos of pizza boxes. The one with the beach scene in the background was handed over to me with a pizza almost a year ago. I posted the picture on my blog because I thought it was all a bit phallic. Click here to see the original post. I don’t think that my objection to the pizza box brought about the change, so I guess the artist, who probably gets paid to produce a ‘new’ pizza box illustration annually, decided to be a bit lazy and update the background only.

As much as the beach scene was all wrong, I’m not sure that grapevines are much better. It looks like they’re waiting for their pizzas, or that they’re ready to attack, and now I have this image in my head as if from some C-grade movie from the fifties, when things always seemed to attack humans. Is the grinning pizza man about to die? And is the wood-fired oven in the background teaming up with the grapevines? Are they both being controlled by the villa on the hill in the distance? I’m now really looking forward to next year’s illustration. Will it be a Venetian gondola? The pope? Or a trulli hut? I’m hoping for an Italian ski resort.

I saw this advertisement for a carpentry business in a local paper recently, and I think it’s meant to be a clever play on words. The French word for building is batiment, which, with a French accent, sounds a bit like batti-mon. Given that their logo shows a man with a house on his head, I’m sure that the company has chosen to mix English with French to create a word that means house man. But I suspect the play on words goes further than that. Batman the movie kept its title here in France and Batman, lets face it, is a hero. What company wouldn’t want to be associated with a hero? I asked a French friend what he thought and he didn’t think it was a play on the movie title. I think it’s to co-incidental not to be. What do you think?

After some rather dodgy pizza boxes, including this one from Geoff, and this one from me, I bring you the perfect pizza box.

It has everything you want in a pizza box: the idea that your pizza has been made in a wood-fired oven; an aroma that the pizza maker himself is loving; written confirmation, if there was any doubt, that you have a pizza inside this box; and a tasty-looking pizza to get you in the pizza mood while you’re driving back from the pizza shop or paying the deliverer. There are no toothless urchins and no young girls with cleavage in bikinis. This picture has a cartoon feel about it, so if you’re imagining the cartoon man salivating over your pizza, that’s okay too: cartoon saliva isn’t real.

Even better, the size of this pizza box was almost double the size of the last few pizza boxes I’ve had. Its size dictates that the pizza inside is a serious pizza, and not some poor attempt and covering some dough in some canned tomato sauce and hoping it won’t taste too bad.

My rating of this pizza box is a ten out of ten! Have you had a better or worse pizza box experience? Feel free to send me a photo of your loved or hated pizza box and I’ll post it up.