Le Franco Phoney

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.

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 too 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.

Following on from my remarks on my local pizza box, I received this photo of a Swiss pizza box by Geoff in Switzerland. He wrote:

This is the box they use for pizza round our way. Not as bad as the man with the stick and the young girl, but do I really want to take a pizza from a toothless, homeless urchin? Still, I guess it is Naples, which probably means my wallet is being nicked as I take delivery of the pizza…

So, it looks like France is not solely responsible for weird pizza boxes. I particularly like the guys sitting down behind the urchin’s pizza, almost as if they’re holding it up in a two-dimensional world. And is that a seal that the men on the right are pulling from the water? Or a dead body? At least the pizza is the classic Margherita. They got something right.

Goeff actually found the photo of his local pizza box elsewhere on the web. It turns out that Mike from Zurich put it in a photo album and wrote:

I bought a pizza at my local döner joint because their pizzas come in boxes that have this lovely picture on them. It’s lovely kitsch art.

The ‘artwork’ has also made it onto Photo of the Day on a pizza blog, where it’s described as ‘slightly creepy’. My interest in pizza boxes is now starting to match French roundabouts and I’m worrying that perhaps I need to get out more. Speaking of which, lots of photos and information about road tripping through central France will be available just as soon as I can get my hands on the photos.

This is the cover of a catalogue I received in the mail a while ago. It was one of four catalogues advertising gardening equipment, such as ride-on mowers and other goodies for people with big backyards.

The man says: “They reimburse the difference if you find the same thing cheaper!”

The woman replies: “And the goods are ready to be used!”

Now, maybe it’s just me again, but isn’t it a bit odd that a woman in a bikini (with a bit more on display than the ‘up for it’ girl also in a bikini, illustrated on the pizza box my previous blog entry) is relaxing right next to an old man using his gardening equipment in a field by a big shop? Apart from the noise he’d be making, isn’t it just a bit dangerous for her?

So, I asked a French friend about the conversation the two are having. I asked her, before showing her the picture, if you could say something like ‘pret a l’emploi’ (‘ready to use’) as a way of saying ‘how about it?’. She said she didn’t think so because it’s how you’d refer to a toy. Then I showed her the picture and she said “ooh la la” (she really did!), and agreed it had been used to infer that the woman is indeed up for it. One of the other lawnmower catalogues featured women in bikinis mowing lawns with big smiles on their tanned faces. So, French gardening catalogues: possibly the only gardening catalogues in the world who feature bikini-clad women who are up for it to entice buyers.

I bought a pizza the other night and the box looked like this:

So, what’s wrong with this picture? Actually, what’s right about it!

1. I’m in a ski resort: where is the seaside and the boat?
2. The girl in the background, still young enough to need a floaty, seems to have cleavage.
3. The girl is also looking a bit ‘up for it’ despite her interest in sand castle building (bucket in hand) and floaty dependency.
4. The pizza man is grinning just a little too happily: I’m guessing he’s just seen the ‘up for it’ girl.
5. Is his pizza stick not just a bit phallic? Especially the way it’s pointing through a gaping hole and towards the girl?

Maybe it is actually a wholesome illustration that some Italian created to truly reflect the happiness of the pizza-maker charged with making my pizza, or to reflect how imaginative a pizza can be or something. Actually, it probably is: a friend showed me a drawing that a little boy did at her work. It had KKK written on it, a man in a white pointy hat, and a green man with wings who was crying. It turns out that the five year-old is not actually up on the Klu Klux Klan: his name is Karl but he can only write the K so far, and my friend had painted his friend’s face green.