A young Dutch company from The Hague is changing the game. They are proposing a new and simpler approach: getting the readers to vote for their favourite (unpublished) works. If a book manages to obtain 250 votes by its readers, it will be published (by their publishing house Het Tweede Gezicht). Isn’t that exciting? Publishing what the readers love, rather than what the publishing house think is good. After all, it the readers they who buy the books if they’re published. Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? If you think about it, then… no, not really. I will show you why.

This company is tapping into a HUGE market, even for a small country. In the Netherlands, an estimated 1 in 15 adults has literary ambitions – that is a million people! We can safely assume that these people like reading too, which would not exclude them from playing judge to the works of others. There are so many writers, that there are bound to be some who pick up on this idea. But then what? Should the author send out messages to all his Facebook friends to get them to vote for him?

The author probably should call up his friends, but the company charges 5€ a vote, so people will not be voting willy-nilly. If ‘their’ book has gathered enough votes (the 250), they will receive a copy of the book personalized with their name in it. But is this worth the 5€ vote? Would people not just vote for the book which is closing in on the tipping point of being published? This is more like a stock market than literary criticism. Again other people will not care for the personalized copy (after all, they have already read the book), in which case they will not be too thrilled to pay 5€ for a vote. It does not sound like it would work, and even more so if we consider the arrival of more and more ebook readers on the market which are pushing aside printed books.

If we take a step back, what attracts authors to traditional publishing houses is two fold – the prestige of being published by an old and respected house and their ability to promote the work. Even in the unlikely case that many books in the future never see a paper version, the attraction of the prestigious house remains. Imagine an author defrauding the Dutch company, and forking out the 5€ for each of the 250 votes required for publication (i.e. 1250€). Would the publishing house then foot the bill for the promotion of his book, get it distributed to the shops if they did not really believe in the project? I don’t think so. It is worth reminding ourselves, that the attraction of the house for an author is minimal, after all, they have no glorious publishing history with big names, in fact, they have no visible experience in the field at all. If an author would be willing to go with them, he should also be considering self-publishing. It is more likely that this book-voting concept is inherently doomed to failure.

If readers-voting is to have a future, it would have to be organized by a respectable old-school publishing house, for a book a year, and offering the voting readers a trip to come and visit them in Paris or London or where ever they are based, and meet their favourite authors over lunch. That is an exciting motivation to vote for people who like reading. It is also a way for a prestigious house to take a bite out of a ever-growing market of unpublished works (blogs included!) but remaining faithful to their calling of promoting books they believe in. It is an idea to consider. Anyone at Hachette or at Pearson out there?

www.schrijversmarkt.nl

Although they are no longer used for heating, most of the apartments you will have seen in the city will have them. And not just one of them, but perhaps even one in every room. It looks great, of course, but do you need it? If you are wondering why this question even needs answering, you are probably not paying rent in Paris. Say your apartment covers 55 square meters, subdivided into 3 rooms – the Parisian average. You will presumably be moving in there with your girl(/boy)friend and perhaps a baby (2.2 average household size), or perhaps a friend who still can’t find his own place. This makes the apartment relatively small. So that fireplace, which admittedly looks great in the bedroom, is now actually taking the place of a cupboard or a side table. This may make you wish it away, but grant me a few moments to delve into the archeology of the matter, to see if I can make you see it differently.

Let us start by establishing that the fireplace, anywhere other than the living room (and even there!), is indeed in the way. You do not need it, and the precious space could have been used for more useful purposes in your day-to-day life. But try to think of it differently. The fireplace is a relic of the past. Of a past when there was no central heating. Of a past when life was different for whoever was living in the place. It is a link between your existence and other people who lived there before you. Same place, but another time and life. In the other direction this works too, as one day, you will no longer be living in that apartment, and someone else will be there. Accepting to live with a relic in your midst is accepting a place, or your role, in the development of your culture. You take care of something that was passed on to you, and which you in your turn will pass on to the next. Someone you may or may not even know.

If this all sounds like a lot of thought emanating from a fireplace, I am convinced that it does have that effect. It works because the fireplace no longer serves its purpose. A huge block of marble to support the cards your friends sent you is clearly not an optimal use of your precious space. That is exactly why it can remind you that the world is not completely moulded around you, to suit your needs. The fireplace, as the city, was already there before you and still has its own future independently of you. It increases your consciousness of your place. Conscious about your role in life, your relation to others, and your relationship to the world around you. It helps to make you a better person, to take better decisions. To be happier person. To feel at home. And surely that’s what you wanted, when you dreamt of your own place. And as an added bonus, you might even light that fireplace one day.

The Centre Pompidou presents a retrospective of the work of one of major players in the post-war abstract movement, Pierre Soulages. The exposition spans 60 years of activity, with more than 100 works on display, all set-up with the help of Soulages himself. The latter is important for an artist who dedicated his life to the analysis of light bouncing off black canvas. This black light, or outrenoir (“other-black”) as he calls it, varies greatly with your position in relation to the work. A quick search on Google will show you some his paintings, should you not already know them, but you might as well know that they are quite meaningless on a screen. To experience Soulages’ work, it is essential to face the work yourself. If you give them the chance to speak to you,  which they may or may not do, you will find out whether or not it means anything to you at all. Or have had the chance to experience first hand a major contemporary artist.

As you walk around the exposition, you will initially see works resembling graphical-design abstract characters painted in thick strokes of black paint. The canvas material is still visible through the paint, reminding the viewer of the reality of the work as an object. As Soulages’ interest seems to be more and more focussed on the colour and its intuitively-contradictory capacity to reflect light, the character-type forms are slowly replaced by more abstract structure of vertical and horizontal lines. There is a 1984 wallpaper-effect painting, created through an image of black homogeneous wood, cut up with a horizontally structured vertical lines. It is all black, but the reflection suggests an abstract version of trees in a forest which light up in an illusionary lighter grey. The effect comes out perhaps even better in a 1997 bamboo-ish painting in black with the thick vertical strokes conjuring up the image of a mangrove in glowing blue in the night.

In the heart of the exposition, it is these dark textured paintings which dominate. There are wide strokes of paint which at times (as in the 2007 work) are so thickly put on that the painter managed to carve into it, giving it a 3D effect. As you move around the paintings, the light bounces off different parts of the work, changing the image. In effect, the space around you is also being changed, as you move.

As the lighting is so important to the experience of the works, you might be surprised to hear that the exposition’s lighting is a common museum mixture of spotlight and white ambient lighting. You may also be surprised to hear that the walls and floors are plain white too. In a lot of his work, Soulages emphasized the black he used by contrasting it with a white -or sometimes a yellowish or other- hue. I can not help but wonder why he did not go that one step further to darken the walls and the floors and paint directly on to the wall to maximize the effect. Soulage does break the mould with a step over into a black on black room (1990 onwards), which shows three of his paintings in a black room with ambient style lighting from behind. The emphasis is on the lined texture. It is abstract without the letter-type motifs, giving that grey-tone effect despite being pure black.

For an artist who has been so fascinated with blackness and light, it is surprising that his work did not take a more object or experience orientated turn. The black-on-black room still had one white wall and featured real paintings. It seems but a step in the direction of “experience art”, where the artist gives the visitor an ephemeral aesthetic experience. Why not go all the way? After all, light is an ephemeral experience. The same feeling returned with the lighting, when we move around to see the light reflect off the paintings, why not allow for a room with changing light or even allow for an audience to manipulate the light or a movement of the work itself? Or is this all a little too playful for such a serious colour? Monochrome (or nearly monochrome) does, after all, command respect. Or perhaps even black could just, you know, lighten up a bit.

www.centrepompidou.fr / www.pierre-soulages.com

It is hard to quantify how determined people must be to go in, despite having heard and read things like Roger Ebert’s a “horrible experience of unbearable length”; or Quinn from The Independent resorting to “boring, preposterous nonsense”. It would seem that the audience has shut itself off from all criticism. We could also turn to Ebert and Quinn and ask them why they bothered to review such a film at all? The audience obviously does not care, in this case at least, what the critics think. The divide between the critics and the audience has never seemed so wide, with people already proclaiming the death of movie reviewing.

Let us go back in time to look at the development of the interplay of critic and audience to see what is happening and how we got here. The two camps were once clearly marked, with newspapers hiring educated people with insight and writing skills to come up with critical reviews. The critics were in competition amongst each other, being judged by other film fans. Over the last decade, the internet gained so much ground that it is becoming a universal medium. The internet offers everyone the possibility to voice their opinion on a film, competing with the paid reviewers of the newspapers. Now that you can put the two groups side by side, what do we see happen?

The audience accuses the critics of forgoing the pleasure of movie-watching in exchange for pretentious analysis. The critics, in the their turn, feel that if you are not going to “really watch” the film, what is the point in writing about it? It might be added that the critics have seen too many films to be able to rave about a copy-paste production, making them pretentious in the eyes of the more indulgent young cinema-goer. This feeds the separation of critic and audience which has become so wide that we have reached this point where the press is clearly irrelevant to the success of this film Transformers 2. This is not a co-incidence. I think the critics misunderstand the films they are reviewing, at least they misunderstand their role.

People do not go to see the film because it is any good (the critics are not wrong). People go to see the film because it is the “hype” of the moment, it gives them something to discuss in a world where television is losing ground through over-production. There is no specific channel airing programmes everybody will have seen the following day, TV viewers can have been watching anything. Similarly with music – there is so much choice, what should you be listening to? Transformers 2, and other such commercial splash-outs, are the common culture. They give you not only something to discuss, unpretentiously, but it is also a guide in music choice, fashion and even political ideology. And they are international. In a globalized world, these films offer “something” in common between people. Whining about how bad the latest commercial film is, is a shared pastime. It is a pleasant and easy subject of conversation between people of different (sub)cultures.

Even besides actually discussing a film, one can say “Optimus Prime” or “Voldemort” in conversation and get away with it. It creates a shared global culture out of nothingness – “agile like a Jedi, but tall as a Hobbit”, without risking the embarrassment of ignorance on a reference to Mr Darcy’s fate. Of course film references in conversation are often silly, but then that is part of the appeal. Calling Human Resources the “Dementor of the office”, or referring to the consultants as the “Men in Black” will be understood.

It is also about what constitutes “public knowledge”. It would be a stretch to assume, even in France, that people know what is in the old French national library now, but you can easily presume that everyone knows that people speak “Chti” up north (thanks to Bienvennue chez les Chti’s).

For a film to be able to take on these roles, as leaders in conversation fluff or assessments of public knowledge or opinion, a film must be a huge success. But not only that, but advertised as such. These are commercial films we are talking about. Audiences will still want to read reviews on Sin Nombre (Mexican gangstar love story) but critics can perhaps give Lucky Luke a miss – although a lot of fun, it is the audience which will decide whether or not they go, irrespective of any critic’s vision.

It would make sense for movie reviews of commercial films to be replaced by press releases, advertisements and the audience’s comments (“It was like awesome”), as they are consumer goods which fit a product launch and life cycle. This sounds somewhat depressing, but it is actually just a more realistic approach then writing crushing reviews for films (such as Transformers 2) which lack the pretension of quality. Someday movie reviewing may even become the distinguishing criterion – if it is taken seriously by the critics (positively or negatively) the film belongs in the category of art and culture rather than in commerce. And that would not be such a bad thing.

Le Voyage d’hiver :: Book :: Amelie Nothomb :: France :: 2009 :: 133 pages

Zoïle was scarred at an early age by a realization that sharing an aesthetic experience was little more than an invitation to ridicule. He took the cue to reject the pull of mediocracy, by developing an extremely individualist, selfish approach to life. He would not qualify as a social success, but as he was to be the only measure to himself, to remain untouchable from the leveling standards of society. In his simple life, he meets the woman of his dreams – a beauty who sacrifices her every living moment to a dysfunctional woman who doubles as a literary oracle. His love, in its physical expression, is thwarted by the constant presence of the vile but illuminated literary spirit. As his frustration mounts, he knows that it will end with a bang.

I will lift out one aspect of the book for consideration. In this year’s novel, it is as if Amelie Nothomb has returned from a high school reunion with a fierce determination not to be like the others. Irrespective of which of her school reunions she went to, there is little chance of that. Her writing is as fluent and creative as ever, and her characters as off the wall as they can get. Bizarrely though, she seems to feel that she has to justify herself. She argues for praise of qualities which make someone unique and the ability to recognizing talent or exceptional qualities in others too, irrespective of whether it “pays the rent” or not. It is as if she had been bombarded with questions as to whether or not she is earning enough with her strange novels.

In a society where recognition and pay check are increasingly being seen as the same thing, she rebels. It is as if she feels she does not receive enough recognition for her work herself, or that it is being brushed over. As in a wave of self-mockery, her editor even put Nothomb’s Harcourt picture on the cover, which, for those who do not know the studio, is a sort of photographic wax museum. If that is still not enough to take her seriously, she argues that our favourite passages should be copied, to unleash the power of the words. In case you are wondering how these words are going to be unleashed, she compares the action of copying literature to sheet music, as having more impact when it is played than when it is read (p128). I do not share the view of writing over reading for a superior literary experience, but her point is clear: she wants to be read with care.

After having soaked up the pretension, a reader can not help but feel a little tricked by the simplicity of the metaphor of this solitary seducer’s end. It is as if we are playing hopscotch in the streets of Paris with the two compulsively innocent women, while it is raining proverbial elephants. But then again, it is a pleasure to read Amelie Nothomb, and, it has to be said, she did surprise us once again with this literary road trip.

www.albin-michel.fr

Fire La Taverne, (c) Eric Tenin 2009

ParisDailyPhoto :: Eric Tenin :: 12 sept 2009

With a little bit of calculating, we can see that in 2008 there were 4,260 fires in Paris. That is 82 a week, with his arrondissement, the 9th, accounting for 3 of them. That’s 3 fires a week! Now if you think that sounds like a lot, then you are right. A quick glance at the map below could, alarmingly enough, also remind you that the 9th (which houses the Opera Garnier and the Grands Magasins) is not very big either.  A few calculations further down the line, looking at number of fires per Parisian square metre, we notice that his arrondissement comes as second worst hit, after his southern  neighbour the 2nd district (the textile industry HQ the Sentier).

Before we all start urging Eric to get out of there as fast as possible, let us look at population density as well. Naturally, the population density of the city varies, as urban space is not only housing, think of the space taken up by schools, churches, hospitals, cemeteries, parks, shops and ministries.  The resident density of the 9th (27,100 per km2) classifies as just over average by Parisian standards. So if we take the number of fires per inhabitant, the rate drops to a little over the city’s average.

Should he one day wish to reduce his chance of having another fire next door, he would have to consider a move to the left bank. Curiously enough, the southern arrondissements, although slightly denser, have considerably less fires per person than the right bank (2.9 fires a week per 100 000 inhabitants as opposed to the 4.1 fires a week on the right bank). But Eric’s beautiful picture actually does not show the fire. He shows the smoke and the Parisian firemen. They not only belong to the biggest fire department in Europe, but they also offer an impeccable urban coverage. And thanks to them, another fire was extinguished without anyone getting hurt.

www.parisdailyphoto.com // www.pompiersparis.fr

Parrworld: the Collection of Martin Parr

Martin Parr (Curator: Thomas Weski) :: Exposition :: Jeu de Paume, Paris :: 20/06 to 27/09/2009

The Jeu de Paume groups together photographs and collected miscellaneous articles by the prolific British Magnum photographer Martin Parr. Besides the humorous time-stamped (mostly) kitsch miscellany of Saddam Hussein watches and postcards of highways, his own collection also groups together photos of both well-known and unknown photographers which inspire him. Of his own work, we are presented with three series: One on luxury (“Luxury”), one on tourism (“Small World”) and finally an urban portrait series of the UK made in conjunction with the British newspaper The Guardian.

Luxury

In the section on Luxury, Martin Parr looks at the wealthy over the last 5 years “showing their wealth”, as he puts it. The pictures have been taken at horse races in Durban, Ascot, Longchamps and Dubai, and at a Millionaires’ fair in Moscow and surprisingly enough at the Oktoberfest in Munich. He sees his pictures as a record of a period of rapid growth before the current credit crisis set in. He talks of wealth as a global phenomena, yet you can clearly see the differences between the pictures he presents. Sometimes ‘luxury’ seems to be little more than a brand name, at other times it is a market, at other times it is elegance and again at other times just a state people find themselves in.

Let us take a look at two of them. The exhibition’s poster, taken from a picture in this series (from the Moscow Fashion week) shows a young woman wearing a colorful body-warmer, with an air of contented and fascinated greed. This light andhappy obsession, strikes a completely different chord to an unflattering one taken at a charity event in the USA (here), where we see opulently dressed guests being fed food on sticks. Because of their dark sunglasses, it is almost as if they are being fed blindfolded, as we see the hand on the left already handing them another helping, as if the food is being shoveled into them. This gives us a more cannibalistic image of wealth, and one far removed from the fascination of the young fashion victim at the fair, even if, in the same series, they could be seen as follow-up events…

Small World

As you walk through the gardens of the Tuilleries in summer, with the thousands of tourists around you, Matin Parr offers you a critical and humorous glimpse of the very industry which brings all those people there: tourism. This is an industry built around selling experiences. To lift out two images, consider the funny and quite formal picture of someone taking a picture of a row of tulips (at the Netherlands?) wearing a red-yellow-blue coat which matches the colours of the flowers in the picture he is taking.

The lightness of the picture could not contrast more with the one taken out of a moving jeep out in the African bush, with a group of children running after them. On close inspection, we see a worrying determination in the eyes of the children running after the jeep. Then we notice the somewhat scared little white girl looking down at them, wearing an Egyptian souvenir T-shirt. If we sense some tension in the air already, then our prejudice is confirmed when we see that there is a man standing on the back of the jeep, in what looks like a military shirt. We can suppose that we are witnessing tourists touring a war-torn or impoverished nation being escorted through the zone. To finish off our feeling of discomfort, we see the man on the left take a picture of the running children, reminding you that the photographer himself is also on that jeep taking the picture of the running children, passively using the lives (or distress) of others as a source of his livelihood. A very uncomfortable thought.

If you happen to pass by the Concorde with little time, take in the “Small World” pictures which are shown in the open air. Seeing the critical and funny images of perhaps the worlds biggest industry and one which both surrounds us and in which we partake, is unique. If you have a little more time, go on in to see the rest of the collection – it’s a unique opportunity.

www.martinparr.com // www.jeudepaume.org

PARIS – Why does the press insist on reminding us of the financial success of films, as if the audience is composed of potential investors? Knowing that Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis was the absolute box-office hit in France in 2008, does not make it a better film. This is akin to claiming BP’s petrol is better than Exxon’s because their stock is more stable. It really is not related. But why do we keep seeing it?

This year starts with a similar curiosity as 2008, with the film Lol (Laughing out loud) by Lisa Azuelos having attracted the most viewers. Having been one of those people who walked in, but also walked out(!), something which happens to me very rarely, the thought that it would now hug the limelight is embarrassing. I had even snobbed it out of a crushing review. So how does a film like this attract so many people? Before being accused of living in some little Parisian bubble, notice that even on the IMDB only 2 people bothered to comment on its merits! But let me make a case for the attraction of the film anyway.

For those lucky enough to have missed it, the concept is actually quite appealing: the always beautiful Sophie Marceau, who was a teenager in the hugely successful 80s party film La Boum, is now back as a mother with a partying daughter. A true generational film, especially for those who were around in the 1980s to live the original with her. Sounds like fun. But the movie near opens with a young girl claiming something along the lines of “he MSN-ed me and I downloaded it from Myspace”… and you know that the film is a farce. Not because a teen could not say that sentence, but because it is so obviously constructed, like the title. A film can not be about youth and have to explain such trivialities such as “Lol” as well, should there still be anyone around who does not know what it means. But of course, this is not a debate about quality, or lack thereof. This is about misguidance.

Lol is not a good film and you would waste your time going to see it, as I have (partly) done and many others with me. No doubt some people appreciated seeing Sophie Marceau again but that does not change the appalling level of the film. If the audience was offered the chance to reward the film with a number of stars on leaving the cinema, as one does when one deletes an iPhone application, movies could be judged on appreciation instead of on financial gain or number of people who were caught out. Of course, even with appreciation level established, we could be very surprised by the result… lol.

Fiddling around with the fancy gizmo, I have to admit that I now feel a part of a new mobile era – searching information on the go, replying to emails as I’m queuing up somewhere, taking pictures, panning through my calenders as I listen to random songs from my ENTIRE music collection. I realize that many people have had this wonderful experience before me with their iPhone or another smart phone, but do you still remember how exciting this actually is?

I would love to brag that I managed to fill it up to the rim, but 32 Gb is a lot of filling to do. There is enough memory there for 6000 songs. Or to put that differently, you can have 2 weeks of non-stop music. Or actually, there must be a little App programme in the App store out there you can download to calculate your iPhone’s song capacity exactly…

That evening, I polished my shoes. I rubbed the bee wax polish onto my leather shoes, spreading it out evenly so that they would shine the following morning. As I was polishing, struggling in vain not to get the wax on my fingers, I felt a comforting connection with my ancestors, who for hundreds of years have had to have their shoes polished. They would have found themselves in the evening either polishing them or getting their shoes to someone who would do it for them. Perhaps I felt that shared moment there, rather than in other things I do, because shoe polishing feels so antiquated. And yet, the next few hundred years it is not expected to be any different.

But if shoe polishing feels antiquated, as an invisible impossible link to another time, then the iPhone is its opposite, linking you invisibly and impossibly to the current time, the world as it is now. A world which allows you to stare at it and interact, as you move around in it yourself. Feeling the connection with our world is exciting. Feeling a link with your ancestral past through shoe polishing is existentially comforting, as a little escapade away from the immediate. Even if it is not nearly as much fun, as I walked out the door in my freshly polished shoes I felt a self worth I could reflect back through the mirror of the internet phone. And I also realized that I’ll need it too, because cyber-bullying, spam, viruses, cyber fraud and identity theft all just stepped out the door with me…

In my neighbourhood, we have a great curiosity called the La Quincaillerie, which sells doorknobs and handles on boulevard St Germain, with atrocious opening hours to discourage any potential customer. As it so happens, I was in the market for them and had walked in. They have a surprisingly limited selection -given the concept of the shop- but amongst their designer wares, I found some beautiful painted porcelain doorknobs. On the day I  would need them, I walked over to the shop to pick them up. Of course it does not work that way with a local shop, and I was told that I would have to wait FIVE weeks for them to arrive! That was of course out of the question. If you would have to wait for weeks for EVERY item you need as you are renovating your apartment, you will never finish! Walking home, I was left wondering what the concept of that store was as I could do better myself – why not just order them directly from China, they will get them here faster than that. (On the internet, myfab.com is a fun consumer experiment.) Or just go to one of the big chains, which actually have something to sell.

Everybody can conjure up a story of their own such as the one above, but the thing is, these local shops are almost all outdated. A painfully limited choice should be shameful. Not having a stock should lead to not having any sales.  Rude staff should lead to snubbing. People are too nice to these little shops, keeping them afloat on a customer unfriendly concept. I was at the IKEA today, arriving too early and with goods to be returned. We were welcomed at the door to let us know they were still closed, they held on to our goods while we were offered a free coffee in their restaurant. All that with free parking, smiling staff and dirt cheap interior design which was all in stock! A similar experience the week before at the DIY chain Leroy Merlin. These places are, of course, in the suburbs and require a car to get there with time to burn a traffic jam.

People are not only nostalgic for old school shops, which have long stopped being an emblem of craftsmanship and style, but also the services industry has taken on the transformation. Many people say they miss the little cinemas. Today they only subsist on the left bank, with most of them in the Latin Quarter. The rest of the city has multiplex cinemas. Do not pity them. Although an evening spent wandering through the old crooked streets of the left bank, with a little red plush cinema showing a black-and-white Marcello Mastroianni movie sounds divine, the reality is not quite up to it. My local cinema, the Cinéma du Panthéon, has been around since 1907, still looks great and has a tea room co-designed by nobody other than Catherine Deneuve(!). But the lounge is only open till six (!?) and the cinema, although they try, seems to have films lingering on for months on end, and the staff…. Is it really that great to go the old, little screens?

When you think of the MK2 multiplex cinemas, which offer super screens and sound,  chairs for two (so you can lay one against the other), or one which features a little boat from one to the other (Quai de Seine) and a stunning lights-in-the-water terrace view, and one which features a design restaurant and an immaculately stocked bookshop (MK2 Bibliothèque), what is more attractive? They offer a wide choice of films, which, let us not forget, is the whole point of going to a cinema. It is hardly surprising that they are doing so well. If the small cinemas want to survive, they should be fighting as the big ones do to find their added value. The embarrassing truth is, that as with the shops,  audiences are often just people who wish them well, rather than those that just want to be there. People are too nice.

At some point or other, we are going to have to accept that consumer business should survive or fail based on the applicability of the services they offer. A shop which has nothing to sell, or a cinema which has nothing to show does not need nostalgia aid, but a change of management. The little shops and cinemas should be thankful for the kindness of their audiences, but that will not continue forever. We all know you are subpar. You presumably know that you are subpar. And someday our generosity will falter. Perhaps in times of financial crisis… Learn to be nice from the boulangerie, learn to sell something from the successful. We might forgive you for the pain you put us through. We might.

www.laquincaillerie.com // www.myfab.com // cinema.pantheon.free.fr // www.MK2.com