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Roger was positively thrilled to discover that there was indeed a great American behind Merde in France.
It started pretty badly, with a last minute treachery by an otherwise faithful mechanical device.
Yes, that means my car wouldn't start at 6 AM that very morning because it was friggin' freezing down at the frogman's lair.
Picture yourself the great opening scene of Ridley Scott's Gladiator: a dark and cold Germanic forest filled with a bunch of hairy guys in fur pants and sharp axes who last had a bath two years ago when the ice shattered under their feet and they fell accidentally in the river. Add my car parked in the middle, just behind General Maximus' catapults.
There you have it.
When there's 7° or 8° (Celsius, for the non metric system(ed) among you) in Paris, it's below zero here and we hunt wild boars in the woods, shoot them with our shotguns, finish them with our daggers and then we drink their blood while fornicating with our females naked in the thickets.
Great fun to be had.
(Okay, I'm just laying it on thick - so to speak - as far as blood drinking and female fornicating are concerned. Ease up.)
End of the digression, back to the mechanical device: I was eventually able to make it to Paris where, resisting the temptation to shoot wimpy Parisians and drink their blood while fornicating with their females, Merde in France and myself were commissioned by the most esteemed Roger L. Simon to lead his anthropological expedition dedicated, on the battlefield, to the study of the post 9/11 France and the singular species she shelters.
Roger will certainly blog about this experience, and considering that he is still in his plane back to Los Angeles, I'm not going to spoil his fun by revealing anything.
Let it be just said that, either on his own - this man has balls or is totally unconscious. Maybe both - or with us, Roger certainly got a feel of the situation that's way more concrete an accurate than any of the lachrymose floweriness dripping from Woody Allen's chitter-chatter. Either on his own or with us, he's went to places where the Woody Allen of the world - as well as the ludicrous apologists of the old guard of the French blogosphere, desperately trying to convince themselves that "all is well in Frogistan and here's a proof: the Eiffel tower is still here" - never go and never will go, he saw things they don't want to see and he had an overview of the bitter reality hidden behind the grubby curtains of the House of France.
But surely, Roger will tell you about that once he's finished playing with time shift.
That was a very interesting day and an excellent encounter. Roger L. Simon is truly a great character and, alongside the thrill of meeting such a talented man, the honesty with which he broaches his personal trajectory in the field of ideas definitively elicits my respect.
Hats off, Mr. Simon.
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1142 - jkrank
jkrank
1143 - the dissident frogman
the dissident frogman France
1144 - joye
joye
1145 - Valerie, the Texas
Valerie, the Texas
1146 - Valerie
Valerie
1147 - Papertiger
Papertiger
1148 - Papertiger
Papertiger
1149 - Joe
Joe
1150 - Valerie, the Texas
Valerie, the Texas
1151 - julie de maupin
julie de maupin