Really?

Front page of the Times today.

Harlem to Antarctica for Science, and Pupils
By SARA RIMER
Eager to be a role model, an African-American teacher plans to travel to Antarctica, where almost all is white.

Chat with Izabel Gass

8:34 AM Izabel: i'm going home but

have a good day in paris

you live in paris

New photos

When will you have time to see Paris?

Had to cancel on a movie date (Paris). Sunday, mon copain asks, When will you have time to see Paris? I don't know! I reply, distressed. I mean Paris, the movie. Oh. Tuesday night?

Returning to my flat this morning—from a long night that began with a 5 PM wine tasting at Fish La Boissonnerie (69 rue de Seine)—I felt like small Mario in big Paris. Everyone's on his or her way to work, or school, after an Easter weekend of chocolate eggs, family, lamb dinners, Mass in big churches. A girl with clear skin and white headphones opens a bottle of Coca-Cola. I'm watching her take a drink in slow motion. She smiles, puts the cap back on. I'm jealous of how smoothly it probably goes down, how sweet and spiky it probably tastes. Wish I were drinking Coca-Cola and going to high school. Me, I have a sore throat, I feel achy, feverish, hungover. J'suis malade encore une fois, I write to mon copain. A salt water gargle and an Ibuprofen later, I sleep for most of the day. Wake up in a pool of sweat and watch part of Jarmusch's Down By Law. Sleep more, black and white images of Tom Waits and John Lurie in my head.

I've emerged from my room and am force-feeding myself the same dish I've been making for weeks, mini penne rigate with canned peas and grated Emmental. Roommate is in his room cheering on a snow leopard on Planet Earth. CNN.com tells me Brain-damaged woman at center of Wal-Mart suit. Huge Antarctic ice chunk collapses. I'll see Paris tomorrow.

When the night has come

Last Monday, St. Patrick's Day, I met a friend for dinner at one of my recent haunts, Les Deux Singes in the X^e. Sometime between our plat and dessert (the crème brûlée is good), a man with a guitar sits down at a table next to us and begins playing. Frankly, distracting and kind of annoying. When he's finished, or so I think, he goes around with a hat, and I begrudge a 2 euro coin. At Les Deux Singes, you can have a glass of red wine for 2€. We soon learn his name (Ben), he learns ours (Ann, Gabriella), how many years he's played the guitar (twenty-nine years). Of course, he wants us to sing. Just as I learned the piano for nine years and can't play anything from memory, I can't sing any songs from memory, save for a few lines from my library of "Alternative" music. I doubt he knows Feist. Je ne peux pas, je ne sais pas les mots (I cannot, I do not know the words), I keep telling him. But he doesn't believe me. Gabriella has already claimed she doesn't sing. But, a couple of drinks later, he gets what he wants. Gabriella, another friend who has joined us, and I are singing Ben E. King's Stand By Me together. Among the three of us, we knew the words and turned some heads, although mostly shady ones. Long live Monday nights in Paris.

Did you know?

The title 'Gattaca' is composed of the initial letters of the four DNA nucleotides (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine).
-Wikipedia