All Purple Everything

ACT I: Setting the scene
4:30pm-ish: The Baguette Winner and I were wandering around our neighbourhood Sitis Market – basically a Four Square – buying low-calorie, high protein snack foods, and not ice cream (obviously). On the radio we hear a couple of snippets of Purple Rain and When Doves Cry, with some French chatter in betwixt. ‘Hm,’ I said, ‘perhaps Prince is coming to France this year?’ [And wouldn’t that be amazing?].

Sitting around at home, I figured I’d Google “Prince Paris”, just to see whether we might have any luck. Shocked, I was, to discover that not only was Prince coming to Paris, but he was coming TONIGHT (ie, yesterday). Two shows, one at 6pm and one at 9:30pm. As it was nearly 5pm, I (with immense help from the BW) set about trying to find tickets. Eventually, we found a GA ticket for the 9:30pm show, heavily marked-up on a third party website. I have always said that I would happily pay more to see Prince than anybody else, and this ticket was about even with some of the pricier gigs I’d been to. The ticket was duly purchased. I WAS GOING TO SEE PRINCE!

Confusion. Shock. Despair. CYCLING…

After finding a nice hotel where we could print off the ticket, I set about becoming wildly excited.

I also had dinner.

The Baguette Winner and I discussed what time we thought I’d need to get there; General Admission, after all, and I wanted to get a good spot. I checked the ticket to see when the doors would open.

How peculiar: this ticket says the show starts at 6pm (it was now after 6).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They sent the wrong ticket. [I have since double-checked, and I definitely selected a 9:30pm ticket. My lawyer (me) has demanded a refund].

This must be what it feels like to be the President of South Sudan. The power, the glory, the new-found independence. On election night he’s on top of the world. And then the next morning he wakes up and realises he’s the President of South Sudan.

I was in a panic, and the Baguette Winner gave me one simple instruction: “ride like the wind”. [She actually said that!] The concert venue – Le Zenith – was about a 15-minute ride away. So ride I did.

 

ACT II: In Which Sarah Ulmer Could Not Find A Place To Park Her Bicycle

I rode really fast, making great time. I was only going to miss, maybe, the first hour. But Prince would play for 2 hours at least, I figured, and Purple Rain would be right at the end.

Two issues: I only vaguely knew where Le Zenith was. It’s in a big complex – a park which straddles a canal – and the venue could have been anywhere. Also, I was riding a Velib, one of the very affordable subscription-based bikes that Paris offers. These are wonderful when you are not in a great hurry, but sometimes it is hard to find a place to park them. [There are Velib parks all over Paris, but you need one that has a free space to hook your bike to]. For some reason (I blame sin), all of the parks out near the venue were out of order. Eventually, I found somewhere to leave the bike, and began sprinting in the general direction of the venue (I had peddled past it earlier, but wasn’t quite sure how to get in).

By now, it was 7:20, and I knew there was not much left of the show. Desperation; heartbreak; anger at myself for believing that good things can happen to great people.

At this point (I was still running), a man (Turkish, maybe) dressed in black, with a funny little bum-bag called out to me ,‘you want Prince?’

I said, ‘yes, which way is it?’

‘I have two tickets for you, my friend’.

I walked past him, as I already had my ticket, and hurried off down the pathway to the venue. About 100 steps in, I decided that I had NOT come all this way to see 20 minutes of Prince (and who knows when my next chance would be?).

I went back, got money out, and bought a ticket off my "friend". [This ticket was literally half the price of the one I had got online, which wasn’t even the right fucking ticket!]

And I went in to catch the last 20 minutes of the first show.

Act III: In Which Dreams Come True

I walked into a surprisingly small, surprising not full venue. Standing, as I was, at the back, I was maybe 15 metres away from the stage. The next 20 minutes are a complete blur. I remember coming in to the end of a very funk/rock number that I didn’t recognise. He then played Something In The Water (Does Not Compute), which I also didn’t know, but was amazing. 

And then it happened. I had been in the room for 10 minutes, when the first few notes of Purple Rain kicked in. And I cried a bit. [In that totally masculine way that girls respect because it shows you have feelings and aren’t a robot.] It was one of the most surreal moments of my life. And 12 minutes later, Purple Rain had finished and the house lights had come on and I was off to wait in line for the real show.

Evidently there aren’t the same liquor bans over here as in New Zealand. People, knowing they’d be queuing for awhile, had brought a few beers down to pass the time. You could also buy them a number of people who had set up stalls around the queue. Although I didn’t have one (I was petrified of having to leave my spot to find a toilet), I thought it was nice. Nobody was especially drunk, by the way, just having a couple of beers on a Sunday evening.

After about an hour in line, and half an hour in the General Admission area, Prince came back. [He actually did a couple of laps on a bicycle outside to see all the crowds lining-up (separated by a huge fence, of course)].

The show started with a cool funk/rock version of Let’s Go Crazy, and then Take Me With U. I had actually been pretty worried about the setlist. This was a small venue, and he is in Europe all the time. He is also with a new band, and they are releasing an album sometime soon. I was worried that it was going to be a whole load of new stuff, as well as some other obscure miscellanea that I would not recognise. It was neither of those things.

Prince proceeded to play almost nothing but hits, and he played them pretty honestly. He also seemed to have a marvelous time doing so. Raspberry Beret; When Does Cry; Sign O’ The Times; Kiss – all the big names were there. Early on, he announced ‘At our parties, we play the songs we want to hear!’, and went into an awesome re-working of Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough. He played Little Red Corvette, the whole thing, and it was incredible. He sang a long version of Nothing Compares 2 U, and it was pompous and camp and spectacular. And then he went off-stage.

For the encore (one of those encores that’s really part of the set), he came out on his own and gave us a medley on the piano: Diamonds and Pearls, The Beautiful Ones and a great version of How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore, the song he wrote for Alicia Keys. And then it was Purple Rain again. The feelings this time weren’t quite as powerful as the last time around, but the spectacle was better. For one, I was in the fifth row back from the stage, and when the purple confetti dropped it was everywhere. The guitar solo was (obviously) sublime; both true to the original, but with some vamping in there to show he was trying. It’s a pretty remarkable thing that this was so affecting, when you consider the backbreaking number of times he has had to play this song. 

And then he went off-stage.

The people of Paris were not content with one encore (although I had now been standing for 6 hours, and was pretty content). 5 minutes of cheering and screaming later, and Prince was back onstage again. He played three songs in this encore, and while I didn’t know any of them, it was still a grand ol’ time. He went away again.

More cheering and screaming, and back he came. The highlight of this encore was What’s My Name, which I didn’t really know either. [I can’t find a video of this one, sorry]. This involved a lot of really silly dancing from Prince, while police sirens blared over the chorus. It was really excellent. He went away one more time.

This time he came back and played the only song that I was hoping to hear, which he was ever actually going to play. [I would’ve died if he’d played International Lover, but that was never going to happen]. The final encore was a beautiful, passionate version of Sometimes It Snows In April, which you will remember from the end of the film Under The Cherry Moon (obviously). And then he was gone again, this time for good.

It was, without a doubt, the best concert I have ever been to. Seeing Prince in a 6,000-seat venue (which wasn’t even totally full) was pretty much the best case scenario, and he played every song I could’ve requested. 

The only downside was that he HATES people filming or taking photos, and he had security people shining bright lights in the faces of anyone holding up a camera. I still managed to get a couple, however, so that will do. I will say that the lack of phones being held up did help to keep focus on the show, so maybe it was a net positive.

I rode like the wind home, stopping only to buy a poster on the way out. I triumphantly strode through the door at 12:30am, where I was promptly told off by an angry Baguette Winner, who had been expecting me back at home 3 hours earlier. But it was all worth it when she saw the beautiful purple confetti centrepiece on our coffee table...

Suck It, Cesson!

Last night the Baguette Winner and I went to another handball game: Paris St-Germain vs Cesson-Rennes. Based on my dubious translating of the programme, this was the last game of some sort of round-robin competition. PSG ended up coming second to Dunkerque, who I can only assume are big jerks.

The game began in a disappointing fashion – our two favourite players, Luc Abalo and Samuel Honrubia (left and right wing, respectively), were out, presumably with injury. PSG didn’t miss a beat, with their two replacement wings (Jeffrey M’Tima and Fahrudin Melic) each scoring six goals in the game.

-       Mercifully, we did not have to hear “TNT” after every single goal, as at the last game. The team introductions were conducted over an AC/DC backdrop, but that was all we were forced to endure.

-       This was shaping up to be another pantsing, with the Parisians going up 10-2 after 15 minutes. Cesson-Rennes finished the first half with a flurry, and just after halftime it was only a four-goal game. While PSG ended up winning by 7, it was a hard-fought victory, and the result was not guaranteed until the final few minutes.

-       Unlike the previous game we attended, the PSG players actually seemed willing to compete. Perhaps this was due to them being down two starters (they also relied on back-up pivot Robert Gunnarsson more heavily than usual starter Igor Vori), but they defended stoutly and chased down loose balls with gusto. This was a far better example of competitive handball.

-       This had, easily, the best ambiance of any handball game I’ve ever been to. They even had proper NBA-style player intros!

Well, that photo did it no justice whatsoever, but in the right corner, you can see the beginning of PYROTECHNICS! For someone used to playing handball in far-flung gyms with three spectators, this was rather thrilling.

There won’t be too many more handball games in the near future, unfortunately. It’s a winter sport, after all. So this sports post will have to do until the FIBA World Cup in Spain (September!).

Mission Improbable

The Baguette Winner is out of town. I know absolutely nobody else in Paris - well, except “Adele”, the waitress at our nearby café Les Anemones - and by ‘know’, I mean she recognises me as the guy who speaks English at her - which means I am staying in, enjoying cheap bottles of Stella Artois, and watching Mission Impossible. As has become custom, I have made note of my thoughts:

-       Emilio Estevez is in this film. That’s how you know this movie was made in the Nineties.

-       Kristin Scott Thomas is in this film, and is not speaking French. This is further evidence that this film was made in the Nineties. I happen to like Kristin Scott Thomas, as she made her film debut in a Prince movie.

-       Jon Voight instructs the crack team of carefully selected specialists that they will meet back at “4am. That’s 0400.” This team can’t be all that elite.

-       Tom Cruise just performed an internet search. I am delighted to report that he does this using an acceptably low (and therefore realistic) number of keystrokes. One of the great grievances in popular culture is the depiction of computer use in late 90s - early 2000s film and television. An ‘internet search’, apparently, typically involved wild mashing of keys and virtually no use of a mouse, which resembles no internet search I’ve ever performed. Kudos to the Mission Impossible team.

-       Wikipedia informs me that the team that Tom Cruise’s character is/was a member of is the IMF, the “Impossible Missions Force”. That’s a little fatalistic. Why can’t it be the “Improbable Missions Force”? Or something more optimistic. Perhaps the “Missions Which Are Destined To Succeed Force”? If you think positive thoughts, good things will happen. [That last sentence is the premise behind The Secret, just FYI. I’ve just saved you time and money. You’re welcome.]

-       Ving Rhames plays the computer nerd Luther Stickell. This is the very antithesis of type-casting.

-       The famous “Tom Cruise hanging from the ceiling scene” (or Sporty Spice, if your only reference point in life is Spice World): It really is a good scene. Of course, surely they could have imagined that the foreign guy might get tired of holding Tom Cruise, but no harm done. They also could have waited until the CIA vault guy goes for lunch, so that he doesn’t keep intruding (as opposed to making him sick for about 5 minutes, which seemed like a strange plan). They could have just made him so sick that he had to go home… But these are minor details.

-       The whole peeling-your-face-off-to-reveal-you-are-someone-else thing is also pretty great, if totally unbelievable.

-       Even more unbelievable is the scene where A HELICOPTER FLIES THROUGH A TUNNEL TO KEEP UP WITH A HIGH-SPEED TRAIN! 

-       After the aforementioned helicopter/train scene, Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames meet up at a café for a beer, and discuss something-or-other. In the background, almost imperceptively quiet, you can hear Dreams by The Cranberries. This is both pleasant, because it’s a nice enough song, but also strangely jarring, as the rest of the soundtrack is action-movie-esque.  

      And it’s not just that it was a hit song at the time; Dreams is from 1992, and Mission Impossible is from 1996. Now, if Dreams was featured in the soundtracks to Aladdin, Home Alone II, Beethoven or The Mighty Ducks, it’d make a lot more sense.

And with that Emilio Estevez full-circle callback, I will end this post.

Bad Public TV Channels

I write this post with no wi-fi access. This means I’m stuck relying on cellphone 3G like your average Amish blogger. Worse than your average Amish, I’m watching domestic television. Which means I’m switching between Marley & Me and Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Home Cooking.

I’ve learned the following things:

-      Gordon Ramsay has a large family that laughs and high-fives a lot. His wife is also a 9, at worst.

-      Marley is a poorly behaved dog. I hope he doesn’t come between Owen Wilson and Rachel from Friends.

-      When Gordon Ramsay isn’t cooking, he’s doing curls.

-      Owen Wilson was really good at movies for awhile there.

-      Gordon Ramsay’s kid (“Jack”) asks good questions and seems to be enjoying cooking with his father. He’s probably going to get bullied for this at school.

-      Alan Arkin won an Oscar a few years ago. He seems to play the same character in every film. This means he’s either incredibly unlucky not to win an Oscar every year, or incredibly lucky to have won one at all.

-      Gordon Ramsay just pulled some milky-white cheese out of a plastic tub. He called it some name that was not “mozzarella”. It looks like mozzarella. Is it mozzarella? Clearly, he expects that I know the answer to this.
Jamie would’ve said ‘you can use mozzarella, if you want,’ and I would’ve smiled, because we both know I’m using Edam (if I have cheese at all (dairy prices, and what not)).

-      Marley wants to watch Owen and Rachel having sex. Owen is not ok with this. Rachel is.    He wants to take Marley into the next room. She argues that Marley won’t know what he’s seeing, anyway, so why can’t he stay? She seems to have thought this through. I was distracted by this.

 -     Gordon Ramsay and his large family all collapse together on one of those corner couches where everyone is close together because that’s how angles work. They playfight and laugh heartily, and thank god the cameras were there to catch it because it’s really organic and genuine.

-      Owen and Rachel are having a baby. Owen was not excited by this, but then Rachel said he had to be, so they are still having a baby and now he is excited about it. Marley doesn’t speak English.

-      Rachel was hotter when she wasn’t always frowning.

-      An advertisement for Edward Scissorhands was just on. I’m starting to think Tim Burton has been tricking us for way longer than we thought. Now, when he makes Dark Shadows, people say things like ‘yeah, but his old stuff like Edward Scissorhands was great.’ Hm…

-      Johnny Depp is dangerously close to pulling an Owen Wilson.

-      Owen Wilson just said some line in a way that was charming when he was Hansel, but isn’t in this movie. I don’t even know what his character’s name is in Marley & Me. I doubt it’s “Hansel”. That would confuse the viewer, I suspect.

At this point, I went upstairs to make tea (I don’t like tea). I then saw that there was anything else to do, and so I did that.

Note: This post was written before leaving for France.