Paris is less than OR equal to the U.S.

So, it may have taken me almost 5 months and a bushelful of random life experiences (Dean's List, rampant domesticity, Viewpoints, to name a few) to figure it out, but I now get why I was sort of (pardon my French) blase about the whole Paris thing.

You know, one goes to Paris assuming that its heyday of expatriatism and the tumultuous art/music/lit world has persisted into modernity and even the 21st century. What one does not expect is the elitism of capitalism has stretched its tentacles over everything in the whole city, where everything is based upon material wealth and possessions (so-called "fashion") and "art" exists only as the terrible jokes of contemporary art that one would put in a Hollywood movie (anyone seen Iron Man 2? That "painting" that RDJr. moves aside for his Iron Man poster that Penny/Gwyneth gets so upset about? It's a strip of black down the center of a canvas. This is 2010. Fuck that/you/your taste.).

Anyway, the point is that if you're rich and totally boring and uncultured, uninterested in compelling ideas and things other than buying clothes and spending a shitton of money on boring food and assume because it's French that it's all wonderful, then #1. your critical skills essentially do not exist and #2. you'll flip for Paris. However, those of us unburdened by the frivolity of extreme wealth are forced to wander the streets, cold and munching on the end of a baguette, seeking answers we thought would be here but have faded as the McDos pop up on every third block. My advice: give up on Paris, but if you're there, spend every second in art museums and parks.

It's like America: all obsessed with themselves, their silly Western language and American top 40 music. Voila!