Dans les Voooooooosges

Though rumor has it that the film festival this year is at an all-time low due to lack of sponsors/funding, there nevertheless may be a couple of heavy-hitting movies. Looking at some of the festival's past winners, I'm hoping I may have just seen the next "28 Days Later" (which in my opinion is a great zombie movie):

1997: Scream
1998: An American Werewolf in Paris (Grand Prix), Gattaca (Jury)
1999: Cube (Grand Prix), Bride of Chucky (Jury)
2000: Stir of Echoes
2003: The Gathering (Jury)
2005: Saw (2005)
2006: Isolation
2008: El Orfanato (Grand Prix), Teeth (Jury), REC (Prix du Public)
2009: The Midnight Meat Train (Prix du Public) <--why did I never see this?

Cool, huh? I saw "La Horde" last night, the only French horror film in competition, but that certainly is not going to win a thing -- what a waste of cinema. "La Horde": machine guns, zombies, a braless woman.

Tomorrow I'm going on another "sortie" with the alpine club: raquette (snowshoeing)! Apparently, the conditions are going to be fantastic: less blizzarding, deep, powdery snow, maybe even a little sun. I've always thought of snowshoeing as one of those silly sports that people do when it's not really necessary (as in, why would you strap a couple of tennis raquets on your feet when you could just go on a hike?). But since there's likely to be waist-high snow out there tomorrow...

..............................

To give you city-dwelling ignoramuses an idea of what mountain-bound French people eat, here are some very tradtional Vosges dishes that I haven't talked about much since they're not really up my cuisine alley (my cuisine alley?):

Quiche Lorraine: eggs, cheese, lardons

Raclette: cheese, potatoes, ham

 

Tartiflette: cheese, potatoes, lardons

Tarte Flambee: cream, onions, lardons

 

Tourte Lorraine: meat

The variety is astounding!

Monolith

I spent my birthday evening volunteering at the film festival, and was lucky enough to see a free screening of "2001: A Space Odyssey," one of my all-time favorite movies. Here's a clip of the high-speed-time-warp-mind-numbing sequence, possibly one of the best 9 minutes of cinema ever created:

The Rachel Show

I was mad last Sunday and went on a four hour hike in the snow:

 

I got my wisdom teeth taken out:

 

I read some French fables:

Where am I? What am I doing?

Idiots and Computers

I just read this article about mistakes in radiation therapy -- and how most of them are due to software problems. I'd love to blame the technology, but it's the people, of course: the radiation therapists who aren't looking at the screen, the doctors who aren't checking the patient's weekly doses, the computer programmers who haven't built an emergency/fail-safe mechanism into the software. The article is horrifying and takes awhile to read, but I feel strangely moved and fired up after having read it. People are morons. Morons, morons.

Bacteria

So besides coming down with le gastro (stomach flu... it's what you get when you have a student vomiting into a bucket in your classroom) this week, this is what else I've been doing:

Making naan! (my yogurt days are over)

 

Looking out my window

Enjoying the art on my wall

In other words, not much. But January is always a slow month, and so I should probably consider myself lucky to have its temporal viscosity broken up by illness, dentistry, and the annual Gerardmer Film Festival:

...at which I'll be working as a volunteer English translator for all the overseas tourists, directors, producers, whomever that can't speak French. Maybe Miley Cyrus will show up!

Happy Birthday, from France

Forgot to mention: I'm getting my wisdom tooth out next week.

Yes, just one tooth, in the dentist's office, with a little novicaine and no pain medication, because that's how all wisdom teeth are removed in France. AND FOR FREE.

I think I also want to get the rest of my wisdom teeth unnecessarily pulled, get my appendix out, and get a pair of rec specs while I'm at it.

RE:

Another video you don't have to watch per se, but should probably have projecting on the living room wall of your next house party: