Thursday 8 October 2009

Frog 2 – Why I’d Want To Live In France

 

Reasons why I’d love to live in France:

1- The food is fantastic: I kid you not, this stuff is angelic. I had my first quiche Lorraine yesterday and I almost died of ecstasy. Their bread is also first class. Buying a sandwich on a freshly made baguette is heavenly. For some reason as well, I’ve started eating all the things I used to hate in England; tomatoes, all different types of cheese, vinaigrette and lots of salads, mushrooms and green beans. Not fish though. Fish are perverted little critters. I say, if a country’s cuisine can taste so darn tasty and get me to eat loads of stuff I’d previously hated, it’s on a winner.

2 – They still have BNs and Golden Grahams: ‘nuff said.

3 – People seem more cheery: Please note the number of conditional, subjunctive, downright maybe clauses and the general mood of quasi-possibility in this paragraph. Ok, I’m from the North of England which is typically typecast as generally more friendly than the scummy south. Yet here, friendliness tends to be assumed everywhere you go. Except in Paris, they’d sooner guillotine you than look at you. I realise that this politeness is, for the most part, a formality and some people can seem as friendly as Santa but they eventually manifest themselves to be the official paperworker from hell with the ultimate power over your current miserable situation and the unshakable sense that they are better than you, but it’s nice to experience for the first few minutes at least. The Christians here redeem the country though. They actually seem to have read the nice bits of the Bible telling them to be joyful and   über-thankful for God’s grace and they get on with it quite well.

4 – Alcohol: Everyone knows that some of the best wines (if not the best) come from France. Shucks, they even invented a fizzy wine: champagne, named after the French region Champagne (see the crazy leap of faith for a brand name there?) And not only is their wine fantastic, it’s also dirt cheap. What would cost £10 is sold here for the equivalent of £4, and the French being the French, a lot of the best wines never make it out of the country. Not only is their wine fantastic, but you can also buy Gordon’s Export Gin which you can’t in the UK for obvious reasons (you can’t export a product to its country of origin). By far the best thing though is the sheer lack of drinking culture. In France, alcohol typically goes with food, thereby negating a large portion of its potency and not reducing the average working Jean-Claude to a staggering wreck by the end of his lunch hour. Yes, there are bars and nightclubs etc, but the binge culture hasn’t really reached France (or the better part of the continent for that matter) and I don’t get the impression that it ever will.

5 – Le café: Coffee is big in France. They love the strong stuff – and so do I. A French café is monumentally different to its English counterpart, most notably for the way it treats its coffee. In England you might order a latte, cappuccino, espresso, mocha, macchiato, or if you’re really lucky a ristretto (go Oomoo)  and that’s generally the end of the coffee list apart from a few variations on these. In France they have all of those and more, with little short names to learn if you ever want to impress a Parisian waiter (which you do, otherwise you won’t be served). Café is also a normal thing to have after a meal and the French know how to make coffee – non of this filth they call instant coffee. I always say that France is built on three principles: Liberté, égalité, donnez moi du café.

 

Yet fear not ye English! This blog is merely an attempt to explain why I like France and why, if I ever did settle here, I’d do such a thing. I must have you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could never stand to leave my green and pleasant land for too long, and I’d never dream right now of settling in another country for life. I admit these opinions may change with time, but I feel fairly certain that should I ever become an ex-pat, France will never be home.

P.S.V

Thursday 1 October 2009

Pomplamoose

Aside from being a rather humorous translation (albeit inexpertly spelled) of the word ‘grapefruit’, Pomplamoose is an American couple who make fantabulous music on YouTube. Subscribe to them here at http://http://www.youtube.com/user/PomplamooseMusic .

Yes, that’s right – subscribe to them! “Oh but Andy, you can subscribe to people on YouTube? What does that mean?”

It’s quite simple really, lots of people are now vlogging (the video version of this thing you’re reading), creating and promoting music, doing funny crazy stuff, and generally being quite cool.

I’ve mentioned stuff like this in my previous blog I Have No Life? where I lauded the talents of both Philip De Franco and Alan Distro, stalwarts of the YouTube community.

When most people think of YouTube, they tend to only be aware of its capacity to show impossibly hilarious videos, such as this one:

Or maybe perhaps ones more like these:

But I usually prefer videos with a little more personality to them. Take Jake and Amir for example. Here are two guys who work for College Humor (pardon the American spelling), a site which makes brilliantly funny videos and also posts these videos on YouTube. Jake and Amir form a comedy duo who make regular episodes documenting Amir’s utter lack of higher brain functions. Although videos like those posted above can be (and quite frequently are) great and really funny, I really enjoy a good comedy duo and here is one – on YouTube. I also love their channel as it comes with all the other brilliant College Humor videos. Sadly I can’t post a Jake and Amir video here as YouTube doesn’t allow it, but here a link to their site.

Another style of YouTube which I adore is that of vlogging. Vlogging is essentially (for those of you who hadn’t worked this out yet) a video blog. There are loads of vloggers out there so to get noticed, as Charlie Macdonald has done, is no easy task. Charlie, or charlieissocoollike as he is otherwise known, currently has 203,212 subscribers to his channel and has had (the last time I checked) 5,704,532 views to his channel. This means that his videos have clocked up an accumulative 5,704,532 views – and he’s only just 19!

From humble beginnings of short videos of how to make tea and how to be English:

To his now BBC worthy quest to get a song in the UK top 40 with three of his friends (who are also stories of great accomplishments themselves). Click here for that video. My ultimate favourite videos of Charlie’s however are his subscriber task videos. In these, Charlie performs a random task as given to him by a subscriber such as ‘paint yourself purple’

But maybe one of the best types of YouTube users, or at least the most exciting, are the YouTubers who make music. These are often just random teens with a guitar and a video camera and they often come up with some of the most brilliant music I’ve ever heard. I’ve spoken before about Raven Zoë (whose album is fantastic by the way), here she is with one of my favourite songs of hers (P.S. She’s the girl…)

Yet, as the title and opening paragraph of this blog suggest, my favourite music makers on YouTube have to be Pomplamloose. Here's a link to a website where they have posted a load of their music FOR FREE! Nataly and Jack make a brilliant musical coupling, Nataly with her ethereal beauty which is somehow translated in to her voice and Jack with his ability to play just about any instrument on God’s green earth. And finally, here’s a video of theirs which will show you just why I love them so much. Not only do they make good music, they also have a quirky sense of humour…

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little introduction to the YouTube community. Go and explore YouTube – there’s something for everyone.