Czupka Cakis

2009

December 22
November 39
October 55
September 72
August 67
July 67
June 59
May 88
April 85
March 118
February 42
January 118

2008

December 55
November 69
October 90
September 122
August 89
July 123
June 140
May 116
April 53
March 95
February 82
January 39

The sky

keeps feeling like it’s going to break, and then we get satisfyingly dramatic thunderstorms...
May 31st
Bassin de la Villette. 
May 31st
Bassin de la Villette.
May 31st
Design market, Quai de la Loire.
May 31st
Design market, Quai de la Loire.
May 31st
Design market, Quai de la Loire.
May 31st
Design market, Quai de la Loire.
May 31st
May 31st

Reading:

Six hundred pages into Geert Mak’s In Europe, a remarkable but often profoundly depressing...
May 31st
Listen Listen
Vic Chesnutt and Liz Durrell, Somewhere, 2005.
May 31st
Can't wait to get their take on the Sex And...
May 30th
Listen Listen
Throbbing Gristle, Hot On The Heels Of Love, 1979. Just got my tickets to see them (and for the...
May 30th
Warch Watch
Hell of a week, demi-icon-death-wise: Dick Martin, Sydney Pollack, and now, one of my childhood...
May 29th
Gallery, Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Culture Rapide café, rue Julien Lacroix.
May 29th
A thing in a vacant lot on rue Ramponeau.
May 29th
A vacant lot on rue Ramponeau.
May 29th
Rue Ramponeau.
May 29th
Rue Ramponeau.
May 29th
Spanish restaurant, rue Dénoyez. That dog is always there,...
May 29th
Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Rue Dénoyez.
May 29th
Aux Folies, rue de Belleville.
May 29th

Graffiti walk

I spent the early, muggy evening walking some back streets like rue Ramponeau, with its mix of...
May 29th
Moutarde Bornibur headquarters on Blvd. de la Villette.
May 29th
Listen Listen
Moby Grape, I Am Not Willing, 1969.
May 29th
Warch Watch
Look, I don’t really know you. But I do know that you can’t watch this all the way to...
May 28th

Still here.

alexbalk: Every morning I rise before dawn, stumbled bleary-eyed to the shower, get dressed, take...
May 28th

Listening to:

the audiobook version of Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin. It’s read by him, it’s...
May 28th
Listen Listen
The Congos, Congoman, 1977.
May 28th

Gridscuppered

Gridskipper, a travel site I once enjoyed despite its sometimes annoying interface, has re-opened...
May 27th
Warch Watch
Just finished watching Burden of Dreams, Les Blank’s 1981 documentary about Werner Herzog...
May 27th
Listen Listen
Lambchop, Up With People, 2000. 
May 27th
Listen Listen
Mylo, Guilty of Love (Kid Porno Lo-Fi Remix), 2006.
May 26th
“Any film that boasts a lengthy and strangely hypnotic...”
— AV Club. That’s ex-Kid...
May 25th
Clinton speaks of faith in face of adversity
May 25th
The Melange Of Cultures In Belleville
May 25th
Sunday morning. This guy’s robe was awesome and I want...
May 25th
Sunday morning.
May 25th
Sunday morning flower-line, rue de la Villette.
May 25th
Sunday morning bread-line, rue de Belleville.
May 25th
“Oh, and for all these people saying Belleville is so great...”
— Adrian Moore. Well,...
May 25th
Listen Listen
John Cale, Andalucia, 1973. Just heard an orchestral version of this in the Andy Warhol doc and it...
May 25th

A visit to the equator

  Last night we went down the hill into the 11th, to have dinner at L’Equateur, a Cameroonian...
May 25th
Listen Listen
Faust, The Sad Skinhead, 1973. The lament of a broken-hearted Neo-Nazi, set to a crooked reggae...
May 24th

Note to self:

People who blog from Paris always seem to have to underline the fact that they’re blogging...
May 23rd
Listen Listen
Coleman Hawkins, Out of Nowhere, Paris, April 28, 1937.
May 23rd
Listen Listen
J. Dilla, Nothing Like This, 2007.
May 22nd
May 22nd
Those Filthy French, Pt. 5. (via Boingboing,...
May 21st
For technical reasons, I can’t put up any music from...
May 21st
Listen Listen
Neu!, After Eight, 1975. R.I.P. Klaus Dinger.
May 21st
The Digested Read
May 20th
Warch Watch
David Lynch, panties. (via Kottke.)
May 20th
Fun/depressing/silly.( via Gawker, which is terribly uncool...
May 20th
Listen Listen
Fred Neil, The Dolphins, 1969. 
May 20th
Pandas rouge.
May 19th

Minkeys

Noted blog commentator Steve Burgess is in town. Yesterday we visited the Jardin des Plantes and...
May 19th
Reptile House, Jardin des Plantes.
May 19th
A mixed message for the menagerie inhabitants.
May 19th
Orangutans discussing Steve. 
May 19th
Steve surveys Paris.
May 19th
Listen Listen
Opal, Empty Box Blues. What happened to Kendra Smith?
May 19th
May 17th
May 17th
May 17th
May 17th

Concentrated bullshit

In between watching Ric Burns’ doc about Andy Warhol and overhearing Y’s fashion news...
May 17th
May 17th
Listen Listen
The Ethiopians, Everything Crash, 1968.
May 17th
Listen Listen
Yeah. What he said. (Beach Boys, Busy Doin’ Nothin’, 1968.) Not a lot of action these...
May 16th
May 15th
May 15th

Oakley Hall

just passed away at the age of 87. I’ve only read Warlock, but it’s a novel that has...
May 15th
Artsy Slime-Dunk
May 15th
Listen Listen
The Left Banke, She May Call You Up Tonight, 1966.
May 15th
Listen Listen
MGMT, The Youth, 2008.
May 13th
Listen Listen
Flash and the Pan, Walking in the Rain, 1979. Eccentric Australian studio duo Vanda and Young,...
May 12th

Reading:

There are no car alarms in our neighbourhood, thank god, but plenty of sirens go wailing up and down...
May 11th
 It’s yougoogoogoo who’s fugugugued up, man.
May 11th
Listen Listen
Game Theory: We Love You, Carol and Alison
May 11th
Game Theory, 1987, circa Lolita Nation: just found this...
May 11th
Hillary's Downfall
May 9th
Spent yesterday afternoon on a hill in Butte Chaumont,...
May 9th
Goodness me! It’s Henry! via bullshit:
May 8th

This bug is BRUTAL

and the weird French anti-grippe pills I’m taking are making me semi-hallucinate in that only...
May 8th
“She calls her son an “evil, stupid little...”
— The lovely Lucie Ceccaldi,...
May 7th
May 6th

Reading:

Well, now I’m down with this awful flu of Y’s. Predictable, and frustrating while...
May 6th
“One entry I’d like to post now in this Stupidpedia...”
— Armando Iannucci, in...
May 5th
“Where the heck is the ‘off’ switch on this thing?”...
May 5th
“You do not find in Menilmontant the sublime legs you see at...”
— Pierre-Louis Colin, Guide des...
May 5th
It’s been stunning weather recently. Today we joined...
May 4th
Y’s lunchtime galette being made by the evil Bretons...
May 4th
Shit-talking, stilt-walking shepherds of the Landes....
May 3rd

Modern Gasbag

People, especially Gawker people, have been saying snarky things about Keith Gessen for a while. I...
May 3rd

Tenuous political conclusion jumping

My takeaway from Boris Johnson’s win in the London mayoral elections: it’s more proof...
May 3rd
“There is a strong case to be made that, in recent years, it...”
— Andrew Hussey’s...
May 3rd
Paris noir, just off rue de Rivoli.
May 2nd
Rue des Pyrénées
May 2nd
Palais Royale, and skater kids.
May 2nd
Luxembourg Gardens
May 2nd
Rushing down the stairway of the Marie Antoinette exhibit at...
May 2nd
Rebecca at the Palais Royale.
May 2nd
Musée de la Magie: a museum of Wrong…
May 2nd
Belleville Market
May 2nd
Atelier Man Ray, à la Pinacothèque turns out to be more of...
May 2nd
Viral Y in the doctor’s office. Poor widdle fing.
May 2nd
It’s a terrible disease.
May 2nd

May Day

We’re in the pont, the beginning of a stretch of holidays in May that the French have turned...
May 2nd
It’s the 40th anniversary of the May 1968 Riots!...
May 2nd