Champagne in Paris: How It Became Evident That I Am a Character in a Movie

You know what? I am a fictional character, and I have incontrovertible proof. Have I told you the champagne story? No? Okay, sit down and I will unfurl this tale of truth. That’s a fancy way of saying this is a true story. This is one story of about a hundred and sixty three, but in a way it’s the story that proves everything.

I had been in France for all of three hours. I’d fallen asleep on the train from Chuck The Gallbladder and we were looking around Paris. I was there with my girlfriend at the time, since it’s France, we’ll call her Lezette. It sounds better than to say I was visiting a girl name Holly, which makes it sound like I was dating Angela from “Who’s The Boss” a contention she would agree with, but I would argue.

Now, in Paris there is an Obelisk. There was a giant Ferris Wheel, in front of The Louvre and in front of the Ferris Wheel there is still and obelisk. I only mention the Ferris Wheel that stood in the Place de la Concorde because I was given a choice. We could see the Ferris Wheel, or we could see the obelisk. This is important. I had an illusion of choice. If you are caught up in the story, you believe that I could have either gone to the obelisk or the ferris wheel. Not true, because I am not a real person, I am the main character in a movie. I have no agency, I have no free will, the writer and the director decided that I had to go to the obelisk.

Wait, I must set the scene, that’s important too. October in Paris is like May in Michigan. It’s warm, but it also rains and everything weather wise has that sort of constant changing aspect that brings a touch of magic to whatever you’re doing. The ground is wet from the rain, but it’s warm and inviting and there is going to be an adventure if you just go out and find it. It was night, I can’t remember how late, but late enough that the sun was gone. Not so late that the city was deserted. I’ve been to Boston, New York, LA, Cleveland... nothing shuts down like Paris does. After Midnight it’s like walking around a Film Noir where you know stuffs happening somewhere, but the streets are deserted.

So anyway, it was probably around ten at night, still warm and inviting and still fun to be had. Now, for reasons that aren’t always clear to outsiders I was being silly. I didn’t just walk, I stopped across the road saying “Gobalisk, goblalisk, gobalisk.” If you repeat the word “Obelisk” quite quickly, it sort of sounds like that and if I think something sounds sort of like something I push it and make it sound like that. This is both sort of childish and something that Lezette found deeply attractive at the time. She’d grown up in a world where people acted with dignity, a world where people wanted the approval of others, a word where people did not stomp and bounce their head and repeat the word “Gobalisk” over and over. She lived in a world where people behaved themselves, and did the things adults are supposed to do. In short, she had never seen someone who so utterly and completely failed at the single most important life-task of all, giving a shit.

Now, while I am completely distracted by my goofiness, a Frenchwoman approaches me with a bottle of champagne and a paper cup. Yeah, I’m talking a Dixie Cup here. She then approaches and speaks the sort of gibberish you get in France, probably a local dialect of some variety. Anyone know what the hell The French are supposed to speak? No, of course not, they’re just making up sounds! We’re just all so intimidated by the French being all French that we don’t call them on their bullshit.

Lezette makes a hand wave, because she never actually did ANYTHING in her life before I came along. I however, did everything until that moment in my mid-thirties, but that’s another story. This was Ocotober of 2001 and I did everything. So this woman is standing with her Dixie cup and her bottle and Lezette is trying to wave her off and if speaking apologetically in the local gibberish and I interject because that’s what you do when you are fictional. I spoke up, and I asked a question, and I caused a problem.

“Hold on, what’s she saying?” I asked, and it was that moment that the whole fake language thing dropped. See, French people can all speak English, most of them can do so better than those raised with the language.

“Oh,” She said smiling and it was that moment that I got a good look at this woman under the unflattering sodium lights. “Tonight is my hen party and my friends say I have to give a stranger champagne.” She then paused for a moment and added. “For luck!”

Her friends waved to me as I looked over at them and I smiled. I’m pretty sure Lezette was having the internal conflict equivalent of a conniption fit. This is not the sort of situation she had ever been in, or envisioned she might be in. A complete stranger, probably a lunatic, offering a cup of what simply had to be poison, so they could distract us before stabbing us to death. Our bodies would wash up on the shores of Lower Mongolia, which for those of you paying attention is a landlocked country. In her head though, we were dead the moment she talked to us.

“Okay.” I agreed “If it’s for luck.”

I took a big gulp, and the French woman and I stand cheek to cheek, she with a crystal flute and I with my Dixie cup while her friends photograph us. I wish her luck, she refills my Dixie cup, and we part ways. I stick my arm through Lezettes and we walk towards The Fountain of River Commerce and Navigation and she sort of looks at me and the conversation begins...

“I have lived in Paris for two years, and you’ve been here for roughly two hours.”

“Yeah. You want some of this?”

“Sure.”

“Is it any good? I know nothing about champagne.”

“How the hell do you do that?”

“Limited experience with it I suppose.”

“I have never had someone offer me champagne. she just walked up to you and gave you champagne.”

“You would have refused to have anything to do with that situation.”

“No one has ever even offered.”

“Sorry.”

“It makes me feel like the sidekick in a movie.”

“It’s my world. You’re just living in it.”

“No.”

“No?”

“These things don’t really happen in real life, you’re a character in a movie. You can’t really exist. You have to be a fictional character.”

This wasn’t the last conversation I would have about this subject. It wasn’t the last I would have with her, or with other people. There is the fact that people have trouble telling the difference between me telling a true story like this, and a tale of complete balderdash. Someone actually said to me recently “If anyone I know has traveled back in time and shot Hitler six times, it was probably you.” which tells you exactly the sort of thing I’m up against.

Crepes and Cherries

So you made a simple fried rice and some hibachi style steak for dinner right? Only you used one of your two eggs for the rice, and you want to make some crepes and all the recipes call for like... more than one sad fucking egg, yeah? NOT TO WORRY!

Check this shit out...

So you take your one sad-ass egg and you leave it on the counter IN A BOWL! The hell’s wrong with you? Don’t just leave a naked egg on the counter. The salt will get all randy and want to hump it and eggs are notoriously easy when it comes to salt. If the salt bangs your egg, you are fucked vis a vis the crepes. Yeah, I speak all kinds of French. Point is, the egg needs to reach room temperature. You also need to melt some butter, about half a table spoon, so leave that out next to the egg. The butter will chaperone (more French) the egg and keep the salt in its place.

NOW! While that whole... THING is going on, you got those cherries we talked about right? The fresh cherries? The ones I told you to get? Yeah, those ones. Slice ‘em, cut ‘em, rip their pits out. You’ll need about a cup or so, maybe two. Hell do nine pounds if it gets you off. I don’t care, but I will warn you, the salt likes to watch. Now put them in a pan with some brandy, or rum, or something equally nice. If you use vodka I will hit you, a lot. Then add sugar, about half a cup of sugar to a cup of cherries. Now boil it. Not too high of heat, but you want it to boil. Some water might be needed, if you’re kind of bad at syrup and can’t make the hooch behave the way you want it to. You need a syrup of medium consistency.

Done? Yeah? You sure? Okay! The syrup needs to cool a bit, so just let it sit there. You don’t need to set anything on fire. It’s not that kind of dish.

So now comes the hard part. Put one quarter cup of water, one quarter cup of milk one third of a cup of regular all purpose flour into a blender. Add the egg and butter, then set the salt to one side, and put a tiny amount in your hand. Put the salt in the mix, but don’t let the egg know what you’ve done or it’ll think it’s been ruined for marriage and the butter will commit seppuku because butter takes the virtue of eggs seriously and you don’t need that shit. Hit the button and mix the ingredients. Now, I know I didn’t explicitly tell you to put the lid on the blender, but that’s because I assumed you could put those particular pieces together. Was my faith in you justified? Only time will tell.

Now comes the hard part. Put the blender pitcher in the fridge for about half an hour. During that time you can remake your syrup if you screwed it up, or give the salt a lecture on moral fortitude, or go out and buy the ice cream that you forgot is needed for this dish, or have sex if you're quick, or listen to an episode of The News Quiz. If sex takes too long, not to worry, you do no harm to the mixture, an hour or two is okay.

You got a nice smooth teflon pan, yeah? About eight to twelve inches across? Nothing fancy, just a normal, shallow, flat, smooth, teflon, pan. Medium high to high heat, depending on how gutsy you are. Okay, get some more butter. MOAR BUTTER! You can either melt this, or use it as a stick to lube up the pan, or you can stick it in your ear or eat it whole. Again, this ain’t my kitchen and I’m rarely as happy about that as I am right now. Lube the pan and pour some of the batter in there. Not too much, but we want to cover the bottom of the pan. Shake it around a little to get a good covering and when it begins to slide around on its own try to flip it over. If it splatters, or isn’t firm on top when you flip, you put in too much, use less next time. You just want the other side there for a few seconds, just to make sure it’s done. Then take it out and put it on the plate. Either the person with you can start the desert, or you can WAIT A DAMN MINUTE! This won’t take long, there is only enough batter for four crepes.

Put the crepe on a plate, then put a single spoonful of ice cream (We used cherry from Oberweis, but life probably sucks for you and you don’t have an Oberweis near you) and some of the cherry syrup on the crepe, before folding it into a sort of cute little cone shape. Now if you’re a greedy motherfucker, you can load the thing up with more ice cream, or put whipped cream on it, but this dish doesn’t need that. It needs just a bit of ice cream and a bit of cherry syrup. Don’t make me come for you all Liam Neeson style because you can’t be trusted with dessert.

So now you’ve made crepes with ice cream and cherry syrup, or you’ve made a damn mess. Either way, I am proud of the effort you’ve made, and Fancy is proud of you and Ringo is proud of you, but I can’t give you this briefcase because it doesn’t belong to me.

New Cocktails: Purple Thing (A drink for nice people)

I can’t say this cocktail was invented in any one place. It evolved over years, adding and subtracting elements. There was a time when the drink took four hours to prepare, and then you needed to find a naked 19 year old French virgin to serve it. Eventually though, as the supply of virgins began to run out, I subtracted ingredients until I got the drink down to these four. This drink should be served cold, keep your gin and rum in the freezer.

2 measures Gin
2 measures White rum
Top up Black Currant juice
4 Blackberries


Smash blackberries in a highball glass with a muddler. Pour gin and rum into the glass. Fill glass with ice. Slowly fill with black currant juice. If you like, you can still have a naked 19 year old serve the drink, but I’ve learned that virtue has no bearing on the taste. The server should present the drink on their knees, holding a silver tray in both hands. If you are so inclined, a collar may be worn, but not everyone does their drinking ‘in the community’ as it were. Since the drink was finally perfected in France, I still think a French nude is the best for this sort of thing, and a blond if you can find one at short notice.

New Cocktails: Good Fairy

A good fairy, rather than just a green one.

I invented this cocktail while staying in England with a pair of Parisian girls. It would be inaccurate to say I was “with” them exactly, but it wouldn’t be correct to say that nothing went on between the three of us. We were there for reasons beyond simply enjoying ourselves though, you might have read about the diamonds going missing. The largest Diamond Heist in English history tends to get noticed. I was annoyed, to say the least, because I don’t like my exploits to make the papers and that one did. However, as I was never officially implicated, I can discuss the matter now.

None of that is important, what is important was that I invented this little drink as something to pass the time between waiting in that farmhouse for The Greek to arrive and actually going into action. It’s a strong little drink, but then, they were strong girls.

2 measures Absinthe
2 measures Blue Curaçao
1 measure White rum
1 measure Orange juice

Put all in a cocktail mixing glass with ice. Stir with a novelty swizzle stick. strain into a champagne glass and serve. Be careful though, you may find yourself on the run from Interpol by the end of the night.