Michael Stevenson, aka Dai Bando, Johnny Foreigner, Monsieur Pas De Merde, is a blogger of French and British culture. His blogs "Pas De Merde" and "The Hobbledehoy" have been called "marvelous" by some, and "meh" by others.
Next summer, my wife and I will be visiting Belgium for the first time. Linda loves chocolate and waffles. I have been known to enjoy an occasional beer. Sang the Ink Spots, “My prayer, is to linger with you, at the end of the day, in a dream that’s divine.” It will be something like that. We’re coming, chocolate, waffles and beer. We’re coming. [ – Pas De Merde – ]
In Belgium, beer (bière in French, bier in Flemish but said just like beer in English) is an institution. As much as the Mannekin Pis (terribly disappointing and underwhelming) and frites (delicious in every which way), beer is an integral part of Belgian identity (…)
The Eiffel Tower lit up in green to mark the success of the Paris Agreement, Friday Nov.4, 2016 in Paris.
The Paris Agreement on climate change enters into force Friday faster than anyone had anticipated, after a year with remarkable success in international efforts to slash man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases. Inscription reads, “Paris Agreement it’s done”.
(AP Photo/Michel Euler)
I rewatched Martin McDonagh’s brilliant In Bruges last night, this time anticipating my upcoming July vacation in Belgium, Paris and Provence. This morning, found this piece from The Guardian’s series on “My Favourite Film.” For me – it nearly is! [ Pas De Merde ]
The best films waste no time, and In Bruges hits the ground sprinting with this pin-sharp voiceover: “After I’d killed him, I dropped the gun in the Thames, washed the residue off my hands in the bathroom of a Burger King, and walked home to await instructions.”
Bam. Within 10 seconds, the story has begun. A young hitman, Ray (Colin Farrell), has botched his first job for East End crime boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes) and needs to go away for a while – to Bruges. He is incandescently stroppy about this. Accompanying him is Ken (Brendan Gleeson), an older gangster who, guidebook in hand, greets the Belgian town and its misty pre-Christmas streets with the determined gusto of your dad on a camping trip, all deep nose-breathing and itineraries.
Bruges is really the fourth name on the cast list here: its 12th-century canals and lamplit cobbles form the perfect backdrop to the script’s crepuscular tone, as well as its somewhat medieval probing of morality and blame and redemption. Because (spoilers ahead!) Ray, in the course of performing a hit on a priest, has also inadvertently shot dead a choirboy. His rage at being stuck in this purgatorial “shithole” hides an anguish over what, if there is an afterlife, must surely be an unpardonable sin.
The British musician said he would appear at the inaugural show on Nov. 12, almost 12 months to the day after a terrorist assault at the venue killed 90 people.
Islamic State militants wearing suicide vests opened fire during an Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan on Nov. 13, 2015, an attack that was part of a series in and around the city that night.
“In reopening the Bataclan, we have two important tasks to reconcile,” Sting said in a statement on his website. “First, to remember and honor those who lost their lives in the attack a year ago, and second, to celebrate the life and the music that this historic theater represents. In doing so, we hope to respect the memory as well as the life-affirming spirit of those who fell. We shall not forget them.”
Proceeds from the concert will be donated to Life for Paris and 13onze15, organizations that provide support to victims of the attacks and their families.
Moroccan-born Leila Slimani won France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt, on Thursday with a novel guaranteed to “scare the wits out of parents”. The chilling tale of a “perfect” nanny who murders the two children she is looking after, “Chanson douce” (roughly translated as “Sweet Song”) is based on the real-life story of a Dominican child-minder shortly to stand trial for the double murder of her charges in New York in 2012.The book – which begins with the words “the baby is dead” – is already a bestseller in France.
