The further adventures of an earthbound alien

Everyone in my family has called or emailed to see if we are surviving the fires that are running wild out here. To all of you I say, “We’re fine”. We are in the San Fernando Valley and fires usually burn up. So, in the future keep this in mind and don’t worry.
There were something like 1,800 homes burned and a half million acres went up but, again, none of it was in our neighborhood.
The fires to the west were in Malibu, to the east Big Bear and Arrowhead and to the south in San Diego. The picture above is Arrowhead. (and not taken by, Mom)

The two guys that got arrested had their fires put out pretty quickly. …Pretty sad. They sound like a couple crazies who wanted to get in on the act.

Six people dead in San Diego, two people got arrested for looting. One president and one movie star governor took helicopter rides and that’s pretty much it.
Basically everything you saw on the news, we saw on the news.

So that’s probably it for the year. In a month or two you are going to start hearing about the rain and mud-slides out here. Here’s where they’ll be: To the west in Malibu, to the east around Big Bear and Arrowhead and to the south in San Diego. Just in case you’re wondering.

By the way the last two post I did from France were in French.

Little streets, little shops and…

Heads! They leave the heads on. I guess otherwise you’d never know what you were eating (that is if you couldn’t read the little sign underneath) I look at these and say, “ Wow, these things had heads at one point?”
I think of my Aunt M making a big deal out of a trout head that made it to the table. (Not on it’s own, it was on a plate) I doubt she would have shopped in a meat market that left the noggin on the old Pheasant. In fact I doubt she would have made pheasant. And I doubt she would have shopped at a little neighborhood meat market.
No Aunt M shopped at Kroger like everyone back home.
I guess that it’s not that the world eats weird things in a weird way it’s just that American food prep is very sterol …and plentiful. Maybe if we Americans had to walk to a little shop to buy meat, and carry it back home we wouldn’t be… Well, Americans. Not that there’s anything wrong with loading the SUV up with enough groceries to feed seven brides and seven brothers, it’s just that maybe we’d probably eat a little less if we had to hump everything home. Maybe.

Business first Floundering in the waves later.
OK, here is what I don’t like about Europe. THE SHIN BUSTERS!

The French like to put these like concrete marvels next to really interesting buildings. In this case the buildings columns were naked women and the burse on my shin is sizeable.

The first day of the show went pretty well considering none of our stuff arrived on time. Here, M tries to make the best of it. He figured that instead of artwork; some shades, a smoke and a surely attitude is the next best way to sell cartoons.

Actually our stuff arrived the morning of the first day so we really only looked foolish for the first two hours.

Second day of the show and things are going well. The booth is set up and that’s something isn’t it? Over there, on the left is the TV and DVD player we rented at the convention center. Here’s a future note don’t rent anything at the convention center. It cost us as much as if we wanted to bribe a minor government official. Still, we’d look foolish without one. After all we went to so much trouble making the DVD in the first place.

I’m amazed at the amount of work some of the booths go through. Some of the anime booths are built better than most houses. Disney put up their own convention center and wouldn’t let anyone in.
But our humble little booth is doing well. We’ve got some pretty nice fish on the line and I ran out of business cards. (The card swapping around here rivals a pokemon convention.) So… that’s something, isn’t it?

Right across the isle from us is a Chez group selling soft porn. Nothing really offensive just a couple lovely ladies discovering each others bits on a motorcycle, and later in front of a fountain. And there’s one woman who really gets into ballooning. Seriously she should be careful. I’m no balloonist but I’ll bet you’re not supposed to thrash around that much.
I think we would have done great if we were selling our show. The interest is pretty good. If we had the 26 ready right now we’d be on the air in Thailand, I’m sure of it.

By the way, when traveling to Europe stuff your suitcase with a lot of foreign currency. If you make it past customs you’re golden. Because credit card companies are useless.

There are a lot of thing that they do here in Europe that I really love. In Paris, early in the morning, cleaning crews emerges, from underground, in blue haz-mat suits and scrub all the sidewalks down. Granted, the sticky paste then flows into the river but it makes Paris clean for more little dogs to shit all over for another day. They also have little shops that sell meat. They sit and enjoy a tiny cup of coffee for hours. Almost everything is smaller and more humble. And their appliances are like little works of modern art.
Naturally, while here in, Cannes, I won’t cooking anything myself so I don’t need to buy meat and there is nothing in my personality that would allow me to sit with a cup of coffee for any more than fifteen minutes. Still, I’m glad that there are people who do that sort of thing.
Cannes is very clean and very expensive. But the people are a lot more relaxed than Parisians. Come to think of it pretty much everyone is more relaxed than Parisians. Here's why:

OK remind me, why didn’t I bring a bathing suit? I don’t think most people would need to be told but let me say it out loud one time so that no one ever makes the same mistake I did. When you go to the Riviera, bring a bathing suit. OK?