zefrenchpeople

I decided not to “Disco Tuesday” today mainly because there’s enough videos on this page for a few posts, I don’t want to overload it.

Instead, I will share a very strange yet useful information.  In France, we have something I have yet to see here which is scented toilet paper.  I’m not kidding!  “Le Trèfle” and “Lotus” are a couple of the main brands that carry it, as well as store brands usually.  It comes in different colored scented paper: you can find lavender, lilacs, aloe, grapefruit, peach… and many other kind.

Don’t believe it? check it out here!

As a side note, I recently found out that in Annecy-le-Vieux  you can see this:

It is a machine that dispenses fresh unpasteurized milk direct from a local dairy farm.  The idea is that the dairy farmer can go directly to the consumer and the consumer can buy fresh milk that is only filtered, thus “drinking directly from the cow.”  The cost is 1€ for a liter of milk that is advertised to last up to three days.

Today I’ll talk about “Les Nuls“, a group of comedians created in the 80s. (official website)

They didn’t have a special show like SNL does but they were often on other shows, doing the same things as the SNL comedians do.  “Les Nuls” made tons of fake commercials and zillions of parodies.  They also made a movie called “La cité de la Peur” also known as “Le film de Les Nuls“.

Here is some of their parodies… the least offensive ones I could find:

Alain Chabat is the one who really became famous by making actual commercial, like for example, the ones for “Orangina Rouge” and will play Napoléon in Night at the Museum 2 coming out end of May. (site)

Back a couple decades ago, there was a show on FR3 (which is now France 3) called “La dernière séance“.  That show was presented by Eddy Mitchell, whose real name is Claude Moine and who took this pseudonym in honor of Eddie Constantine.  Eddy Mitchell enters in the same category as Johnny and Dick Rivers, the US-loving Presley-wanna-be’s.

This program was his own, with his theme song and it was very original for that time.  Filmed in the Palace Movie Theater near Paris, on Sunday, they would should a movie, an American classic.  At the beginning of the show, Eddy would explain the movie briefly and the life of the lead actor.  These movies were mainly Westerns.

As for Eddy Mitchell himself, he was in a band called “Les chaussettes noires” (the black socks) before going solo but was always kind of in Johnny’s shadow.

I was thinking about a few things which are totally random but need to be mentioned.

The first one is that, in France, it’s “No right turn on Red” ever… if you go when it’s red, you’ll be in trouble anytime!

The second is that the lights at the intersections are on the right side of the road next to the stop line, not across the intersection.

The third thing I wanted to say is that schools are for schoolers and nobody else, if the school is closed and you want to let your kids play on the premises on Sunday, someone will call the cops on you… it’s private property or something.  It’s like breaking in… there actually is a gate and fences.

Most of houses in France are fenced all around.  You will rarely find opened lawn houses like here.

You will most likely find milk in “boxes” like Parmalat milk which is undrinkable… bad taste… The only decent milk to be drunk (or so I’ve heard from Americans since I don’t like milk) is the Candia brand in plastic bottles.  The main reason is that most of the time we don’t just pasteurize it, we have U.H.T milk which means we super-pasteurize it.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, is in the spotlight today once again.

As a European Deputy, along with his daughter Marine, he is thought to be the next “Doyen” of the assembly if re-elected to said statute.  Why would this be a problem?  Well, the “Doyen” of the Parliament gets the right to preside the first session.

Le Pen is well-known for his racist comments, and more recently for reaffirming his statement on gas chambers which for him were just a “mere detail” of WWII.

He was the runner up during the Presidential Elections of 2002.

Insulting the Socialists and the Environmentalists on a fairly regular basis in the European Parliament, there is a lot of tensions around him.  He now says that he is a victim of “Francophobic racism” from the German Parliament side. Although he has a spot in the European one, he has no seat in the French Parliament.

He will be 81 years old on June 20…

In 2007, the Front National counted more than 75 000 adherents.

Le Pen sparks Holocaust row at EU parliament

16 minutes ago

STRASBOURG (AFP) — French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen caused a storm in the EU parliament on Wednesday by repeating comments belittling the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

Already at the centre of controversy over the possibility of the veteran MEP presiding over the chamber’s next inaugural session, Le Pen said he was the victim of “inflammatory accusations” by the parliamentary socialist group head, German euro MP Martin Schulz, who had branded him a Holocaust denier.

“I just said that the gas chambers were a detail of second world war history, which is clear,” he told a sitting of the European parliament in Strasbourg.

 AFP