Who Will Speak For The Mimes On Bastille Day?

I had to lift The House on the Hill’s ban on mimes today, Modern Philosophers, because the interns got all pouty about it.

It’s not that I didn’t want them to have a Happy Bastille Day, but I just find mimes to be creepier than clowns.  I know they are thinking judgmental French thoughts and believing they are better than me.

You know what, mime?  You have something to say, just say it.

Didn’t think so.

Bastille Day is oddly important to me.  I touched on why this morning when I re-blogged a post about my first love and Bastille Day.  If you haven’t read it, I would be thrilled if you went back and did so.

Merci.

As is my Bastille Day tradition, I am throwing a party at The House on the Hill.  The interns organized it, hence the mimes.

I asked blonde weird nose intern if she knew the mimes’ names, since I couldn’t just walk up to them and ask.

She told me they were Jacques, Marcel, Jean Pierre, and Broderick.

Before I could make a witty comment about that last one’s name, she pointed out that I never bothered to learn her name, and then stormed off towards the croissant buffet.

It’s not that I don’t want to learn my interns’ names, but they come and go so quickly that it just easier to give them odd nicknames that change on a daily basis.

Whenever I think about things that are French, one particular movie comes to mind.

And it’s not the one you’d think.  It doesn’t star Jerry Lewis, it isn’t in French with subtitles, French politicians aren’t surrendering France to the Germans, and it isn’t a black and white flick about an orphan and his stolen bicycle.

It’s “Better Off Dead”, a John Cusack classic from back in the day when he played the loveable oddball to perfection.

That flick’s got some memorable scenes and a very attractive French foreign exchange student who has a little trouble with English (see a hilarious example below), but it’s the French Dinner catastrophe that comes to mind on Bastille Day.

The mother of Cusack’s character prepares a special French feast for the foreign exchange student, and the menu consists of “French fries, French dressing, French dressing, and to drink…Peru!”  At this point, she reveals a bottle of Perrier.

Of course, I made sure that the interns had all those menu items available at today’s Bastille Day Bash.  There’s also baguettes, croissants, and French toast.

We really are having a feast.  Wish you were here, Modern Philosophers.

I actually took two years of French in high school, but I wasn’t very good at it.  As if mastering a whole new language weren’t enough of a challenge, I also had to try to pull off a French accent while having a Brooklyn one.

That does not sound pretty.  Trust me.

The only way I could ever pass myself off as a French native would be to dress up as a mime, and there’s no way that’s going to happen, mon ami.

The one French sentence I remember?  Il est midi et j’ai faim, which means “It is noon and I am starving”.  Hey, at least I wouldn’t starve to death in Paris, where as you know, everything is located sur la place.

At least my first kiss of the French variety happened with a beautiful French girl in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Mon dieu.  Such a lie.  It was in front of the fake fireplace in the basement of my house in Brooklyn with Tara Flynn.  She was as Irish as you could get, and the setting couldn’t have been more Brooklyn unless we were eating pizza at the time.

According to Tara, I got French part just right, though.

I’ve never been to France, but I would like to go there some day.  Just as long as they keep the mimes under control, and no one expects me to speak French.

The Eiffel Tower has always intrigued me, and I would like to check it out in person.

I’ve got a house full of guests, and I don’t like the way Seamus is tapping his shillelagh on the living room floor as he stares at the mimes.  I’d better give him my undivided attention before we have an international incident.

Happy Bastille Day!  Remember, don’t drink Peru and drive if you’re out celebrating!