The new issue of Variant Girl’s E-zine is now up. Lots of comic and movie reviews, some talk about woman’s roller derby and a manga review by moi. You may have caught my review for 20th Century Boys Vol. 1 on this blog a couple of weeks ago but if you missed it you can now read it there.
Go get a fresh perspective on the comics industry through the eyes on a fangirl.
J.
Variant Girl
Because real Havana Club rum isn’t sold in the United States, it begs to be consumed in mass quantities when abroad. After many shots of Havana Club, absinthe sounds cute and after absinthe I found myself talking with this girl and a guy she loved who walked with a cane. Together they kept me up all night in his French studio filled with carnivorous plants, bags of drugs balanced on empty wrought iron candle votives, and a projector of Nicolas Cage movies.
The guy with the cane kind of has the “I may be a magician” vibe going on with his clothes, and I learned he was quite paranoid when I tried to take photos. No photos in the magician’s house were aloud. This is also probably because his dad is a famous french actor, and although I never cared nor have heard of his dad, the magician kept saying, “He’s very famous. He’s like France’s Harrison Ford but funny.” We all drank apple juice and vodka and I asked them some questions about bathrooms in France.
Most toilets here have two buttons. I asked why and they solemnly said, “the smaller button is for number one and the bigger button is for number two.” In pragmatic order, I asked about the bidets. They are everywhere in Europe.
“Do people use them?”
“Nooooo” the girl said. “It is quite an old habit. For grandmothers, you know.” Bidets are of the past, apparently, and only for show, like a dirty display of aristocracy. Both were emphatic about how infrequently bidets get used, like they were shunning it from their culture.
“I go number two in the morning and then wash my body,” said the magician. Bidets, then, are futile.
“It is not good for you,” the girl may or may not have said. Her thought process is that the constant scrubbing with soap and water is unhealthy to the natural ph balance of the body (I think. Some of this part of the conversation got lost in translation because whenever the couple got excited they’d break into French).
“We never use them.”
For all the shit talking (pun? I think so) they did on their bathrooms, it sure illustrates their acknowledgement the French’s stereotype of being perverted and not showering.
