Head's up: this is going to be a Grumpy-Cat-kind-of-cranky post today.
Now, everything can't be amazing. There has to be a dud once in a while. And my first real dud was at the Victor Hugo House, right near the Bastille Metro stop. The song on my iPod had just switched to "Red and Black," and I smiled brightly because it was so appropriate.
Now, that Bastille is actually gone; it was razed in November 1789. (I'm appalled I did not know this.) Still, the circle (it pretty much looks like Dupont Circle with a giant gold statue in the middle) was far more interested than La Maison de Victor Hugo.
My disappointment began to creep up when I entered the second room. Part of the room was roped off, and there were children reaching over and trying to touch things. If my kid did that, I would drag him out of there by his ear. Seriously. How rude. And because Parisian apartments are small, it lacked the freedom of the Curie Museum, where I could stretch out my arms and hold them by my side naturally. That wasn't possible in the Hugo Home.
Painting with accompanying poem by Victor Hugo. Since I'm not familiar with his poetry, I was very disappointed that I was unable to read this. They did have English translations in the bigger rooms, but otherwise, I couldn't really tell what anything was unless the title had a name in it.
Painting depicting a scene from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And yes, there is a goat. So did Disney actually get something right?
Victor Hugo's daughter who tragically died early.
Here come the Les Miz jokes...
Candlesticks! But they are not silver. What a disgrace. Guess he must've sold the the silver ones the Bishop gave him...
I realize this is Victor Hugo and his son (but only because the plaque said so). But since this son is wearing a dress, I like to think of this as Jean Valjean's and Cosette's family portrait.
Since this is a scene I possible didn't read in the novel (I read an "abridged" version that was 400 pages long) I might be wrong, but this possibly looks like Jean Valjean giving the stolen bread to his sister and her child. "My sister's child was close to death / And we were starving..." and "There was a man / His name was Jean Valjean / He stole some bread / To save his sister's son" should be sufficient enough proof.
Dining room. (Not the play; sorry, that joke will only make sense to about two people.)
Even worse, I saw that it was not completely restored. Some rooms were, yes, but other signs said things like, "Imagine this is the foyer." Imagine? I didn't come here to imagine; I came here to see. I'd rather look at a photograph than this facsimile.
But the absolute deal-breaker for me was the photographs. No, not photographs of Victor Hugo with his family/friends/dog/whatever. (For the record, I don't actually know if he had a dog; don't go telling people I told you that.) These were photographs by a contemporary artist. Oh. Okay. Were they of the Hugo House?
Nope.
See? Look at those black and white photos. Those are modern photographs, clearly not around when Victor Hugo lived here. What the hell is this???
And to add insult to injury, they gave this asshole photographer his own room to showcase is photographs! Go rent a warehouse somewhere and stop stomping on history. This room was allegedly Victor Hugo's study, but of course we don't get to see that...
And that was it. I practically huffed out of there. I wanted to be mad because otherwise I'd be sad about my wasted day.
For the Connecticutters (I don't know our plural noun), imagine (ha) that the Mark Twain Museum was only half-full of all the interesting stuff (which most people don't even find that interesting). Not only that, imagine they put random photos by like Ai Weiwei (or any random contemporary photographer) were placed on tables all throughout the house. You'd ask yourself, I didn't come here to see this asshole's photos. I've never even heard of him. What does this have to do with Mark Twain? Aren't we going to learn some Huckleberry Finn trivia that I can dazzle my teacher with?
The cherry on top of this crappy sundae, however, was the Chinese Room. Now, I've seen plenty of these in museums and old homes; there's almost always a theme to each room. So this giant green room was the Chinese Room. I could feel people looking at me. Ooh la la, a real live Asian relic! I'm exaggerating, of course, but look at what this plebeian wrote:
I'll give this person the benefit of the doubt and assume he/she is Asian.
Ugh. The only review I see talks about the freaking Chinese Room rather than anything about Victor Hugo.
These are some of the weirder stained glass figures I've seen...
The only thing to elicit a huge grin from me. So cute!
The Stairway to Lost Dreams.
This outside seems symbolic, though I doubt it was intended to be so. I'm sorry, Victor Hugo, that your legacy is trapped behind the bars of overly modern photographs and children touching your stuff with their grubby hands.
Graffiti is cool.
My good fortune also allowed me the immense pleasure of avoiding seeing works by my favorite painter, Norman Rockwell, by one day. I can feel the sarcasm oozing from that sentence.
It's a nice area. It strangely felt more English, though. May have just been me.
Silver lining of the day: glad to see T.J. Eckleburg is the mascot for glasses stores.
I decided the day wasn't worth salvaging, though I held out hope that my mind might change when I reached the Metro. However, I walked out onto the street only to hear sirens blaring. A common noise in cities, but it didn't pass: it kept going and going. Then, strangely, I heard the revving of engines--very obnoxious revving. As I moved out further into the street, I saw a parade of motorcycles go by. Well, this is going to be over fast. Might as well watch since the streets are even more clogged. Nope. It seemed to last longer than when I was inside the Hugo House.
The fumes accompanying the carbon monoxide were making my head hurt, and my ears were feeling delicate after all the stupid motorcycle noises.
Damn, even the graffiti is more interesting!
Suddenly, I felt homesick for Washington, DC. At least motorcades didn't try to poison you. At least they have Woodrow Wilson's House. This homesickness increased when I looked at the Washington Post's spectacular photos from various Twitter users of the orange sunset. I decided to combat this longing, I had to get a burger.
Luckily, there's a restaurant outside the Convention Metro (my Metro) called Dupont Café. That made me feel slightly better. I went inside, ordered a burger, and was very happy when it came out. Except... No French fries. Now, I understand that they're not really French, but what did they give me instead? A potato cake, better known as a hash brown. Now, I find breakfast foods at any other time of the day gross, and suddenly I missed the well-seasoned fries at Firefly. :(
Unfortunately, today was not really that fun, either. True, Mondays are not the greatest of days. It seemed to still be okay when I realized I had changed my answer on my French quiz--when it had been right. And as I tried to settle in and read A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, I just couldn't shut out the voices of these five students who kept arguing over limits and derivatives.
I know, you're shocked that I didn't get excited and whip out an Expo Marker to start teaching them how. But they were studying for a class that would begin in 15 minutes and hadn't learned a lick, as we are on Week Three of school and they were all arguing about how the solve the problem--all incorrectly, of course.
Now, I love tutoring. But I love tutoring when my students try. Plus these people were just being loud, louder than anybody really needs to be about math. There's not much to shout about. Even I, as an enthusiast, can confirm that.
Walking into Shakespeare in Context class, the kids who had arrived early were talking about how their Chinese friends (from China, raised in China, for those who are wondering) were having a hard time with Shakespeare. I commented, "It seems cruel to make people who are learning English read Shakespeare." And someone replied, "Well, it's because English is so different now than it was then."
Wait, what?
Let's go back. Does that make any sense? That would be like if I ordered my standard meatball-pickle-olive sub at Subway, I said, "Wow, I love this sub," and the same person replies haughtily, "Well, that's actually a grinder."
Why do people correct correct statements? In my opinion, it shows you know even less about the subject.
This same person, in response to my comment about how Marxism is like proto-Communism, interjected rudely, "Well, actually, the Communists took Marxism and just went crazy with it."
How can you correct me? I just said that!
Proto: original or primitive; first or earliest
Once again, I imagined the situation as if we were in Anthropology and I said, "Those are proto-humans," and he/she said, "Noooooo, those are hominids that came before humans."
I'm banging my head against the tree like Charlie Brown in "Little Known Facts."
*
This is the point where I know I've lost you, since this is where I usually lose my parents. They tell me do be like Idina Menzel (I heard two little girls singing the tune with French words last night; so adorable!), but I was just stewing. Up until my allergy appointment.
In the waiting room, a woman began breathing frantically, and she began exclaiming, "Ooh la la," but not in the cutesy "oh myyyyy" way Americans tend to think of the expression as. This was an, "Oh, my God, I can't breathe."
The three others people in the room rushed forward to help this woman. I was sitting next to her, but I was frozen. Not because I was paralyzed with fear, but because there was nothing I could do. I couldn't understand what exactly was going on; I didn't even realize they had called out one of the doctors until he appeared.
It was awful. I just couldn't do anything. I was impotent (misogynist term, but it's the best adjective I have). I kept clearing my throat, but I couldn't speak because I couldn't even formulate what to say in English, let alone in French. And when I finally had words to say in English, they weren't anything you typically learn in Basic French in middle school. I was rendered mute, and as a consequence, I became the asshole in the room, similar to the ones I was complaining about today.
Luckily, the other three seemed to have the situation under control. As I left, the woman seemed well, as they had moved her to a comfier chair and were giving her water.
So I guess I have to practice the subject of Portia's famous speech: mercy. After all, if I wished a bad day on everyone else, I wouldn't be any different from Hammurabi demanding a scary person to pull my tongue out because I said something cold-hearted to my parents. I mean, the French people have shown me lots of mercy, given my terrible French and my terrible habit of speaking English automatically when I'm distracted. I'm supposed to be suppressing the American stereotype! Grr. It's actually a hard task to be an "ambassador to your country," and although I know no one (including the teachers) take it that seriously, but you certainly don't want to be the reason why French people find Americans irksome.
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