Hello to la belle France!

My blog’s title and the title of this first post were both inspired by a very entertaining piece in the Guardian by Stuart Jeffries about the recent election of Nicholas Sarkozy. Thanks to my friend Isabelle for making sure that I saw it! See the link just below.

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To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

Goodbye to la belle France?
The French seem to have the perfect lifestyle: long lunches, short hours, great food and plenty of ooh-la-la. But their new president is determined to make them work harder, faster, more efficiently - just like the British and Americans. Merde alors, says Stuart Jeffries
Stuart Jeffries
Wednesday May 09 2007
The Guardian
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I won’t bore those of you completely uninterested in French politics with Jeffries’ or my own opinions about Sarkozy. If you are interested, read the article for Jeffries’ thoughts. If you really want to know my own opinions, too bad. Instead, I would prefer to address that plenty of ooh-la-la that Jeffries mentions! I’ve decided that I need more ooh-la-la in my life: as an exclamation, a verb, a noun, and whatever other grammatical uses it might serve.

From Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable:
“Ooh-la-la or oh-la-la. A phrase intended to evoke a French-style ‘naughtiness.’ It dates from the 1940’s and represents French o-la-la!, literally ‘Oh there, there!’”

Most of you know that I’m going to spend the summer in Paris. I’ve had all sorts of requests for emails and photos, and so, having already opened up a Friendster account only to then need to open a MySpace account because no one uses Friendster any more, I have decided that I am now prepared to embark upon one more virtual phenomenon that has spawned not only a new verb and a new noun, but also new, frequently disturbing (to little introverted me, anyway) ideas about what information one desires to be public.

Welcome to my blog. My family-friendly blog of ooh-la-la. My grandmother will be reading this, so keep that in mind if you leave any comments! At least, I hope she will be reading this. Dad, please print out a copy for her.

As you might have guessed, my research proposal didn't include even one reference to ooh-la-la. But that isn’t going to stop me. For those of you still wondering why I’m going to be in Paris, it is because I will be conducting pre-dissertation research in some archives about how African art (specifically West African jewelry) was understood in French culture in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I will also begin to make some connections in order to conduct research on contemporary West African jewelry and French fashion some time in the future. I don’t know about you, but I definitely see some potential for ooh-la-la in there.

I’m still in the U.S. I just had a great time with some college friends at a wedding in Woodstock, New York, where I began cultivating my newfound interest in ooh-la-la. I’ll arrive in Paris on Friday!!

So, to conclude, graduate school has not been the wellspring of ooh-la-la that one might have expected. Oh dear, now I have caught you off guard. Too shocked for words, I know. It is OK, take a deep breath, and don’t worry. I plan to find some in the next few months--along with chocolate and chevre! Oh, and ahem, I’ll find enough interesting material to make significant progress on a dissertation topic, too…not to mention my ongoing search for fluency in French. In any case, you’ll be able to read intermittent documentation of these experiences right here.