Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Monday, Jul. 31, 2006 - 12:15 p.m.

I HATE The Hocker. OMG, I can't tell you how much I hate him. It never stops, and seriously, how fucking long can you draw out that fucking horrendous, god-awful, motherf'g sound? Huh? Huh? Huh? Seriously, HOW LONG???

HHHHOOOOOOOOOOOWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKKKK.

I am pushed to the brink, people. The other night I actually hocked back. I would rather listen to nails on a chalkboard, people. Metal on metal. Metal on concrete. A dentist's drill. There are precious few friggin' sounds that are worse than the constantly repetitive hoooowwaaaaahhhhhhkkkkk I hear every single day and every single night, and frankly, none come to mind. I have identified him, too. He lives directly across the courtyard from me, and his chief pleasure in life is to sit right there at his kitchen table, right in front of his open window, 15 feet away from mine, and fucking hock to his heart's content. I suffer from allergies and perpetual sinus drainage, so believe me, I understand the misery of a ton of gunk constantly in your throat, but for the love of GOD, clear your throat. Cough. Do NOT repeat, over and over and over, that fucking hideous fucking sound. ESPECIALLY during the dinner hour, because dude, when I am trying to eat and you make the fucking sound, it actually causes me to gag on my food. I have to get up and close the windows in order to eat without hurling. Seriously, people, I am at the end of my rope with this. It is my most hated sound EVER, which until now was held by tone, the sustained beep that comes at the beginning of raw footage or used to play for tests of the Emergency Broadcast System, back before they replaced it with that horrible brapping sound that can raise the dead. Anyone who's logged video for many years can probably vouch for the horrendousness of tone, yet I am here to tell you, there is no worse sound on the planet then that of The Hocker. In fact, someday, when I am sitting onstage at The Actor's Studio, and James Lipton trots out the Bernard Pivot and asks me what sound I hate, and I say hocking or The Hocker, you guys - and only you - will know exactly what I mean.

I am happy to say it's about 10 degrees cooler thus far this week than it has been. Thank you, rain.

Package from home today!!! The housemate sent me contact lens cleaner and saline and my cd's and guidebooks and language books. Yay!

I got a little homesick for him when I saw his handwriting. It sucks when you still love someone but you just can't live with them. :( I really don't think I'm ever gonna get over him, frankly. I think some part of me will always love him and be sad it wasn't what I thought it would be. He's totally hot, smart, witty, and fun. He's also deeply, tragically flawed. :( I kinda wish that erased all the good things about him so that it would be easier to be apart from him and go on with my life. Unfortunately, it doesn't. The dream I had once was such a beautiful dream, it's unbelievably painful to let go of. (yes, I ended that sentence improperly. taste it.) (bygones.)

Today I went to Place de la Concorde and took photos of the fountains. I have a picture hanging on my wall at home, a framed cover of the French magazine L'Illustration, from the 40's. It's a drawing of Place Concorde from one end to the other, and when I came here in 2003, I took a picture to match it, but I took it from the wrong end. So today I went to take one from the proper end, only for some reason, that fountain wasn't really working today. So I wandered back to the other end and snapped some stuff down there. I think I need to go again closer to noon, though.

While I was there, I found out it is illegal to use a tripod to take pictures in Paris.

Let me repeat that again, for those of you who think I mistyped something there: It is illegal to use a tripod in Paris.

"Why on earth is that, Katie," I hear you ask. That's what I asked the nice policier (policeman) who informed me as I was putting my tripod together that if I used it, he was going to have to ticket me for 150 euros, so I really shouldn't finish what I was doing. His answer was that that's just the way it is, in all of Paris. Oh-kaaaay... I told him I'm just using it because my hands shake, and I showed him my camera, which is a blatant point and shoot thing, but he was adamant: absolutely not, unless I felt like shelling out 150 euros today. This sucks, because my new camera doesn't have a sports setting like my old one did. With the old camera, I can set it for sports and not have to worry about the tremor in my hands, because the camera compensates for it. This one doesn't. My only option is to set the ISO at 400, which, in this particular model, creates noise. So I am not happy to find out I risk a very expensive ticket if I use a tripod. :(

After I left Place de la Concorde, I went thru the Tuileries, looking for a statue of 3 nymphs that my friend Kelli remembers fondly from her last visit to Paris, where she took pictures of her naked friends in broad daylight in the middle of the Tuileries and happily did not get busted or arrested. Yep. Loopy American girls stripped down to nothing in the middle of Paris in broad daylight and demanded Kelli take their picture on this statue. Ever since my first trip to Paris, I look for that damn statue, and I have yet to find it. But I wandered around the Tuileries and took pictures of a statue or two and some flowers, as well as the Louvre. While I was taking pictures of the gold-painted spikes on the top of a wrought iron fence, there was a French guy there with a hugeass honkin' professional camera, and he asked was he in my shot. I said no, and then asked was it really illegal to use a tripod, because frankly, I thought the policeman had been having fun at my expense. But he verified that yes, it's really illegal, because it makes you look like a professional, and I guess the French government holds the rights to all the photographs to be taken in Paris, or you have to have a permit to snap a single professional photograph. I asked him about a permit, and he said yes, it's possible, but difficult to get. He said basically to just carry the tripod around and use it as I wish but to keep an eye out for policemen. He said with my little camera it should be obvious I'm not a professional, and he was surprised the policeman told me no. Then he swung around so I could see he had a tripod himself, in a black bag over his shoulder. Alas. I kinda need the tripod at Pere Lachaise, but I don't want to use it there if the little cemetery policemen are gonna peg my ass for 150 euros. :(

On the way home, I was starving because I hadn't eaten all day, so I went to McDonald's. Yes, McDonald's. I apologize heartily, but I was unbelievably hungry, and the boulangerie was closed, so I couldn't have the quiche lorraine I really wanted. You know how when you get so hungry, you reach a point where you really couldn't care less what you eat, so long as it's semi-palatable? That's where I was. And as soon as I finished it, I regretted having had it. Especially when I got home and finished lugging six 1.5 liter bottles of water about 3/4 of a mile and up 4 flights of stairs and realized that I'm hungry again. :(

Do you know, it still doesn't get dark here until like 10pm or a little later? it's 9:43pm right now, and it's all blue dusk out there, not even twilight yet.

Okay. I don't know what I did to my back, but it hurts like hell. I have to lay down.

Peace out,
Katie

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