As for the rest of the day's doings, too much happened to put it in one post. I'm going to have to break it up into parts. Here's a list of events and as I write each post, I'll add links:
Bare-Breasted White Girls And The Avoidance of Drunks
Lunch n' Lust With Bio Wine Makers
Reliving My Childhood With The Playmobile Dashboard
Dinner With The Asteroid Family
Nightlife's A Ball In La Baule
Let's begin where we ended...in La Baule. G had already told me about this town. It isn't my kind of town. Or hers. It's resorty, versus authentic. It has a fabulous coastline, but they've ruined it with high-rise hotels all along the water's edge. But behind the hotels, the old town and its lovely buildings are still worth seeing. To get there, we crossed a short bridge; leaving sleepy Le Pouliguen behind and entering into a completely separate reality. Unfortunately, we left our 3-D glasses at home.
It was after we had dinner with The Asteroid Family. They had begun to politely yawn after my Toilet Guy performance. So, we took the cue and said our French kiss-kiss goodbyes. We were happy and full but not ready to go back home. So, G said, "Let's show La Baule to Lisa." The fact that Lisa was a) still awake and b) still awake, was a miracle.
Our hostess drove through the tiny streets and we kept looking for a cool bar that was open. There weren't
The place was called B'ollywood. I expected Indian decor, pictures of multi-armed Goddesses and Indian movie stars. Maybe even some dhoti dancing on a wide-screen TV. Nah. Instead, it was full of pictures of Steve McQueen and other obscure H-H-Hollywood movie stars. Not a single B-B-Bollywood item could be found.
In addition, it had a sleazy meat market kind of vibe. Some young, blond drunk guy fell into G and spilled her drink all over her and the floor. He just looked at her stupidly and never offered to help clean it up or buy her a replacement drink. I saw him outside afterwards, trying to chat up some preppy-looking blond chick who wouldn't give him the time of day. When she looked at him, he put on his best drunken suave look and when she looked away, he went slack-jawed and just stared at her, blinky-eyed.
There was a muscular bartender and his faithful giant dog companion. The dog was attached to the bar on a really, really short leash and could only stand up and turn around and lay back down again. He had zero interest in being petted. He wasn't mean and he wasn't cute. He was just... all tied up.
Sitting at the bar was a Nubian princess with a nine-inch forehead, wearing an elegant cocktail dress and casting a sideways judgmental eye, full of doubt and disdain, upon a tweed-jacketed, curly-gray-headed hopeful. He lasted longer than most of the guys who had the nerve to settle next to her. I was staring at her and wondering, "Is that a guy?" when G leans in and says to me, "Is that a guy?"
At the end of the bar, there was a short, tough guy in a black leather motorcycle jacket, standing under the John-Wayne-with-Lariat-n-Chaps photo and with his back to the Steve McQueen poster. He was chatting up a leggy blond. His hands were as big as his head. Seriously. And his fingers? Fat as Snausages. I said to L, our hostess, "There's an old wives' tale about men who have fat fingers." G says, "Oh yeah. And it's true, too." She's such a Ho. That's why I love her. If you don't know what we're talking about, well, look it up.
Since then, our vacation theme has become men's hands and their fat fingers. G and L went to have a picnic at a wheat farm Monday afternoon and I stayed home to get some work done. G sent me photos to my iPhone of the wheat farmers and she made them pose with their hands in full view. They were confused. But their fingers were not... confused... at all.
After one drink in B-B-B'ollywood, the three of us looked at each other and knew we had to get out of that bar. It was such a weird place. As I said, there are no words. If you want to see a video ad for the place, you can click here. When we left, G said, "The coolest guy in that bar was the one in the wheelchair."
On our way back home to Batz sur Mer and before we crossed the bridge back into real life, G told L to at least stop at one of the casinos in La Baule so I could see what a French casino was like. The DING DING DING! KaCHING! WRRR! sounds of Vegas casinos drifted through my brain. When we walked into Casino Barrière de La Baule, there wasn't a sound. You could hear dust settling.There were three security guards standing menacingly in front of grocery-store turnstyles off to the right of the "lobby." They demanded identification. I gave them my shiny new pink French work permit while G gave them one of her 86 passports. They actually took them from us and spent lots o' time on the computer with them. Maybe they wanted to check and see if we were on the cheezy casino crime watch list.
But this gave me a chance to look around. The place was dead empty. There were about 5 octogenarians sitting at slot machines, but that was it. The floor was covered in dirty red carpet squares. Seriously. It was the cheeziest place I'd ever seen. And I've seen some casinos. Hell, I've been to a casino in Pahrump, Nevada. I even went by boat from Parker, Arizona (a garden spot, let me tell ya) on the Colorado river, to see casinos in Laughlin, Nevada. Ho, yeah. But this place reminded me more of the local dive bars in Henderson, just outside of the Las Vegas strip, where the alchies and gambling addicts play video poker right at their seats at the bar, from morning until, well, morning. At least those places are respectfully dark enough for people to hide their crevassed faces and DT-shaking hands. This French casino was lit up as bright as a day on the beach.
Somehow, after getting past the security guys and their super-secret iPhone headsets, we lost our hostess, L. I still don't know where she went. And G took off like a lightening bolt around the back of the slot machines. "Where are you going?" I said, puffing and trotting after her, hoping that she was going to take me to the "nice" part of the casino. "To the smoking room."
HAHAHAHAHAHA! I'm sorry. I'm still dying laughing. There was a sign above the hallway to the smoking room that said, "We welcome you to smoke in our lounge." It was so... elegant-sounding. G pushed the door open. It was a box, the size of an elevator in a real casino. There were two chairs and one plastic table. One chair was dwarfed by a rather large female. G and I started taking pictures, our laughter echoing against the hard tile floor and bouncing off the blindingly white art-free walls. Our fellow smoker shifted a bit. I thought she might want to escape, but she settled back in to watch the Lisa and G show. L called to find out where we were. Then she came into the smoking room too. Her smile said, "I hate this room. Can we go right now? Right now?"
So, we decided to go back out to the lobby so we could descend to the 80's and 90's disco!!
It was called L'Indiana. I already told you about the terrible restaurant chain in Paris called the Indiana Cafe. Why do French people have this obsession with Indiana? Have they ever been there? Have you? I can't even name one city in Indiana. OK, fine. Indianapolis. But what the fuck is there to see in Indianapolis? Christ, they could just as well be obsessed with Cincinnati. Then they could name their restaurants and discos L'Ohio.
The disco was pumpin', let me tell you. There were more than five people there! And less than seven. The music was terrible. But the red and purple couches had the coolest sparkly fabric on them. I wanted one. The bar was illuminated and the color changed. That was cool too. The three of us danced on a tiny dance floor, off to the side, not wanting to threaten the 5 people sitting on a stage in front of the main dance floor. Then I thought, oh what the hell and ran to that stage and started doing The Bump. Or, something like that. I took a short video so you can soak in the atmosphere. That skinny girl dancing at the beginning of the video is G.
Nobody ever asked us if we wanted a drink. The bartender was as ephemeral as the lighting. The super-macho security guys ran in and out a couple of times, but I'm not sure why. So, after disco-fevering on the main dance floor, my girlfriends decided to do Yoga on the bar stools. I captured the event in pictures and made this calming little video for your viewing pleasure. Oh, and I'll leave you with this little realization that dawned on us, TWO days after our foray into La Baule...the bar is called B'ollywood because...drum roll...it's Hollywood in la Baule. Get it? We didn't either.
