This past weekend as the La Fête de Marquette festival. I could hear the music from my front porch and wondered to myself on Friday night exactly what Tab Benoit's cover of "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" had to do with French culture. The Dulcinea and I met some friends there on Saturday evening and I remained impressed with the paucity of things French.
Miss Regan was there as well. In addition to hanging out inside the mini Eiffel Tower, she got her first lesson in darning socks from a woman who had brought a spinning wheel to the fest. Why anyone would want to lug one of those around the crowded festival grounds is beyond me. I guess knitting is an addiction which just has to be satisfied.
While a few bands played during our tenure in the beer tent, I managed to photograph only one - Watcha Clan. I got into them once they started augmenting the sequencers & synths with other instruments.
They keyboardist had a nice Rick Wakeman-esque outfit.
And the singer was a beauty who shook her booty.
I do have to give the fest credit for at least making wine available and having someone dressed as Father Marquette dragging a canoe around. Still, free of charge, are my suggestions for making La Fête de Marquette nominally French:
1) Have a French film night at the Wil-Mar Center before the festival. Renoir, Godard, Besson - anything French.
2) Make all event staff wear berets along with black & white striped shirts and have them act extremely rudely.
3) Play "Bastille Day" by Rush through the PA system in between band performances.
4) Have some people give French lessons. Even getting festival goers to say "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez" would be a start.
5) Storm the Bastille. The festival purposely coincides with Bastille Day so why not reenact that fateful day in 1789? Failing this, how about erecting a miniature Maginot Line so I and my fellow Krauts can plow right through it?
6) Dress someone up as Jean-Paul Marat and put them in a dunk tank.
7) Put a Nerf guillotine in the center of the grounds and charge for people to undergo mock beheadings using lots of fake blood. The Reign of Terror wasn't pretty, ya know.
8) Have men in drag or women who don't shave their armpits hold baguettes under their arms and try to run an obstacle course without dropping them.
9) Serve French food. I like Jamerica's jerk pork, Lao Laan-Xang's curries, and the People's Bakery's kabobs, but how about something French? Where was the brie and foie gras for hors d'oeuvres? Where was the Coq au vin?
8 comments:
re: #9 Dardanelle's kiosk featured only French food - the croque monsieur was excellent - and the new crepes cart served, well, crepes.
Lux, I stand corrected. Didn't see the Dardanelle's kiosk nor the crepe cart. Where were they?
Dardanelle's was to the left of the larger beer tent, flanked by Lao Laan-Xaan. The crepe cart - which can usually be found on the corner of Charter and University - sat between the MG&E trailer and Amsterdam's tent.
How blatantly odd considering I spent most of my time in that general vicinity. Next year I will look harder.
Thanks for correcting me.
Just a separate note, it would have been much more enjoyable, French themed or not, had it been held at any of the nearby parks, on the grass, it is way to hot and just feels wrong to be at a festival on blacktop...
My understanding is that it wasn't held at the Central Park site because of construction. Otherwise, it would have been there as it has been in the past.
I just have to say that as a Franco-American young woman who's from Wisconsin but has been living in France for the past 10 years, I find number 8 suggestion rather offending. French women shave their pits, dude.
I'm sorry that you have no sense of humor.
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