"Paris Out of Hand"

[fiefoe]

Surrealism for its own sake is wearing a little thin. ('I'm always a day's footprints ahead of myself, which is quite a handful for the fellow who polishes the shoes each night.' ??) I also have a sneaking suspicion that I'm missing the best language-related jokes, given that the ones I do get tend to be heavy-handed. ('Among the fish dishes is her salmon in existential crisis, saumon de Beauvoir.')  Still plenty to like though:

• Hotel Helas, Paris's answer to Heartbreak Hotel, many languages spoken, but the blues is the Desesperanto readily understood.
• Dried tears off the china ... (as) a rarefied condiment ... went for 1000F per milligram and were the secret ingredient that threw the Guide Michelin's restaurant ratings into disarray for several years.
• Special service: when a wake-up call was requested, it came in this most understated form: a note slid under the door. 
• Le Pont Neuf Cinema: movies are projected onto the Seine... One night's screening slipped away from the projector and started to flow gently down the Seine.
• It is only behavior that the Cafe Conjugal will not tolerate. With arrangements, anything goes: a man and his dog, a woman and her mirror, a ménage à trois of mixed or blessed genders.
• Credit Eyptien: Of special allure is the cat mummy, la momie d'urz chat, with his whiskers and fixed-forever stare. But this is the only place, the bank claims, where you'll also see the cat mummy's own mummy of a mouse, and the mouse's mummy of Mimolette, a cheese so hard it almost mummifies itself.  {This reminds me of Hello Kitty's pet, Charmmy. }
  
• At Pere Lachaise: the angel over Chopin's tomb (is missing fingers because) she chews her fingernails whenever, throughout the city of Paris, anyone plays Chopin's compositions badly - wrong tempo, wrong notes, out-of-tune piano: she won't tolerate the slightest imperfection when it comes to his art.