Andrew's True Reviews: Cecile's Wedding

Note - in the original version of this post, I cruelly used an unflattering photo of Cecile for comic effect. It showed her with a very curious facial expression. I have replaced that photo with a similar one of a well-known celebrity.


I went to Cecile's wedding, and wrote an article about it for her newspaper. (Here's a link to the article, but I'll put it at the bottom as well so that you can read this first.) I only had 500 words to work with, so there were some details I didn't have space to include.

1. In the morning we went to the registry office for the legal ceremony. Cecile told me it was going to be "just a simple casual thing" and then complained when I turned up in shorts.

Cecile told everyone to be at the evening service at 16:30 sharp. Sharp! Don't be late! At 17:15 someone turned to me and said, "Here we are, waiting for Cecile to turn up, not sure if she will. This must be how her students felt."

(Okay, I said that. Whatever.)

2. The ceremony was performed in French and English. Cecile tried hard not to mix the two up. "I take you Nick to be my usband... No, husband. Husband! With an H! Everyone heard me say the H! Stop laughing!"

3. When I met Cecile in the weeks before the wedding I asked what kind of cake they would have. "Shoe cake," she said. Obviously I laughed. When this made her angry I realised she was being serious and there really would be shoe cake served.

I genuinely thought it was going to look like a shoe right until the moment I saw the tray of profiteroles (which she smashed with her fists like some nuptial Hulk).

Turns out it's written 'choux'. 

4. Me and my girlfriend had a mini-break in Aix-en-Provence then went to Nice. "Ah no you haff bin somewhere," said Cecile, "bwhut whahere hexactly?"
I replied, "Aix, Aix, baby." She did that puzzled, half-blank, half-stupefied face of hers.

She didn't know the song! Ice Ice Baby, the biggest song of the early 90s! Never heard it, never heard of it! She insisted that it was an obscure thing that was "only famous in Manchester." It became - with remarkably little prompting - the biggest running joke of the wedding, culminating in the dance floor being full of people singing 'check out the hook while the DJ revolves it' with Cecile in the corner, arms folded, while everyone laughed at her.

(Not true - she danced along with everyone else.)

5. We also had to endure slideshows showing Nick and Cecile's progression from baby to married adult. ("Slide 296: Nick gets 4 atoms taller"). Well, apparently I'm not allowed to complain about that, because it would be ungrateful, because Cecile organised for me to have a giant delicious tomato instead of a fish dinner.

Listen up, relatives of the newlyweds, you did a good wedding and everything, but I've prepared my own slideshow. Show you how it's done. Learn up.

CECILE - A LIFE IN PICTURES

BABY

FIRST GALLIC SHRUG

FIRST BIKE

MEETS NICK

ABANDONS VEGETARIANISM

PROPOSES TO NICK

HAPPIEST DAY OF HER LIFE

Anyhoo, here's that link to the article:

Click here for the best article ever printed in the southern hemisphere.

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Being Cecile Meier

I have created a piece of interactive fiction. It was partly inspired by the movie Being John Malkovich. So far, three people have played it. Here are the reviews:

Male #1: This is amazing. I want to make one of my own. How did you do it?
Male #2: It's very good. I enjoyed it, and learned a lot about the benefits of crab.
Female #1: I laughed a lot, but it's so weird. Why are you so weird? Did you spend the whole day doing this?

You can play the game by clicking on this link:

http://www.philome.la/AndrewGirardin/being-cecile-meier

It's quick and fun. (It's playable on a mobile but on my phone the text was a bit small, so better to play it on a laptop.) Let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

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The 40 Saddest Songs in the Universe

York, 2006

The two-week summer language programme always ends with a disco, and the teenagers always end up crying. I'm walking around watching them blub into each other's shoulders. It's fun. But there's one Italian girl who isn't crying. It annoys me. I take her aside and ask what her problem is.

"I no feel so sad," she says in rubbish English. She hasn't learned English, and she isn't crying. Well, there's only one of those things I can fix right now.

"I know what you need," I reply.

"No," she says, seeing my intention.

I take a deep breath and do my sad face. "Bright eyes," I sing. "Burning like fire." Her lip wobbles. "Bright eyes, how can you close and fail?" I see there's a lump in her throat. "How can the light that burned so brightly suddenly turn so pale?" She's weeping now. "Bright eyes," I add, unnecessarily.

I doubt she's understood many of the words, but it doesn't matter.

Bright Eyes is the saddest song in the universe and its power transcends language.

Zurich, 2011

Cecile is in a total mood, which is amazingly annoying. Isn't it her boyfriend's job to put up with that? What's in it for me? I decide to make the most of the situation and see what songs make her cry.

Naturally, I start with Bright Eyes. It doesn't work, because somehow she's worked out what I'm trying to do. So I turn to plan B - Somewhere over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.

"It's not working," she says, although I can see tears streaming down her face. "My eyes are crying, that's all."

"Yes, but your eyes are connected to you. You haven't outsourced your eyes and tear ducts. Anyway, it's okay to cry. First, it's healthy. You get better blood pressure and stuff. Also, no woman can resist crying at those songs. They're infinitely sad."

"They aren't that sad. I know sadder," she sniffs, wiping away tears from the eyes that are crying for their own reasons.

Later, in a better mood, she asks me if I want her collection of songs that made her cry.

"Yes," I say, with as much calm as I can muster. "Yes, I do." My head is already spinning with the possibilities. They're bound to be lame! I can make fun of them on my blog! Don't show too much enthusiasm or she'll suspect!

She leaves a USB stick with 40 songs on it in my locker. It also has instructions for use: run a bath, light candles, etc. She's such a sweet, thoughtful person that I almost feel bad about making fun of her.

(ANDREW iN A BATH) SAD + crying

The 40 Saddest Songs in the Universe

By coincidence, I'd planned to have a bath that night anyway. So I started the playlist and got in.

It started pretty well, with Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. It starts with slow guitar plucking, which certainly sets the mood. Then a husky voice comes in and wonders, 'So you think you can tell Heaven from Hell; blue skies from pain?' The logical side of my brain quickly said, 'yes, I can tell the difference' but it didn't make me less sad, because the emotional side of my brain had fixated on the word 'pain' and all the many kinds of pain I've experienced in my life.

Next up was Wind of Change by The Scorpions. It starts with a haunting whistle, like the ghost of a worker, which is quickly followed by a husky voice. This voice sings some of the saddest lyrics of the modern era. They praise David Hasselhoff for defeating Communism, but warn us never to forget that socialism leads to oppression and suffering and sad babies. "They've never had bananas," croons the main Scorpion, "Until now. And that's a good change of the Wind of Change." A poignant guitar solo reminds us that while capitalism has its faults, it's better than the alternatives.


The next song, If You See Her, Say Hello came on (link takes you to Hurricane because there are few original Dylan recordings on Youtube and I liked that movie. It's by a million miles the best Dylan song, anyway). Husky-voiced Bob Dylan starts singing. I'm starting to think that husky voices are inherently sad. "If you see her, say hello," he warbles. So far, so sad. It's obviously going to be a song about lost love. Everyone can relate to that. It's a genius opening line, in fact. I've already got my line ready for the blog - HE HAD ME AT HELLO. But there's more to the song. "If you see her, say hello. She might be in Tangiers." Huh? Tangiers? Why is she there? That's weird, isn't it? Why does she want to go there? How does he know she's there? Why does he say might? She might be in Tangiers. Is that based on her credit card activity? Did she have family in Morocco? He could have said, 'she might be in Africa'. That'd be more likely, statistically. So what's all this uncertain specificity? Perplexity dried up my tears.


The next song was Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by the Crash Test Dummies. It's easy to see how people are affected by the song. It's deep and dark and the lyrics are at once staggeringly specific yet movingly universal. "Once there was this kid who got into an accident and couldn't come to school. But when he finally came back, his hair had turned from black into bright white." Has any other lyric ever made us more aware of the immediacy of our own deaths?


I wasn't crying - it was just the bath bubbles stinging my eye. Many other songs came and went. Most were legitimately emotional: I Just Can't Get You Out of My Head, I Kissed a Girl, Smile, Hollaback Girl, Reading a Book, and every Bob Dylan song ever released in France.


But then came the sucker punch: NSYNC's Bye Bye Bye. At the start, keyboards swell for just a moment, but then it's BAM! Right into the beat. Right into the words. "I loved you endlessly when you weren't there for me, so now it's time to leave and make it alone." My tears dropped into the wispy foam of my peach-scented bath bubbles. Why was I crying? What did this song stir inside me? Obviously, like Cecile, I'd had to walk away from dysfunctional relationships before, and it's always sad. But not sad enough to make me cry, surely? Then it hit me - this was the song that presaged Justin Timberlake's departure from NSYNC and his focus on a solo career. "Time to leave and make it alone." For me and Cecile, hardcore NSYNC fans, truly the day the music died.

"Don't really wanna make it tough

I just wanna tell you that I had enough

Might sound crazy but it ain't no lie

Bye bye bye."

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