Statler and Waldorf - the later years

Darlyn and I passed a perfect evening in the Summer of 2007 crowding the stage of a womb-warm jazz cavern carved into the substrate of Paris's right bank. I read that the club, The 7 Lezards, sadly, has closed. The singer, Bremner Duthie, has become a friend. The cavern, and its adjoining 177-mile labyrinth of abandoned limestone quarries, has claimed a piece of my soul. Known collectively as the Paris Underground, these dark and dangerous haunts are home to all manner of commerce -- from the famously public (such as the 7 Lezards and the ossuary known as The Catacombs, to occult ceremonial chambers and the clandestine tag art of kata-artists. The artfully displayed skulls in the photo are remains from two of more than six million souls moved from a mass grave filled to bursting on the grounds of St. Opportune parish. Centuries of mass open burial had already contaminated the groundwater, but things came to a head in 1786, when the cemetery wall collapsed, spilling corpses, and their attendant diseases, into the surrounding neighborhood -- oopsies! Moving the remains took years. Chanting priests, swinging incense, led processions of black-draped tip carts from the failed cemetery to the ossuary. The original plan was to just dump them there, like an eternal U-Stor-It. But ultimately, they decided to arrange the bones artfully, and to open the ossuary to the public, as a tribute to the dead. The sight is both awesome and disturbing as you walk among miles of stacked femurs, admiring altars and art fashioned with skulls. The sign at the entrance to the ossuary reads "Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la Mort" ('Stop, this is the empire of Death'). For some reason, these two particular skulls reminded me of those old hecklers from the Muppet Show.

The good stuff:

Bee free!

National Honor Society Induction

CBGB T-Shirts

kata-artists

Mid-term elections

Clowns in cars - really

Civil discourse

Justice

Tires for life

The yin and yang in the moon