I love Paris.

I had an opportunity to spend just one day in Paris and I didn’t want the experience to suck. I planned every waking moment so that I would see as many sights as possible on the limited time and budget I had, but I was afraid that my stay would be marred by an aloof people: friends had warned me that the French can be somewhat standoffish when it comes to dealing with Americans. I didn’t care, it was Paris and as long as no one spat on me I was determined to have a good time.

After a customs check at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, a bus and cab ride, I wound up lost. I was near my modest hotel, I knew, but it was late at night, raining, and my normally excellent sense of direction failed me.

There was a van idling near a corner store and I decided to ask for help. I mentally brushed off what little French I knew and with what meager confidence I could muster I said the driver, "Pardon Monsieur. Parlez vous anglais?"

I had been told the French would response curtly, but the driver replied, "Yes, I speak English. Can I help you?"

After telling the driver of my plight he said, "Throw your case in the back and climb in, I’ll take you!"

There’s a lot more to this story than I can write here, but suffice it to say that my experience in Paris was a wonderful one, and I plan on going back for a longer stay someday. This time, however, I shall be armed with a better command of the French language. I know this because I’ve found Ma France, a video podcast dedicated to teaching us Yanks la langue de l’amour.

There are 12 vids in all, but for some reason the iTunes Store only carries the last ten. To make matters worse The BBC has stopped producing the podcasts and have removed them from their site, which is kinda silly. The BBC site does have Ma France in an interactive Flash version, but you can’t take it with you on your iPod.

And wouldn’t you know it; the first podcast is titled How Not to Get Lost! That sure would have come in handy back in Paris. (Of course, I didn’t have an iPod then, and podcasts hadn’t been invented yet, and my Internet connection was a 56k dial-up way back in the States, but it would have been handy nonetheless.)

So, download the remaining 10 episodes of Ma France while you can and start parlay-vooing the Frances. Bien? Merci beaucoup. (And we wonder why the French think we are uncouth.)

Moving right along (and before I start an international incident), I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could ever be a vegetarian. I like V8 as well as the next guy, but a diet of nothing but plant matter seems boring to me. Besides, I’m not a herbivore, I’m an omnivore and I got the opposing thumbs and canines to prove it.

I know vegetarians must feel the same way because they are always trying to come up with ways to fake-out food, to make plants look and taste like meat or fish. Supermarkets carry fake hot dogs, pretend chicken, and wannabe beef. And if you can’t find it on your store shelf there are shows that will teach you how to make fake food. One such show is the Delicious TV: Totally Vegetarian, found in the podcast section of the iTunes Store. In one episode the host, Toni Fiore, goes in search of vegetarian crab cakes... IN BALTIMORE! That’s like going to Italy for Spaghetti-O’s. When she doesn’t find them (thank goodness some things are still sacred) she opts to make some using that Play-Doh of the food world, tofu.

Tofu "Crab Cakes" a la Fiore

I’m a big fan of miso soup and have some every time I go out for sushi, but that’s about as far as I’ll go with the tofu thing. I don’t want it texturized, pulverized, bicarbonized, or Simonized to make it look like food, and I definitely don’t want a tofu cake made up to look like a crab cake.

I’ll admit, Toni makes them look tasty, and I may be convinced to try one if you threaten to kill my cat (I don’t own a cat), but no matter how you slice it, dice it, or mush it up, what is on the show is not a crab cake, it’s a tofu cake. Crab cake are made from crabs. Tofu cakes are made from tofu: Big difference.

(And who came up with the ideal for tofu anyway? I bet it was a Japanese mad scientist bent on culinary world conquest. "それは生きている!" ("It’s alive!!!"))

Anyway, if you are Steve Jobs looking to broaden a vegan diet, or a vegetarian who’s grown weary of celery sticks, take a look at Delicious TV. You are bound to find something you like.

Finally, and in keeping with my foreign theme, I’m going to talk about truckers. Yep, the guys and gals who drive the big rigs for a living. Their lifestyle and vernacular is about as foreign to me as Russian reindeer herding, but I got a lot of respect for these folks. Driving a 16 hour or longer haul is not for everyone, and our country simply could not survive without the army of diesel behemoths that ply our highways.

It’s a hard life, on both the trucks and the people who drive them, so why not do something to make the monotony of the road a bit less tiresome. Enter Trick My Truck.

OK, so this is a Good Ol’ Boy’s version of Pimp My Ride, but hey, why not? Fans of hip hop stars and Hollywood celebs aren’t the only ones who can use a vehicular makeover.

In the free episode on at the iTunes Store trucker, Robert LaGrange, gets his purple (yes, purple) rig hacked and slashed by a team of heavy duty make-over artists. Mr. LaGrange use to be a Navy submariner and that’s the theme the make-over boys use on his truck. Even if you don’t much care about big rigs, you’ve got to see what they did to LaGrange’s truck. It is tight!

Check out Trick My Truck at the iTunes Store.

Well, I guess that’s it for this week. Make sure you grab Carol Reddick’s free download, I Don’t Wanna. It’s a melodic, soulful song of a relationship ending. It reminds me a bit of Anita Baker at her best. Take a listen.

Other freebies on the iTunes Store:

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.