This site was launched initially as a tongue-in-cheek exposé of the real story behind the Charlottesville-Besançon Jumelage or "Twinnings" as it is known in France for the boondoggle it is, on both sides, benefitting an elite few and having little to do with the citizens of Charlottesville and Besançon as proclaimed. We thought this sad, sorry tale had all the ingredients - sex, lies, and steamy love letters. We thought the cast of characters hilarious. Blake "I'm still eating stinky French cheese" Caravati and his cohorts, the Mayor of Besançon, Jean-Louis "We're Getting Married In The Morning" Fousseret and Andrée "Show Me The Money" King, self-appointed maven of Franco-American cultural relations, who raised thousands of dollars for L'Alliance Française OPÉRATION expenses in the Jumelage effort, hereinafter L'Dalliance Française the old-fashioned way . . . PRONE.

VECTOR (how appropriate) on the Charlottesville side . . . TEMIS (Technopole Microtechnique et Scientifique) on the Besançon side . . . insidious sounding corporate entities deeply embedded in this story. The deal was struck by Caravati, President and Owner of VECTOR, and Fousseret, President of TEMIS; if they both won their respective bids for mayor in 2000 the OPÉRATION would proceed.* It was not until we put our researcher TOSHIBA GIRL on some time-line research that WE SMELLED A MOUSE!

The Two won their elections; ". . . thus Blake Caravati returned in September 2002 to Besançon with the President of the Alliance Française, Andrée King, accompanied by a score of Americans . . ." Mayor Fousseret* Fast forward to April 2005 when on the Besançon side we find our lovable Mayor Fousseret on the hot seat. He is being asked to 'splain himself regarding the OPÉRATION; the asterisked (*)(**) links are from the minutes of what can only be called a "grilling" including . . . "My answer will be a bit long because I want to be precise in answering questions from you who are nevertheless a little critical . . ." Whew! We find it refreshing that at least some were critical.

". . . There was then, certainly some of you remember, a proclamation of friendship between Besançon and Charlottesville the day of the 62nd birthday of the release of Besançon by the Americans because it had appeared convenient (our emphasis) to us to sign this proclamation. To this occasion, Blake Caravati had led a delegation of ten Virginians among who were, since you request all this information from me, an official representative of the University of Virginia, Dudley J. Doane, Director of the Center for Anglo-American Language and Culture, and Mrs. King, President of the Alliance Française . . ."Mayor Fousseret**

*BULLETIN OFFICIEL DE LA COMMUNE DE BESANÇON 643 28 avril 2005 Page 3

**BULLETIN OFFICIEL DE LA COMMUNE DE BESANÇON 644 28 avril 2005 Page 4

Meanwhile on the Charlottesville side Andrée "Show Me The Money" King is just short three months from the finalization of four years of her "hard work." Our TOSHIBA GIRL uncovered so much more than we dreamed possible for this first exposé focusing on Madame King. Research reveals a cautionary tale not only of a treacherous woman willing to commit among other crimes adultery in her quest for position and wealth but the dark, disturbing underbellies of sisters Charlottesville and Besançon, knowledge of which has turned our lighthearted approach to that of heavy hearts, especially since seeing the hand-written letters from Madame King in print. Wherever we looked, we found a common denominator of, well, FILTH, pure unadulterated, cross-referenced, almost algorithmic FILTH . . .

THE FALSE MIRROR . . . Early in the research and development of Charlottesville-Besançon.com it became clear that the real Jumelage is to be found with the people of our cities, not with the mayors, city governments nor their representative fronts. In fact, it is disgraceful how little interest and effort has been made on both sides to showcase the living diversity of our twin cities. While it is understandable that we honor, celebrate and reflect upon historic personages such as Victor Hugo, the Lumier Brothers, Thomas Jefferson, Lafayette and their accomplishments, all one has to do is GOOGLE! As a result of their being DEAD for some time there are literally millions of bits of information regarding these historical figures on the World Wide Web. In the coming weeks we at Charlottesville-Besançon.com intend to focus on our living hometown heroes of which there is an abundance. We are like the sisters who like and enjoy each other in spite of having common blood.

STAFF at Charlottesville-Besançon.com is a cadre of home-grown citizens comprised of an investgative journalist, corporate researcher, punk artist, paralegal, frat boy and web developer who are weary of exploiters in their Villes. The Staff has meticulously fact-checked, cited, and provided external links in support of the TRUTH of these matters. The Staff has in its possession the original letters of Madame King and original checks made payable to Madame King. All other documents referred to such as recorded deeds of trust, chancery records, and tax records are public information and were accessed on the internet and in the Albemarle County Clerk's Office.

René Magritte (1898-1967, Belgium) first painted in 1928 Le Faux Miroir. The inverted iris/pupil acts as a mirror of the exterior world instead of being the mirror of the soul. In his art, Magritte used the unexpected to liberate our conventional vision from its obscurity, in order to glimpse the hidden mystery of the visible world. As Magritte said "Everything we see hides another thing."

This giant eye whose iris, pierced by a black pupil, reflecting a sky with clouds, is another adaptation of the theme of a well-known engraving by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux Eye Enclosing the Theatre at Besançon France 1847. This image showed an eye in whose iris was reflected in the interior of the theater of Besançon. Ledoux had conceived that theater as a vast hemicycle, which had acquired as he put it, "the strength of the semicircle, the only form to reveal all the scenes of the theater;" it had also granted every spectator "the right to an equal sight-line." Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'Art, des Noeurs et de la Législation, Paris, 1804. "But, by a curious inversion, it is the view of the auditorium which appears in the background. The eye of the spectator therefore reflects nothing but himself. The spectator is made the spectacle." William Howard Adams, The Eye of Thomas Jefferson, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1976.

On a lighter note, how better to kick off our celebration of Jumelage than with ALDEBERT and DAVEBERT whose resemblance in our opinion is phenomenal? Born in Paris in 1973, the young Guillaume Aldebert leaves the capital with his parents for Besançon, where he lives today. He shows a precocious more.....

Blog twinnings will be an ongoing project on this site and we begin with blogs de cuisine.

Good morning Besançon! Epicurism? No Contest. Besançon's Le Blog D'Une Jeune Maman (the blog of a young mother) is by any standard a most outstanding blog de cuisine more.....

We in Charlottesville love food too; in fact, it is said that this town has more restaurants per capita than New York City. Gourmands can be found packed in restaurants throughout our fair City on a nightly basis, abandoning the joy of cooking for the joy of cramming more.....

Tom Wolfe writes in From Bauhaus to Our House a certain type of public art is increasingly found outside newer office buildings in large U.S. cities which he termed an archetype that is all too real: "Turd On The Plaza" known to some as "plop art". Following, our moniker is FartInPlace (GOOGLE knows what's up). Warning Besançon: "The Urban Turban" intends to FartInPlace in your town Sistah! Our researcher could not locate a counterpart FartInPlace in Besançon which means you win by default more.....

Good morning, Besançon! Sistah, you beat Charlottesville's derrière in Blogs de Cuisine and FartInPlace. Sadly, aside from the fabulous Aldebert it appears your hometown heroes are all DEAD.

Meet Mr. Jefferson, Charlottesville's own Favorite Son...actually, Fifth-Great-Grandson of our number one hometown hero, Mr. Jefferson. Now, as we all know our civic father Thomas Jefferson is DEAD; however, his 5th Great-Grandson Roberts ("TJ") Coles III pictured above is very much alive more.....

IDEAL FOR CHILDREN! The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is an international, non-profit organization of internet leaders working to develop a safer internet and operates under the umbrella of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI). We self-rated this entire site as a result of a link to pornographic referrer links on MonticelloAvenue.org discovered while researching L'ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE usage statistics. MONTICELLO AVENUE is division of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library and is a community information network which hosts non-profit organizations in ALBEMARLE and 'HARLOTTESVILLE, providing hosting, technical support and webmaster work sessions to groups eligible for a free Web page. It appears there is not a Webmaster/mistress worth his or her salt on the entire site. Obviously no one is doing their job. First, Web Stats should not be accessible to anyone other than Web Admin. Second, Web Stats should be checked weekly at a minimum primarily for marketing reasons. If your top thirty referrers are BOTS that means NO-ONE IS LOOKING and you need to market your site because most of your visitors are robots foraging for electronic mail addresses for the purposes of SPAM. Even more agredious than DUMB and LAZY is DO NOT CARE. LESBIAN-MOVIES.SYTES.NET/*f*i*l*t*h* (all links are DEAD) should not appear under any circumstances anywhere on MONTICELLO AVENUE or its subdomains and we call for the firing of all so-called Webmasters/mistresses for not doing their jobs in protecting our children and youth. THE COLOR IS GREEN! Believe it! Cash is being collected by these organizations and people are being paid to do little or nothing under the auspices of community service. IDEAL FOR CHILDREN!

UPDATE: May, 2007; the referrer links in question are being denied permission . . . it's about time. We have hard copies of these pages in our files.