Category: Fourre-tout

(Initially drafted in October 2005)

I am a straight shooter. Ask me how to get from point A to point B and I’ll tell you, just like that. Thirty seconds and it’s done! But for some people, it seems to be an almost impossible task.

My mother used to be such a person. I sometimes called her QAD (Queen Of Digression). This propensity of hers could be amusing or highly annoying, depending on how much time you had on your hands.

– Mother, what was the name of Madame Charpentier’s dog?
– Madame Charpentier? You mean the butcher’s wife?
– Yes, the butcher’s wife.
– The butcher’s wife… she was an odd woman… Did you know that her father used to get drunk every Saturday night? He would carouse at the tavern with his good for nothing friends, and continue drinking at home after Le Chien qui Fume had closed… But what do you expect from a Socialist? Before the War, everybody in France was socialist and look where it took us…

– Mother, the dog’s name?
– What dog?
– Madame Charpentier’s…
– The butcher’s wife?
– Yes…
– In my book, the butcher is a good lad. Always polite and pleasant. Always calls you by your name… regularly enquires about your family… not like the butcher on rue de Bretagne… you know the red haired guy with a southern accent. He must be Corsican or something like that.
And Corsica is not worth the trouble it is giving us. They want independence? Give them independence and let them starve. Look at all these African countries… they are all independent now. And what did it get them? Wars, diseases, starvation…

– Mother, the dog’s name?
– Oh you are so impatient… I am getting to it. You young people are all alike. You want everything right away. When I was young, people were more polite and more patient. Do you know that in my days, before you could kiss a girl you had to show that you were an upstanding young man? Today, young people kiss on the first date and hop in bed before even knowing the name of…

– The name Mother, the name?
– What name?
– The name of Madame Charpentier’s dog?
– The name? Oh yes… You mean the black one?
– Yes
– I totally forgot… Sorry. But you seem to be in a hurry… Anything wrong?
– No Mother, everything is fine.

Ultimately

People who digress endlessly are not at the top of the list of my Bêtes Noires, but some days, when it’s hot and muggy, they come dangerously close to light the fuse of my righteous wrath.

Alain

Yesterday was not a day for the faint-hearted; it was cold and unpleasant. At 9:00 am, it was 41° with 70% humidity. But in the afternoon the weather changed for the worse. The day turned blustery with freezing gusts of wind sweeping the field and creating havoc everywhere.
How cold was it?  “It was colder than a room full of ex-wives.”
I bet that the people who had the audacity to show up in shorts cursed their macho clothing decision.

At 10:00 am a small crowd had congregated on the pétanque field. With the flu epidemic still in full swing, the “fist bump” or the “rump bump” was still de rigueur. Many participants spontaneously grabbed some tools and proceeded to groom the courts. Kudos to all of them.
I did not do any of this. As a photographer, I put my priority on recording for posterity most of the details of tournaments. I will let you judge the results.

The organizer/accountant/scorekeeper/enforcer was Noel Marcovecchio. A first-time job that he managed to accomplish very well. He registered contestants, collected fees, kept scores and put together the 12 following doublettes:

1. Alain Efron $ Sabine Mattei
2. T.Wetzel & Monique Bricca
3. Mark Shirkey & Susan Wyatt
4. Bernard Passemar & Sandra Shirkey
5. Ed Porto & J-C Bunand
6. Evan Falcone & Tamara Efron
7. Rob Houton & François Moser
8. Charles Davantes & Logan Ginzberg
9. J-M Poulnot & Helga Facchini
10. John Morrison & Mireille Di Maio
11. Jonathan Dalmau & David Lindsay
12. Liza Moran & Calvert Barron

The tournament, by the way, was open to all (newcomers and seasoned players) and the format of the event was “a la mêlée”.

One game was played before lunch and 3 games after lunch.

I was lucky to be paired up with my old partner in crime Sabine Mattei. She is a good player and above all a cool chick. We are both natives of the Parisian area and we speak the same language. We have an easy, playful relationship and there is never tension ever between us. The way a team should be.

We managed decently, winning 3 games out of 4 while losing one 11/13 and I credit Sabine’s excellent pointing for these results.

Some of the people we played with were very good, among them Charlie Davantes, François Moser, and newcomer Logan Ginzberg. The previous day I also noticed Liza Moran who is becoming an excellent shooter and a threat to male egos. Don’t be fooled by her angel face! Under her smiling face, she hides the instinct of a killer.

To everybody’s relief, the tournament was over around 4:00 pm. and prizes were awarded to the top players:

1^st prize: Rob Houton & François Moser
2^nd prize: Calvert Barron & Liza Moran
3^rd prize: Monique Bricca & T. Wetzel
4^th prize: Alain Efron & Sabine Mattei

Everybody went home for a well-deserved rest and a hot beverage.

Epilog:

Then, shortly after I arrived home, shazam! I received a telephone call from Noel Marcovecchio (our scorekeeper) telling me that the previous results were erroneous.

After a recount, the official results are now as follows:

1^st prize: Alain Efron & Sabine Mattei
2^nd prize: Rob Houton & François Moser
3^rd prize: Calvert Barron & Liza Moran
4th prize: Jean-Claude Bunand & Ed Porto

Sorry folks! Poopoo happens!

Alain

I hope that you like the pictures!

I have a beef with “fine print”.

As my old friend Andy Rooney once said, “nothing in fine print is ever good news.” I firmly believe that.

But the damn thing is multiplying like crazy, breeding like rabbits on a Caribbean holiday. It is everywhere, and like most everything that you cannot see, it is hazardous to your health… and to your retirement plan.

“Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.”  Pete Seeger

A wise person (or a seasoned lawyer) will read the fine print before gracing any document with his John Hancock. But unfortunately there seems to be a shortage of wise men; in their eagerness to acquire something new, very few people bother to scrutinize (especially the benign last paragraph) of the document that they are signing.

Fine print basically means that the author of the document is loath to reveal what the law constrains him to do. He thus complies through the artifice of miniaturization.

I realize that my sight is not what it used to be, but even when wearing my spectacles I strain to decipher some documents.

I just purchased a Thermos bottle, and it came with a “care and use” guide. But this guide (hiding in the bottle) is barely 3 x 2 inches and the print is so small that I need a magnifying glass to decipher what it says.

Is Thermos trying to pull a fast one or am I becoming paranoid? In this climate of “fake news” everything is possible. Is a microphone hidden in the walls of the bottle? Am I going to get infected by a mysterious virus by drinking from this container? Is this a surreptitious way of converting me to Scientology? Are the Russians involved?

Washington’s paranoia has affected all. Everybody is jittery and inclined to believe the most outrageous claim.

Make America clean again and built a beautiful wall around Un-American fine print.

Alain

The big print giveth and the fine print taketh away. Fulton J. Sheen