Category: Fourre-tout

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

Ne berces-tu jamais                       Don’t you ever entertain
En tout bien tout honneur               With honorable intentions of course
De jolies pensées interlopes ?        Fetching lascivious thoughts?

Those are some of the lyrics of “Penelope », a song composed by famous French singer/songwriter Georges Brassens. This ballad was published in 1960 and as it shows, Georges was not the first person to cast some doubts on women’s declared rectitude.

Sexual Harassment deserves condemnation and should be reined in, no doubt about it. But not all men are villains and not all women are innocent victims. In view of the Sexual Harassment tsunami, we need some kind of a reset.

Yes, there has been a lot of sexual harassment in the past but let’s not turn this into the Reign of Terror or the Red Scare.

In the current climate, someone’s reputation and livelihood can be wiped out in seconds by allegations, and one needs to be cautious before casting stones and ostracizing anybody.

In some cases, women were the amorous instigators. But what if the romance goes sour and the man decides to put an end to the relationship? There is something called vengeance and it is a very tempting retribution tool for scorned women. Could then a consensual relationship suddenly become a case of sexual harassment?

The key to all of this is consensual agreement. If both parties agree to some hanky-panky there is no cause for melodrama. But the main question is “when does the woman agree to a sexual interlude?”
Some men are seemingly unable to tell.

In my ever-inventive mind, I see an opportunity for another smartphone voice-activated app. It would work like a miniature stoplight. Since most people bring their phone near or into their bed, it would be easy to handle.

During any prelude to sexual activity, the would-be seducer would have to pay attention to the phone lurking in the dark. If the light is green, there is a consensus. When it turns orange, easy does it. If the light turns red, STOP. An alarm could also be activated if the Lothario persists in his unwelcome advances. Running a red light as everybody knows is a serious offense punishable by law.

To sum it up

If men don’t see the light, the Stop Light could become the indispensable killer app for the woman on the go. What da ya think?

Alain