Category: Fourre-tout

Curse you Red Baron Petaluma!

Every year contestants from all the local Bay Area pétanque clubs converge to Marin to brawl for the honor of having their names engraved on the Interclub Cup.

This year the participating clubs were: La Pétanque Marinière (Marin County), La Boule d’Or (San Francisco), Valley of the Moon (Sonoma), Lamorinda (Contra Costa), Sunrise (San Francisco), Petaluma Valley (Sonoma County).

Due to the nature of this this tournament it is unlike a regular event.
The organizers have to keep track of all individual scores and tally all the results in order to determine which players will represent their clubs in the final phases of this event.
It is a tedious and time-consuming task.

Tournament Director Verena Rytter, Liv Kraft and Christine Cragg did an excellent job doing this and deserve a big hand for this thankless assignment.
Clap! Clap!

Among the contestants from the various clubs I spotted with pleasure seldom seen Pascal Gravier, steady Bill Hansen, Beth Lysten and adorable Rosa, young Noah Sonnet, and for the first time JoAnne Easton, newly minted member of the San Francisco club.
A big hello to all the other participants.

A tournament is often a humbling and sobering experience. A big fish in a small pond often finds himself small fry in a larger pond.

I would have loved to regale you about my own gig, but I produced such an abysmal performance that I would rather bury it discreetly (at night) in some isolated corner of my garden.

Three randomly drawn doublettes were played in the morning. The best scoring individuals would then represent their clubs in the following games.

At noon, in an emotionally charged moment, Marin club president Christine Cragg presented a commemorative plaque to Mireille Di Maio honoring René Di Maio who passed away last April. RIP René.

After lunch, the elimination process started. The highest scoring players from each club played each other in triplette formations.

In a memorable semi-final contest Lamorinda’s George Zolinski, Carlos Couto and Bill Hansen faced Antoine Lofaro, Jean-Claude Etallaz and Mireille Di Maio.
It was an evenly matched contest whose results were in doubt until the end.
George Zolinski’s team offered a dogged resistance to the Marin Club. George’s unorthodox shooting style was amazingly efficient but Antoine barely overpowered him with an even better performance.
Marin won 13/11.

In the Finals, the Marin Club faced Petaluma.

Petaluma fielded a very strong formation: Ed Porto, Jim Donahue and Dennis Casad.
On the Marin side: Antoine Lofaro, Jean-Claude Etallaz and Mireille Di Maio.

It was an interesting match full of emotional rebounds. Mireille Di Maio (Marin’s pointer) did a very good job but was outperformed by the steady efforts of both Jim Donahue and Dennis Casad.
Interestingly enough, I understand that Jim has been playing pétanque for only 5 months. Great show Jim. I see a great future for you.

Antoine played with the emotional bravura of a matador but missed a few crucial shots while Ed Porto remained coolheaded and almost error free.

Final results:

Concours:
1st prize: Petaluma
Ed Porto, Jim Donahue, Dennis Casad             Final score: 13/8
$125.00 to the club. + bottle of Champagne each.

2nd prize: Marin
Antoine Lofaro, J-C Etallaz, Mireille Di Maio
$60.00 to the club. + bottle of Champagne each.

Consolante:
1st prize: Lamorinda
Beth Lysten, Pascal Gravier, Serge Hanne                  Final score: 13/6
$60.00 to the club.

2nd prize: Petaluma
Rob Everett, Doug Colville, Les Stone
Bottle of Champagne each.

Hasta la vista Petaluma. We will meet again.
Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

Alain

 To look at photos of this event and listen to the accompanying background music, turn your computer’s sound on, and click on the link “My Photos” located on the right side of this page. For best viewing, go Full Screen.

 

Our attention span (the length of time during which someone can stay interested in something) is getting shorter and shorter.
It is said that the average person today has the attention span of a gnat, and I understand that it is very, very small.

A thousand things solicit us daily and there is just so much time that we are willing to devote to a particular topic. There is even a fancy acronym to excuse that modern ailment: ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).
When I was a kid, ADD was nowhere in sight. I was simply called scatterbrained.

In the days of Facebooking, Twittering, Instagraming and sexting we have very little spare time to devote to anything or anybody. That’s why my postings are usually short. Five hundred words at most, with well aerated chapters.
If the text is drawn-out it will deter readers from forging ahead.

Celebrated Dorothy Sarnoff said:
“Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.”

 Paraphrasing Dorothy, I am corroborating her statement :
“Make sure that you have finished writing before your audience has finished paying attention.”

Most of the people have a low boredom threshold and I know that beyond one page of highly personal opinions, I will start losing my readers. So I strive to keep my essays brief.
The only way to slightly prolong readers’ attention span is to entertain.

One-liners work well.
What is the difference between a snowman and a snowwoman? Snowballs.

Or
A couple went to a restaurant. They both suddenly realized that they had left their cell phone at home.
What are we going to do? asked the anguished woman.
Hesitantly the man offered: talk?

For a chuckle, most of the readers are willing to sacrifice a few more minutes of their precious social media time.

Basically, I feel like the court jester of yore.
As long as I can amuse the masses, I will be permitted to keep my head on my shoulders.

But jeepers creepers, I am dangerously approaching my words limit.
I better go before you dump me, because as you probably know It always feels better to be the dumper than the dumpee.

Toot-a-loo.

Alain

As an early “reader” of Playboy magazine I have always been enamored of the woman’s figure, but to my surprise while watching the Rio Olympics I caught myself paying more attention to men’s physique than women’s figures.

The male athletes participating in disciplines such as gymnastics, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal bar looked incredibly fit. Broad shoulders, thin waist, bulging biceps, impressive pectoral muscles…
Perfect human specimens. The way that every male on earth wish he could emulate… minus of course the unimaginable amount of hard work leading to this spectacular condition.

Women in comparison looked equally fit but in a lithe, androgynous sort of way.
I am not denying that they are spectacular athletes in their own rights, but aesthetically speaking the men looked better, maybe more mature.

And thank goodness, I didn’t see too many “inked” competitors. Tattoos are the decorations of people who wish they could but can’t.
Athletes can and don’t need these “look at me” attention-getting gimmicks.

In the eyes of many, what makes a woman captivating are the curves.

“A woman without curves is like jeans without pockets…you don’t know where to put your hands.”

The curves contribute to the way a woman carry herself. The combination of bosom, hips and bum provide the gait that makes some women so alluring.
Without curves, a woman lacks the smooth suspension particular to luxury cars.

But I surmise that generous women’s attributes could be a hindrance to their athletic performance. Particularly in swimming when you try to reduce drag to a minimum.

US women generally performed incredibly feats, particularly in gymnastics. And it seems that the more compact they are, the more determined they are. Diminutive Simone Biles (4’8”) is a prime example of that.

But the Olympic games are not about look; they are about performance and the American women gymnasts proved to be the best.
Simone Biles, 19, Aly Raisman, 22, Gabby Douglas, 20, Laurie Hernandez, 16, and Madison Kocian, 19 won a well deserved gold medal for their absolutely stellar performances.
The men team didn’t.

When the Games are over though, I don’t think that I will keep looking at men. As the saying goes, “a leopard cannot change its spots”.

The minute the shindig is over, I will switch my attention to what the Gods programmed true-blue men to look at: tits and ass.

Alain