Category: Fourre-tout

A little bit of everything

Double fault

July 1971There was a time when tennis was for me an all-encompassing passion.
I would eat, breathe and play tennis almost every evening on the foggy Marina Tennis courts in San Francisco.
I would also naturally compete on weekends.

I don’t play the game anymore, but tennis remains one of the few sports that I can bear to view on TV.

A few days ago I watched Maria Sharapova play against a young Spanish woman named Garbine Muguruza in the quarterfinals of the French Open.

By the way, I love those four syllables names. They roll off the tongue in a delicious sounding manner and I find them much classier than those poor two or three syllables patronyms.
Let’s be frank, Sha-ra-po-va sounds much better than Du-pont.

The French TV commentator also loved that name and must have pronounced it at least a hundred times during the match. He only referred to Muguruza as the “Young Spaniard”.

Sharapova lost the first set 1-6 but armed  with a steely determination she rallied and finally defeated the young Spaniard 7-5, 6-1.

Being a keen observer of human nature, I took a few notes and here is what I noticed:

– Screaming while hitting the ball greatly helps your shots.
– Wearing a visor style cap (or a bandana) instead of a regular cap is the way to go. Carrying tennis balls in knickers is very practical.
-Bouncing the ball at least six times before serving helps to concentrate.
-Munching on a piece of banana between sets looks like the thing to do.

I always try to apply everything I learn to the game of pétanque.
After all, both sports are very similar. They both use balls that are roughly of the same size and they both require the same athletic ability.

So in the next pétanque tournament, I will slightly modify my look and approach to the game.

First of all, to aerate my skull, instead of my beloved “casquette” I will wear a visor style cap. It might not help my game, but it will definitely cool the top of my head.
I will carry my spare “boules” in my knickers.
Regrettably I won’t be able to bounce my balls before shooting but I know that this would have helped.
When shooting, I will scream like a banshee.
And finally, between games, instead of an enchilada, I will chew on a piece of banana .

My philosophy has always been “don’t be afraid to innovate”.
If the above-mentioned moves work for the champs, I don’t see any reason why it would not work for me.

Alain

PS: To see a picture full size, click on it.

 

And yet it moves!

According to the rumor mill, Apple will launch the iPhone 6 this Fall.

What it means is that my six months old iPhone 5 is soon going to be obsolete and probably finish its brief career as a glorified paperweight.
I am not complaining, I am just stating a stark reality.

What was hot two or three years ago will soon lose its shine and be pushed aside in favor of new ideas and products.
Innovate or perish, that’s the way it is.

So, why do some people still cling to ideas articulated two or three thousands ago? I asked myself this morning while shaving.
I was of course mulling over Pope Francis (who I believe is a good man) visit to Israel and all the controversies that it generated.
Islam, Judaism and Christianity have common roots but have been bitter foes for a long time. Yet, they all base their “righteous” teachings on what “prophets” uttered a long time ago.

What Moses, Jesus or Muhammad proclaimed might have been sensible centuries ago, but in my opinion “pronouncements” (just like patents) should have expiration dates.
After a certain time doctrines should be reformulated to accommodate new times.

I absolutely don’t see why after all those years Jews and Moslems cannot eat pork or catholic priests cannot marry.
Does this make any sense, or is it just my iconoclastic tendencies?

Portrait_of_Galileo_Galilei,_1636Many people believed for a long time that the earth was flat. Similarly, people were told that the sun revolved around the earth.
Galileo Galilei thought otherwise and got into big trouble for contradicting the teachings of the Church. He was condemned to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.
“And yet it moves!”
Not cool!

My core belief is that no man should be bound by any archaic doctrine.
We have to live and adapt to new paradigms.
If it feels good and does not harm anybody, do it!

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -George Bernard Shaw –

Alain

 

Bocce vs. pétanque

A few days ago, I happened to be in the vicinity of the Albert Park Bocce Ball courts in San Rafael and out of curiosity I dropped in to see what was going on.
Let me say right away that the place is inviting, well groomed and family-friendly.

I have always been under the impression that bocce was a form of exercise catering to the geriatric set, but to my surprise I discovered that most of the people in attendance were youngsters under the age of forty.

IMG_0364
By comparison, most of our members look like yesteryear models with quite a few miles on the odometer… but let me haste to add that old jalopies are sometimes more reliable than more recent models.

Bocce and pétanque have many similarities, but they also differ in many ways. At first sight it seems that bocce is a more civil game than pétanque, but it also looks that pétanque is more challenging.

To start with, bocce requires carefully groomed lanes whereas pétanque doesn’t. The game can be played just about anywhere (pétanque sauvage) and for purists, the more challenging the environment the better it is.

It also seems that in bocce, you don’t need a great variety of shots to bring your ball close to the jack (boccino or pallino).
In pétanque, you have to pay close attention to the ground and gauge your shots to fit the existing topography. If you see some gravels or debris in the ball’s path, you might have to use a lob shot or a “curved shot” to avoid them. I have never seen such tricks in bocce.
If the field shows some incline you might also need to apply some backspin to your ball to slow it down.

Then in bocce I have never witnessed “au fer” shots. I didn’t even think that it was done. In petanque, such shots are common.
I had to go to the Internet to check that such  shots existed in in bocce. And they do.

IMG_0369But to sum it up, the people –and it is very important- that I saw on the bocce courts looked much more buffed than the people on our own courts.
Damn!

One of our 78-year-old member is known for saying “I don’t like to play with old people”… and that’s why maybe he doesn’t play with too many people.
I think that in casual games most people would rather team up with younger players rather than old geezers, but tournaments are a different story.
If you are competitive, experience definitely trumps looks.

The question is, would you rather play with a pretty young thing and lose, or team up with with an arthritic old geezer and triumph?
It is up to you to decide.

Alain

PS: To see a full scale shot of a photograph, click on it.

Thanks to Jacques Gautier for showing me the following video. To get the full effect, watch it in “full screen” mode.