Category: Fourre-tout

A little bit of everything

The ballad of Minou and Minette

Yesterday, nineteen teams from all over the Bay Area braved the elements to compete in the 2014 California Commemorative Cup.
Ignoring rain threats, they gathered in San Rafael for the first official LPM tournament of the season.

These brave souls were:

  1. Louis Toulon & Claudie Chourré
  2. Francois Moser & Helga Facchini
  3. Alain Efron & Sabine Mattei
  4. J-C Etallaz & Minette Etallaz
  5. Etienne Rijkheer & Carolina Jones
  6. Mickey Coughlin & Nicole Coughlin
  7. Patrick Vaslet & Shannon Bowman
  8. Henry Wessel & Calvert Barron
  9. Kevin Evoy & Holly Sammons
  10. John Krauer & Eva Lofaro
  11. Joss Krauer & Jean-Michel Poulnot
  12. Adair Hastings & Barbara Hall
  13. Bernard Passmar & Henriette Matocq
  14. J-C Bunand & Mireille Di Maio
  15. Carlos Couto & Therese Pollock
  16. Ed Porto & Beth Lysten
  17. Hans Kurz & Debbie King
  18. Rene Di Maio & Monique Bricca
  19. Peter Wellington & Teri Sirico

The predicted rain never materialized and the tournament proceeded under an overcast but clement sky.

The tournament consisted of three 13 points qualifying games played before lunch and the ensuing Concours, Consolante A and Consolante B played in the afternoon.

I noted with pleasure that a much-needed time limit of forty-five minutes per game was enforced by the organizers. Kudos to La Pétanque Marinière for finally implementing this necessary rule.

After lunch, 8 teams qualified for the Concours, 7 teams for Consolante A and 4 teams for Consolante B.

In the first round of the Concours

  1. Vaslet/Bowman defeated Porto/Lysten
  2. Hastings/Hall defeated Evoy/Sammons
  3. Etallaz/Etallaz defeated Di Maio/Bricca
  4. Toulon/Chourré defeated Efron/Mattei

In the second round

  1. Hasting/Hall eliminated Vaslet/Bowman
  2. Etallaz/Etallaz eliminated Toulon/Chourré (by a hair).

Our own team (through the excellent pointing of Sabine Mattei) won its three first games and qualified for the Concours.
But in the first challenge of the main event (probably drunk with success) we were unceremoniously kicked out of the tournament. A shrewdly calculated move I might advance, designed to free me to snap some action shots of our petanque warriors.

I think that this particular event will be remembered more by the fairytale of the defeated than by the achievement of the winners.

Minou and Minette (Jean-Claude & Genevieve Etallaz) lived an enchanted life throughout the tournament and to everybody’s surprise squeaked into the Concours’ finals.
But like Icarus, their magic ride came to a fiery end when they flew too close to the sun.

In the finals of the tournament, facing a much stronger team, they crashed and burned.
In less than 15 minutes they were annihilated by Adair Hastings and Barbara Hall and suffered the seldom-witnessed ignominy of a finals’ Fanny.

But to their everlasting credit, Minou and Minette deserve respect for reaching the finals, a slight detail that 17 teams failed to achieve.
Let’s not forget that to reach the finals, they first qualified for the Concours and that during this event they also defeated Di Maio and Bricca, and then Toulon and Chourré.
Not a small achievement.

FINAL RESULTS:

Concours:

1st place: Adair Hastings & Barbara Hall (on the right of the picture)
2nd place: Jean-Claude Etallaz & Genevieve Etallaz

IMG_3524

Consolante A:

1st place: Mickey Coughlin & Nicole Coughlin
2nd place: Etienne Rijkheer & Carolina Jones

Consolante B:

1st place: Carlos Couto & Therese Pollock
2nd place: Francois Moser & Helga Facchini

The names of the tournament winners (Adair Hastings and Barbara Hall) will be inscribed for everybody to see on the Perpetual Trophy.

Thank you to Verena Rytter, Christine Cragg, Liv Kraft and Bart Zachofsky for hosting and coordinating this tournament.

Alain

PS: To look at photos of this event and listen to accompanying background music, turn the sound on, and click on the link “My Photos” located on the right side of this page.

 

My acceptance speech

Motivated by the recent Academy Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles, I have decided to write the acceptance speech that I will deliver when accepting my own award.

When my name will be called, I will naturally show surprise and immediately lock lips with the man or woman sitting next to me.
I will then dash to the podium to deliver my improvised, previously written address.
I will naturally be wearing some ribbon showing that I am an upright human being supporting (but not necessarily financing) some humanitarian cause. Supporting Free Tibet is always a good choice.

Oscars-500x619I will then raise my Oscar, and overcome by emotion, I will thank as many people as time allows (and beyond).

So here is my totally improvised speech:

“I want to thank the Academy for bestowing this prestigious award upon me.
I am honored and deeply grateful, but I want you to know that I owe it all to a bunch of obscure little people who were always here for me.

Sitting on the front row is a woman, pregnant at sixteen and mother of four, who means the world to me.
Her name is Rosario and she is my cleaning lady. She always made sure that my carpets were clean and my bar well stocked. I could never have done it without her.

I also want to thank my mother, for not loving me and kicking me out of the house at a very early age. She taught me not be a wimpy kid and to be self-reliant.
Thank you Mom for being tough on me…
And eat your heart out, bitch!

I want to thank Madame Nguyen Tan Dung, my pedicurist, for keeping my toes shiny and my moral up.

I want to thank my lovely concubine whom I usually visit at night riding my scooter.
She could not be here today (she is babysitting my Shar Pei) but she deserves a medal of her own.
She never pressured me to leave my wife of twenty years and our four kids but would like a new set of boobs. I think that she earned it.

I want to thank Crunch my neighbor’s pit bull for not barking at night and letting me work undisturbed when I am not high on Coke or assorted stimulants.

I want to thank Secretary of State John Kerry for keeping peace in the world, or at least until the end of this ceremony.

I don’t want to forget my attorney Saul Goodman who is always willing to help, no matter how bad things look.

And most of all, I want to thank myself for never giving up and having the gumption to send thousands of letter asking influential people to support my candidature.

And now, I invite you all backstage for a slice of pizza and a shot of Stoly. Please leave some tips in the hat by the door.
God bless you all and thank you again for letting me take home a trophy that I so richly deserve.”

Alain

Le rire

Last night I watched a two-hour “laugh festival” on TV, and I never laughed. I might have smiled a few times but I never laughed out loud. Very sad.
The entire thing was a rather pathetic affair and I felt sorry for the captive audience that had to endure this unappetizing “comedic” smorgasbord… and pay for it.

Everybody wants to laugh, but to induce laughter requires brains, good timing and an extremely dexterous touch… and few comedians have it.
Many rely on slapstick, pratfalls, vulgarity, gross sexual innuendos and those things are seldom amusing.

A bad comedian is like a homely girl wearing too much makeup to compensate for her lack of charm.
He relies on shticks to compensate for his lack of talent and can seldom hit a homerun.

But the comedy business is no laughing business. It is a multi-million industry and it needs to churn out the goods.
And this is the “raison d’être” for all the pathetic “sitcoms” (and their obnoxious laugh track) that are a daily offering on American TV.
Half of them should be weighed down with an anchor and dropped into the ocean.

You cannot be continuously funny week after week.
I once read about a man who was a renowned wit. He was in great demand in all the literary salons, and each time he made an appearance, he effortlessly dropped one or two sparkling gems.
Needless to say that he was revered for his easy wit.
What people didn’t know was the fact that he worked very hard to produce such gems.
If he couldn’t come up with something genuinely clever, he pretended to be indisposed and stayed home. Fearing to tarnish his stellar reputation he could stay home for weeks at a time.

Many comedians should heed this advice.

Humor also evolves. What was hilarious fifty years ago is probably not funny today.
When I was very young I used to love Jerry Lewis. Today I absolutely loathe him.

It is said that laughing is the best medicine, but bad medicine can have unexpected and unwanted side effects.
If a prescription shows some undesirable side effects it should be discontinued, and so should bad comedians.

“When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing each other.” Alan Alda
It seems that we need more good comedians and fewer bad diplomats.

Alain

A semi-good comedic routine:

http://youtu.be/lUr3XbROoA8