WTF is That?

            

           This post continues a theme touched on last time, namely language and cultural characteristics of which I usually haven't a clue but find entertaining. You're hereby warned that much of what follows will probably appeal only to those whose maturity and sophistication levels approximate mine.

Gummi Puppen?

This post is dedicated to the memory of a friend.

            A long time ago I abandoned the idea of ever making any money writing or that anything I had to say was of much interest to anyone. This blog is evidence of that, more or less. Despite this I always write with the idea of trying to please some unknown someone (writing for your readers) but this one is for me. I have nothing more in mind than pleasing myself as I remember a dear friend whose worth to me became even more apparent after he'd gone. So I'm warning you now that this post has a bunch of video clips attached to it and I have no idea how it'll turn out. The idea occurred to me sometime before June as we were approaching the 70th anniversary of D-Day but between travel and preparing a presentation on the trombone for Bordeaux-USA, I'm only getting around to it now. In putting together my trombone project, I learned how to use Imovie and went a little nuts making videos. The same thing happened again and for the past week or so, I've been working on clips to stick into this post.

Incident At Milepost 49

The HoJo at Oakmont looked just like this

             Lately, I haven't been posting much for reasons that really don't matter but have resulted in my going through some of the essays and other writing that I've had laying around for a long time. Over the years, I've accumulated a trove of mediocrity that I once thought was pretty good. At some point, everyone even semi-serious about writing imagines their masterpieces being featured in the New Yorker or some other lofty publication and I was no different. But most of my stuff was written with no idea where it could possibly find the light of day. I paid no attention to any of the advice every aspiring writer gets on researching markets and how to appeal to editors or anything else that might have at least gotten me some encouraging rejection slips. So now I've decided that if none of this stuff is ever going to make me a member of the next Algonquin Round Table, I'm foisting it off from time to time on whoever runs across this blog accidentally in the course of surfing for pornography.
       
           The first of these I've rewritten so many times I can't stand it anymore. It was intended originally for some now defunct online magazine in Pittsburgh and I think I was encouraged by most of the previously published pieces being worse. I'm not sure Thurber would have gotten very far, either, if his mantra had been, "Shit, I'm not that bad."

Bruce le Mec Blanc

            

          

           As my wife and family can tell you, I'm possessed of a disposition so perpetually sunny and upbeat that, sensing they can't possibly match it, others are sometimes brought down. Knowing you're everyone's favorite Pollyanna can be a pretty heavy burden at times and that could be why I've spent the past couple of months at the whogivesashiterie. Maybe I've been here in France long enough to be turning into a brooding existentialist - a sort of human version of Henri le Chat noir. Incidently, Henri's French isn't much better than mine so I must be making some progress if I'm picking up on grammatical errors in a cat video. Anyway, I hope the recent sparseness of postings hasn't disappointed anyone coming here looking for their positivity fix.

O Llama, Where Art Thou.

            Well, things are finally getting back to normal here in Bordeaux.  You might be aware that last week 5 fêtards ivre (drunk party animals), as Le Parisien called them, made off with a llama from a travelling circus and took it for a ride on the tram. English language accounts passed on just the basic story, plus a few of the photos and videos. They generally maintained the French media's lighthearted attitude with only the CBC using the word "hooligans" and mentioning calls for punishment. So Canadians have little tolerance for drunken debauchery and boorish behavior, unless, of course, you're the mayor of Toronto. The past week here it's been all Serge, all the time and yesterday was the first day he was missing from the local newspaper, Sud-Ouest, website. He will, however, be making a personal appearance at Le Girondins soccer match on Sunday so Sergermania might not have abated.

      

Phantom of the Apero

            A couple of days after posting about beer, we made a trip to one of our favorite supermarchés and I found myself standing in the spirits aisles contemplating the many hip and sophisticated ways a guy in France could get plastered, or bourré. I suppose most of this stuff is available in the States but an early brush with Southern Comfort coupled with a 21st birthday celebration gone awry made me steer clear of anything stronger than wine ever since. While living in San Diego I discovered my inner Casanova through tequila but my skills went mostly unappreciated so I ditched margaritas for the economy of beer.

C'est Fischer Time!

            Some weeks ago I decided to spruce up this blog with a gadget highlighting subjects mentioned in old posts. Soon after, one of the 2 or 3 people who actually reads these screeds (and, big surprise, a trombone player) pointed out that posts including dog shit outnumbered those of beer by margin of 6 to 1. So, in addition to disabling the subject counter, I've decided to address that disparity with this post.  I should point out that, while enjoying a good lager, I am not one of these people who can tell you all about top and bottom fermentation (as opposed to all the way through, I guess), where the best hops come from or, in fact, discuss the subject from any perspective other than that of an enthusiastic, if limited, consumer. I'm aware of the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 only because it was printed on the labels of the Bitburger I used to buy and I wouldn't be caught dead drinking American Budweiser. That fact alone qualifies me as more discriminating than most American hops heads.

Confessions Of A Jerry Lewis Fan

            The Cannes film festival was a couple of weeks ago and I was not invited for the 6oth consecutive year. They did, however, give Jerry Lewis some kind of award and an article in the New York Times had the obligatory quote from a French critic, miffed at America's failure to recognize his genius. France's love for Jerry Lewis is another stereotype for which I've yet to see much evidence. Months ago I saw a poster for Docteur Jerry et Mister Love ("The Nutty Professor") but this was in a movie memorabilia shop in Bordeaux so I'm not sure that counts. I've asked a couple of people here but their answers always fall a bit short of unbridled enthusiasm.  In fact, they usually give you a look that says, "Why would you ask me this?"

I ♣ Guignol

         

           We just finished two weeks of home exchanges in Dijon and Nîmes. Both places were interesting and fun but we were eager to get back "home" so I think Bordeaux's beginning to get comfortable.

            Never having been to Dijon, all I knew was it's in Burgundy and back in the States its name is on mustard. As it turns out, there really was a guy named Poupon and Dijon really is known for mustard. In fact there's a store there, Maille, that's has it on tap and you can take your own container to be filled with one of three different moutardes du jour. We felt right at home, though, since one of the wettest, coldest and longest winters in Bordeaux history followed us right up north.    

Driving Mademoiselle Cynthia

© 2013 Cynthia Hinson

            As you might recall, the last post ended with a thought about the type of car we might eventually buy.

             The last cars we had in the States were a Lincoln LS and a Fiat 500. We bought the Fiat thinking that it might be easier and cheaper to take a car with us, an idea that turned out to be one of the most stupid I ever had. And to get the 500, I had to give up my Mazdaspeed6 (MPS in Europe), which Cynthia was not sorry to see go. Even under the best conditions, I'm not a patient driver with the added curse of a lead foot. The Mazda was only the second car I've owned that I really wanted (The first was the '65 GTO I bought a frightening 42 years ago at the age of 18) and I drove it like the name suggested I should. At 18 this is expected of you but at nearly 60 it borders on pathetic and stupid, even if it's still damn fun. This will not be an issue here, especially since most of what is sensibly priced runs on diesel.

 

            Unlike the Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and other European makes in the U.S., the average car driven in Europe is an underpowered slug, probably because the price of fuel has always been so high. Remember when we saw Monty Python or Upstairs, Downstairs on PBS, thought all British TV was like that and lamented that we couldn't get it here? The reality was that what we got was the best they had and almost everything else was mediocre to downright awful crap. So it is with European cars and it's hard to decide what to buy.

In Transit

         I started this while we were just killing time at the airport and wanted to do a last stateside post. I don’t remember why I didn’t finish it but it could have been some dispute over hogging the laptop. So this is my first post from France and it should probably be something profound or sentimental but if you're looking for that you might be disappointed.

         We spent the last two nights in Florida at a hotel but right up until the last minute were fixing things around our house. When you marry someone with a master’s in Historic Preservation, it's accepted that you'll live in a house with some years on it and constant maintenance is part of the equation. If, like me, you lack competence in the use of tools and/or have no patience, it's going to cost you.

                    But that's not what I'm going to talk about today. Instead, I've been thinking, among other things, about one of our last meals in Florida, possibly due to the contrast with our new home. The day before we left, we had breakfast at a Cracker Barrel, mainly because it was right across the street from the hotel (a Hilton) and would be a whole lot cheaper. Cynthia and I used to eat at these places a lot as we were travelling from our home in New Jersey to visit her folks in Louisiana. It’s always struck me that these “Country Cookin’” pushers are a pretty good example of what America is all about, at least for some people– the food is cheap and plentiful and a gauntlet of down home Made in China crap is arrayed so that it is impossible to walk straight to either the hostess station or the restroom. And as an aid to digestion, country music is piped throughout.

            Cracker Barrels also seem to serve as a place where the morbidly obese can freely mingle with their own. Whoever made the remark about feeling thin by hanging around larger folks must have been here. I’m no lightweight myself but I’ve never left a CB feeling anything less than anorexic.

            And there always seems to be a big family containing at least one member who is so severely mentally handicapped or old and senile as to have no idea which end is up. You never see these people come in and never see them leave - they are simply there.  I’ve often wondered if this is where country folk come to abandon family members they can no longer care for. “I mean everyone seemed so nice and all I just knowed  they’d take care a Mamaw.”

           
            Along these same lines, during our 8-hour layover at London's Gatwick Airport, a fate that should at all costs be avoided, I couldn’t help noticing that a substantial number of our fellow loiterers bore a striking resemblance to Marty Feldman, the late English comedian. One can, however, avoid having to spend too much time with the unwashed by paying a substantial fee to instead lay about one of a couple of very nice lounges. While there, we were reminded that, because of PBS and things like Masterpiece Theatre, Americans have this idea that TV in the UK is vastly superior to our own. One of the lounges large screens was tuned to a channel that covered what appeared to be a half marathon from beginning to end, including the packs of colorful stragglers. It was on for at least two and a half hours that I noticed and reinforced the idea that anyone who could sit and watch about a dozen guys running along a road, who looked like they’d just survived an African famine, would have no trouble watching any of the crap on American TV or a show about drying paint.

            
            By the time we finally got to Bordeaux and checked in to where we’ll be staying for at least a month, it was getting to be late Sunday. In the USA, we are used to things being open at all hours and so it is never any trouble to find food, even if you’re reduced to eating at McDonald’s. Here things are a little different and we were worried about being able to find something open. But when you are in the company of a discriminating palate, a restaurant can’t merely still be open on a Sunday night, it must be open and pass muster. After passing Moroccan, Japanese, Indian and Chinese places, we finally came upon a great pizza place we had tried on our last visit and Cynthia’s life was spared.

            
           It was nearly 10 by the time we sat down and one of the first things I noticed was, unlike Florida, we were not one of the youngest couples at a table. We might have, in fact, been the oldest.  Peppone’s serves real Italian pizza pies that, unlike their American cousins, are sized for one person. And in contrast to Cracker Barrel, the average customer was sized smaller as well.

             I’m not sure what the ideal length for a blog post should be but this is probably enough anyway. Next time, I’ll let you know how it went opening a bank account and expound upon the danger of France sinking under the weight of dog shit.