HOBBYHORSING AROUND, THE GREATEST GENERATION, DRUNK DRIVING AND MORE: #23

 

THE GREATEST GENERATION

Friends were taking the ferry from the UK to  France and came across these gents headed for D Day ceremonies. They represent the best of us. If there is such a thing as valor in the ugliness that is war, they are the case study. There's nothing more that needs to be said.

DRUNK DRIVING

I would guess that not many of the boys in that photo are still driving. Certainly not driving and drinking. But consider the case of Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton. Drivers for Jaguar at Le Mass in the 50s, their car was disqualified the day before the race on a technicality. Both men spent the entire night drowning their sorrows in traditional alcohol-fueled fashion only to discover as they greeted the dawn that Jaguar had successfully appealed and their car was ready to go, almost as well-oiled as they were. Twenty-four hours of racing with no sleep and with a raging buzz on lay ahead. As they got ready, they realized that the traditional hangover remedies weren't working. So they tried the last one, hair of the dog. They downed a bottle of brandy and went racing.

They won, I suppose that it proves that there are times when a lack of inhibitions is essential to victory. True story. Google 'Drunk Le Mans' and learn more.

COMPETITIVE HOBBYHORSING

No foolin'. It's a thing. Associations. Governing bodies. Rules. Judging for style and creativity. National championships in several countries. 

They jump fences, they trot and they prance. They push to make hobbyhorsing an Olympic sport. And yes, it's not just kids. The most serious ones are adults.

I have said it before and I will say it again. You can't make shit like that up.

CAITLIN CLARK

Yes. I'm paying a bit of attention to the WNBA because I do love basketball. It's an interesting moment in their sport - maybe the Bird/Magic moment.  I remember how Bill Russel, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek sucked me into men's basketball in the 1960s. We'll see if Caitlin and Angel Reese and the rest of the league can suck in today's generation. 

If I had to guess, I would guess that no matter how good Clark or Reese or any other WNBA player becomes, attendance at WNBA games will diminish over time but settle at better than pre-Clark levels. Think of women's soccer. Even after winning World Cups with some highly visible and compelling athletes to market, league attendance increases over the past decade were driven almost entirely by opening new franchises in more soccer-friendly locales. 

There just are not enough eyes on the WNBA to lift it to major league status. 

CLICKBAIT ABOUT FOOD IN PARIS 

I thought that I saw an interesting article to read in BBC's Good Food newsletter. I was wrong. 

The article was titled Top 20 Foods to Try in Paris. The subtitle was 20 Local Food (sic) to Eat in Paris. 14 of the 20 were generic dishes that are available to me in our little village of 1,750 souls, 800 kilometers from Paris. Baguettes? Eclairs? Steak/frites? Duck confit? Really? Those are not local to Paris. They are foods that are French. Period. Most of the rest of the list had at least some merit - a particular chocolatier, a particular pâtissier, a particular cocktail in a particular bar.

 

Content. Websites need content. Any content will do. The internet has become a dumping ground for lousy writing about inane subjects as vehicles for eyes on advertising. Please. More cat videos. Less crap.

MUSLIM DEATHS AND DISPLACEMENTS

Do you know how many Muslims have been killed, how many Muslim children have starved, how many refugees have been displaced, during the civil war in Syria? 600,000 dead. 80,000 children starved to death, 5,000,000 refugees. Now you know.

Pakistan is preparing send back nearly 1,000,000 refugees from Afghanistan. What do you suppose that the Taliban will do to those folks? Did you even know that many refugees had fled the Taliban into Pakistan in the first place?

Is Sudan on track to become another Somalia? Both countries are Islamic states. Both countries are failed states, tens of thousands dead, millions displaced. 

Who marches against Muslim on Muslim violence? Apparently, violence against Muslims is only worth notice if there are Jews involved.

A TASTE OF LOCAL CULTURAL EVENTS: COST OF LIVING IN FRANCE #4

In the USofA, we lived in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metropolitan area. The State Theater in Easton brought in class acts like Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Beach Boys and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. The century-old, award-winning Bach Choir of Bethlehem is known worldwide. Allentown Symphony Hall supports an orchestra of reasonable repute. Local universities provide an impressive array of concert opportunities. And tiny Godfrey Daniels Coffee House in Bethlehem has hosted artists from Tom Paxton and Townes Van Zandt to John Sebastian and Peter Tork to James Cotton and Odetta in a venue barely seating 100 folkies, 

But we were going to live in the rural, politically very conservative south of France. We knew that big cities were not that far away. And sure enough. ZZ Top, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen have all recently toured within a drive of two or three hours. to Barcelona and Marseilles or Toulouse. The ticket prices are as you would expect, a couple of hundred USD and up. Same for the opera in Paris - 200USD for a world-class performance of Tosca. Would we have to travel that far just to hear less expensive sounds of music? We quickly learned otherwise. 

Cases in point:

Built about 900 years ago, nestled in woods and fields well off any main road, Chapelle Saint-Germain hosts an annual summer concert series. This year, beginning in July and spaced two or three weeks apart through early September, five concerts are on tap in the small Roman chapel with a dirt floor and about 100 mismatched lawn chairs. Programs range from Bach sonatas presented by the Baroque Ensemble of Toulouse, 15 artists when at full strength, to the Ensemble L'Archerona string trio plus soprano presenting sonatas from the less well-known 17th Century German composer Johann Michael Nicolai. Tickets run about 17.50USD per performance and there's a free tasting of wines from the domain on which the chapel sits.

At the other end of the scale, Catalan conductor/composer/instrumentalist Jordi Savall helms a concert series in the magnificent Cistercian Abbey Fontfroid not far from us. A Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, a UNESCO Artist for Peace, and a Grammy winner, Savall specializes in Early Music but has presented snippets of world music and blues as components of his annual five-night series. Tickets for one evening of this one-of-a-kind series are running between 50 and 60USD this year.

But I don't want to leave you with the impression that the only music available to us locally in our little corner of France was composed hundreds of years ago. Down the road, in a concert series scheduled for the courtyard of the abbey in Saint Chinian, French sisters will present modern and traditional Celtic music. (Celtic influence in Europe ranges from southern Spain to Scandinavia.) Pianist Marc Olivier Poingt, who has collaborated with the likes of Lee Ritenour (American jazz), Omar Sosa (Cuban jazz) and Gilberto Gil (Brazilian jazz), will play solo. And the Duo Yakaira will lend their piano and accordion to Argentinian tango. Tickets for the series run from 20USD to a suggested minimum contribution of 8USD.

But I don't want to leave you with the impression that the only places to hear music locally are churches. While it's true that churches that are centuries old are particularly satisfactory venues for all sorts of music due to having been designed before the age of electronic amplification, they are not the only concert venues. We've heard New Orleans jazz performed by local French musicians on a boat moored in a canal down the road (free with a food order), Latin jazz played by a skilled combo from Toulouse while nestled among tanks of fermenting juice in a local winery (11USD donation suggested), a bad jazz trio performing on a stage next to a burger joint in a campground on the beautiful Gorge d'Heric (free with food order), and have heard various members of The Gypsy Kings perform twice, once on the lawn of a local chateau (free) and once during a fundraiser in the next town's community room (27.50USD). If you didn't know, The Gypsy Kings are French and the extended family comes from the area of Montpelier, about an hour away.

But I don’t want to leave you with the impression that the only cultural outings are music concerts. The cultural arm of regional government also supports children’s shows, magicians, comedians, acrobats, plays and readings. Of course, most is in French, so you will miss nuance if you are not fully fluent. But like reading the newspaper, listening to radio or watching television, exposing yourself to the language in multiple contexts enhances one’s ability to speak and understand your new language.

And I haven’t even mentioned the winery that hosted Nina Simone’s daughter Lisa or the little seaside music festival about an hour away that often has Sting on the bill.

So...

There are cultural opportunities aplenty. All genres. All prices. Locally and in the cities. Never fear. Even in the relative sticks where we live, the French, like Grace Slick, urge you to feed your head.

BIOLUMINESCENT PETUNIAS, MET GALA, MESSI AND MORE: #22

 ODD STUFF

I read. It's silly of me. But I read.

In Rhode Island, it is illegal to wear transparent clothing. So no Met Gala in Rhode Island.

A repeat attempt by the city of Kyle, Texas, to break the world record for the largest gathering of people with one name fell short despite 706 Kyles turning up at a park in that suburb of Austin. The current Guinness record is held by a town in Bosnia that got 2,325 people named Ivan together in 2017. 

And finally, an 81 year-old man has been arrested for busting up windows and windshields in his neighborhood for the past ten years with ball bearings fired from a slingshot. Get off his lawn! 

EDIT: Shortly after his arrest, the gentleman in question died of a heart attack. We'll never know...

BIOLUMINESCENT PETUNIAS

Lede: Scientists from the US, the UK and Russia walk into a bar.

Punch Line: Bioluminescent Petunias.

And there you have it. For a mere 29USD, a garden variety petunia that glows in the dark will be delivered to your door. Spliced genetically with a bioluminescent mushroom, the petunias need no special handling and glow naturally, whether in a light or dark environment. They don't need 'charging'  and they'll glow all night long. That way, you will be constantly reminded that whatever a person can think of, a person can do. And another person will pay for it.

MESSI'S NAPKIN

Speaking of paying for something, a 25 year-old napkin covered with the scribbled terms of a proposed contract with a 13 year-old Lionel Messi sold for just under $1,000,000 recently. There's too much money in the world.

AND FURTHERMORE 

I'm a coward. A visiting friend called the war in Gaza genocide. I said that there were probably war crimes being committed, but not genocide. She said that it was genocide and that perhaps we shouldn't talk about. And in the interest of domestic tranquility, I said, "Okay." 

I'm a coward.

NEWS FLASH

Guilty! Random thoughts:

 

*He'll never go to jail. 

*The Supreme Court will not exonerate him directly. If a lower court vacates the verdict, they simply won't agree to take New York's appeal. If the matter comes before them with the guilty verdict intact, SCOTUS will find a way to return the matter to a sympathetic court that will vacate the verdict, then refuse to take New York's appeal. At some point during the process. Elena's keyboard will burst into flames.

* He will probably be elected President in 2024.

* He will probably not be elected President in 2024.

* The above is not a contradiction. The 2024 election will be such a hot mess that there's no telling who will have won and who lost. 

* Macron is my President.