The great pine tar scandal

Speaking of football, which I wasn't. Tech's season got under way last night with a 41-14 drubbing and decimation of Jacksonville State. The game was as exciting as the score would indicate. You probably didn't know and will have been no worse off having not known that JSU's quarterback's last name was and presumably still is Perrilloux. He's from Louisiana and a possibly drunk wise-acre sitting nearby insisted on calling him Perrilloser. The wit. This, as one might imagine, was amusing precisely once. The exception to the Perrilloser rule being when he was sacked. Nothing if not adaptive and resourceful, wise-acre then changed the jeer to Perrillized. I can only pray this would-be Don Rickles sits near us the rest of the year. Oh boy.

Jacksonville State, who am from Alabama, waved the flag of the old Soviet Union at halftime. I'd have thought this some clever comment on the the current Russian invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia had Jax State been from anywhere besides Alabama. Snap.

Of course Alabama did give us the great Sun Ra. He always maintained he was from Saturn. One can hardly blame him. Double snap.

Not wishing to waste an evening otherwise spent practising French on such a boorish competition, I carried my Rosetta Stone cd to soundtrack the drive. This thrilled my traveling companion, dear old Dad. Somehow the monotony of alternating male/female voices repeating such bon mots--J'ecrive, Il ecrive,Je lit, Il lit, Combien de fleurs rouges,etc.--combined with the monotony of the road made Papa Bear very sleepy. I was impressed and more than a little relieved that I didn't have much trouble picking up on the words.

Figuring I was blowing my Dad away with my translation skills--I write, He writes, I read, He reads, How many red flowers, etc.--I glance over for confirmation. Zzzzzz. Apparently, he fell asleep before he even closed the cd case. How sweet and touching.

I laid on the horn to wake him up.

A spot of good news last night was that we'll be leaving for London from Paris instead of Bayeaux. (There's a giant blanket in Bayeaux or some such. I keed.) What does this mean to you, dear reader? Absolutely nothing. To us it means we get to take the high speed and all around awesome Eurostar again. Bitchin. One of my favorite moments of our trip in 1997 was the blur of the French countryside from my window at 180 mph with OK Computer blasting in my ears. Fitter. Happier. More productive.

These are not insured benefits

Congrats to Bonnie and her superb translation skills. Or perhaps more accurately, her superb use of a French-English dictionary. As a prize I might tell some random Parisian, " Bonnie dit salut et espère que vous aimez votre magazine."

For any that might be wondering, this blog's name has no hidden meaning nor is it a reference to some obscure band, film, book or otherwise cryptic notion. Rather it was the first nonsensical word I thought. Some might say it's a chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella. But that would be weird.

Anyway...

Without really verbalizing it, we stumbled into dividing up the pre-departure tasks for the three of us.

1. Andy is planning most of the excursions and handling reservations. He apparently enjoys the details since he always gets saddled with them. Or perhaps he simply knows my planning would consist of mapping a path from record store A to book store A to record store B to book store B.
2. I'm brushing up on my french. Read: Trying to relearn as much as I can in a couple of months.
3. Our Dad's task is to agree with everything I say and take naps. Thus far, he has come through like the true champion he is: the Michael Phelps of siestas. Though I'm sure Mark Spitz will say he is still better.

For reasons still unknown I majored in journalism in college. While I met some decent enough folk, the biggest lesson I learned was that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the world of journalism as it was then. I say then because like so many other facets of modern life, the internet has radically changed that whole field; the 24-hour news cycle is now even less than Warhol's 15 minutes. If that's for better or worse is a discussion for another blog somewhere else.

Nevertheless, one of the more better elements of my chosen major was that I was required to take 4 classes of a foreign language. I chose French.

In the mid-90's, fresh from his crushing one-two punch of Green Card and 1492, Gérard Depardieu's (the French Jack Nicholson) U.S. popularity was getting dangerously out of control. In fairness, the pull of a tubby dude whom most Americans can't understand cannot be overstated. Just ask Meat Loaf.

Regardless, the imminent arrival of his latest opus, My Father the Hero, figured to put our Gerry over the top and send the U.S. into willing subservience of the French master. Beret factories went into overdrive; accordion teachers still mourning the death of Lawrence Welk believed their moment had arrived. Most pointy-heads had already taken to using the french, Etats Unis, when referring to this grand land. Vive la France! So I hedged my bets that learning French would be far more useful to a rural Georgian. I mean, no Mexican laborer would ever come here. Right?

It is with this backdrop that I took my final French class in the the autumn of 1995.

This was actually my fifth class and focused on the good peoples of Quebec. They love their French heritage there and every so often attempt to break away from Canada proper and its general, Anglican/American bad self. Thus far the only major success any of these 'revolutions' has had was kicking the baseball team out of Montreal, which seems about right. I digress.

For all five of these classes I had the same professor (hey, Dr. Blanchard wherever you are) and enjoyed them. Alas, my skills never seemed to progress far beyond being able to comfortably carry on a conversation with l'enfant de six ans. For the Quebec class the prof and I both knew I was in over my head--this was a senior level class for French majors--but she took it easy on me. I became the comic relief for the rest of the class or so I assume since they were always speaking french. I was grateful and with a very generously rendered A in hand I vowed never to think of France again. Much like the rest of the world.

Then I got interested in French cinema. And my pal MB took some continuing ed French classes. I was embarrassed that with all my classes I couldn't even understand if she just asked for some water. So I vowed to learn again. This was 7 or 8 years ago. I made little progress which is to say none at all other than working my way through the French New Wave--favorite-Alphaville, biggest snoozefest-Jules and Jim--and discovering the awesome world of French prog--favorites-Heldon, Lard Free, Aqsak Maboul

And then suddenly we decide to visit France and Andy figures I've got the most background of the three of us. Make it so. A few weeks ago I signed up with Rosetta Stone and away I went. Every night I put on my little headphones and listen diligently to how sad the girl is because her umbrella is broken, or how happy the little boy is that gets to eat cake. Empathy being one of my stronger points I often find myself weeping along with that shivering girl and laughing with the gluttonous boy. La tristesse, la joie.

After three weeks of this sort of thing, assuming everyone in France is/is not: buying a ladder, wearing a hat, eating bread, asking me how I am, what my name is or if I'm hot/cold, we shouldn't have any trouble once we get there.

None.

Did you say Jay Ferguson?

Before I go any further allow me to point out to whom it may concern that I merely said "stand by for fun." I did not give a time table for nor suggest how said fun may reveal itself. It will just happen. Like the old axiom says, "Jesus is coming, look busy." Not comparing myself to our Lord and Savior, just sayin'.

I suppose I should lay out some of the details of how exactly the whole trip came about. As most of you know I have a brother, Andy. As most of you probably also know he is somewhat of a Georgia Tech fan. Somewhat. Home game attendance is expected and it's not uncommon for him, and sometimes me, to travel far and wide to see our beloved Jackets win and occasionally lose. We (he) specifically makes a point to attend away games at stadiums to which we've never been. Ostensibly, to cross off another school but really just to get another team's souvenir cups (best-UNC, worst-Duke's cheap paper ones). This season it just so happens that Tech will be playing at Boston College. Next week actually. We, along with our Dad, will be there because, well, who wouldn't want to fly to Boston for a football game and then come right back.***

So over the course of mapping out that particular trip the comment was made about it would be nice to go to Normandy and just turn the Boston trip into a brief world tour. You know, because leaving from Boston would shave +/- 3 hours off the flight. Europe is practically the next town over anyway.

Caught up in our delusions, we forgot that:

1. Andy is married and has yet to saw through the newly applied ball and chain.
2. We're swell people who love all of God's creatures. However, Delta, the finer hotels of the world and the tackier gift shops therein generally do not extend charity to us.

Ignoring such trivialities, we carried on plotting and eventually "wouldn't it be nice?" turned into "why not?" and here we are.

Not being privy to the inner workings of Andy's domestic bliss I can only guess Millicent (a.k.a. the fake name of Andy's real wife) was told of his plans. The following is merely a guess.

Andy: "I'm going to England/France with Daddy and Jeremy. You can't go because England only lets in three people at a time these days. Plus, we don't want you to.

Millicent: "That's okay. I need to work anyway."

Andy: "Yes you do. And since I won't be here you might as well work overtime. Fetch me my pipe and slippers."


***Andy's preferred method of attack for away football games: fly up the morning of the game or night before if a noon start, get rental car, drive from airport to stadium which may or may not be on campus, ooh/aah at the city/countryside on the way, find parking space, sit in car with radio on eating lunch/snack, walk to stadium, cheer/jeer at game, walk back to car, leave parking space to go to airport, ooh/aah at the city/countryside from the other side of the road on the way, return rental car, fly home and be back in time to watch the Saturday night games. Assuming Tech wins, this would be Andy's perfect day.

A couple of favorites from these trips:

1. Making 3 trips to Washington D.C. over one football season, seeing Dulles Airport and its awesome mobile homes with dorsal fins that double as transports and precisely nothing else of our nation's capital besides the beltway leading to/from.
2. Taking a day trip to NYC that consisted of attending the game and coming home 12 hours later. I even have a photographic evidence.

Perhaps you are jealous of my jet setting past. Never fear, this is natural. I understand.

déjà-vu all over again

So The Mailbox apparently closed for good. It was a good ride and there's all sorts of completely useless info about all sorts of completely useless things that are still there if one cares to relive the good ol' days of mispent snarkdom. Like The Monkees and ABC sang in entirely different songs: that was then but this now.

"What is now?" I presumed you, dear reader, would ask if you were here. As of right now (ho, ho), Now is an idea to document the preparation, execution and afterglow of my upcoming trip to France and England (Sept. 25-Oct. 3, 2008). Or at least the portions I feel the need to send into the ether. To put another way, if The Mailbox was the minutiae of my life in general. This blog will be the minutiae of the minutiae. Fun word that: minutiae. Say it and sound all pretentious not unlike...the French. I keed.

While the intent is to focus on the trip, I suspect my inability to ignore the world around me will mean myriad postings about myriad topics. Regardless, one can look forward to posts that are hopefully more entertaining than this first day of school one. For a schedule, I will try to post at least every couple of days. Plus ou moins.

A brief word about my blog title. For Bonnie's sake I will not reveal the English translation. However, I am certain that if you bright people found this site you can probably find a French dictionary somewhere on the internets. No Kathy it's not a rude word but my original, and preferred, title was.

Finally, feel free to leave comments though do not expect them to be read. Again, I keed. The email address, whatsfrench@gmail.com , provided at the top of the page is active. However, I would suggest using the address you've always used to contact me. This decision, like whether or not to wear a coat, is ultimately yours.

Stand by for fun.