On Sunday morning I drove down to the Kroger's for some Doritos and a half-rack of Bud Lite so that I wouldn't show up empty-handed to the Super Bowl party over at Philippe and Étienne's place. Also, because I knew that their friend Laurent was a huge Saints fan, I figured I'd balance things out by cheering extra-loud for the Colts while wearing a throwback Johnny Unitas jersey. But, damn it, the local Foot Locker and even the NFL memorabilia outlet store in Avignon were all sold out of Unitas, and Art Schlichter too, so I had to settle for a pair of Mike Pagel pants instead. That put me in a bad mood. And then I drank way too much of Philippe's sister's Jägermeister-and-grape-juice punch. By the time the fourth quarter started, I'd already broken one of Étienne's commemorative Little League World Series mugs, chipped another, and spilled a pitcher of strawberry daiquiris all over his cousin Pascal's taco salad. It still might've been okay, I think, until I told that crude joke about Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and the guy who played Horshack on "Welcome Back Kotter." That was it. Étienne cut me off. Philippe started yelling at me. His sister damn near punched me. They wouldn't even let me stick around for the end of the game. At about the time that Peyton Manning threw that comeback-killing interception and the "Who Dat!" cheers started echoing through the cobbled streets, I was stumbling to my knees in an ancient alleyway and vomiting all over the back bumper of somebody's Citroën.
Okay, actually, that's a lie. All of it. Even the vomiting part. Especially the vomiting part. Total fiction. Nobody here cares about the Colts or the Saints or the Super Bowl. They don't even care about "Welcome Back Kotter," as near as I can tell.
What I really did was this: I walked with Jasper down the street to the local cinema to catch a Sunday afternoon showing of "Max et les Maximonstres."
The movie theatre (although it'd be more accurate to call it a "movie room") is in a sort of multi-purpose municipal building called La Grainage. We'd been there once before to investigate one of the elaborate and long-lasting bingo events that seems to happen every weekend. Yes: bingo. It seemed suddenly like I was spending a sabbatical at a senior center in Boca Raton. Darn near the entire population of Cotignac was there, filling out their 5-Euro-apiece cards with the hope of winning computer equipment or electric animals or baskets full of wine and cheese. I left quickly, but Quincy and Maddox and Jasper stuck around for several hours. Jasper managed two cards at a time, and then a third, and then five at a time after Maddox turned over his cards to her. She's precocious, Jasper is, with the enthusiastic bingo skills of someone 10 times her age. Didn't win anything though.
Actually, given the time difference, the Super Bowl didn't even start until it was already after midnight and into Monday morning here in France. So, what'd we do on Super Bowl Monday? We went for a little family hike – through the village, past the soccer field and the skate park, along the path of the penitents through the woods to the top of the hill, to la Santuaire Marial Notre-Dame de Grâces. It's been around ever since the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to some local lumberjack back in 1519, and it's a very big deal place for pilgrimages – especially pilgrimages by women who are keen to conceive. Some lady from Austria famously made her way here in the 1600's and then proceeded to give blessed birth to Louis XIV. There's now a whole wall adorned with tiles – hundreds of them – engraved with thanks from parents whose prayers have been similarly answered. I may be an atheist, but I'm also I'm a sucker for heartfelt piety and uplifting architecture. It's a pretty cool place.
There was some sort of Monday morning mass going on inside the church, while nearby a couple of guys with chainsaws noisily destroyed a dying tree. We sat outside and ate a picnic lunch (baguette, goat cheese, dried sausages and apples; also pretzel stix). At one point during our picnic some old guy in flowing robes – the local Bishop, I believe – ambled by accompanied by a cat. "He is my friend," the Bishop said in French, and he hopped up onto Quincy's lap and she stroked him lovingly behind his ears. (I'm talking about the cat here, by the way; not the Bishop.)
The Bishop seemed to be in an exceptionally upbeat mood and when I asked him why, he said that he'd placed a big bet on the Saints the day before and so had won a ton on the Super Bowl. Not only that, he'd also cleared a tidy profit on a ridiculous prop bet involving the halftime show, Pete Townshend, and a porkpie hat. He was such a good-natured fellow that one thing led to another and before you knew it I was telling him my raunchy existentialist / Horshack joke. He laughed like a hyena, which is more than I can say for that jackass Étienne and Philippe and his goddam mirthless sister.
Okay, yeah, I made up that last bit. That whole last paragraph isn't true. But the rest of it is. And the good folks at Notre-Dame de Grâces really do appear to be a culturally savvy lot. They have a surprisingly sophisticated website, for instance, on which the latest Message from the Bishop starts off like this: "Today the internet is an indispensable means for the apostolate."
Okay, actually, that's a lie. All of it. Even the vomiting part. Especially the vomiting part. Total fiction. Nobody here cares about the Colts or the Saints or the Super Bowl. They don't even care about "Welcome Back Kotter," as near as I can tell.
What I really did was this: I walked with Jasper down the street to the local cinema to catch a Sunday afternoon showing of "Max et les Maximonstres."
The movie theatre (although it'd be more accurate to call it a "movie room") is in a sort of multi-purpose municipal building called La Grainage. We'd been there once before to investigate one of the elaborate and long-lasting bingo events that seems to happen every weekend. Yes: bingo. It seemed suddenly like I was spending a sabbatical at a senior center in Boca Raton. Darn near the entire population of Cotignac was there, filling out their 5-Euro-apiece cards with the hope of winning computer equipment or electric animals or baskets full of wine and cheese. I left quickly, but Quincy and Maddox and Jasper stuck around for several hours. Jasper managed two cards at a time, and then a third, and then five at a time after Maddox turned over his cards to her. She's precocious, Jasper is, with the enthusiastic bingo skills of someone 10 times her age. Didn't win anything though.
Actually, given the time difference, the Super Bowl didn't even start until it was already after midnight and into Monday morning here in France. So, what'd we do on Super Bowl Monday? We went for a little family hike – through the village, past the soccer field and the skate park, along the path of the penitents through the woods to the top of the hill, to la Santuaire Marial Notre-Dame de Grâces. It's been around ever since the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to some local lumberjack back in 1519, and it's a very big deal place for pilgrimages – especially pilgrimages by women who are keen to conceive. Some lady from Austria famously made her way here in the 1600's and then proceeded to give blessed birth to Louis XIV. There's now a whole wall adorned with tiles – hundreds of them – engraved with thanks from parents whose prayers have been similarly answered. I may be an atheist, but I'm also I'm a sucker for heartfelt piety and uplifting architecture. It's a pretty cool place.
There was some sort of Monday morning mass going on inside the church, while nearby a couple of guys with chainsaws noisily destroyed a dying tree. We sat outside and ate a picnic lunch (baguette, goat cheese, dried sausages and apples; also pretzel stix). At one point during our picnic some old guy in flowing robes – the local Bishop, I believe – ambled by accompanied by a cat. "He is my friend," the Bishop said in French, and he hopped up onto Quincy's lap and she stroked him lovingly behind his ears. (I'm talking about the cat here, by the way; not the Bishop.)
The Bishop seemed to be in an exceptionally upbeat mood and when I asked him why, he said that he'd placed a big bet on the Saints the day before and so had won a ton on the Super Bowl. Not only that, he'd also cleared a tidy profit on a ridiculous prop bet involving the halftime show, Pete Townshend, and a porkpie hat. He was such a good-natured fellow that one thing led to another and before you knew it I was telling him my raunchy existentialist / Horshack joke. He laughed like a hyena, which is more than I can say for that jackass Étienne and Philippe and his goddam mirthless sister.
Okay, yeah, I made up that last bit. That whole last paragraph isn't true. But the rest of it is. And the good folks at Notre-Dame de Grâces really do appear to be a culturally savvy lot. They have a surprisingly sophisticated website, for instance, on which the latest Message from the Bishop starts off like this: "Today the internet is an indispensable means for the apostolate."
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