Bonjour, Mes Amis!

Howdy. The Kooze (thanks, comment poster, whoever you are – I prefer this spelling to my own) and Brandisova – er, Vaidisova (I’ll explain later) are locked in mortal combat at 2-2 in the first, and I’ve just spent the last hour trying to clean up some of the goons comments on previous posts. It’s a drag having some of these clowns around, and we’re shortly getting some new software that will enable us to monitor this stuff in a more effective – and timely – manner.

Had a great dinner at the Le Palais Royal café, inside the square at Palais Royal last night, with a few pals. Chris Clarey was in charge, as he married a French girl, speaks the language, and has lived in Europe for a good part of the past decade (he’s back in the states now).

Chris makes a great effort to introduce his friends to his favorite Parisian haunts and beauties of the city, and I’m very thankful for it. I just found out that our press badge gets us in – free – to any museum in Paris. So if I get some free time, I’m going to make a beeline for the NASCAR Museum; I always wanted to see a scale model of Talladega!

Actually, there are two good restaurants inside the Palais Royal,the cafe and Le Restaurant Palais Royal, which is an off-the- charts fine, four-star-plus joint. Place I would approach expecting somebody to take a shot at me (begone, etranger!). I guess there are benefits to the restrictive gun laws here; no way those fussy maitre’d’s are getting carry permits!

The Cafe was great; we sat inside (outside, where you can gaze at the symmetrical rows of trees and watch the idling locals play the bocce-like game, Petanque). The restaurant had two things I like: lots of room (I sat on an overstuffed leather couch/banquette, half-expecting to be fed grapes) and a very welcoming, friendly staff.

All in all, my new digs are working out. At first, I was reluctant to leave the little Rive Gauche hotel where I’ve stayed for so many years. I figured I’d miss the unrelenting dirty looks I regularly ilicited from the terminally disgruntled Albanian breakfast water, the perky but dimwitted front-desk manageress (messages? Oh, we never write them down. Would you like a truffle, Monsieur Bodo?), and - of course! – that 40-pound hunk of brass that was attached (permanently – trust me, I tested it) to my room key.

The key itself was a rough, L-shaped hunk of iron originally meant to open the drawbridge at Count Dracula’s Carpathian castle, not a six-foot by four-foot catbox of a room!

Besides, if I moved, where was I going to run? I was used to taking my morning jog down along the Rue Bonaparte, then, past les Bouquinistes, down to the Seine, where I rolled along the left bank, down to the Eiffel Tower before turning around.

I hate scouting for a new place to run!

Well, it turns out that our apartment is close to the Seine, and my run would take me along the river and still on the left bank, but going upstream, not down. So it turned out that the midpoint of my customary 45-minute jog, where I turned around, was almost exactly at the same point that I used to reach previously, coming from the other direction.

How’s that for synchronicity? My impoverished soul filled to the brim with an overpowering sense of the Yin-and-Yang of existence; I felt so hippy-dippy in a post-modern European but somewhat early Grateful Dead Zen acid kind of way that I nearly wept for joy.

Then, on the cool down walk home, I stopped by the supermarket. I don’t have any more money so I’m going to have to eat bread and cheese at the apartment. You know my motto, "Fly high, crash hard, leave no dental records!"

In the meats section, I picked up lovely cow's heart the size of my fist, wrapped in plastic. I thought of taking it home to boil up for dinner, but I don’t really know if you’re supposed to eat the ventricle or not, so I figured I’d better stick with a nice stinky cheese and a sociable but inarticulate Sauvignon Blanc.

You know what’s kind of funny? The clerks in the markets here don’t bag your food at check out. You feel kind of stupid, standing there with a pile of groceries between you and the checkout lady, who’s looking at you with an expression that says, “If you think I’m bagging your stupid horse heart and calf’s brains, you’ve got another think coming!”

It’s a hard habit to break, having your groceries bagged for you. But, as they say here, it’s a tough job, but nobody has to do it.

Vaidisova totally collapsed against the Kooze – full report after the pressers. Justine and Champagne Kimmy are just getting rolling. Later.