Note…4/29…next BC Monday, May 3. But, regarding the Kentucky Derby, unfortunately, our pony, Lookin At Lucky, drew the rail. No horse has won from that position since 1986. No horse has finished in the money from the rail since 1988. In other words, folks, as trainer Bob Baffert put it:
"He\’s got to break well. Plan A is to break well. Plan B is we\’re screwed."
Drat!
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[From the beautiful Hyatt Regency Hotel, at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris…your server is Diane]
Baseball Quiz: The top five pitchers in career shutouts are old-timers…Walter Johnson, 110; Grover Alexander, 90; Christy Mathewson, 79; Cy Young, 76; Eddie Plank, 69. But the next five on the list all threw in the modern era. Four of ‘em are in the Hall of Fame. Name these esteemed hurlers. Answer below.
Just Stuff
Folks, I’m beat. It’s been a long trip and I have to admit I can’t wait to get back home after two weeks to get into a normal routine again. So you’ll have to excuse this abbreviated chat.
I actually had a terrific flight Saturday afternoon from Beirut to Paris on Air France, the smoothest four hours I’ve ever experienced, and the visibility was super, the better to see places like Cyprus, Turkey and a great look at the Alps. Us window seat guys live for this. In fact we flew over Salzburg and I burst into song.
“Climb…Ev’ry…Moun-tain…
Ford…ev’ry stream….”
My seatmates didn’t exactly get a thrill out of this, nor did they when I performed the entire “So long…farewell…aufweiderzein good-bye…To you…and you…and you and you and you-uuu!”
I pretended our pilot was Max, securing the getaway. Or maybe it was the fine wine the lovely Air France flight attendants were serving me.
Anyway, often I stay at the airport Hyatt on my way back from Eastern Europe or the Middle East because it’s not only one of the more relaxing hotels of its kind, with a good bar/lounge and restaurant, but you have easy access to the train into Paris, about 50 minutes on the ‘local,’ and I like to head in just for a stroll and/or a museum.
So I check in Saturday night here at 9:00 and repair to the bar shortly thereafter to see if I can chat anyone up. The place is pretty dead on weekends but I met two delightful gentlemen, one of whom is from Seattle but has relocated to Dubai and is a pilot for Emirates Airways, while the other fellow grew up in Belgium but has been in Dubai as well for a long time. They had some terrific travel stories of their own, and observations, like on women around the world.
And so it only seems appropriate that I now officially revise my “Most Beautiful Women in the World” list, don’t you think? [Half my female audience just left me.]
1. And the new titleholder is…Lebanon!
2. Russia
3. Slovenia
4. Singapore
Now it just so happens that Steve and Jay have traveled quite a bit to Beirut, but while not disagreeing with my take at all, told me how many of the women there have had extensive work done.
Well I’ve gotta tell you, sports fans. This really doesn’t bother me, especially since I’m just looking. And on the topic of Icelandic women, they were surprised I was disappointed when I went there about a year ago, pre-ash.
Anyway, after many a Heineken for me, and some dark stuff and Corona for the other two (there’s Corona again!) I’m sticking with the above listing.
[In the age 50-55 category, French women win hands down. I had two of them as my flight attendants. But in the key 22-34 Bar Chat demographic (anything less and I could have legal issues), in Paris it’s the Vietnamese women who are tops, not the natives. There was also a surprising dearth of Russians in Paris. Kind of disappointing.]
Well I managed to get off to an early start today, Sunday, and hopped on the train into Paree. I first came here as a 10-year-old in 1968, which proved to be quite a summer of discontent in these parts. We did miss the major demonstrations and riots, however, that roiled the streets. I’ve probably been back about six times since, including some extended stays, and this isn’t your father’s Paris, that’s for sure. This place has changed, and not for the best.
You get a good idea in taking the train from the airport because you pass through the grimy, dirty, trash-filled suburbs, with few “Parisiens.” I’ll have a comment on the sociological impact in that other column I write at week’s end, but with each passing year that I roll through here, let’s just say it’s not improving in the least.
But I get off the train at the Notre Dame stop, where there is a big banner across the top of the cathedral that proclaims “Charlie Weis sucks!” OK, not really, but not that far-fetched, either.
Basically, what I like to do is just walk all the way from there up to the end of the Champs-Elysees and take in a few of the side streets. The weather was gorgeous but the people watching was disappointing, if you catch my drift. I think next April (the best month to come here) I’ll spend an entire week, do every museum and neighborhood I’ve ever wanted to, and then call it a day when it comes to this place.
And just a note on Lebanon since I last checked in. As I noted in my “Week in Review,” I did hook up after all with my contact, Michael Young, the opinion editor for the Daily Star newspaper. He said to meet him at a small fountain at the ABC Shopping Mall and at the appointed time he was right there. I’m forever grateful to Mr. Young for affording me the time. We had a heavy conversation and it was most useful to me. He also just wrote a book on his native land, “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square,” that received a terrific review in the Wall Street Journal last week so pick up a copy.
On the people-watching front, I really just walked a ton on Thursday and Friday in Beirut, exploring a few new areas. You would feel more threatened on the Paris trains than you would in many parts of Beirut. [But it’s still a totally unpredictable powder-keg.]
I also have to confess that I got some of the Arabs staying in my hotel to at least smile, a major breakthrough in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the suppliers of our precious crude. I may not deserve a Nobel Prize, but gosh darnit, I’ve done more to unite the world through beer than Obama has with his speeches!
That’s all on the travel front. Gotta get down to the lounge for a last brew or two shortly.
–But first, here’s an item from the Daily Star newspaper.
“SOFIA: Bulgarian customs agents at Sofia airport Friday netted an apparent illegal entry into the country: some 107 parrots in four cages that arrived from Lebanon. But these were no ordinary birds. They are African Grey Parrots from Gabon can fetch up to $2,400 on the black market.”
$2,400?! Actually, my former neighbor Marge had one and they are pretty cool. [Marge also spent something like $5,000 on the bird’s cancer surgery!]
–In the European edition of the Wall Street Journal, there’s a column titled “Safety first: security tips for women,” and this one ‘expert’ says that when taking a cab, girls, you should “put your luggage in the back seat with you and text somebody the taxi number, where you are going and what time you left. And that way somebody will know if something happens to you, where to start looking.”
Slightly paranoid, but the woman had a bad experience with a cabbie outside O’Hare Airport once.
She also says to do “a room search as soon as (you) walk into a hotel room. When you go into a hotel room, it’s a five point search. It’s the closet, the bathroom, under the bed, make sure the landline telephone works. If there should be a situation where you need to get to outside authorities, they will ask where you are and if you’re calling from your cellphone, nine out of 10 times you will not remember the address where you’re calling from. Make sure the locks are working as well.”
Geezuz. Glad I’m not traveling with this babe, though I do check all the spots mentioned for snakes, come to think of it.
–One of my favorite movies of all time is “The Train,” the movie about recovering the great art work that Hitler was trying to steal.
So there have been a number of stories in just the past week or so on classics that are turning up. The Journal had a bit on masterpieces by Cezanne, Picasso and others that are going on sale in June, after disappearing during World War II, and, in one instance, later being discovered in a Societe Generale vault. Sotheby’s is selling some of the works in auctions in London and Paris.
“According to Sotheby’s, the collection had been hastily deposited at Societe Generale in 1940 by Erich Slomovic, a Yugoslavian, before he fled Paris to escape the Nazis. Slomovic, who was Jewish, was killed by the Nazis in 1942, leaving the collection at the bank.”
Slomovic had the paintings on consignment from Ambroise Vollard, a gentleman who gave Picasso his first exhibition in 1901. Vollard died in a car crash in 1939.
The art in question remained hidden for 40 years and since being discovered has been out of sight as well, for it’s been tied up in the courts as to ownership and what can be legally sold.
–Paris has been the scene of a slew of bank robberies recently. In years past I’ve also written of some of the world’s biggest jewel heists taking place right off the Champs-Elysees where in broad daylight, armed gangs have barged in, knew exactly what they wanted, and made off with it.
But in the case of the bank robbers, one group has been dubbed the “Termites.” For a third time, this group has ‘bored’ into a bank vault, using “pickaxes, drills and flame throwers to tunnel into the buildings,” though the third time they set fire to the BNP Paribas branch and fled empty-handed.
A few weeks ago, over $30 million was stolen in similar fashion from a Credit Lyonnais bank, while the first such heist was back in January.
In the most recent, failed attempt, “It is believed the gang started…from a sewage system, digging up into the bank’s basement.”
“A police spokesman said: ‘The gang aborted the robbery and started a fire to destroy evidence. This set off an alarm and alerted police.”
They weren’t able to open safety deposit boxes but a pneumatic drill was found at the scene.
French authorities have compared this string of brazen attempts to that of Albert Spaggiari, who about 30 years ago, in Nice, led a gang that “tunneled into the vault of a branch of Societe Generale during a public holiday, spent two days and two nights there and made off with more than $30 million in cash and valuables.” [This became the basis behind many a book and movie…though I’m blanking out on the latter, probably because I don’t go to movies anymore…but I digress.]
–Here’s a piece I brought along for this segment of the trip, from the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s from a book, “What French Women Know About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of Heart and Mind,” by Debra Ollivier.
“Every French woman knows silence is sexy: speaking eliminates the desire. [Ed. Huh. Gotta work on my game in this regard.] To this day Ollivier can’t ask her husband about his youthful sexploits. ‘French women don’t need so much information,’ he tells her. Surely that grates? ‘Yes, but it’s the custom.’ Flip-side, her lips are zipped. ‘But with women, men don’t want to know.’”
How To Be A Femme Fatale
1. Flirt
2. Be opinionated…. “That John Maine. Relegate him to the bullpen.”
3. Argue
4. Make time for licentious naps…I nap all the time, but not always licentiously.
5. Have spontaneous sex…don’t know my new neighbors that well
6. Silence is sexy, old flame-talk is not
7. Sex toys are a turnoff
8. So is having too much money….Goldman Sachs men are soooo yesterday
9. Tolerate bad boy behavior…I can be a bad boy!
10. Sex on a first date, why not?……Oui oui!!!
–Some sports observations from afar.
Phil W. and I were very pleasantly surprised that Appalachian State’s Armanti Edwards was selected in the third round of the NFL draft by Carolina, though earlier the Panthers picked Notre Dame’s Jimmy Clausen so Edwards is in no way in Carolina’s QB plans outside of the wildcat. But who the hell knows 2 or 3 years from now. Things change.
I hope Tim Tebow, selected No. 25 by Denver, proves his critics wrong; and I just saw where Broncos coach Josh McDaniels said he is looking at Tebow solely as a QB.
[Wake Forest’s Brandon Ghee went in the third round to Cincy.]
Holy cow! I just saw that Eskendereya is out of the Kentucky Derby! That probably makes Lookin At Lucky, the official pony of Bar Chat, the favorite!
With Lebanon’s women now being ranked No. 1, I’m guessing MEA (Middle East Airlines) flight attendants are strong. [Wait, how did this get into sports bits?]
Well, it’s settled. Not 96 teams in the NCAA basketball tourney field, but 68, and few of us can have a problem with that at all. Plus from the regional semifinals on out, all the games will be shown live with CBS and TBS splitting the coverage. This is good.
What’s not good is 400 meter gold medalist LaShawn Merritt being suspended from competition for using a male enhancement product that is over the counter but which contains some steroid precursors. Merritt is duly embarrassed, though he should not be forced to give back his medal because the use was well after the Beijing Games.
[Speaking of track, don’t let me forget I have tickets to see Usain Bolt in June.]
Yes, all the way in Beirut there was a cry of anguish when the Pirates suffered their worst loss ever, 20-0, at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers.
–“The Black Eyed Peas” are in Dublin and London next week, in case you were so inclined to blow off work. “Boss, you know that project you wanted done May 5th? Can’t do it. Goin’ to see The Black Eyed Peas at the O2 in London….What? Clean out my desk?”
Top 3 songs for the week 4/24/82: #1 “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” (Joan Jett & The Blackhearts) #2 “We Got The Beat” (Go-Go’s) #3 “Chariots Of Fire – Titles” (Vangelis…absolutely dreadful)… and…#4 “Freeze-Frame” (The J. Geils Band) #5 “Don’t Talk To Strangers” (Rick Springfield) #6 “Ebony and Ivory” (Paul McCartney with Stevie Wonder…easily in the top ten ‘Worst Songs’ of all time…used to torture Taliban captives) #7 “Do You Believe In Love” (Huey Lewis and the News) #8 “Key Largo” (Bertie Higgins…blows) #9 “ ’65 Love Affair” (Paul Davis…this guy did some great tunes) #10 “867-5309/Jenny” (Tommy Tutone)
Baseball Quiz Answer: Nos. 6-10 on the all-time shutout list.
6. Warren Spahn 63
7. Nolan Ryan 61
7. Tom Seaver 61
9. Bert Blyleven 60…why there he is again!
10. Don Sutton 58
Entering this season, among active hurlers, Roy Halladay had 15 and Chris Carpenter 13; as in we all will be long dead and buried, or ashes scattered to the far ends of the earth, before a pitcher throws 50+ shutouts again.
And on that cheery note, I need to play catch-up at home after my little trip so the next Bar Chat will be Monday, May 3…post-Kentucky Derby. Enjoy the race!
