The 'Trivial Paris' Board Game

M. Ferrat scans quay for missing club members.

News About the 'Café Metropole Club'

Paris:- Saturday, 27. November 1999:- After the 'breather' taken by your club on the recent occasion of Beaujolais Nouveau day, your club nearly took a snooze last week.

This was welcome after six hectic weeks of 'meteoric rise to success' because it allowed me to sit and stew in peace and relative quiet for 100 minutes. Occasions like this do not come along every day.

Monsieur Ferrat, the meeting's waiter for the day, was quite upset with the emptiness in the club's corner of the café La Corona. Although the café had other non-club customers, he kept going outside to look for possibly 'lost' club members.

However, the day was saved from being recorded with a completely fictitious 'report' by the arrival of Annie Salmona, who has also been a regular correspondent for some years.

Before last Thursday, I don't recall Annie had ever telling me she was born up on Montmartre. She now lives in Milwaukee and is an American citizen. At the same time she is one of the club's few real charter members who is a bona-fide Parisian.

Your club is attracting all sorts of odd interest. Some people think the Café Metropole Club is a sort of club for American 'ex-pats' in Paris.

I thought I went to some lengths last week, to explain in a obscurely roundabout way, that Metropole's readers are not in their majority, residents of the United States. Neither are the club's members exclusively Americans, 'ex-pat' or otherwise.

I will therefore repeat; any reader in any of the other 76-odd countries outside the United States, is welcome to become a 'virtual' or real member of the Café Metropole Club in Paris.

As promised, I tried to find out if the café La Corona will be open over the Christmas season - specifically on Thursday, 30. December. The management of the café vaguely assured me it will be open so I - also vaguely - assure you there will be a meeting of your club on this date.

Last week's 'City of the Week' was Milwaukee, Wisconsin in partnership with Sherman Oaks, California. I have had to look this up because so many towns and cities have become 'City of the Week' that I can't remember them all. As 'Ed' of the Café Metropole Club, I do not hesitate to say I still have nothing personally against Athens, Ohio.

Why not? Simply this: I am collecting material for the creation of a board game to be called 'Trivial Paris' and place names like Athens, Ohio will be a major factor in it.

As in this sample question, "Name four double-name towns less than 45 kilometres - 'metric' miles - from Athens, Ohio and give the dates of their last five Thanksgiving Days."

For an account of last Thursday's weekly 'Club' meeting - in case you haven't already read it - hit the hyperlink to see what happened.

Last Thursday, the situation with the 'popular demand' for membership cards - not obligatory! - was a non-issue because nobody thought to bring it up. Because possession of the membership card is not obligatory, I don't know why I even mention it.

However, the actual card, as reproduced here, potentially contains millions of colors; far more than any standard computer system set of only 256 colors. Printing it in black and white is therefore highly unrecommended. In black and white, it looks like some scrap ripped out of a poorly-printed horse-racing tipsheet.

For 'virtul' or real Café Metropole Club members who have come in late - try not to do this - you will note that this is a 'virtual' membership card. If you want to carry one around with you - perhaps to prove that you belong to an exclusive* club in Paris - you will have to make a print of it; in color, if possible.