Semi-Okay In Paris

You will be more than just 'okay' in the
restaurant La Comedie.

Brand New - the Café Bricolo

Paris:- Sunday, 14. January 2001:- There has been no accurate report about the number of Parisians and visitors who made their way to the area of the Tour Eiffel on New Years Eve to see the traditional fireworks.

Instead, what they - however many they were - saw was the illuminated '2000' sign become unilluminated, and the tower light up with its twinkling lights changed from white to blue. What people said when they saw this has also not been reported.

My own poll has such a small sampling that I feel that it scientifically indelicate to relay its ovewhelmingly negative results to you.

However some word must have got around, because last week the high-iron crew quietly came back and took the blue hoods off the lights and at 17:00 on Friday the 20,000 white sparklers returned to perform their daily evening show on the hour up to one in the morning.

This means that everything is semi-okay in Paris again.

If the BHV's basement hardware department was not already a heaven for do-it-yourselfers and visiting tool-gawkers, it has taken another step in this direction with the opening last week of its own 'Bricolo Café,' which is appropriately brico-decorated.

While taking a café or nibbling on a tarte, brico experts will also stage demonstrations twice daily. Imagine! - having a good cup of expresso while sitting in your bathroom looking at a faucet that has flipped its washers.

The idea was dreamed up by Christian Maury, a cinema cameraman, who is also a power-drill fan. Besides the demos by experts, the café also has bricolo-books and access to the BHV's own brico site.

Once other thoughtful people realize that there is no limit to the possibilities for theme-café ideas, expect to see one open near you. After Philo-cafés, lit-cafés, cybercafés, maybe the next new thing to appear on the block will be good-café cafés.

It may be nearly time to evaporate your double-platinum card's arrears because Air France's Concorde F-BTFB will undergo a series of high speed runway tests next week.

Using exterior tanks filled with colored water, a part of the tests will be effected to determine how the Concorde that crashed on takeoff last year caught fire. A second series of tests will be carried out by British Airways to test the strength of supple gas tanks at Mach 2.

If the test results are satisfactory, Air France's supersonic planes are still not expected to resume regular flights before the last quarter of this year.

British Airways expects its Concordes to be flying by April, which has led some French pilots to think that Air France wants to cease its Concorde flights - even though studies have shown that gluing the fleet to the ground might cost three times as much the tests, repairs and ongoing maintenance.

Around 10:15 last Wednesday, a family of four from Germany on a visit to Disneyland Paris, discovered that one of them, Stefan the father in fact, was the theme park's 100 millionth visitor.

Disneyland then pulled all its stops and its manager, Jay Rasulo, to shower the family with VIP treatment, and a lifetime passport to the park for the entire family, plus a suite for the night in the park's fanciest hotel.

This was a fair return for the family who said that they had visited the park to the east of Paris 'nearly every year since it opened.' This milestone, reached in winter's January, proves that the early skepticism about the park's viability in winter has been dispelled.

The actress and director Jeanne Moreau became immortal on Wednesday, by being the first woman to be inducted into the Académie des Beaux-Arts. She will occupy a newly-created chair for cinema and audiovisual.

L'Institut de France put on its best face, with every 'immortal' present wearing their green jackets embroidered with olives in gold, designed by Pierre Cardin, who made a speech of remembrance involving an 'immortal' hotel in Venice and Jeanne Moreau.

Jeanne Moreau's voice, which is also becoming more and more unforgettable over the years, paid homage to those who encouraged her professionally, and ended with the wish to see another woman join her soon in the Académie's cinema section.

As of today, 'winter' is 25 days old. If you are interested in the wintry state of French winter sports stations, try hitting the Hiver, SkiFrance and Net4Ski Web sites.

An exceptional site is supposed to be the one managed by ex-champion Edgar Grospiron, called Ridearth. Especially conceived for actual fans or practitioners of fast downhills, it features all sorts of current white snw activities, including morsels of techno-ski music.