A Steamy Meeting

Today's 'group photo' - was taken after the meeting had
been over for three whole minutes.

Was Had By All

Paris:- Thursday, 26. July 2001:- Well folks, guess what the weather has decided to do today! Unlike last week when it was disgusting, it is now so hot that it is sordid. People here are going around in extremely flimsy clothing, more or less dressed for a big day at the campsite.

Neither I nor anyone one else I've spoken to is complaining about this. We, who live in Paris, are owed good weather, and all the other good folks who have dropped in by the jumbo-loads, deserve it too.

All the same, on the way to the club, I take my favorite back alleys - especially the ones with shade. Poking my nose out on the Quai de la Mégisserie is like sticking it in an oven. Between the métro entry and an outdoor stall outside of Samaritaine - selling umbrellas - pedestrians have gotten glued together.

The terrace of the café La Corona is well occupied with the thirsty who have found refuge under its awnings. There is a bit of unshaded stretch between the Louvre and the café and it looks like some are barely making it to this oasis.

I have time to set up the members' and the reports' booklets with the meeting number and the estimated temperature - but not enough time to sneak my shoes off - before Dawn Warren and Peter Spotts from the Louvre - no - from Seattle, Washington, come in and quickly take the seats I offer them.

They have been looking at the mummified cats in the Egyptian department over there. Peter says - this is not an exact quote - none of this meetings' will be either - that it is a big place. It may even be bigger than Seattle, even if it hasn't got a 'Space Needle.'

For readers unfamiliar with Seattle, its 'Space Needle' is a bit like an upsidedown Tour Eiffel, with a revolving restaurant at the top, instead of one on the second floor. From its top, on a clear day, you can see the Olympic mountains or the Oly brewery - I'm not sure which.

Since I too have been 'sleepless in Seattle' we trade a few stories about all the bars we know. Actually this is only one - the Red Robin - and I am amazed to hear that it actually still has an outside terrace, overlooking some body of water - which I never clearly noticed on account of the rain, or fog.

Dawn startles me by saying, "It's a surreal experience to look at Metropole for two years," taking a pause for a cool sip of Sancerre, "And then meet its main character."

If it wasn't about me, and I'm not sure about the 'surreal' and 'character' business, this could have been the 'Quote of the Week' but it won't be because a new club 'rule' I've just invented doesn't permit quotes with philosophical words like 'surreal' in them.

We have a darn good conversation about nearly everything else, including Peter's story about the fixer of electric chairs who gets promoted to doing gas chambers.

This goes on a lot further, with some of this and that until the punch line. "Just because you've read Proust doesn't mean that you should try fixing electric chairs," Peter says.

Bill Rosenthal saunters in at 16:20. Anybody who wears suspenders like his has a right to saunter in any old time they want - and when the introductions are done I learn that last week's 'City of the Week' was not 'Someplace in Michigan,' but was in fact East Lansing, so I declare it to be the 'City of the Week' this week - partly because Seattle has already had a turn once or twice.

Just as Bill is starting to grumble about the absence of the server-lady, Linda Thalman staggers in - she isn't wearing weather-proof suspenders - with a Parisian guy named Alban in tow.

It's like a slow motion musical show, with everybody staging their cues at 10-minute intervals, when Doug Fuss floats in exactly ten minutes later - ten minutes after Linda and Alban, who are ten minutes after Bill.

For some reason, the café has decided not to appoint a 'Waiter of the Week' and no drink at al has appeared until just before all of these appearances on stage. Much of this liquid evaporates before any of it can become the 'Drink of the Week.'