Buzzer Dayz

Seista time for the café near Mouffetard.

Signs of Too Many

Paris:- Monday, 10. February 2003:- Last week's forecast here for last Friday didn't work. I tried a hoodoo thing on it and it rained anyway. This wasn't actually predicted as I recall, so if last Friday's rain ruined your day you know who to blame instead of Le Parisien, France-2 TV- weather news or France Métèo.

I tried hard to get interested in tonight's TV-weather news forecast but the coming weather is not really very interesting and I have forgotten its forgettable details already. Highs will be six until club day, when it will be only three.

On checking today's Le Parisien, I do find news. It says the weather has been 'persecuting' us for several days, but it is going to take a pause with these 'tortures.' But this isn't the news.

The news is that today's Le Parisien has completely forgotten tomorrow and Wednesday. See? What did I tell you?

The paper picks up the weather again on Thursday, when it says it will be ugly and grey. Friday, the paper says, will not be very original or inspired. Then, next weekend, it is supposed to become worse. But Saturday will not be worse than Sunday, which will be the pits.

Since next Sunday will only be the 16th, there will still be time in February for the really cold week with really clear skies. This is as optimistic as I can get and I'm trying hard.

Café Life

One early morning last week, I was up before sunrise and I happened to look out my big window overlooking the cemetery in darkness. Some of the buildings on the other side were lined with gold and there was a flash of it running up the Tour Montparnasse.

But right in front of my window, the black bare branches of the street trees were outlined with incredibly fine veins of glittering magenta-red-gold, like hot wires, set off from the near blue-black of the still nighttime cemetery.

I ignored my instinct to open the window and take a photograph. These outlines of fire were much too fine for a crude-resolution digital camera. And what would I do with the photo anyway? But here it is, in words, from my memory. Once I decided 'no photo,' I looked harder.

I am pretty sure this wasn't the morning the guy with the new door buzzer phoned really early, to ask if it would be okay if he showed up in 30 minutes to install it. I said 'sure.' I told him to knock loudly because the buzzer didn't work.

At this somewhat unusual time of the day for me I found a bit to do for 90 minutes before he came, like have breakfast, but not do the other things I usually do, because the buzzer didn't work.

He said he had gotten halfway to my place before finding out the buzzer he was bringing didn't work either, so he took it back and got another one. It came in two parts. One he taped to the door jamb just above the outside buzzer button that doesn't work, and the other he handed to me.

He said I could put it anywhere I wanted to. I toyed with the idea of putting it in the fridge even though he said there was a bracket for hanging it on a wall. He said he didn't bring any tools to attach the bracket.

Together we figured out how to turn the volume of the thing down. He said its batteries would last five years, or was he referring to the battery in the buzzer button part?

Anyhow, the thing has no wires. It means, if you come and push my door buzzer, that you are setting off an invisible electronic signal which will wander around my small apartment, perhaps passing through my head, to find its receptor ding-a-ling thing and set it off.

Later on Dennis came over to look out my window. My new door buzzer didn't impress him at all. We'd been having a Pho soup around the corner and when we got to my door I pushed the button and heard the ding-a-ling go off inside. Dennis said, "So what?"

The ding-a-ling thing jangled again yesterday. I immediately remembered what it was and went and opened the door. There was a lady standing out in the hall, looking for somebody I never heard of. I tried to tell her she had won the honor of being the first person to ring my doorbuzzer, but she wasn't interested.

You try it. Pull the plug on your doorbell and then forget you've done it. Hardly anybody knows how to knock on a door with their knuckles anymore.

After a while you will notice that nobody comes to visit, but you will have forgotten why because if nobody comes, how will you remember that your doorbell doesn't work or you've turned it off?

According to a town ordinance in Kennebunk, Maine, Metropole may have too many 'signs' in its pages and may be liable for penalties ranging from $100 to $2500 per day for each infraction.

The issue reared up last summer at the seaside resort across the river from Kennebunkport, which is known as a summer residence of the nominally-based in Texas Bush family, and as the place across the river from Kennebunk.

A town official, Paul Demers, told Brian Bartley, the manager and a co-owner of Bartley's Dockside restaurant that he would have to remove outdoor table parasols advertising 'Hebrew National' all-beef frankfurters. The town has a limit of three brand-name signs per establishment, and the restaurant was over the limit.

But how the official decided that the offender was 'Hebrew National' is unclear. He could have chosen parasols carrying names like Budweiser, Poland Spring, La Corona or Coca-Cola instead. Mr. Demers is quoted as saying, "There are things you do not say in this world, and this is one of them" - apparently after he told Mr. Bartley that 'Hebrew National' was the offender.

Actually, Mr. Bartley's restaurant had parasols advertising at least four brands of beer, and town officials claimed that the restaurant's parasols had 'in excess' of ten brand names featured. Mr. Bartley got some spray paint and over-painted the 'Hebrew National' brand-name to try and calm things down a bit.

Despite this voluntary defacement, the town of Kennebunk sued the restaurant in October, seeking thousands of dollars in fines. The ordinance claims to regulate the town's 'visual environment' and ensure traffic safety. Mr. Bartley's lawyer has asked a judge to tell the town to get lost. The attorney says the town's position borders on 'Alice in Wonderland silliness.'

Inadvertently, Metropole is also in grave danger from Kennebunk's visual purity and traffic safety ordinance because it has a parasol within its Café Metropole Club logo - repeated more than 150 times - and also contains a photograph of 'Hebrew National All-beef Knockwurst,' inclded in the club meeting 'report,' put online on Saturday, 17. January.