The Meet People Issue

After the tour's sparkle, the 'after' cafés were assaulted.

Server-Lady Meets Horse

Paris:- Monday, 23. June 2003:- According to today's Le Parisien, the temperature climbed to 40.3 degrees yesterday in Gourdon, in the Lot départment in central France. North of the Loire temperatures were not above Saturday's highs, due to high clouds. All the same, the high in Paris yesterday was 31 degrees - or 84 or 85 on the 'F' scale.

Thus, without a lot of elaboration, I can say that now summer quarter of the year is officially here, real summer is here too and has been here for some time.

Last Thursday it looked as if it was going to be 'Hawaiian-shirt' weather, but it turned out to be less brilliant. Most mornings had high cloud cover, and if it lessened it did not do it until late afternoon.

Temperatures have stayed above 25 pretty steadily. Three degrees more have been forecast for tomorrow, 27 for Wednesday, and only 24 for Thursday, when lower clouds are forecast to hide the bright skies for a while.

This morning's Le Parisien advances all of this by a day, but my guess is that tonight's TV-weather news forecast nullifies the paper's prediction.

The big question is - now that summer is officially here, will summer weather continue into its proper season? Past summers have followed rotten springs with continued rotten spring weather, so Parisians are hoping that the pattern will remain intact, with summer following a summer-like spring.

Café Life

Matthew, who I call Matt for short, is a red-haired daguerreotypista who isn't actually around much because he is a very busy starving artist without much time for Café Life. Like me, I guess he hasn't much money for it either.

I think Matt has been mentioned here before, when he had a one-man show about his illustrated life of failure with about 38 girlfriends. I think we, the other daguerreotypistas, took it literally and thought he would have been much better off without some of them.

While we are sitting around in cafés Matt is getting things done. He is good at this because he has an old scooter. Besides being an artist with a scooter, Matt also writes. For Art - the Magazine, he writes about Paris. His latest piece is titled 'What are You Wearing?

After some general comments, he writes a lot about the photographer James Startt, who I think also has photographs in the exhibition mentioned below. I asked Matt to get me an invitation to the opening, mostly because Dennis told me Matt's new collages are better than his old girlfriends.

I was in the café Rendez-Vous yesterday and Matt came in and ordered a tiny café. When it came, he checked to make sure it was full. If they are, they are watery - so his was okay because it wasn't full, but I could see he wasn't pleased about it.

Because I still can't get a lead on the garbage-room door key, so I can't invite the cable-Internet installer to come and give me broadband, I asked Matt what his was like. He said, after having it for four years, that the company claims too many people in our quartier use it too much, so it is kind of erratic.

I am grateful for this information. Getting ADSL instead may solve my whole installation problem, and it might do this in the near future instead of when I obtain a key from some letterbox in Panama. Next time I see Matt, I should buy him a big little café for the advice.

Also see Matt's collages at the exhibition 'Pour l'Amour des Chiens,' along with other important paintings, photographs, sculpture and installations. From Wednesday, 2. July to Saturday, 30. August. Open Tuesday to Saturday from 10:30 to 18:15. At the Mona Bismarck Foundation, 34. Avenue de New York, Paris 16. Métro: Iéna or Alma-Marceau. InfoTel.: 01 47 23 38 38.

But he writes from Los Angeles every year or so, just about whenever he gets a feeling that he should be here instead of there. I'm sure this is why he wrote to me yesterday.

Bob wrote, "We haven't plugged your site for a few weeks because of your ties to Jack Sherrack - or however he spells it. And because my editor thinks if I do it again that means I'm trying to suck up to you to get a job on your site.

"The heck with my editor - this is a plug for your site in this week's column in Delusions of Adequacy Online.

"I recently spoke with Sparkle Hayter and that brought up 'Kilometer Zero' in Paris which you might like because maybe you could do a good feature article about it or them.

"Also You might like to be aware of Ms. Hayter's books. Most of them are set in New York, but one is set in Paris. She seems to spend some time in Paris and was able to answer my questions about the health of the owner of Shakespeare and Co. book store. She might make a good feature story during the 'dog days.'"

Bob - the self-described 'world's laziest journalist' - was good enough to point out in his column that Metropole having its own wine instead of sleazy T-shirts, is a bit of impressive self-'trompe,' even by Internet standards.

You might think the connection feeble, but it reminded me that I have been getting emails announcing events from Kilometre Zero. An email produced a reply from Quinn Comendant, inviting me to ask any questions I want.

But I first glanced at the Web site. It seems to explain itself and it is worth alook and read. It may be just the cup of café you were looking for.