“The official French National Past time is wearing a beret while smoking” is a little something I’ve joked before regarding the French. Sports fans think about stuff like national past times, such as Baseball in the US. And we wonder about what else people across the globe –those who don’t have baseball-- do for fun.
Maybe a better question is this: What should we do with ourselves when not in the domain of our own national past time?
The French are as complex we Americans and Brits. But if you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting France, you know they have a soft spot for American culture whether or not they would admit to it.
The first time I went, in 1990, it was ‘50s this and James Dean that. Elvis was everywhere even amidst tabloid rumors that Elvis was alive and well. So apparently he was alive and well in France all along and probably still is. If only the French had thought to invent the ‘50s diner first, they’d be gazillionaires.
The last time I visited in May '01, the American 1950s was still a fixation in the City of Lights.
Just so you don’t think me a wine-swilling, jet-setting snob –a stereotype affixed to Cubs fans by our brethren on the South Side-- let me point to that this was a guys’ trip. We weren’t in Europe to view the Tintorettos or exchange Rotary club banners. We were there for the fun trip in Europe, that’s all.
I arrived there on the cheapest air tickets, and I couldn’t have cared less where in Europe we had went. Lucky for us, still single, KLM’s flight attendants all looked like models and the six hour flight concluded with a good breakfast and some Mr. Bean videos.
The Sixers were in the playoffs and as usual my mind was on sports, roaming around the city with two friends, Brian, an architect and semi-professional smart ass; and Dugg, a writer who ended up staying in Europe.
The first day was the usual Paris stuff: museums, French palaces of grandeur and Revolution history. We visited Jim Morrison’s grave at Père-Lachaise, and ate lots of fried food with too much dressing. And with the Euro currency in the toilet, we dined like kings but more importantly used our dollars to drink, like drinking alcohol was an Olympic event.
Tourists second, but sport fans first, we stopped in a pub in St. Germain in mid-day to watch soccer, soaking it up with the British expats viewing the FA Cup final. But it didn’t end there.
One drizzling Sunday night we had nothing to do while roaming around the Left Bank, spotting a bowling alley, Le Bowling Mouffetard, named after the street it sat on. So, to avoid getting soaked, we went in to the Mouffetard. There, we bowled to Elvis hits as they do in France.
To this day Brian and I still refer to each other as "moof tard", which indicates either the cultural sophistication we failed to absorb, or just our lack of maturity.
Bowling is one sport that consists of 95 percent predictability, 5 percent who-knows-what. Once the ball drops onto the wood planks you know whether it’s a complete gutter ball or something good. But the final count doesn’t present itself until the ball strikes the pins. Upon impact it could be one pin down, the glory of a strike, or one pin short just to rub it in your face.
In the US, Pro Bowling gets a bad wrap. I can’t for the life of me name the best bowler of all time –the sport’s Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth—and while the game does get its share of TV time and endorsement money, it does seem like Bowling is treated unfairly as if it were a trailer park past time.
Fair enough, most of the game’s “stars” on television are tubby middle aged guys, with greasy hair who forgot to shave. The shirts that pro bowlers wear are a little dorky and the shoes are purely functional and fashionless. Definitely, bowling is an American regular guy’s sport.
That said, Bowling is fun. America regards it fun enough for kids’ birthday parties and Wednesday night leagues throughout one’s adulthood. Maybe like shooting pool, Bowling has its regimented place: it is something for enjoying over a beer, but you don’t read about it in the next day’s paper.
Furthermore, it could be that Bowling is meant to be more fun and less work. After all, have you ever known anyone who has gotten in shape for Bowling? Ever run, stretch, or lift any weights just for Wednesday night?
The worst bowler of the three of us, and possibly the world, I didn’t care much about keeping score, just the having fun part, hitting an occasional spare and many gutterballs. I thought it was weird to be bowling to the oldies, wondering what other weird things could happen.
Right after it had stopped raining and we left to walk a block away up to some plaza where –according to my writer friend-- another masculine regular guy, Ernest Hemingway, had lived and written some masterpieces. In a very un-Hemingway sort of way, a comedy of errors ensued.
Brian, sort of a tough guy, got approached by some old man holding a ferret, who had man boobs, that was trying to bum a smoke off him. Manboobs was annoyingly French; speaking his mother tongue swiftly as if any of us knew what he was saying. He remained persistent, wagging his finger at Brian to reprimand him for being cheap over a cigarette, and Brian, who doesn’t speak French or Ferret got into it with him. Brian played his usual wiseguy game, requesting (in English) that the man who didn’t speak English ask him correctly and politely for a smoke, in English.
Meanwhile, we saw some burly 20-something American guy in a Carhartt barn jacket and a baseball cap wake up next to some other passed out drunks who weren’t American. He must have gotten lost and left behind by the rest of the fraternity, because he seemed confused, and super wasted. Stumbling, stuporing, and leaning forward, the inebriated American with the barn jacket then dropped his pants and did his business right there in the public grass, before stepping in it and walking off toward us.
About two minutes later Manboobs and Barn Jacket walked toward each other, but both in their own little world, didn’t notice each other. Staggering slowly, the two collided in the square, lost their balance and almost went into a table full of tourists eating dinner. What an interesting metaphor for a clash of two cultures.
Both drifted into the darkness, which was probably a good thing. And just like in European Vacation, the Chevy Chase film, some bell started ringing.
We took that as a sign of enough past times and culture learning for the evening. After all, we too were tourists, and with ringing bells we decided it was it was time to get the hell outta there.
Andy Frye writes a couple times a week about sports and life at MySportscomplex.blogspot.com and via My Sports / Complex on Facebook and Twitter. He’s horrible at bowling on every continent.
Written words © 2010.
Check out Le Bowling Mouffetard at www.bowlingmouffetard.fr | 73 Rue Mouffetard 75005 Paris, France
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