Lefty's Luck

Morgane and I were going to spend yesterday in the city. I was in charge of the itinerary. After a day studying my city maps I felt pretty confident about the day's plans. Our first stop was supposed to be the Gustave Moreau museum. After debarking our train at Saint Lazare, I successfully directed us to the museum by foot only to find it was closed because the staff was on strike. Bad luck.

We had an hour to kill before having lunch at Le Bistral, my friend Finney's place of employment, so we began walking north by northwest from rue la Rochefoucauld towards Place de Clichy and then through the neighborhoods of the eastern portions of the XVII arrondissement. Along the way we serendipitously stumbled upon several different shops that Morgane is going to be able to use for her business. Good luck.

After a quick stop at a boulangerie to get some bread to tide us over before lunch we headed down rue Legendre so I could poke my head into Ste. Marie des Batignolles. Closed for renovations. Bad luck. (This is of course compounded by the fact that I tried to look into Ste. Trinite on our way to the museum and it was also closed) We then continued our stroll along the edge of the park at Square des Batignolles before making our way back to Le Bistral for an early (by French standards) lunch.

Le Bistral is an experimental restaurant (progressive might be the appropriate word). So, compliments of Finney, we were able to bookend our brazed pork with cheese polenta lunch with an entree (appetizer)of fresh goat cheese with beet sauce and a dessert of caramel ice cream on top of green jello, garnished with a fried sugar cracker. I'm not up on haut cuisine but I found it oddly impressive and enjoyable so I'll put it down as good luck.

What made the restaurant experience doubly enjoyable was the appearance of Steeve Eastatof, the winner of the second season of Nouvelle Star (the French American Idol). I don't watch the American show let alone the French interpretation so I didn't recognize him. I was however completely bowled over by his dress. If you click on the link you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. I've never seen a 36 year old man dress like he did. He seems to be going through a severe identity crisis (Barring Halloween, what would possess a person to wear a Sheriff's badge clipped onto their sweater?). Unfortunately Steeve hasn't had much success in the recording industry (the French aren't as keen on manufactured stars as we are) and from what Morgane could gather of his conversation has been consistently misled by the show and his managerial team as to his commercial prospects since winning three years ago. While I derived humor from his appearance, I feel sorry for him more than anything else. He seems to be caught in an uncompromising web of distorted hopes and misplaced trust.

After lunch we walked back towards Place de Clichy to see Julia, a movie starring Tilda Swinton. Neither of us knew much about it. Since she just won an Oscar and it's been a few weeks since a decent English language movie as been released here we figured what the hell. Coincidentally, "what the hell" was also our post movie reaction. We sat through a neurotic, sprawling two hour film that follows an alcoholic woman as she kidnaps a kid, only to have him re-kidnapped from her in Tijauna before she gets the ransom. Bad luck.

Though there were a few disappointments along the way, when it was all said and done it was a good day. My perception of the events and of the luck were extraneous to the fact that Morgane was happy. What's a closed museum here and a bad movie there when your girlfriend is happy? It's like having a win against a ranked opponent when you factor it into your life RPI.

(For the non-basketball fans, the last sentence was my segue)

Yesterday was the first day in my life that I can remember not watching day one of the NCAA basketball tournament. It was the first time I've ever made picks without having formed ideas and opinions about teams. It was the first time I ever made picks without spending hours reading about the match ups.

Somewhere along the way my love for basketball faded. When I was in elementary school I wore, on alternating days, a matching Michigan jersey and shorts (I can't quite recall if it was Jalen Rose or Jimmy King's number) or a North Carolina one (Eric Montrose). Every day in fifth and sixth grade I wore one or the other. I even wore them during the winter. Periodically my mother was able to convince me to wear a jacket or sweatshirt but never pants. Thirty-five degree weather outside and I was in shorts riding my bike to school with Grant (he of course was sporting Razorback gear--Corliss). My mom wore those jerseys out having to wash them everyday. That fiendish passion slowly devolved these past few years to the point where the Big Dance itself was the only thing I got excited about during the season (maybe I have been unconsciously preparing myself for yesterday).

So I've blindly made my picks. In the course of which I also made the one decision in the past I never allowed for myself: letting fan-dom interfere with reality. I picked UT to win it all. This is far from a pipe-dream since UT is a number two seed. I was always too superstitious to actually pick the team I wanted to win (even if I thought they had a good shot). Since this is the first year I don't know my elbow from my asshole in the NCAA world, I guess it fits (Unfortunately mistakes have already been made--I'm pretty sure I had USC, as my dark horse, going to the final four in a yahoo group. Oops.)

This of course highlights the well known mantra that having the perfect bracket always boils down to luck. Proof of this was hilariously highlighted on ESPN two years ago during George Mason's improbable run to the Final Four. One of the gentleman to pick the Patriots to the Final Four thought he had been choosing George Washington. Upon realizing what he did, he said to himself, "Why not George Mason?" and picked them to make the Final Four.

Lefty Gomez once said he'd "rather be lucky than good." If there is a better adage to apply to bracketology or life, I haven't found one. For myself, I always feel as if I'm on the edge, getting tantalizingly close but never quite having the one little missing piece of luck that would thrust me from second or third in the bowl challenge or the tourney bracket into first. It's a situation many of us face in life and one that is irritatingly hard to deal with. It is like being hungry and seeing a meal take place within a house but you are stuck at the window staring, unable to figure out how to get inside. It's a position in which Mr.Eastatof seems to have found himself. He got a glimpse but can't figure out how to position himself at the table. Nor is it any different for teams that sit at home and watch a "cinderella" like George Mason have the ball bounce there way, knowing that it could as easily been them as was not them. Is it better to fail without ever knowing what awaits inside the house or to fail but catch a glimpse?