Geneva
I awake on a terrace in sun heat
Flowers white and purple line up in the light
And the waiters behind me, “Oui! Oui! Oui!”
Sound like ducks on Lake Geneva,
Somewhere around that curve
Where the swank hotels disappear
And the ratcheting scooters
Fade into a pleasant cicada-like buzz
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Le dénouement du photographie
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La Foire Doper
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The mascot of the association that publishes the magazine I write for is a mole. We call it “The Mole”. Get it? Molecule? Mole? It’s cute. But what the chemists that run things don’t seem to get is that a blind animal with hands that look like catcher’s gloves may not be sending the right message to potential members. There ain’t no “sexay” to the lowly mole, my friends. And given the eyesight and extremity anomalies already noted, the picture of The Mole in our stand at the ChemSpec trade show in Geneva looks rather stupid with its protective laboratory eyewear and the test tube of blue chemicals in one of its clumsy mitts. With the other, it’s snapping its “fingers” inside a yellow cartoon starburst. Face it. The Mole is a train wreck in a landslide. But try changing dumb things at an association. At least they don’t have the guy in the mole suit in the aisle in front of the stand like they do at the association conventions.
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The folks at “The Show,” our home office in Washington DC, are clearly unaware of the level of sophistication of attendees at this, one Europe’s far-too-many fine and specialty chemical expositions. The PalExpo Center in Geneva, on the other hand, seems woefully unprepared to accommodate the crowd at ChemSpec. The air conditioning– she is Zay-row! One of the saddest sights I’ve ever seen on the road was La Belle Lyonnaise in the Rhodia booth wiping sweat off her face with a grayish café waiter’s towel the whole time I interviewed her. It ruined everything for me.
I like these European trips, though, because I get to see friends and acquaintences in Europe–fellow journalists and sources for stories that only they and I ha
ve read. Jean Xavier-Xavier is one of the latter. I like getting him to recount the story about his wife that I consider to be the most ringing endorsement of my home state of New Jersey. With little prodding I get him to tell me again about coming back to France after a two-year stint of running his company’s U.S. office in Princeton. His wife didn’t want to return to Paris, and was profoundly depressed for a short time upon her return. Well, they lived in Princeton, which is no Lyndhurst. Jean always ends the story by telling me that you can get a good cheese in Princeton, “and a Frenchman has to smell a good cheese from time to time.”
Monsieur Xavier-Xavier’s company is one of many here serving the drug industry that was spun off from a large parent company, or at least, like Jean’s, set up as an independent entity. Their business is to custom-manufacture active ingredients under contract for the drug makers. Herein lies my story—for the magazine, that is. I won’t bore you with it.
Instead, I’ll write about my old mate from “the other magazine,” England’s Alex Scott, who is also in Geneva this week. That ra
rest of birds, the English surfer (in England), Alex is a favorite on the chemical industry business press junket. This time we both drew invites to the plum soiree–dinner at Caves de Vollands, where a German chemical company, newly spun off from a giant German firm, is playing host with a wide screen rig for viewing Germany v Poland in the World Cup. It turns out to be a wonderful candlelight dinner in a vaulted-roof stone wine cellar dating back at least 700 years.
Our hosts started the game with BBC coverage, but switched to the German broadcast at the half. With the booming voices of German announcers bouncing off the vaulted stone, Alex and I mustered our own hue and cry, accusing our hosts of creating bad karma for their side by so abusing the Anglophone guests. We warned them that this is not a good thing, especially with Deutschland und Polen tied at nil-up going into the second half. I suggested that their callus move indicated that our hosts had never read, or certainly never internalized, Greek tragedy.
Brandie, a young Kansan who has worked for an English language c
hemical industry magazine in Germany for six years and now speaks broken English with a German accent, refused to go to bat for us with our hosts. She had, in fact, ducked out just before kick-off to pull on her Deutschland T-shirt, in which she cavorted in front of the big screen. No big deal, really, given that our hosts all speak English and were ignoring Alex and me. So, we settled into the sports video verité of Deutsch, hooting with our hosts when Germany finally scored at 92 minutes—two minutes into overtime.
Ja gut!
Vanx
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Photos:
A favorite stand at ChemSpec
Frenchman Jean Xavier-Xavier
Journalist Alex Scott
Redakteur Brandie
I like when the boys from Centcom pick the hotel. I took this picture from the window of my room at the Hotel Beau Rivage in Geneva earlier today. Now I am blogging in my big white courtesy bathrobe–they were expecting maybe Abdul-Jabbar?
Convening,
Vanx
Le Jour du Canard
I’m about to set off on a high-speed train from Paris to Geneva and I’m eating duck for the second time in less than 24 hours. It’s duck in a completely different manifestation, mind you. Last night I had it fois gras. Here, at the Gare de Lyon, it’s more like neck bone–just so you know that I’m not in a rut. They dole out beer in state-approved graduated Erlenmeyer flasks here, and I’m going for the 1 liter . And the .615 liter. Bon!
This morning I met in the odd, clinically sterile office park of La Défense with the vice president of business strategy for a French chemical company that recently spun off from one of the big state-owned oil companies. It is starting life on its own, sink or swim, in the so-called “Flat World.” It is no longer buffered by the grande bureaucracy and deep pockets of its former parent, which has the ominous name of Total. It epitomizes France right now, where you have the business community anxious to assimilate globally within a society that is doggedly traditional and distinctly…French.
I’m interested in the dynamic in that I’m an unabashed Francophile. I’d like both sides to prevail. Business in France, as elsewhere, has an awful lot of muscle, however, and I can see how French culture has slowly accommodated the pan-European trend of Americanizing. When I first came here in 1993, almost nobody I dealt with outside the towers of La Défense would speak English. Now, you have to go all the way to the train station restaurant and meet the waiter to find a non-fluent English speaker. But even he can speak English, “as long as it is about eating and drinking” (Sounds like my brother-in-law Malachy). The conquest of the English language in Paris certainly makes it easier for the Anglophone North American to visit the city. But it takes away a big swath of the charm and challenge that made my first visit plus fantastique.
A few years ago I witnessed what is, in fact, a major victory for American culture in France–a kid in a Halloween costume.
This trip started yesterday when I arrived at Hotel Bersolys, a three-star hotel up the road from the Musée Dorsay that decorates each room with amateur copies of paintings by a particular impressionist or post impressionist painter after whom the room is named. I spent last night in the Gauguin room under a still life of fruit and phony wood beams across the c
eiling.
Once I arrived, though, I set out directly for Montmartre, the fabled hilltop plaster quarry where Picasso had his studio. Le Bateau Lavoir (laundry boat), a squalid one-story structure used by Picasso and other artists. It burned down and has been rebuilt. It’s on a pretty little square with a nice water fountain. The Church of St. Dennis, painted by another Montmartre painter, Maurice Utrillo, is among the many points of interest. But dominating everything is the Sacré Coeur (top photo), a bizarre church at the top of the Butte. Almost mosque-like in its architecture, it is situated at the high end of a worldclass stairway, the steps of Montmartre.
The place is overrun with tourists, actually. The central Place du Terte is like a bad painters’ convention with literally hundreds of people doing Utrillo knock-offs as caricaturists comb the streets accosting all comers. Montmartre has an indominable atmosphere, however, and in many ways it epitomizes Paris. It’s history ties together a great deal of the grandeur and debauchery that make the city great. Just at the bottom of the stairs is the Pigalle red light district, which includes the Moulin Rouge. Painters associated with the neighborhood also include Modigliani and Van Gogh, who lived with his brother Theo on the Rue Lepic. There is a Piaf-infused atmosphere of the French resistance to the place—it is where The Last Metro was filmed–and there is a distinct afterglow of the Commune. Oh, and Hector Berlioz lived there to. And it has a top flight cemetery featuring Emile Zola and Edgar Degas.
I took the Metro back to the Rive Gauche and attempted to walk to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, a walk t
hat includes a lot of browsing at book stalls along the Seine. These stalls–green sheet metal boxes screwed into the river wall–have everything from plaster casts of Notre Dame gargoyles to pocket-sized, cellophane wrapped-classics of French literature and Belle Epoch pornography postcards. Jet lag and dehydration drove me into a café for an Orangina, however, and back to my room for a nap. I rallied at dinner time and hit the Boulevard Saint Germain, where I lectured a French waiter on customer service and eyeballed some of the less dog-eared publications at the many kiosks. I ended the evening at a café on the Seine across from the Louvre at sundown, where all were entertained by a man roller skating wearing little more than a worldbeat diaper.
Mon Dieu!
Vanx
Photos by Verb-Ops
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Le Radio Verb-Ops
Give Paris One More Chance
Par Johnathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Well if you’ve been to cities but you’ve had enough
Have you been to Paris, France?
And if you doubt that Paris was made for love
Give Paris one more chance
The home of Piaf and Chevalier 
Must have done something right to get passion this way
If you don’t think Paris was made for love
Give Paris one more chance
I hear you calling it arrogant, calling it cruel
(Give Paris one more chance)
And also trop civilisé et mon dieu, c’est trop cool!
(Give Paris one more chance)
And if it seems like nothing when you’re on your walk
Don’t sell these streets short, these streets know how to talk
If you don’t think Paris was made for love
Well give Paris one more chance
Well now there’s some things I don’t like and some things I do
B
ut give Paris one more chance
I can see why Paree might be ugly for you
But give Paris one more chance
The home of Piaf and Trennet too
Must have done something right
Must have something for you
If you don’t think Paris was made for love
Give Paris one more chance
Now hear the boys singing Beegees songs under the skies
(Give Paris one more chance)
And on the steps of Montmartre they harmonise
(Give Paris one more chance)
Because if you don’t think Paris was made for love
Maybe your heart needs a telegram from up above 
If you don’t think Paris was made for love
Give Paris one more chance
Well if you’ve been to cities and you’ve had enough
Have you been to Paris, France?
And if you doubt that Paris was made for love
Give Paris one more chance
The home of Piaf and Charles Aznavour
Must have done something right
And will do something more
If you don’t think Paris was made for love
Give Paris one more chance
Alright!
Give Paris one more chance
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Photos du Verb-Ops 12/6/06
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Report from the Middle Seat
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I’m flying into Paris with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on my ancient disc-man. I have the middle seat in row 34 between Larry Williams, the bassist for Big James and the Chicago Playboys, a blues band from the Windy City that’s booked as the house band for the next two weeks at the Hotel Meridien, and Window Seat Man, who noted what I was reading as he climbed over me to his seat. “Oh good. We have the Sunday Times,” he said. Alright. But he licked his fingers as he turned pages of the magazine. Then he gave it back and fell asleep.
Larry and I talked about ‘our instrument.’ I retired my bass about 25 years ago, during which time Larry has been pretty busy with his. during that time, I learned, the electric bass has inched up to 25 strings. Well, …there are seven-string basses now. No matter. Larry and I discussed the art of the bass, sharing a distain for any pointed consideration of technique.
He filled me in on the Chicago scene. I was able to name Daryl Jones, the Chicago bassist who replaced Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones. This impressed Larry, and he decided to keep talking to me. I first saw Jones play with Miles at Saratoga in 1982 . Miles played a Michael Jackson tune and a Hooters number that Cindy Lauper popularized in the early 1980s. He wandered around the stage during the set, firing a few of his players on the spot. Not Jones. Miles kind of looked on at him in approval. We all met Jones when he, Branford Marsalis, and other jazz luminaries played with Sting on “Set Them Free”—we saw it all on MTV, mid-eighties. Since then, Jones been backing up The Devil.
I’m going to try to catch The Playboys on Friday night. Right now, Coltrane is taking me over the Mer Celtique.
My thankfulness to the band and all the fellas,
Vanx
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Le Voyage de Route pour “L’homme”-I
Paris and Geneva: II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII
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I’m off on Sunday to Paris and Geneva, primarily to attend the annual ChemSpec conference, a middlebrow pow-wow of the people who make the things we buy better. That’s in Geneva. In Paris—well, I’ve built in a little free time, but I’ll be meeting with execs at a couple of major chemical companies in an out-of-the-way office tower park called La Défense . It’s nice that they sequester those buildings away from the boulevards. Houston ought to try doing that next time.
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Friends in Europe tell me not to expect much from Geneva. But some of them are pretty jaded. I expect a whole lot more from Geneva than I do from Orlando. My friend Hassan, who has family in Geneva, compares the city to Cleveland. But he’s pretty jaded. Well, both cities are on big lakes. We’ll see.
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But, did I mention Paris? I’ve been going there every two years or so since 1993. I always book at a hotel in the same Saint Germain des Pres neighborhood, always on the Rue de Lille a few blocks from the Musee D’Orsay and a block from the river, right across from the Louvre. My first visit there was the most amazing day of travel in my life.
I had flown in on a Saturday morning from Marseilles. Both Paris and Marseilles were designed by Barron Hausmann for Napoleon III, so I was already attuned to the grandeur of the boulevards, though in a tougher, more impoverished setting. Once I got to Paris, there was a new kind of light. Marseilles had been brilliant and mysterious, with the Mediterranean sun on the old port giving way to the streetlight glare of its junky-filled streets at night. But Paris was sublime. Opulent, of course, and also rich in spirit with an even cast of architectural beauty and people in perfect touch with the life of their city.
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I remember the neighborhoods, buildings, and museums I visited on the first day exactly as I experienced them. It was truly a perfect day. The black-and-white 1960s documentary on Jaques Brel that I watched in my lit
tle room in the eves of the Hotel de Lille one night on that trip set the hook for me on French culture, in a way. I also discovered Fernandel, the great French comic singer and actor (pictured above) who made it immediately clear to me why the French glommed onto Jerry Lewis—a great mystery until I picked up that tape cassette in the Boulevard St.-Michel.
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The city has a profound impact on the human heart. J’aime Paris!
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This year, I’ll be traveling in Europe during the World Cup. I’ll still have to watch it on TV, but at least it won’t be at 3:00 a.m. A German chemical company, the same one that took everyone to Epcot in Orlando earlier this year, is hosting an event they are calling “Get The Kick.” It will be a dinner somewhere in Geneva with a big screen TV showing the Group A qualifying match between Poland and Germany. Things could heat up!
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I’m flying into Paris on Sunday and traveling to Geneva and back on the train. I’m looking forward to the three hour train rides. Time to work and read and watch France fly by. The last European train ride I took was from Brussels to Paris two years ago, right after my company laptop was stolen by les bâtards in the Brussels train station. The real loss was all my notebooks and a sketchbook that were in the bag. You can’t overstate the danger of this kind of theft in European train stations. I actually have no idea when or how it happened—I’m pretty careful, but I don’t travel particularly light. So, I’m looking forward to a somewhat more pleasant train ride this time.
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I’ve checked with the little hotel I’m staying at and they assure me the rooms have “zee wee-fee” so I will be able to work as well as post here on Verb-Ops and at my new joint, Foto-Ops. That one is all photos all the time. Please check it out from time to time. Photography has, as Leon Kossoff once said, destroyed our capacity to see. But let’s face it, that ship has sailed. What more harm could I do at this point?
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I may go a little heavier at Foto-Ops in Paris. Qui sait?
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Hope to have something for you soon,
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Vanx
Painting: Rue de la Jonquiere by Maurice Utrillo
(Click the red radio!~Vanx~,:^) 
