L’Observateur : March Madness

March Madness is in full effect here in Paris. Thanks to ncaasports.com, all 65 games of the NCAA basketball tournament are streaming to my laptop. This is a treat after years of the first two rounds of the dance coinciding with the SXSW Music festival and not being able to watch for so many reasons. And I love being able to switch between games whenever I want to.

My friend Kim Mellen Kight sent me an email this week regarding a dream of hers that I was in:

We were in a big rock band that was part of a contest. We had to improvise music in front of a middle school or high school audience. You and I chose to front the band playing this contraption that involved holding balloons over different sized pots of boiling water. The steam rising around the balloons made Theremin-like sounds. In fact you said it was the real Theremin. Like the man-behind-the-curtain of the Theremin we know in waking life, I guess. That might have been when the baby or the alarm woke me up, because I don’t know the results of the contest. If it was like most band contest movies, we probably came in second but learned valuable lessons along the way and gained the approval of our conservative parents.

I didn’t think much of it until later in the day when I got a call from my buddy Andrew here in Paris. He said he got us tickets to see Monolake at the Centre Pompidou on April 4 and that he thought they would have some “floating balloons that make high-pitched noises.” What are the chances?

Lately, Paris has the strangest weather pattern I’ve ever seen. It will be sunny, then the sky will turn dark gray, the wind will pick up, it will rain, it will clear, and then the sun returns. Repeat. Yesterday, it snowed/sleeted/hailed today while the sun was shining.