Essay #45 for Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar


	The Essay
Show #45 Tiens! Quelle heure est-il?
	David Gunn

One week ago today, mildly refreshed from a sprightly breakfast of croissant-on-a-bun and French tap water, your two traveling musical correspondents strode off into the giddy, European morning air to search for radiophonic adventure and also our rental car, which was presumably still some distance away in a foreign-language parking garage. Walking Americanically through the mist-shrouded grounds of le palace du cinq frères, we bumped into the ghosts of Rene Descartes and Knute Rockne, who were engaged in a heated game of whiskers six-draw. Impulsively, Isaac Newton descended from a nearby tree to discuss thumb and gander abstractions with the Parisian specters, but to no avail, as the game and its attendant card-sharpening machinations proved more interesting by a factor of five. Vincent van Gogh -- or more likely his evil twin, Zanamuse -- erupted in a fit of high pitched cackles, sundering the sibilant silence like giant fingernails caked with meringue drawn self-delusionally across the Seine, a river of some distinction in these parts, as he whipped out a sketchbook and began annoyingly to draw conclusions.

On we pressed, for time had not been standing still as, hopefully, our car had. Tiens! Quelle heure est-il? became our mantra for our pedestrian trek, which carried us to within spitting distance of the very sesqui-essence of the show, le flambeau oriange. Alas, it was closed, as was soon afterwards Knute's hand, after discarding six successive spades. Game to Rene; score, tied at 2.

Passing a curio stand, I was instantly reminded of the answer to the second mystery in episode 41's sesquintroduction, which had wrongly been attributed to Kalvos & Damian, whose feet were even now sidewalking to the Uno supposedly five secure stories beneath the flashy French tarmac, unmindful of the sordid new direction in which Isaac's unruly presence had taken the game. L'avion et labas! shrieked Jimmy Cagney from behind a stand of wicker, his accent belying the 30 years he had spent contemplating cutlery at the Sorbonne. I was impressed and also discouraged, as, reading between his lines, I concluded that there was really neither meat nor airplane anywhere, the significance of which was nonetheless lost on me, Zanamuse, and the meringue.

The vehicle, fortunately, was safe, as was the tap water, the bacilli of which played Utter Havoc instead with Rene and Knute, a perplexing card game of their own choosing. Bidding a fondue farewell to Paris, the city most unlike Plainfield of those that responded to our survey, we began our circuitous weeklong route back to the comfy confines of the broadcast studio to which, irrespective of the present time-space annulment quandry, you are nonetheless listening, bon radio.

Which means that, yes and no, it's Kalvos & Damian's New Music Sesquihour, again live from radiophonic facilities that would make a lesser station quibble. And do we ever have quibbling to do today, since our previous two programs, carefully handcrafted before a curious restaurant audience, are still in the proverbial can, untested by the ears of you, our listeners. Brief selections will surface later in today's episode #45 as the show begins to flag, this portion of which is being brought to you by us, since no one else has stepped forward to offer helpful funding. Not that we're complaining. OK, so we are. And we are also Damian and -- dare I speak aloud the word -- Ka ... Kal ... Kalv ... Kalvo ... Kakkk.