Hi trav25 and welcome to flyertalk. On the Flyertalk Miles boards, American has its own message board, you might get better responses over there.

As for your question, it does matter where you sit on AA if you care about having a choice of meals. Your outbound flight to Paris will be an even numbered flight. On even numbered flights, AA takes meal orders from the front of the business class cabin moving backward. On odd numbered flights (your return from Paris), meal orders are taken from the back going forward. If you care about having a choice, you should sit in the first two rows on your outbound flight and in the last two rows on your return flight.

As for specific seats, may I reccomend that you chekc-out www.seatguru.com. This site features seat maps of all AA aircraft and has information gathered from fliers about given seats. I can tell you that on the 767-300, many passengers do not like row 2 (the front row) as it is the bulkhead row and they think the bulkhead is too close. I am 5'8" and have no problem, but it depends on your height. Also, row 6, the last row, is missing a window, so the view outside is obstructed. Finally, the seats on the 767-300 are considered by many to be too narrow. They are narrow, but unless you are really overweight, probably not a big deal.

Enjoy your flights.