History Project Part One: The JETS, from three seats.

I've come up with a new idea. Only time will tell if its worthwhile.

In an effort to shore up my quickly fading memory, I've decided to try and remember every concert I've ever been to, and write something about it.

Now, as Billy Bob Thornton said in Bad Santa "They can't all be winners, kid" So, some will get a blissed out narrative while others will get a catalog-like description (Say, 40 Acres Fest, or any band that I saw for under $10).

Most likely, the entries themselves will have little to do with the actual shows themselves, as not even I care about 10 year old concert reviews.

The first concert I can remember attending was for a band called The JETS when I was in elementary school. Since I don't remember most things that happened before the Seventh Grade Dance, this first entry is going to be written in stages. I'll write everything I can remember about the experience, and then talk to the other main players: my brother and my cousin.











--MY TAKE ON THE MATTER--

First and foremost, I have no idea how I even got to go to this show. We didn't go to shows when I was a kid. We went to the converted mobile home that served as the local library and we went to family barbecues...and I'm talking the homemade brick barbecues built in the backyard, not some Weber Grill BS. Shows specifically (and events that cost money generally) just weren't on the radar.


My only memory of The JETS pre-show was an album cover over at my Tia Mary's house. (Note: ALBUM cover, talking about actual records here, old timey stuff). The JETS from their photo seemed like a nice enough, young group. All singers. Possibly a Menudo rip off. My cousin Pat and her sister used to babysit me and my bro when we were very young. I always liked it when they watched us because they'd make us pancakes for dinner.

I think they'd stopped doing that awhile back when we got invited to the show. I don't know if my cousin Pat had free tickets, or had a friend bail, or got bribed by my parents. No clue. Of course, as a kind, you NEVER think of the stuff that is going on the background. Its just OF COURSE I want to go to a concert! I LOVE concerts! Wait, what's a Concert?

I remember being very excited about the Jet show before we went. I remember peppering my brother with questions about what to expect at the show. I remember asking if we'd get to do the Wave (he said no). I asked if there would be CANDY (he said no). I remember the show was held in downtown SA, maybe at Hemisphere arena, although probably somewhere smaller, like Majestic or the Lila Cockrell.

To be perfectly honest, my memories from that show are made up of the peripherals. I remember how loud it was. I remember how stoked I was that they had Peanut M&M's. And, guess what? We DID do the Wave at the concert! But most of all, I remember the drive to the concert. I think my cousin had a two door compact. I was in the front seat. We parked in a parking garage near the venue. The parking garage was one of those multilevel concrete jobbies with the corkscrew shaped up ramp that went all the way up to the top.

By the time we got downtown I was too excited for words. My brother had refused to clue me on what the show would be like, so my imagination was off and running. As we entered the parking garage, Pat slammed on the gas, and took us zooming and twisting up the corkscrew. I was stunned, I was confused, I was scared. I think I heard her laughing as we jerked from side to side in that little car. I thought we were being chased.

It was just one fleeting moment, but its the best memory I have of Jet. Entering the second turn, lurching in my seat, looking up at the ADULT, smiling and enjoying herself and messing with her little cousins. Heart in my mouth and stomach in the floor. Welcome to the show.

--My BRO'S TAKE ON THE SHOW--

So, I talked to Chris about The JETS concert. He remembered some more technical details, but came up lacking on the behind-the-scenes info that I so craved. Chris confirmed that the band WAS called The JETS (Score one for the deegster's memory.) But Chris corrected me that Pat's sister, Zibbit*, took us to the show. (See, this whole experiment proves that I need external sources for my own memories. I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to get people on the record, like a 40 yr version of All the President's Men).

*Zibbit, short for Elizabeth. Did I come up with that nickname for my cousin Elizabeth? I like to think so. I still use it. I wonder if that bugs her?
People I met in Middle School still call me Deegan, and I don't mind. People I know from law school still WON'T call me Major* and I mind that very much.

*Major, as in, Major Deegan Expressway. Sadly, it never caught on.

Chris told me he looked Jet up on Wikipedia a few years back. They were a family band, that got taken to the cleaners by their original manager. "A sad story" he said. Chris remembers the concert as being a fairly last minute affair. He agreed with me that it was a very small venue, and that the concert was during the day time. He wasn't nearly as interested in the "how did this happen?" aspect, and could offer no clues. Sadly, he did not remember the car ride to the stadium. Nor did her remember ever listening to the Jet record. Although I clearly remember seeing it.*

*Of course, I also remember him trying to convince me that his Men at Work record (yellow sleeve, and again, emphasizing the fact that these were actual records) was the bee's knees.

--ZIBBIT'S VERSION--

As luck would have it, I got to see Zibbit over Christmas break, and got to spring my nostalgia questions on her. My mother, with her unlimited capacity to humor me, stuck around our family party past our scheduled departure time because she knew I was waiting for Zibbit. (Mom doesn't remember the show, and she swears she didn't bribe Zibbit to take us. She also denies handing out fliers to strangers asking them to please take me off her hands for short stretches of time when I was young....which is what I would have done). Honestly, I'm shocked that I wasn't Paddington Bear'd by the time I was 7.

Zibbit and her husband Al solved most of the mystery. Yes, we had gone to see The JETS. Props to husband Al for INSTANTLY knowing the answer to this question, and bonus points for his remembering and singing a Jet song.


Turns out, Zibbit worked for a P.R. agency and had gotten free tickets to the show. Al remembered the details better than Zibbit. He was off at basic training and was jealous that me and my brother got to go (he'd been stuck going to the Stuttgart Ballet...sucker). Both me and my brother were right that the show had taken place during the day, and somehow, I had actually guessed the right venue, Lila Cockrell*

*Where I would go on to slay all competitors in a 3 year run of Science Fair supremacy.

It was a longshot, but I went ahead and asked Zibbit about the car ride. When I described my memory of the parking garage, Zibbit's sister and husband both burst out laughing. Her sister knew EXACTLY what I was talking about, and had been taken on a similar corkscrew swirl of her own. Zibbit explained that she parked at the top of that garage every day for work, and by that point thought nothing of zooming her way up the ramps. When I told her it was my lasting memory from the show the whole room agreed.

--So that's my first show. Nice to know that I got at least some of it right. I loved going back and peeking behind the curtain. Next up, (no kidding) Young M.C. and Milli Vanilli: a tale that involves betrayal, jealousy, and a half eaten funnel cake.

Agricultural Tourism

Sure, they look happy now, but wait
till the buzz wears off.

Mack Brown came to Texas while I was still in undergrad. The Longhorn Football program had been in a funk for some time, so they brought an out-of-stater in, to shake things up.

That first year, the football team had a slogan that went (something like) *Come Early*Be Loud*Wear Orange*

If I was to advise folks on how to attend the Tomatina, it'd go (something like) *Come Early*Be Drunk*Wear Goggles*

Come Early: in order to be in the mix, you gotta be close to the trolleys, and to get close to the trolleys, you gotta be at the front of the parade route. Oh and all the bars (wisely) close by the start of the Tomatina, and you need to make sure you
Be Drunk: it makes the details like your lack of sleep, minor assaults and mob-like overcrowding seem way funnier.
Wear Goggles: you may not be able to see much during the event, but you'll still be able to see afterwards. And, after all, cultural food fights be damned, you've still got a test tomorrow.

I got into a fight with Frenchie before the Tomatina. He didn't see the point in throwing down 50 euros to take an overnight bus to some middle of nowhere town to hurl tomatoes at strangers for a few hours. (THIS is why it could never have worked out...)

To me, it was a no-brainer. Merely another (and more literal) step in the immersion experience.

Turns out, the highlight of the event may have been the beginning.

As discussed in the last post (seems like yesterday) the tomato slinging can't begin until somebody pulls a ham down from a 30 foot high greased pole. Use teamwork, Sin problema? right? Nope. Rarely have a group of drunken dudes been poorer equipped to perform a task.

Any and all progress/ascent is torn down by the actions of envious also-rans. Its a parade, its a mosh pit, its a really messy opera. And its got a cast of characters:

Crazy Rugby Guy: green t-shirt, all neck and biceps this one. He'd barrel his way up the base of the pole, attacking it, and his fellow climbers, with equal ferocity. He never made it too far up the pole. He was too busy settling scores along the way.

Eric the Wanker: Lanky blond haired kid. We knew his name because it was written on the back of his shirt...right above a bulls eye. He was lighter and better suited to scamper up his fellow climbers and made decent progress. But, he lost all of the crowd's support, and earned his title (which was
chanted at him) after he grabbed by the throat and tossed down...

Brave Girl(s) 1-3: I think in total we had three girls give the greased pole a go. And none of them until a half hour in. My guess is that the girls needed to be waaaay drunker to decide this was a good idea. All of the girls were crowd favorites, and actually got some support (among other things) from their fellow climbers. But, after Eric's heinous and bloodthirsty act, the girls rarely made it past the first rung. (Maybe it was the lack of sensible shoes).

The Banana: My personal favorite. A guy in a banana suit. He was literally carried on peoples' shoulders thru the crowd and toward pole. Chiquita raised a whole host of new questions: What's with the banana suit? Attention seeker? Mockumentary Filmmaker? Laundry Day?


Now, I've seen a Twinkee go skiing and a Bear take an Intro to Marketing exam. Hell, I've even worn a cape for good luck (but not in a long time...no, really, months). Someday I'll have to stop that banana, halfway up a greased pole, and ask him "what makes you tick" Or, I could just lay off the acid.

And finally, The Cow: Another costumed character, but this one (somehow) seemed less elegant than his fruity counterpoint. But what the bovine lacked in class, he made up for in skill, as he made it up quite high.

There was actually a moment when we had the cow, 30 ft in the air, dangling from the ham at the top of the pole...legs flailing, udders exposed; receiving such helpful advice from the crowd as "MOOO!" and the occasional flip flop tossed at his head. I'm sure there was some cultural insight to be gained then, but I was too busy shouting "come mas pollo!" while pounding warm San Miguels.

Sadly, this gang of jokers never managed to actually bring the ham down. They just managed to unwrap its netting. But, the day wasn't getting any cooler, and the crowd wasn't getting any soberer, so the powers-that-be deemed the ham "gotten" and so the cannons sounded and out came the trolleys.

[Helpful tip, if you hear the chant of 'camiseta, camiseta' in your vicinity, take your shirt off, or have it ripped from your body. Now, if you hear the chant of 'pantalones, pantalones' RUN! You're at the wrong festival!]

People do get their shirts ripped off, the reasoning behind it isn't clear. What IS clear is that when those shirts get wet, they can be used as some seriously stinging whips. Why are the shirts getting wet? Oh yeah, because there are a cluster of enormous water cannons, indiscriminately spraying the crowd...ostensibly to keep us from overheating, but really, just trying to knock folks over.

So here's how the Tomatina works. After the canons go off, 5 gi-normous trolleys (dumptrucks, really) drive thru the choked streets (how no one get run over here is a miracle). The dump trucks stop at predesignated spots along the street and 10-15 people in the back of each trolley dumps loads, and loads, of just-past-prime tomatoes on the cheering crowd. The whole thing is reminiscent of the musical numbers performed along a parade route...but much harder to wash out of your hair.

These early stages are hectic. Everyone is pressed along the sides of the streets. Although climbing walls/telephone poles is considered, anyone at a higher elevation is a natural target, with further to fall. The main goal here is to stay above the fray, flinging tomatoes that are tossed your way, and acclimatizing to the conditions (like scuba).

All of these trucks eventually dump their remaining tomatoes (and passengers) into the middle of the road. This is when the real war commences. You see, by now, the above mentioned water cannons have been spraying the entire street for almost an hour. So when the contents of the trucks come pouring out, we've got more of a V-8 River than a Street.

Once the battle gets going in earnest, everything speeds up. You're struggling to see thru foggy goggles, getting knocked silly with pulp and trying to respond in the general direction of your assailants. At some point you have to make the call, stay on the sidewalk, or dive into the river with the crazies?

So, into the river you go, fishing for tomatoes in the red soup, ruining that pair of $10 sneakers you bought specifically to ruin, half wishing you were bald and loving every slightly acidic minute of it. The laughing sloshing romp continues until the second cannon fires. You pull off your goggles and squint in the bright sunlight.

You and your fellow tomatina-ers look like extras from 28 days later: Tattered clothes, dazed expressions, lots of fake looking gore.

Taking the whole scene in, you shake your head, starting to chuckle at the madness of it all--until WHACK! the first soaked t-shirt smacks you in the face. Time to get the F out of here.

Learn Spanish, In FRANCE!

This is what I´ll be doing tomorrow. Finally participating in the food fight I´ve dreamt about since I was a child. Nothing ever looked as fun as the foodfight during the opening credits of ¨21 Jump Street¨and my favorite Cheers episode was the Thanksgiving Food Fight Episode (Shelly Long Dressed as a Pilgrim, getting a bowl of mashed potatoes to the face. Comedic Genius).

My school has organized a trip to the Tomatina for this event. On a TEST DAY, no less. My list of instructions is hilarious. NO SANDALS. NO DIGITAL CAMERAS. Wear a Bathing Suit, Goggles and Ear Plugs. Underwater Cameras OK, but BRING NOTHING YOU CARE ABOUT. (Love that last line, and I didn´t even add the caps.) According to Wikipedia, no one has any idea WHY the festival started, but only that it quadruples the population of a tiny town for one day. The tomato throwing lasts about an hour and cannot begin until one of the participants climbs a greased pole to pull down a ham(!?!) (All holidays should begin this way)

But That Post will be written when I return...if I make it back.

Soooo,

I fled the Country for the weekend. Heading with Ben to St Etienne, his beloved home town for some good French food, a tour of the neighborhood and the BIGGEST FOOTBALL MATCH OF THE YEAR (for this small town, anyway).

St Etienne was lovely, and completely empty. Everyone in Europe takes August off (where do they all go? most likely the outlet malls in Leesburg).



I visited two of St. Eteinne´s three museums. (Contemporary Art and Industrial Art, I skipped the Mining Museum). The employees of said museums were flabbergasted that anyone not on a school fieldtrip would actually be visiting on a sunny day, and an American, no less!

One way to feel better about my level of Spanish, go to France. Its a nice reminder of how far I´ve come. I´ve been able to ask for bathrooms and more bread for WEEKS in Spain. In France, its back to hand gestures and bugged out eyes. Benoit´s parents own a gorgeous condo on the Main Street of town. The house is long and full of windows and warmth.

I stayed in Ben´s room and he stayed in his brother´s room. The first day was like any first day with a host family. You say your pleasantries run out of common language, and then play a form of ¨memory¨ and ¨name that tune¨
¨Dustin Hoffman?¨ they would ask.
¨Jean Reno¨ I´d reply.
We also made a trip to Ben´s old restaurant. The food was incredible, definitely up to the billing.

The highlight for me was the Foie Gras course. They were stunned that I´d never had it before. (but, I assured them, I loved salads, so this shouldn´t be a problem.) It was delicious of course, but more importantly, any time I ever see Foie Gras on a menu again, I get to say ¨You know, the BEST foie gras I ever had was at this amazing out of the way chef owned French Restaurant in....¨ that alone is worth the price of admission.

The restaurant is located on a tree lined cobblestone walkway that collects a good number of other restaurants and bars. As Ben has been out of town for 3 months his return equates to the biggest event of the month.

We couldn´t walk ten feet without the servers and owners of places stopping us and shepherding us in for a drink.

¨Metallica?¨
¨Air.¨
And on and on.


Once we ditched the parents it was on to more clubs. One called Pushkin, which had white padded walls in its interior (made more and more sense as the night went on).

We finished off the night at ¨The Mine¨ where hearing Eminem´s ¨Without Me¨ followed by the The Jackson 5´s ¨I Want You Back¨, is frankly, to be expected. Also, I give my new friends props for knowing more of the words than me.

The football match was Sunday night and ended up being a let down. The next door rivals (Leon, those scum) were clearly bigger and faster and just wore St. Eteinne down. At the end of the day, I was okay with that. Didn´t know if I could handle a victory celebration on top of everything else.

I gotta save something for the Food Fight of My Dreams.

See you after I´ve taken about ten showers.

Forrest

Note from the Author

There actually IS a new entry. Its found under the last one. The long awaited sequel to Artistic License.

Interlude (Cop Out)

Before resolving the cliff hanger from my last post entry, and to break up the artsy/toursity posts, I´ve decided to add some more photos on to the site.

Other ideas I had for this post included answering fictional questions in a ¨mailbag¨style entry, but I found most of my made-up questions too offensive for this space.

The day before leaving Sevilla, I went to Malaga to visit the recently opened Picasso Museum there. Malaga is another gorgeous jewel of Andalusia where I wish I had spent more time. Malaga has an awesome grand avenue, which is covered with colorful, heat-diminishing streamers strung between the buildings. Malaga also has a cathedral with some impressive art work slowly rotting in its darkened interior. But, other than the Picasso Museum, which I´ll get to next time, the highlight was a large Moorish Castle and its grounds.

The Castle was a sprawling complex that overlooked the city and overflowed with walkways, fountains and vistas of the city and the sea. One of the bonuses of living in a country without a robust civil litigation system is that there are very ¨do not enter¨signs and roped-off areas in public places.

All this open and unregulated space means that you can really lost yourself wandering along the footpaths and following the gurgle of rippling water. And I´m not talking ¨lost¨in the vein of restorative meditation, but LOST in the ¨F, the sun is setting, I haven´t seen another tourist in an hour, and I´m almost out of Maltesers¨sense.

¨What is that red speck? A living soul, or just another mirage?¨

Barcelona has also been great. My days shift between pre 1L exams and post 1L exams with a impressive speed. (This isn´t entirely accurate, because I´ve haven´t been able to find a 30 pack of Miceholob Light, nor the ¨Best of Phil Hartman, on SNL¨ aka, my only pre-youtube access to Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer)

The people in Barcelona are much more serious than the people of Sevilla. The same goes for their planning and execution of street festivals as well. I just spent the last two nights wandering between multiple music stages (how did all the rappers from 40 Acres Fest end up here, and where is Tone Loc?) following Brazilian drum lines and just generally cavorting in 3.5 tenses: discussing the immediate past, the present and the distant future, with varying amounts of success.

A good number of my friends are leaving at the end of this week, so tonight´s the big farewell. Going to language school for more than a month here feels like working on a cruise ship. My entire life is welcome and going away parties. (without the $250 limit). But hey, at least I get to choose the dorky getup I wear everyday.

Gotta run for now, my purchased time is running out. See you soon.
















No, I did NOT take this picture myself, thank you very little....

Artistic License Part 2

==] Night is falling outside the Picasso Museum in Malaga and I´m neverously pacing in the post modern bathroom. Straining to hear footsteps above the steady hum of the neon lights overhead, I glance at my watch again. This whole idea is crazy, but I can´t leave without knowing for sure, and I can´t know for sure until. Footsteps, boots on lineoum. I listen to the squeaky circles and my breath becomes shallow. I wince as the lights are shut off and I´m left alone in the dark. Unable to believe my own luck (I have no problem believing in my stupidity) I step off the comode and inch towards the door. Outside of this WC, and on the second floor of the Picasso Museum, awaits my redemption, or my undoing. Surely that circular red M can´t mean what the legend says. If I´m right, I´ll be a hero. If I´m wrong...¨====]



OK, so that´s my attempt to crib from the Mixed Up Files of Basil E Frankweiler. But, since I haven´t read the book since sixth grade, I probably screwed it up. Of course, there is no REAL secret, just a realization. (but while I´m stealing from Art Suspense Novels, I must note that I´ve see a TON of religious art over the past two months and the dude standing next to Jesus in the last supper portrayals REALLY DOES look like a Chick.)





Anyway, back to the art. The Picasso museum is relatively new and is completely beholden to the whims of Picasso´s children. Its housed in a converted palace (like everything in this country, nothing ¨new¨is ever built, things are just repainted an renamed. this tradition dates back to the crusades when whichever victorious religion that time around would take the other reliogion´s church/mosque, add a new hood ornament to the top, and reopen it with a bright yellow ¨under new management¨banner).

The Picasso Museum tries to serve a few too many purposes. Its got a great collection of Picasso´s personal treasures, the stuff he kept for himself, or that he painted for his children. But it ALSO has a library, a cafe, an archaelogical dig, a movie theatre and an opium den.


Contrast this with the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, which is just wall to wall pictures. With a line that stretches thru two times zones, and taunting pedicabs who shout (in English, no less) ¨No A/C in the Picasso Museum! Go to the Beach! Its not worth the price! Buy some crayons and scribble on a napkin yourself!¨


Now, the Picasso Museum in Malaga hinted at this, but the Barcelona Version of the Picasso Museum drove home this fact for me: Picasso truly was just messing with us for the last 40 plus years of his life.

His early work is achingly perfect: luminous and startling. And then, as time and global wars pass, he just stops caring. All his pals went cubist and he gave it a go, but even that seemed like too much work. Besides, French Villas and mistresses aren´t exactly going to pay for themselves, so he needed VOLUME. And the best way to achieve that was to toss all the painstaking detail and realism out of his pictures.

Even the Picasso Museum itself acknowledges, in its roundabout and pretentious way, what everybody who visits the museum can see for themselves:

¨The aim of all this is to immerse oneself in a world where brazenness, alternated with the most profound ingenuity and where what appears to be bad taste attains the grandiosity and beauty of a new athsetic beyond modernity.¨

(The proceeding was a verbatim quote from the wall placard in the Picasso Museum. Needless to say, I confused the heck out of the security guards. They couldn´t figure out what I was doing, but since I wasn´nt taking a picture, and I wasn´t actually talking on my phone (just typing these lines quickly with my thumbs while snickering) they had to let me be.

So, basically, the Picasso Museum agrees that this late art is terrible, BUT, only if you measure it against OTHER art. If you think of it as being something completely new, which doesn´t have to following rules, than hey, why can´t it also be great?

HERE is my revelation! THIS is what I should have been trying to tell my bosses for YEARS now!

Sure, if you look at this work against any objective standard, or even, that of my peers you could say that.....but, YOU CAN´T DO THAT! Think of each memo/email/project as part of a NEW paradigm. One where ¨accuracy¨and ¨spell check¨are arcane concepts!

(Let´s see how far that argument gets me.)

Artistic License, Part I

I just got back from the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. Its the second Picasso museum I´ve been to, after the lovely, if quaint, Picasso Museum in Malaga, his birthplace. After seeing all this Picasso, combined with my tour of the Dali Museum yesterday, I´ve figured out how to get ahead in the world.

Now, both of these artists established themselves early as blazing prodigies: mastering and tweaking their studies and training. But both went on to ever greater success by bending, breaking, and leaving for dead the conventions they´d been taught.

Dali got a head start on breaking the shackles of convention by being stark raving mad. His crazy pencil thin, curled tip mustache wasn´t just an act, this dude was nuts. He couldn´t be bothered with reason, meaning, or taste.

{{Of course you balance a loaf of bread on the naked-spider-elephant-thing. What else are you supposed to do?}}

The Dali Museum is in a city called Girona. Or maybe its called Firona, or Fironas. Don´t rely on my spelling. Or anything else, for that matter. Now that I think about it, I´m not a 100% sure what city the Museum was in. But I definitely went to two different cities yesterday, and I´m almost certain that only one of them had a Dali Museum.

What made the Dali Museum especially interesting was the fact that Dali himself had been involved in the design and layout of his museum, and donated all the art himself. He had a very specific vision for how he wanted people to view his art:

High as kites, squinting in the black lights and trying to unfocus their eyes long enough to just see the sail boat, already.

The brochure to the Dali Museum boasts to that there is no rhyme or reason to the layout of the museum (awesome) and that there is no ¨right¨way to move through the museum. While a recommended path is provided, its only to make sure you see everything, and should not be viewed as adding meaning to the objects viewed.

{{No, we aren´t going to explain the 8 ft eggs that line the roof of the building, or the black Cadillac with a 20 foot totem pole hood ornament topped by the bust of a multi-eyed woman. Just loosen your tie, Man. And pass me the Pringles.}}

I´ve never been a huge Dali fan, but it was fascinating to see in flesh and blood the paintings which had been rendered into posters and tacked up on the walls of every Dungeon Master I ever knew growing up.

The very best of Dali´s work reminds me of what MC Escher would have done if giving a box of high end watercolors, and a bag of seriously wack mushrooms. The very worst of Dali´s work is strewn about randomly, unlabeled and unloved except by the pigeons.

Of course, even at his worst, Dali is still 1,000 times better than Cy Twombly. An ¨artist¨, who for some unexplained reason, evokes an overwhelming level of anger and outrage within me. Its true, I hate that guy.

If our paths ever cross, that dude better watch it or he´ll end up with a mouthful of teeth, and an eyeful of monacle. Stupid Cy Twombly. Wait, where was I?

Oh yeah. The Dali Museum was more fun house than gallery, with patrons forced to climb ladders, interpret holograms, and squint into random peep holes. While I enjoyed the Dali museum, it was almost a relief to exit onto a nice, ordinary street, with non floating, non melting non incongruous (I´m in Spain, I get to use double negatives) objects.

The Picasso Museums were quite the opposite. Straighforward and serious. So imagine my surprise when I discovered the secret waiting for me at both locations.... But, we´ll get to that next time.

An estrella in my own mind

I´ve settled into a comfortable routine in Barcelona, and the time is starting to fly by. I got to class from (roughly) 9:30 to 4:30, hit the gym afterwards till around 6 or so, and then head home to study, watch odd Spanish Sports programming (horses racing on a beach, anyone? anyone?).

The gym here is light years better than the place I was going in Sevilla. In Sevilla, the A/C units were decorative at best, and noisy heat generators at worst. The cardio equipmemt was stored in a room without windows and the one ab ball was actually an old inner tube filled with broken glass.

In Barcelona, I stumbled upon a gym with strong A/C, decent machine selection and, believe it or not, A POOL. The other spectacular feature I discovered last week was an indoor basketball court. I somehow convinced my moping French roommate to join the gym with me, and his eyes lit up when he saw the bball court. You could actually see his inner Pau Gasol (or Tony Parker) flicker for a moment. The gym loaned us a 1980´s era purple and gold rubber ball and off we went.

Its pretty obvious that Frenchie hasn´t played to much bball in his day, and so i took it upon myself to teach him the ways of the turnover and the elbow to the groin. In spite of his inexperience, he still plays like your stereotypical european: disdains the paint, ignores rebounds and smokes during time outs.

It was kind of fun teaching Frenchie the fundamentals of basketball. In my head, I was the down on his luck Scout, banished to Europe to watch scrubs play pick up games in the weird trapaziodal shaped key. When, all of the sudden, I stumbled upon a diamond in the rough. An urban legend, who with enough cajoling and dedication could change his life, and the world of basketball.

Of course, NONE of that was going to happen if Frenchie couldn´t hit a layup to save his life.

Teaching was required here, not merely discovery. So, I proceeded to walk Frenchie thru a life time´s of acquired basketball acumen. This took, in all, about 20 minutes. I lived the sports movie cliche. I went from atheletic prodigy, to 4 yr starter, to reluctant mentor, to begrudging friend, to avid supporter, to player-agent, to footnote to the legacy of a legend....in the same amount of time as a Spanish TV commercial break.

But that whole first day on the court was a blast. We were shooting (and missing) from everywhere and just basically running around with our arms flailing. The unexpected rush of adrenaline and sheer novelty reminded me of my first day of fencing class.

Now, as a freshman in college, I took fencing. As I recall my thinking at the time, my reason for taking the class was ¨holy crap, I CAN TAKE FENCING!¨

Fencing was taught in the football stadium at UT, deep in its bowels. On the first day, we met our fiercely serious teacher, learned the names of everything and even got to see a little fencing demonstration. With the hour almost over, and with barely enough time to change out of our ¨white¨ fencing gear and to hang up our mesh helmets, the teacher surveyed the 20 odd students sitting indian style on the floor and said ¨alright kids, you´ve got 5 minutes, go nuts¨

FINALLY!

We´d sat there wide eyed all hour, nodding our heads and thinking ¨ok, so that´s what that is called; ok, so that´s how you score a point...¨ while our hearts were screaming ¨just let us play with the SWORDS already!¨

Class was never as fun as those last five minutes of the first day: when nobody knew the rules, nobody thought about form, and blissful in our ignorance, we just tried to kill each other with all of our might. (Am I getting sentimental in my old age?)

Now if only I could convince Frenchie to let me teach him how to fence....

A Lesson in Fear

For those who assume that my three months in Spain are a paradise of carefree sun and relaxation, let me assure you that this is far from the truth. I have an annoyingly odd level of Spanish comprehension. My accent leads people to believe I know far more than I do. Granted, there are tons of words and phrases that I´ve picked up via osmosis thru the years that have made the transition to Spanish easier, but at the same time, without formal instruction, things like accents, indirect objects, connectors (besides, still, although) are foreign objects, and trip me up with regular frequency. Although I think I´m mastering the three main ways of formulating hypothesis for events that are either happening now, happening in the recent past, or happening in a concretely older time, I still have to ask for pepper at the grocery store as ¨the opposite of salt.¨ See, annoying, right?

Class therefore is an anxiety provoking ordeal, where panic sets in with each new twist of the unending mountain pass. Last week for example, we were forced to do word problems, MATH word problems, in SPANISH.

¿¿¿Math! AND Spanish! ???

Why don´t they just blindfold me as well? or have me solve them while padlocked in a submerged safe?

Spanish Math Problems? Who am I, an Einstein-Houdini hybrid?

Gimme a break, and gimme back my dictionary, while you are at it.

My other biggest problem, aside from general cluelessness, is my fear of vosotros. In the U.S., or at least in Texas, vosotros (or the informal version of ¨you guys¨ y´all, essentially) is not really taught. It seems that the whole informal tenses don´t really fly in Mexico, and my Spanish one teacher in 10th grade went to great pains to illustrate this for us.

First of all, she explained that we wouldn´t even be learning the vosotros form, and that we should black it out in our textbooks to avoid the temptation of referring to a group of people in an informal fashion.

Then she told us a story about a drunk kid in lock up in a mexican prison who mistakenly used the ´tu´(informal) tense when speaking with his jailer. Well, this would end up being that kids LAST mistake, because, according to my Spanish 1 teacher, the cop shot the kid.

Now its not as gruesome as something from the movie ´Touristas´ but, it was plenty enough to have me swear off the informal tenses, for good. I didn´t want to be that drunk kid in a Mexican prison...at least not the one who used the informal tense.

My teachers here sense my lack of comfort with the vosotros tense and revel in terrozing me with all of the vosotros questions in class.

Add to all this concern the developments of today, the entrance of my new classmates. Classes here run on a weekly basis, and every week students come and go, and sometimes even the teacher rotate in and out. Today we got two new students in my class: one brazilian and one russian.

The Russian is named Katrina, and is studying Math and Physics in college. I think she said she was 23. Well, our teacher made a big deal about her studying such tough subjects and asked her what she wanted to do when she graduated. Did she want to be a professor? Katrina laughed and said, no, I hate kids, I could never teach. So, the natural follow up was, so what DO you want to do? Her out of nowhere, record scratching as the needle is pulled off the album response was ¨I want to build weapons for Russia¨

WHHHHHAAAAAAA?

Next question: And, why are you studying Spanish then?

Actual and further jaw dropping response ¨we have lots of Spanish speaking customers to sell to¨

THAT IS AWESOME

This girl is slight, weighs maybe a buck five has giant glasses and a ghostly pallor, but she OWNED the room. We really couldnt get off the topic of her future employment for the rest of the day. My question ¨¿porque hacer guerra y no amor?¨went unanswered, although the teacher did bother to correct me: ¨haz el amor, no la guerra¨

Now, I´m not a 100 percent sure she´s legit because why on EARTH, if you actually WERE building bombs for Russia, would you go around blabbing about it? For the street cred? I kind of bailed her out on another question that would´ve helped determine her legitimate claim to Russian Arms Maker. When asked by the teacher, what was the strongest bomb she was studying, I blurted out ¨¡es secreto!¨ which Katrina quickly agreed with, ¨si, es secreto¨

Well, there went TODAY´S lesson. I spent the rest of the day wondering about her life, and marveling about the high stakes world I was entering.

What if I piss her off, will she be even more encouraged to build giant bombs? what if she gets to know me and realizes, hey, we´re all not so bad, and maybe there is another way? And, maybe most importantly, has she SEEN White Knights, with Mikhal Berishnikov and Gregrory Hines? What did SHE think of that daring fusion of different (dance) worlds?

Forget about tenses and questions of formality, my performance in Spanish class could now CHANGE THE BALANCE OF WORLD POWER. Great, like I need the extra pressure.

Having a Russian Arms Dealer in my class, is just another notch in my belt. I´m actually surrounded by spies. I know it, its cool. My first year of law school roommate who mysteriously vanished from a highpaying corporate job for two years, and then came back speaking fluent German and hightailed it back out of the states the second the JD was pressed into his hands? SPY.

The best friend since 5th grade who speaks fluent Arabic and travels across the globe meet with foreign scientists and government officials for weeks on end? SPY.

Hell, the woman who is now renting my apartment, who actually WORKS for the state department, who has a husband studying in Afghanastan, and who speaks Chinese, Russian, and Derka Derka Muhammed Jihad? SPY. SPY. SPY.

I joked in class today that all of her tests are going to come back with perfect scores on them, but there is a hint of concern there. I don´t want my experience tinged by the presence of hostile forces. I don´t want to have to temper my humor or my comments, for fear of further encouraging her along a path of death and destruction.

I don´t want to facilitate global conflict, but I still couldn´t help answering for her today in class.

We learned how to express repent in class today. (Arrepentirse). When the teacher asked Katrina how you say ¨regret¨in Russia, I pounded my fist on the table and said ¨there IS no Russian word for regret!¨

Sorry, World.

Bright Lights, Big City

¡BARCELONA!

I made it, and it was no easy feat. For as hard as it was to get here, and for as different as this place is, I might as well have traveled to another country. I knew that things were going to be different here before I even left Sevilla. There was some confusion regarding my arrival date, and unanswered questions about the keys to my new house. Well, I´ll be danged if Enforex in Barcelona didn´t have a 24 hr Hotline, and IN ENGLISH, no less. The only thing in Sevilla that ran 24 hrs a day was the horse and buggy station.

Getting here turned out to be a massive ordeal. First of all, I´ve got too much stuff. Last thursday I mailed myself a package (some souveniers, some spanish books I´ve now outgrown, all my undershirts and all my ´...for Dummies´books, untouched). Didn´t matter, I still had about 35 kilos of luggage. Converting that to English measurements, my luggage weighed A THOUSAND POUNDS. Add to the luggage problem the traveling with another guy (Benoit, hereinafter Ben, or Frenchie, or Lance) who also had too much luggage.

And just for funsies, sprinkle a bit of ¨we have no idea where we are going, nor how to get there.¨ shake the mixture vigoursly, bake in the Spanish Summer for four hours, and you´ve got me, scarily mimicking Ken´s experience in Barcelona, wandering about in a new and strange city. We ended up flying on Vueling Air (Motto: We make Southwest Airlines C Boarding Group feel like British Airways World Class) On Vueling, you have to PAY for your soda and crappy pack of peanuts. Once we got to Barcelona, we had to take a bus to a subway, a subway to a plaza, and then had to look at 5 maps and ask one kind soul where a street with 3 different names was. And all of that, just to meet someone to give us our keys to our house, which was another cab ride away.

The flight was 80 minutes long. The door to door time was about 8 hrs. I was hurting the next day. I hadn´t been that sore since I moved into my current house, and my neck froze up for two weeks and I walked around with clenched teeth muttering ¨No, I´m not ´doing the robot´i´m just paralyzed from the waist up¨ By Monday, I was moving more like a G.I. Joe than a Star Wars figure (elbows? why?) but my neck is still kinda stiff.

But whatever, the apartment is great. Its newly renovated, and I mean NEWLY. They just installed the second bathroom and washing machine yesterday. I´ve got a shelf in the fridge all to my self (first purchase? ICE and Frosted Flakes) and better TV reception (although, the TV is still the same size as the one I had first year in law school. there is a chronic shortage of big tv´s in this country, i wonder if Best Buy knows this). Benoit agrees that this apartment is much nicer than his last one, ESPECIALLY since, as of yesterday, he doesn´t have to share a room with me anymore. Poor bast-rd didn´t realize he´d traded old and busted for new and impossibly loud. (I think I just gave Mike ´Nam flashbacks, and I bet he just broke out in a cold sweat, sorry bro.).

School is a different world as well. In Sevilla, the school was in a converted aristocrat´s house, complete with winding staircases, enclosed terrace, ivy running down the walls, and colorful tile rising up from the floor to meet it in the middle. A/C was on a room by room basis, and was usually off. Sevilla only had one remote control for all the A/C units and harried teachers and panting students would go room to room looking for it. I also taught my teachers how to get --just a little-- more juice out of the rusty batteries by rubbing them back and forth quickly...judging from their reaction, you would have thought I´d brought back the sun. There were maybe 10 class rooms in total, each named after a different character from Don Quixote. Since the A/C was generally off, classes were taught with the windows and wooden shutters thrust open. Our earnest and funny teachers shouted over barking dogs and mothers taking wayward daughters to task in the streets below.

Classes were more like a social gathering, with the teachers openly disparaging the text and preferring to squeeze all of the gossip from our foreigner bodies. The teachers were our friends, and by the end, they were going out with us, if only to better understand why we were always late for first period.

On Planet Barcelona, the Enforex School is nestled between a 4 star hotel and government offices. The school has a long, neon lit, opaque glass and shiny metal foyer and blond wood, free floating stairs in between the three floors. The class rooms are numbered, and I´ve lost count of how many there are. There is central (freaking) A/C and nutty exterior shades that automatically (and I´m pretty sure completely randomly) move up and down, shading the classrooms for 5-37 minutes at a time.

The place reeks of business, and the teachers follow suit. No dilly dallying in this school. Our teachers are focused and commited to the text. Ben complains that it ¨doesn´t feel like vacation¨but I have to admit I kind of like it. Reminds me of home. But then again, so does the Metro here, which has the exact same graphic design for its maps as the DC Metro. I would not be surprised to board the L1 today, bound for Sagrada Familia, accidentally miss my stop, and exit at New Carrolton.

All in all, I´m really happy with the move. I pretty much was from the second I arrived in my apartment. Saturday night, Ben and I went out looking for some food and stumbled across Plaza Espana. Milling around Plaza Espana were more people than in the entire city of Sevilla. As soon as we finished our first loop of the place, we were greeted, as if on cue, by a spectacular water and light show, set to music. We sat on the ground amongst the blinking trinket selling set, drank a couple of Estrellas and shook our heads.

When had we gotten to the future?
Who are all these people?
(And, after a few more cervezas)
Where do they all go to the bathroom?

RANDOM THOUGHTS

**There is no blue tooth technology in Spain. If someone appears to be talking to themself in the street, they probably are.
**I miss quoting things, nobody here gets ¨okay, no deer for a month¨or ¨do you have anything besides mexican food?¨
**I am going to spoil the surprise now and tell everyone what they are getting as souveniers: .01 and .02 euro coins. I´m bringing them all home, because here, I can´t even give those tiny b-stards away.
**Why do they show dubbed A Team reruns in Barcelona? That show shouldnt have been on network tv 20 years ago, forget about now, and in a foreign land. Its still kind of fun to watch though. As Ben and I sat on the couch yesterday watching BA Barakus duck tape a machine gun to the side of a truck, to which Face had welded metal plates for protection, Ben turned to me and said ¨Siempre las mismas cosas¨ Couldn´t have said it better myself.

Life is Bueno or, I need a Spanish Boyfriend

I´ve been neglecting my blog for over a week now, but with good cause. Last Friday was the test to end all tests, an objective assessment of my language progress, basically a litmus test for whether or not this entire escapade was worth the trouble.

AND....

Turns out it was! I got an 80/100 on the grammer, a 40/40 on the reading and a 9/12 on the writing. I´m pretty sure that´s better than Cervantes did the first time he took it.

So, with my life choices re-validated I decided to go out hard with my friends who were leaving, and then hit the beach for the rest of the weekend.

Careful readers will recall that was actually my second trip to the beach, but, the beaches couldn´t have been more different. Its like the difference between dewey beach and palm springs (not WEST palm springs mind you, that place is a sh-t hole).

So, after dealing with my hangover Saturday morning and after taking every single object, including my shoes and my suit case off the floor (ah, Hobro, will your crazy demands never cease?) I hauled tail for the bus station and the tranquil sights and sands of Cadiz.

((Picture from Friday Night´s Festivities. Unfortunately, it is as blurry as my memory))

Of course, I only had a ¨good idea¨of where the bus station was. which meant I ended up walking around it 5 times before actually reaching it. I think half of my problem with getting lost (other than the fact that I missed the first week of first grade....the ONLY TIME they freaking taught Left and Right, and I´ve been disadvantaged ever since) is that I overthink the asking directions process.

I hate to bother people, and in Spain, I go into the questioning with a heavy conscience, knowing full well that I will a) not clearly ask my questions b) understand even less of what is said in response c) will forget the stuff I do understand almost immediately and d) will probably smack my spanish helper in the head as I attempt to supplement my meagre language skills with overzealous and vaguely menacing hand gestures.

So, who wants to be burdended with all of that?

No one, probably, so I agonize over who to impose on.
¨That group of foreigners? nah they look more lost than me¨
¨That group of nuns? nah they´ll just assume I´m seeking sanctuary¨
¨That nice looking couple? nah they´re still making out, and I just lost track of her hands¨
¨That old guy? Sure! he looks like he´s almost finished talking to that tree!¨

At the end of the day most of my dilemnas are self imposed. The only thing to do is to just keep talking to people. Most people are patient with those who are sincerely trying. And those that aren´t rarely actually leave a mark.

I met an Italian girl here who has found the trick for speaking great Spanish: Date Spanish Men. Of Course! Why hadn´t I thought of this sooner?

Spanish men make the most sense anyway because, well, I´ve got a girlfriend, and even worse, she might actually read this blog and finally, I´ve only actually seen about 7 Spanish women in my entire stay here, and all of them have been topless. --- And if you have ever seen me watch ¨Bikini Cavegirl¨ (the original mind you, not any of those bull shit knockoffs that followed) you´ll know that my conversational skills go through the floor whenever the protagonist (aka, Bikini Cavegirl) drops her furs.

Its a shame too, because I´ve worked out a whole series of catcalls for these mythical Spanish women which will never see the light of day.

¡Tengo Hambre! .....¡Para ti!

Tengo una problema. Tu estas llevando ropa. ¿Peude ayudame?

etc etc

Now, as I´ve consistently stated in this space, I am an avid fan of the casual nudity that pervades Spanish life. Mind you, its not all good, but lordy, is it ever more real. The decency standards here are completely different from the U.S. in general and it makes watching the nightly news a suspenseful experience.

I assure you, the running of the bulls looked very different from whatever video feed was used in the U.S. and at the same time, the war in Iraq, or the disaster-of-the-day looks COMPLETELY different when you actually witness the explosions, hear the victims and see more carnage than just twisted burning cars. I was surpised at the power of these images. Let´s put it this way, the Janet Jackson Super Bowl crisis would NOT translate.

Other then watching the nightly news through my hands, I think I´ve done a good job adjusting to the different customs and mores of Spanish society.

I accept the fact that no one in Seville is awake, much less working, at 8am EXCEPT for the crack demolition team, taking sledgehammers to my next door neighbors house.

I also accept the fact that for 5 days in a row I´ll have cold showers, followed by 3 days of warm showers and then 2 days of showers where the water smells like egg salad ---even though I always shower at the same time of day.

But, little kids in thong bathing suits? WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THESE PEOPLE?

I´m all for treating nudity as a natural state, but that doesn´t mean I think Victoria´s Secret should be opening a ¨tween¨section. I´d rather chalk it up to bad Spanish Fashion than anything more insidious. This view is strengthened by what my Hobro wore for our ¨nice¨dinner out last night: flip flops, track pants, sleeveless shirt with the word ¨patata¨on it, and, of course, the neon green fanny pack, slung over the shoulder.

But fashion aside, there are lots of things I´ve valued differently in Spain than I would in the states.

Take this rock for example. You couldn´t have dropped me on the top of this rock on a helicopter and made me jump in the states.
But in Spain? Hey! Why not?!? Sure, I´m not that strong a swimmer, I am afraid of heights and the last time I climbed anything was the -3 ¨all hands¨wall at the climbing gym, but hey, ITS SPAIN!


It turns out the trick for attempting stupid stuff is to watch a whole bunch of other people do it first, including old ladies and children, and then give it a go.

First, you swim out to the rock. (Cmon, its not THAT far....anymore) By the time you make it to the rock, you´ve half accomplished something, so you are feeling pretty good about the next step, and you could swim back from here, but hell, you´re kind of tired, and wouldn´t the top of the rock be the perfect place for a rest? So then you climb the rock and enjoy the view and catch your breath. Then you decide that climbing back down would be a pain and --since you´re already here-- you might as well give it a shot, so you creep your way to the edge and jump before the thought bubbles forming in your brain balloon out into actual doubts.

And SPLOOSH! you are in the water. See, you´d make a great old Spanish lady.


Gotta run for now, but I´ve got lots to say about my impending departure for Barcelona.

I keep hearing different, confusing, and slightly freaky things about the place:

The school in Barcelona has 500 students. In Seville, we´re the size of the Duke Lacrosse team (but with more public urination).

The prostitutes double as pick pockets. (Ladies, pick a profession and stick with it!)

And, scariest of all: THERE IS NO ELECTICITY IN BARCELONA.

Apparently, along with A/C and ice, ¨power¨ is still a relatively new concept here, and there just isn´t enough of it to go around. So, I´m off to buy candles, and to try and convince some Spanish tech investors to buy my 8 bit Nintendo. I´ll even throw in Pro Wrestling. (no I won´t)

Deegster, we have a problem

I´m struggling with the existence and use of pronouns in Spanish. This is the type of help I am getting: (honest-to-god-Berlitz example)

¨Se trata de aceptar una nueva realidad territorial. Ello equivale a recompensar las depuraciones etnicas.¨

Actual Translation: ¨It´s a question of accepting a new territorial reality. That is the equvalent of rewarding ethnic cleansing.¨ (emphasis in the original).

OK. Hold on. I don´t even know what that means IN ENGLISH! This is not a good sign...

Being back in school is forcing my old bad habits and coping mechanisms to the surface. I STILL panic whenever we start a new topic. I´m still taken aback by the fact that the teacher won´t just stop what she´s doing and explain, (in a non-foreign language, thank you very much) just what the heck is going on. I still also resort to being the class clown. Because, if I can´t get all the answers right, at least I can amuse everyone (and serve some sort of purpose).

I'm also obsessed with classroom dynamics and am incredibly, unreasonably territorial of my desk and my friends. This whole ¨fitting in¨routine has always caused me more heartburn than necessary. Time, degrees and job titles haven´t changed that. As I said to my mega smart, ultra hot, Chinese American girlfriend last week. ¨The Japanese and Thai kids are cool, but I don´t want to get stuck hanging out with the Asians for the whole time.¨

I found out how bad its gotten today, when we had a new student introduced to our class and my alarms started ringing like crazy. He´s an American (that´s MY gig!) from some tiny school, 24 and studying for the MCAT (I didn´t realize they gave it in Spanish these days) and he´s got a laptop with wifi access. He seems nice enough and doesn´t know a soul in Seville. So, of course, I did absolutely nothing to help ease him in, didn't introduce him to anyone or clue him in to what we are studying in class, etc. You see, we´ve worked so hard (in 2 weeks...) to establish this cocoon world of ours, and I didn´t want some know-it-all Yank (well, he´s from Georgia, but STILL) coming in and spoiling the show.

There are some signs of progress for me, though. I´ve been making flashcards of verbs, doing my homework, and even assigning myself more work in ¨problem¨areas. If you´ve only known me during the last 7 years, you´d think: ¨and....what´s the big deal?¨but if you went to college, or god forbid, high school with me, you´d know what a quantum leap forward I´ve made in student survival skills.

You see, I was introduced to my very first day planner/calendar at the start of junior year of college...and then only because I worked for the school bookstore and they gave me one for free. Up until that point, I had just happily walked the earth in baggy plaid shorts and a striped shirt, smoking Camel Wides, (not) working in the school cafeteria and stopping only long enough to realize THERE WAS A TEST TOMORROW AND MY BOOK STILL MADE THAT CRACKING SOUND WHEN I OPENED IT!!!

There is no way to overestimate how unnatural planning and pacing and layering came to me. I remember in high school, a guy I knew decided to take Economics by ¨correspondence¨which meant that you got the book and the assignments, and had to complete them all on SCAN-TRON and then show up somewhere for your final at the end of the year and you´d get credit for the class, having never set foot into the classroom. Said dude was falling behind on his regular assignments and was forced by his parents to create a month long schedule, listing out what chapters he´d complete, and when, with the goal of finishing the class in the month (so he could pass and graduate highschool). I remember being near tears at the injustice of this most-onerous punishment. To me its seemed capricious and impossible. HOW IN THE WORLD was he supposed to know what he´d be doing a month from now? How was that even possible? He´s not a mind reader, or a time traveler. I mean, what did they want from this kid!!?? (Or so was my thinking for the first 20 + years of my life).

But if there´s proof that things can change, I´m it. I was never foolish enough to take a Correspondence course. I just kept showing up. One day, I started taking notes (or paying someone else to do so) and then much later, I actually started looking at said notes and thinking ahead. And the rest is history.

Sometimes I think I don´t get enough credit for what I´ve accomplished. I mean, yeah, my mom is proud that I graduated from law school, and have a great job, but wouldn´t she be even MORE proud if I´d done all that AND BEEN BLIND!? Or what if I was war orphan? that would rule! Then everybody´d see how much I´ve done. I guess I´m always looking for ways to be more impressive...not by doing more, mind you, but by coming from less. Its worked to mixed results. My girlfriend is sorta impressed with the stuff I´ve done. But I´ve also convinced that I´m (her words) ¨a little bit retarded¨

Ah well, can´t win em all.

But, if I can pass this test on Friday, I´ll win one more...

Three Trials, One Theme

Seeing as how its Friday, I´ve gotten several requests for an update. As I told my best friend Tomas: until some sweet Corporation swoops in and starts sponsoring me to go to an internet corporation, or even better, buys me a lap top, updates will have to wait till I´m at school, I´m not in class, and I can hang around until all the college kids stop chatting with their boyfriends.

Its Friday afternoon here and the place is now deserted. I´ve got a big test next Thursday that I really have to hunker down and study for. So, of course, I´ve going to the beach tomorrow and the Alahmbra in Granada on Sunday. This decision making is emblamtic of my constant struggle between the virtues of study and the virtues of fun.

You see, I was on top of the Giralter Tower at the Seville Cathedral last Saturday. The highest point in the city with magnificent views of the entire city and the river that serves as its border. At first, I was amazed by the grandeur of the scene before me. But, after awhile, sweating balls on top of this ancient tower, I couldn´t stop staring at one particular sight: A rooftop pool not 100 yards away where I could clearly see one fat balding dude in a tight Euro suit, arms and legs splayed in the pool all by himself. Sure he was a stones throw from the largest Gothic Cathedral ever built. But at the same time, I was just as a far from what looked like a sweet way to spend the afternoon (did I mention the bar? there was totally a bar). So really, who had the better deal? That´s when I came up with a name for my struggle:

I need to Do Spain before Spain Does me.

Now, as some of you have surmised from previous posts. I kind of live with a crazy person. He´s got a lot of good characteristics. For one, he´s rail thin, so doesn´t take up much physical space in our small apartment. Secondly, he cooks all my meals and is of the opinoin that ¨there´s always room for bacon¨ (Pasta? Bacon! Potatoes? Bacon! Jamon Serrano? Bacon!)
Thirdly, he is the only actual Spanish person I talk to other than my teachers and really does a good job of communicating with me and talking thru words I don´t know.


But, there´s also clearly a lot wrong going on. First, I´m not really allowed to have anything in the fridge or the cupboards, but I´m also not really allowed to take/eat anything that´s already in there. I have to wait until its all given to me. In the beginning, I found my utter lack of choice to be annoying. But now, its kind of fun to wonder ¨will i get an apple today? or maybe some yogurt? only time will tell!¨ I think I also got criticized last week for how I spread my butter. Apparently I stab too far into the container, and don´t exploit the whole surface of the butter tub. I´m also essentially forbidden from having any company, or expressing any preference about what´s on the TV.

¨How can you live under such conditions?¨you may very well ask.

And its kinda like this:

You know how when you are at Duke Basketball Campout, and you are sitting around in portable chairs in blistering heat and chilly sleepless nights for three days? And you know how on the last muddy night, when you are 30 beers in and still staggering along and your buddy Ken boots and rallies over the side of the beer pong table while Scotty Dub points and laughs from 10 feet away....while peeing on his own tent? Well, its kinda like that.

And also:

Its kinda like that time last fall when my ¨friend¨ Mike Kim tried to kill me by taking me ¨rafting¨in west virginia on the coldest, wettest day of the year. We slept three dudes to a 2 man tent, got tossed out of the raft into a river of ice and were then ´rescued´by a guy who proceeded to smack me in the face with an oar and then pull my shoulder out of socket. (and I didn´t even get the worst of it. Some guy who looked like the result of a three way between a Viking a Redneck and a Biker got stuck under the raft about 10 seconds into the trip) The only time it stopped raining was when we were packing up to go home on the last day and were all huddled around a pre WW I Craftsman Stove, waiting for the 10 lbs of bacon to finish cooking.

So, you get back to your house from adventures like these and leave your clothes drying under the fridge. After your shower and your nap, your toe accidentally touches your wet, cold, destroyed jeans and you shudder: ¨how the fro did I enjoy that?¨

Well, my living situation now is kinda like that. Except without the cold and without the rain, both of which I´d kidnap a baby for, right about now.

Its Spain, Its Seville, I ain´t working, so its all good, right?

Well this tale of human adaptability took a sharp left turn when Hobro yelled at me for using my fan.

That´s it, too much. As Cameron Frye would say ¨Its time to take a stand.¨

And take a stand I did, writing out an honest to God page of reasoning, in Spanish, as to why I should sole discretion of over the when and where of my fan usage. It was a great talk we had. It ranged into the politics of conservation, social responsibility and the casual nudity on Spanish network television (all three of which I avidly support, btw). In the end, we agreed that the point of his anger wasn´t the actual cost in dollars of using the fan, but the cost in global karma (I literally did at one point draw and use a ¨Yin and Yang¨as a visual aid during this discussion).

The end result being that I was given a DIFFERENT fan. One with a timer on it. So, I can have my precious fan turned on every night as I go to bed, but which will shut off within an hour to conserve energy. And, if I TRULY AM uncomfortably hot, I´ll simply wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and crank the timer back for another hour of sweet circulated air relief.

Done and Done.

But guess what Dear Readers? The savvy old Deegster figured out a way to BY PASS THE TIMER. That´s right folks: Punk´s Not Dead, Bitches! Suck it, Al Gore!

So, in the spirit of Doing Spain, I´m leaving Seville a month early for Barcelona. And in Barcelona I´m going to live with a French student I met in class here (Ben Wa? I can´t really pronounce the dude´s name, so why should I know how to spell it?) and, who happens to work as a cook for some fancy pants French restraunt back home.

So what if they don´t really speak Spanish in Barcelona? And so what if, for all his faults, my hobro has been my best source for Spanish conversations, and invaluable practice? Its like 10 degrees Celsius cooler in Barcelona, and if I want, I can Buy Some Freaking Ice Trays.

Owning Ice Trays and Not Speaking Spanish. Now THAT´S Doing Spain.

Have a good weekend. You know I will.

The Documentary I just saw

How do you turn Transformers, a movie that opens with the writing credit ¨Based on the toys created by HASBRO¨into a thinking man´s film? That´s easy, try watching it in Spanish.

I haven´t concentrated this hard in a movie since I saw Clue for the first time.

All of my new friends (all 1.5 of them) were out of town this past weekend, and so while I spent the days visiting touristy stuff (which I will generally spare you from....although SOMEONE is going to have to watch the freaking i-photo slideshow I will lovingly prepare) I decided to hit the cinema for a little R&R from my espanol. Someone had gone to the cine earler in the week and seen Oceans 13, in English with Spanish subtitles, and I was hoping to do the same.

Also the allure of 2 solid hours of air conditioning and an American-Sized Diet Coke were too great to pass up.

Unfortunately, when I showed at the cine, Oceans 13 had already started, so it Transformers was the next most viable option. Here was maybe my second or third interaction with a non-school-non hobro Spanish person, and it went about as well as could be expected:

(Translated from the Spanish)
Me: Hi, I´d like to buy a ticket to see Transformers at 10:30
Cashier: How many tickets?
Me: Just one.
**************************
So far so good, right? well, here´s where things took a real nosedive. Apparently, in Spain, they ASSIGN seats for their patrons. So while, I´m assuming all that is left in our transaction is for me to pay, she´s got something else on her mind.
**************************
Cashier: Where would you like to sit?
Me: I´d love to pay, how much is it?
Cashier: No, sir, íts not time for that, tell me where you´d want to sit first.
Me: Yes, one for Transformers at 10:30, and here´s my money.
Cashier: You aren´t getting a ticket until you tell me where you want to sit.
Me: Yeah, I love the Transformers.
Cashier: Sir, there is a line of people behind you, please just choose a seat.
Me: No, the Go-Bots sucked! I got one for my birthday once, his name was A-1, like the steak sauce.
Cashier: I´m just going to give you a middle seat in the front row you yankee bastard.
Me: Hmmm, I don´t know how an Energon Cube would taste, probably like an overripe mango.
**************************
At this point, after much rolling of the eyes, she turned her computer monitor towards me and pointed at a diagram of theatre. I got the point immediately, chose an aisle seat and sealed the deal.

Ticket in hand, I headed towards the concession stand for my big-ass coke and popcorn. These were purchased with relative ease, but when it came time to fill my cup with ice, the woman reached into a small metal vase and pulled out a mere two cubes of ice with tongs to drop in my glass.

This lack of ice seems to be endemic in this country. I mean, sure you can discover the new world and change the course of history on three contintents, but if you remain content to buy your ice from gypsies on the street, then what good is your freaking civilazation???

How hard is it to figure out that: water + cold = ice? You all have freezers, I´ve seen them, how about tossing a water nozzle or some ice trays up in there?

Anyway, I go to my assigned seat and settle in for a good ole American popcorn flick.

Sadly, it became clear pretty quickly that thsi whole thing will be in Spanish, and that I´m going have to pay attention if I´m going to have any idea what´s going on.

((I´d hate to leave wondering ¨what was MegaTron´s motivation? did StarScream resolve his Oedipus Complex?¨))

I think I was able to glean most of the intended plot points, and the movie was pretty good. My biggest problem was that the baddest Decepticon of them all, SOUNDWAVE was nowhere to be found. I understand that cassette decks are a tad outdated these days, but surely they could have worked him and his ever-so-cool-talking-like-Barry White-into-the-fan-on-high-speed-voice into the film!

Oh, and Bumblebee deserves an Oscar for his performance.

I haven´t talked about this much yet, but everybody, EVERYBODY in Spain smokes. And, sure enough, someone lit up in the theatre. Not once, but twice. And this wasn´t even weed! Just plain ole tobacco. Its completely illegal I´m sure but no one said anything. But it did make me feel better about that time I smuggled a Long John Silver´s (LJS for those in the know) Add-A-Piece Meal into the Riverside theatre for a late night showing of Species 2. (And thank God I did, those batter dipped fish rectangles were the best part of that film).

Watching Transformers in Spanish was a healthy experience for me. It helped broaden my worldly perspective. You see, Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots didn´t come to Earth just to save America, they came for ALL OF US.

Thank You, Spanish. And Thank You, Autobots.

Keep waging your battle to destroy the evil forces of....the Decepticons.

That its it for today. Next time I´m going to try and work all of the funky spanish keyboard keys into my message, but I won´t do it unless you all can see them. So please, someone in the comments tell me if you can see¨ ñ, €, ¿, ¡, ª, º, ¬, and of course, ç

Bullfighting is for the ....

On Thursday I attended my first ever bull fight. Bull fighting has existed in Spain for a whole bunch of years and is highly ritualized and intensely meaningful. Every costume, color and cheer is rich with hidden significance and the spectacle as a whole is symbolic of man's solitary struggle against large horned animals, when surrounded by cheering drunk Americans.

As luck would have it, we also covered bullfighting over 2 days in my culture class last week, so I am able to provide an in-depth analysis of the events that took place. Before we get to the actual bull fight, let's go over some of the facts and fictions regarding bull fights. Let's see if you can pick out the differences between the truth and the misconceptions

_________________________________________

BULL FIGHTING.....TRUE OR FALSE?


*Bull fighting is derived from the Roman Collesium spectacles

*Bull fights take place in a circular ring, and the seat of honor is reserved for the King of Spain.

*A typical bull fight involves bouts with 6 different bulls and usually lasts 2.5 hours.

*Before the matador enters the ring, the bull must face three different "Picadors" or, people with gnarly looking spears that jump up and stab the bull in the back.

*Bulls are colorblind and the color of the matador´s cape is red in honor King Leon ¨The Red Faced. ¨


*If a matador does well during a bullfight the crowd shouts at the governor to cut off the dead bull´s ear for the matador. If he does REALLY well, the crowed demands that both ears and the bull´s tail be given to the matador.

*Red Bull sponsors cheerleaders at most major bull fighting arenas. The bull fighters are also rewarded with some of their tail.

*Having empty bottles and seat cushions thrown at you by the crowd is a GOOD thing.

*It is ABUNDANTLY clear that all of the matadors are going Commando.

*Nobody laughed at my ¨the sum of my bullfighting experience comes from that one Madonna video¨ joke. (You know, the one where she gets dumped by the Matador...)

*Matadors have caddies with whom they consult and who provide them with different swords as the situation requires.

*Matadors in training make extensive use of the mechanical bulls at Coyote Ugly.

*After getting killed in the ring, the bull is chopped up and sold in a meat store on site.

*Even if the bull ¨wins¨ by, say, goring the crap out of the matador, he still gets killed, and chopped up and sold.

__________________________________________

Wait a second....all of the above is TRUE!!!

What a crappy sport!

Its kind of annoying that the bull has no freaking shot whatsoever. Its a worst case scenario handbook without any solutions, its the Kobayashi Maru from Star Trek II, except that its REALLY hard to cheat the system without opposable thumbs.

The sport does seem to go out of its way to be as brutal as possible. Yet, strangely, I was able to tolerate and even enjoy parts of the bizarre spectacle.

My ability to come up with and spout sage-sounding commentary was key:

¨The matador has total control of that bull...and this crowd!¨
¨That bull has got creepy-old-man-stength¨
¨The matador´s theatrics seem forced and hollow¨
¨This sort of behavior would never fly in Madrid....¨

This penchant for commentary, along with my extensive rationalizing made for a fun night.

¨Up until this very moment, that bull has led a good life....for a bull¨
¨That bull was dead the moment he walked into the ring¨
¨He´s probably so hopped up on meth that he doesn´t feel a thing¨

....(what am I saying? how can I stand this? what have I become? Has the dude selling ice cream passed by yet?)....

Hell Freezes Over; Or, this beats Conjugation Drills

Wow, here´s a place I never thought, I´d be: the BLOGOSPHERE. I used to make fun of that word, and now I found it strangely comforting. What a difference, a few days anad a ton of miles make.

Everyone I know has been really supportive about my trip to Spain. People that have spent time here seem to have strong feelings about this country. Before I came, I took a week´s worth of Spanish classes in DC. I had a great old teacher. She wasn´t old school, she was OLD WORLD, and she was always giving me creepy, old world advice like ¨don´t buy batteries from Gypsies on the street¨that always seemed to raise more questions than they answered.

All and all, things are going quite well. My house is really close to school, only two life-treatening, sidewalk-lacking streets away. I live in an apartment with a one other student, who I´ve seen for all of 5 minutes. My host family consists of a dude my age who wears pajamas with a picture of ghandi on them and who asks me if I´ve been to the gym before deciding what I get to have for dinner. I´ll call him my host brother, or hobro for short.

Hobro seems like a good guy, if a bit anal retentive. He gave me a tour of the house and the streets nearby on my first day. Hobro is big on control, he only gives me things when i ask for them. So, I didn´t get hangers for closet until I asked for them. I didn´t get a towel for the bath until I asked for it, I didn´t get a fan for my room until I asked for it. I reckon its a miniexperiement he runs to see how people cope with different surroundings and privations. I´m sure he once had a poor Japanese student, too shy to ask for anything who ended up sleeping on cinder blocks and drinking out of his hands. In fact, I have yet to ask for something that he hasn´t had ready to give me. In my mind he´s got a giant room like the pirate ship in Goonies where he just pulls out whatever I´d like or need. Hopefully its got fewer skulls.

Thankfully, Hobro is a good cook, and his trains seriously run on time. Meals are at 9:10, 2:30 and 9:00. To the second. You can set your watch by them. Hobro lays out a table cloth on the round table in the living room and unfolds two plastic ikea chairs...to be sat in only at meal times. Yesterday, when he was going out for dinner and cooked only for me, I got only HALF a table cloth because, apparently, the honor of a WHOLE tablecloth is reserved for when he eats with me.

I plan on peppering these posts with my Spanish revelations as they come to me. These will keep me from getting bogged down in the minutae. Here are a few to get started.

¨How the fro did I ever live without a personal deep frier?¨
--Just trying to imagine the inabilty to fry up ham and cheese fritters, french fries, fish sticks, is now laughable. Clearly there is something about these friers that allows the Spanish to stay rail thin. I will investigate further by consumer everthing that comes out of the magical toaster-sized contraption that occupies the place of honor in our kitchen.

¨Songs by Spanish-Language Artists such as Shakira ACTUALLY SAY STUFF¨
--Its not just a bunch of gibberish with a killer beat. There are words, nay PHRASES buried in there! I have yet to figure out a single song, but I´m starting to capture words: amor, pechos, that sort of thing.

¨Simpson´s quotes don´t translate, but Sesame Street impersonations will keep you alive in most countries.¨
--Its tough to convey Simpsons lines like ¨Those sandal-wearing goldfish-tenders!¨but everybody knows Sesame Street (here, Barrio Sesamo) and my Vampiro de Contar just KILLS....¨Uno! Dos! Dos Platos! Ah ! Ah ! Ah !¨

"Gay or Spanish?"
--Probably both.

¨Everything goes better with running bulls¨
--The running of the bulls is in Pamplona tomorrow and I´m having trouble concentrating on anything else. In culture class yesterday we learned about all of the solemn religious processionals held in Sevilla every Christmas. It was the first video we´ve watched in school so far. For every gorgeous, candle-laden icon of the virgin, and for every grand and silent march of purple hooded believers, I couldn´t help thinking ¨this is great, but when the bulls start knocking sh%t over, that´s when it´ll be aweomse¨ I´ve found this type of thinking to be contagious, and now, I see bulls stampeding through class, crushing desks and impaling that italian kid in hawaiin shorts who is weirdly fat in a way you don't see in America, Bulls running thru the Tienda with its one size (40oz) cervezas, and even, Bulls running thru my own living room trampeling the tiny TV and knocking over the dinner table, half table cloth and all

That´s it for now, I´ve got a fairy tale to write. This will be harder than my last few assignments because the answers aren´t in the back of the book. Thank god I didn´t have that temptation growing up. I´d still be in 4th grade.