“Figueres, you say?” Yes, I know, this destination may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you–being that, in light of the last few posts at this post one might expect that it’s changed its name from “Now Ain’t That Some Shit” to that other grand railway destination of mine (via Lorca and subsequent car ride of course):

Like the famous song by Manu Chao, "Welcome to El Valle/Tequila, sexo y marijuana"...no wait, that doesn't rhyme, does it...

 So I’ll start at the beginning.  A couple of weeks ago now, we did indeed go down south for Christmas with the folks down the country, a rather somber affair really, due to the circumstances (passing away of aged grandmother, other family health concerns), but there was no lack of logs on the fireplace and play time with the nephews, including walks down by the “crick”:

Victor and the mystery of fire

He so crazy...

It's hard to tell from this photo but I was wearing short sleeves like, two days before Christmas. Whatch'all know about that?

Thumbs up

At one point on one of these brief little excursions, I could have sworn that I’d detected the unmistakable aroma of a Bojangle’s picnic fries, or at least the seasoned salt that goes on it.  Mmmm…

No goat or burro sightings this year, but I did get a snap of the peacock they got cooped up around the corner.

Another big difference with Christmas in El Valle this year was that this was my first trip down there without my MP3 player (M.I.A.).  Apart from making the train ride down seem longer, this meant no all-night subliminal ”hypnopaedia” via MP3′s of La Hora Chanante soundtracks or low-volume Spanish hip-hop.  Luckily, this time around there were almost no late-night/early-morning sessions of incessant dog-barking, so the MP3 player wasn’t strictly a necessity, in its capacity as a sleep aid.

Reading wise, I plowed through two books by Johnathan Coe, who I wasn’t familiar with and whose books were lent to me by our neighbor Eva (thanks Eva!)–The Accidental Woman and What a Carve-up!  The first I started and finished on the train ride, and the second (much thicker and with much smaller print, I might add) I devoured in three sitting more or less.  Recommended.

Ain't got shit to do with anything, but I really like this up-close and personal portrait taken by Fernando (age 6) of the annoying plastic duck that inexplicably sings "I'm a Barbie girl/in a Barbie world, etc.", over and over again.

The low point was getting off the train in Barcelona at Estació de Sants and forgetting my bag with the camera, cel phone charger, two books, and my house keys.  Uhhhhhh, whoops! 

Thankfully, when I realized the mistake and hurried back to the station to report the items missing, the train was then arriving to Figueres, and the helpful lady at Atenció al viatger  was able to get in touch with the people on the train to have someone at the station in Figueres pick up the bag there and hold it for me.  Very helpful, and look at that, for once someone has something good to say about the service at Renfe…

And hence, the train ride to Figueres on a cold winter’s afternoon.  There, finished.  Promise to write more about Spanish hip-hop, linguistic nationalism, and all that other, non ElValle-related stuff that I tend to write about sometime soon.  Happy 2010!

First things first, I should probably finish the travelogue promised many many weeks back now.  But instead, I would rather present some scribblings conserved in the notebook I took with me on my summer vacation.  For your approval, some amateurish observations on naming practices in la España profunda and intonation in L2.

“Notes from El Valle

The first few days or so have been pretty rough*.

Briefly: this is not my place.

Nor will it ever be, no matter how much time I spend here staring through the window screen at the blazing white facade of the houses across the street, or the scrubby brown mountainside drying out in the sun behind them.

This can’t be my place because I am not me here.  Or, possibly, I am more myself here than I realize, and that’s the problem.  Whatever the case may be, I’ve resigned myself to the role which I inevitably must inhabit: that of the the foreigner, slow-witted, clumsy, and generally useless for any task more complicated than rinsing the dishes and putting them in the rack to dry.

At mealtimes, I let my mind wander, paying little to no attention to the conversation at hand.  Try as I may, I just can’t follow the endless train of who-did-what, who-said-what-to-who, etc.

For one thing, I can’t keep the characters straight–mainly because they all have the same names: either Juana or Remedios or Maricruz or Juan or Jose or Manolo.  (Since they’re passed down from generation to generation and it seems like practically everyone here is related, well, turns out everybody’s named after the same grandfather/mother.  Whoops!)

Then there’s the preferred means of distinguishing one of these multiple Juans or Juanas from the others, that is, identifying them with the name of some other relative, almost always a parent or spouse.

–“Where’s Juan?”

–”El Juan de la Remedios or El Juan de la Maricruz?”

Alternatively they may be identified geographically (“La Mercedes de los cortijos de abajo”) or by some nickname, ranging from the obvious (“Los mellizos” (the twins), who are, you guessed it, twins) to the purely non-sensical (one guy whose given name is Juan but everyone calls him Jose, or something like that).

But I think the real reason that I tend to drift off into space during these conversations is lack of interest, pure and simple.  I mean, honestly.   “What’s that you say? La tía Virtudes (not to confused with varous other Virtudeses of the pueblo) and la Henriqueta de los cortijos de arriba aren’t speaking to each other and can’t hardly stand to even see each other in the street?  Well, quite frankly, I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK.”

This, I imagine, causes me to give off an aloof, impassive air, being that I don’t really ever participate in these little rap sessions, and tend to leave the room once I can find an excuse to do so (thanks, nephews!).  Some might attribute this to a perceived feeling of city-fied superiority, but that’s not really it.  I just can’t work up the energy to fake like I give a shit.  It’s WAY too much hassle.

Let me explain, as a non-native speaker, I find myself having to invest a lot of thought and conscious effort in speaking with the proper intonation, not just in a functional-grammatical sense  (i.e., asking a question with the proper intonation (rising at the end) so that my interlocutor recognizes it as such), but also–perhaps more importantly–to convey emotion, attitude, etc. And if it’s hard enough as it is to say something more or less correctly when I actually mean what I say, you can imagine the difficulty I have saying something I don’t really mean and saying it convincingly.  In other words, in addition to stupid and clumsy, condescending and phony.

Better stick to monosyllables.”

Next time, photos.  I promise.

* the fact that I spent the majority of it hiding in the guest bedroom reading the Spanish translation of Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris and pining for North Hills Mall and Cameron Village and things like that had something to do with it

For example: the first night, I’m a character in a strange sword-and-sorcery fantasy movie.  I’m trapped in an enormous castle, trying to escape from skeletons and ghouls who appear randomly, jabbering gibberish in unearthly, ghoulish tongues.

(If we’re to believe the theory that dreams are the mind’s way of fitting together fragments of sensory information perceived during sleep, this dream then is no doubt inspired by the voices from the kitchen down below the guest bedroom—an interminable parade or distant (or no) relatives of my girlfriend and various other townfolk who file in every morning to offer greetings and salutations to my girlfriend’s grandma and her nephews.  Usually without knocking or ringing the doorbell.)

Or this one: I have a car, and I’m trying to find a parking space.  I’m in some unrecognizable suburban strip-mall area, on a four-lane divided highway lined with shrubbery and flowers, which nonetheless has parking on the street—all occupied of course.  I pull up to a stoplight, and when it turns green I turn left, somehow directly into a pizza place which is and is not Andy’s Pizza.  Somewhat confused as to how I managed to drive a car into a pizzeria without breaking any glass, I get out and look around.  The décor is orange and yellow.  There’s a fat kid with short brown hair, about 12 years old, and he’s cracking jokes, laughing and making fun of me.

Without thinking twice, I jackslap the living shit out of this kid, leaving a light, stinging sensation on the back of my hand, and my victim a blubbering mess of tears and snot.  He runs off to tell his daddy on me, and I decide to hightail it out of there.

I get to a safe distance, and then realize that I’ve left my bicycle in the pizza joint, and that I have to go back and recover it.  In my mind and in the dream, the car is now a bicycle, and at this point I wake up.

(The car here obviously stems from our lack of same, indispensable here in El Valle if you want to be a truly, free autonomous individual.  Also obvious is the expression of my unquenchable desire to strike obnoxious children, as Bernie Mac would say, “in the throat or stomach”.  Or right smack in the face.)

On my third day in El Valle, at the moment I first took the trouble to write down these dream sequences, I remembered the first and the most recent, but not the second night.  Then something I read in the book I was reading at the time (the 3^rd part of The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster) reminded me.

In a supermarket, one with pretensions of being a gourmet grocery or health foods store, perhaps the Fresh Market in Cameron Village (where I used to work), or Wellspring/Whole Foods (where countless friends and acquaintances have worked over the years).  I’m there with my friend Alex.  I want to buy some things to make spaghetti, evidently.  I’m looking and looking and can’t find jack.  Then suddenly, Alex is already in line at the cash register, and he already has what I’ve been searching for, although I barely recognize it: pasta of an unfamiliar, undescribeable shape, like three-dimensional hieroglyphics perhaps, sold pre-cooked in a clear, unmarked plastic bag, mixed with a thin red sauce of an oddly liquidy consistency.  “What the hell is this?” I think, as I wake up.

Last one, an epic: I’m in a workshop of some sort.  There are lines of table, and a screen, and no doubt a Power Point presentation is involved.  Everyone there has a laptop, myself included.  There’s a break, and I go outside.  When I come back, my laptop is gone.  I search frantically for it, eventually finding it somewhere really obvious, as though it were “hidden in plain sight” as they say.

I leave the workshop, and in the street I narrowly escape an altercation between some Spanish tourists and nasty, hairless football hooligans—from which I deduce that I am in the U.K.   I recall running away from them, shouting “Fuck you, you fat British bastards!”

Then I think, “Ooh, I need to be getting home” and I start looking for a bus stop.  A tall, older man, with a greyish mustache and squinty blue eyes says something to me in an accent that I can’t quite place, which makes it impossible to understand.

At first I panic, thinking that he is with the local police authority, asking me for my documentation, and since I am illegal I sputter nervously that I don’t have any.

He repeats himself, and I realize that he has said “Mapbook.”  A sort of blunt, Neanderthal way of asking for directions, as though made under the assumptions that everyone has to carry a “mapbook” (whatever that is) at all times.  I tell him again that I don’t have any and make my way to the bus stop.

It’s night, and I walk past a park flooded with mysterious green light.  The park is full of young people talking very quietly into their mobile phones or catching free wireless access with their laptop computers.

I reach the bus stop and get on the first bus that comes.  The inside of the bus is like the old school buses from my childhood, with grey metal and brown vinyl seats.

The bus is full of children, and they’re all wearing New York Yankees baseball caps, and navy blue t-shirts that say “Yankees” in white cursive letters, that typical two-tone Little League baseball design.  They are boisterous and belligerent, launching all manner of crude taunts and epithets my way.

I move slowly, purposefully up the aisle, until I reach the oldest and most vociferous of the team.  I punch him once, quickly, really hard, in the ribs, and he falls back in the seat with his limbs up like a cockroach.  He squirms, but not as though in pain especially, rather more like a dog showing submissions to a larger, more dominant dog.  I lean over and snarl something along the lines of “Now shut the fuck up and leave me the hell alone”, and I sit finally at the very back of the bus, slumping over against the window, my computer under my arm, exhausted.

We ride quietly, peacefully past one baseball diamond after another, each with a team of youngsters practicing.  At first, I am too sleepy to pay much attention, but finally I notice that these groups of kids—each dressed in a different uniform, be they Pirates, Phillies, or what have you—are not practicing baseball, nor even teeball.  They’re practicing with crossbows, lances, bow and arrow.  They’re sparring, doing judo, karate, bare-knuckle boxing.  Frightened, I awake with a shudder, on the bus and in my bed.

 In the meantime, I want to take this opportunity to do something that I haven’t done much of here—what’s commonly referred to as “shameless self-promotion”.

 I’ve decided to make an album compiling the output of my electronic-music-composer alter ego Young Nickels the Great.

Who is Young Nickels the Great?  Well, the name first appeared as just a silly user-name on my Myspace account.  (Reason Myspace is cooler than Facebook #4071: You can call yourself “**PHUKK U!!!**” or “Captain Serve-a-Ho” or whatever retarded moniker floats your boat that day.)

 It got serious though with the arrival of my friend B—- to my apartment in Barcelona.  My roommate J—– was a bit hard-up for cash, so he decided to live with his girlfriend for a couple of months and rent out his room. 

 B—-, a Portugese guy about my age who speaks quite good, very funny English, was the one who took the room…or took the bait I should say.  It turns out J—– had sold B—- on the room telling him that it was all his, for as long as he liked, not a sub-let or anything like that.  Just the normal set-up in this kind of informal “Craig’s List” (or “LoQuo” in this case) rental agreement.   But in fact, the plan was, fleece him for a couple months worth of rent, kick him out, and move back in.  Which is exactly what he ended up doing.  Kind of ugly.

 In any case, before this happened, B—- got J—– to install on his laptop two programs, SoundForge and Cubase.  A sound editor and a music engine, and fairly decent ones.  Evidently, they had gotten started talking about music while J—– was showing B—- the apartment and etc., etc. 

 Now, I was more or less familiar with these, from my days dicking around with my friend Max, making beats and recording the Nicky Album.   So I showed B—- the ropes more or less, how to take sample and screw around with the effects and so forth in Cubase.

 From there it was only a matter of time until I started creating stupid little songs, mixing Ñico Saquito and Camarón with the theme music from Dragonball Z or whatever the hell else I happened to have on hand.  B—- would leave his computer on the table in the living room, with speakers hooked up and everything, to listen to music in the morning before he went to work.  When he was gone I would mess around with SoundForge and Cubase, creating my humble little monstrosities.

 Sometimes you could pick up free wireless from the neighbors, which led me then to the next step: creating a Myspace page to put up some of the songs I’d made.  They were mostly crap.  Except for one, the first track on the “album”, which is “(I Drink a Lot of) Thunderbird”, which dates from this period and which I’ll stand behind as being listenable.   (Yes, I know, really going out on a limb here.)

When B—- left, there was a long pause in YNG’s recording career.  They had taken my toys away and I had nothing left to play around with.  This forced hiatus ended when I bought my own computer.  One of the first things I did when I got my lovely white Dell Inspiron 1520 was download two free music programs from the internet, Audacity (a well-known shareware sound editor similar to SoundForge) and Kristal (like a very primitive version of Cubase).

 With these two programs I was able to almost all of the things I could do with their more advanced cousins.  And they were free.

 The album is entitled “Travellin’ Music (Bustin’ Ya Ass Style)” (taken from a quote by Ol’ Dirty Bastard a/k/a Big Baby Jesus [R.I.P] at the end of his song “I Can’t Wait” which I subsequently sampled in my song “Yo Miami Yo California” (see below)).  Yes, I know, it’s goofy as hell.

 I’ll be posting it in its entirety for free at some point when I figure the best place or way to do so.  In the meantime, listen to the snippet tape I made, and watch these videos.

I suppose that in theory the idea was, first and foremost, for me to record my life and my experiences and share them with family and friends. And also, in passing, sharpen up an instrument, the pen (metaphorically speaking, seeing as how we’re in the Digital World and all) which, if it were ever at all sharp, had long since fallen into disuse.

Looking back at the sporadic entries made here since then, I’ve done a lot of the second (sharpening up the ol’ instrument, as it were) and very little of the first.

More than life experiences and poignant anecdotes and the like, what we find here are mostly observations and commentaries on Spanish pop culture–ranging from Toteking to Pe Cruz—and overlong ruminations on geopolitical, sociolinguistic, and parapsychological themes. Ah yes, and the odd travelogue, and one or two anecdotes of varying poignancy.

That must be a sign of how “uneventful” my life has been this past year. Now, “uneventful” is a word saddled with an uncomfortable connotation of tedium and dullness, so it may not be totally appropriate for me to use in this case. I mean “uneventful” in the simple sense of “without events”. Truth is I kind of prefer it that way.

To wit, here I am, one year later, in the exact same situation as last year doing, doing the exact same thing: at home alone while my girlfriend’s visiting her sister, watching Operación Triunfo. (Anybody gotta problem with that? Huh? What? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Bitches.) (Just playin’, y’all. Ha. Ha ha.)

Whereas last year the main interest to this American Idol knock-off was the phenomenon of Virginia—beloved by judge Risto Mejide and object of scorn by her colleagues and the other judges—this year the big story has been the “mal rollo” between the above-mentioned Sr. Mejide and the other jury members, his repeated attacks on the presenter of the program (Jesús Vázquez), the professors of the academ, and Gestmusic, the production company responsible for the program. All resulting finally in his being unceremoniously relieved of his duties and sent home.

Imagine Simon Powell getting thrown off American Idol for incessantly shit-talking to Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul. That’s basically what we’re looking at here.

The root of all this “mal rollo” has been I think the fact that this year more than ever it’s been obvious that OT is rigged. Really, really rigged. Being that the producers make all their cash from the text messages and phone calls of the voting public, it’s in their interest to maintain the most popular contestants (in this edition, all Tiger Beat-style boy band candidates) as long as possible, setting them up in duels against their theoretically less popular colleagues and milking the SMS cow.

At one point in this edition, it seems one night live on stage in the tense closing moments of the show, the judge’s panel got a message in their little earpiece (how do you say “pinganillo” in English? Shit…) from the producers, prohibiting them from nominating Jon, a mediocre-to-shitty singer (especially popular with a certain sector of female viewers middle-aged and older) for expulsion from the academy.

Also, I think that apart from the hanky panky with the nominations, etc., your boy Risto got miffed when his particular pet project, a Gitano from Extremadura by the name of Elias—who at first was a particularly easy target for Mr. Mejide’s verbal darts (basically calling him retarded to his face on one occasion) but then ended up winning him over with his work ethic and poise. Although more than for his singing he will most likely be remembered for his clamorous failures in learning English pronunciation.

Also worthy of mention is the phenomenon Púa, a young kid from a small town in Barcelona who was clearly born to sing lead in a popular Spanish pop-punk band (tipo El Canto del Loco, ya sabes)—he was thrown off in the very first show, and then, inexplicably returned weeks later as a special guest artist to perform his new single, like he was Paulina Rubio or one of these people. I guess the producers realized they had a finished product on their hands and that there was no need for putting him through the paces of OT. Kind of weird.

This year the three finalists are Brenda, Mario and the aforementioned Jon. These three, it must be said, bear a striking resemblance to the three finalists in the first edition of OT. Clearly, I think it was totally intentional on the part of the producers of OT to try to recreate the magic of the first one, especially after the sullying effect on their brand by all the hubbub about it being rigged and yadda yadda yadda.

l-r. Bisbal, Rosa, Bustamante

l-r. Mario (i.e. "Bisbal") Jon ("Bustamante"), Brenda ("Rosa")

First you have Brenda, by far the most talented of the three, not a slim, slender cutie like some of the others in this year’s edition. She’s like the Peruvian incarnation of Rosa, the winner of the first OT, another big-boned girl who sang the hell out of some soul. Brenda’s crowning moment I think was singing “Listen” by Beyonce (from the Dreamgirls soundtrack) and kind of killing that shit.

Then there’s Mario, who corresponds to David Bisbal in the original OT—the perfect student, always applied and dedicated, very serious in his study and preparation and extremely correct in his performances. Like Bisbal, he will probably come in second. Unlike Bisbal, he will probably not go on to become super-super-hyper-famous living in a mansion in Miami despite coming in second.

And Jon. Uy, Jon, Jon, Jon. Obviously the David Bustamante of this edition. Meaning, a shitty singer, but who appeals to a certain sector of the feminine audience, as I mentioned before. He definitely has a not-at-all-slim chance of pulling off the upset and winning it all—apart from his core supporters (teenagers in the Basque Country and women going through menopause?), he has the advantage of being totally and irrevocably mediocre.

Come again? What’s that you say? The advantage of being mediocre? Yes, because people tend to go with the underdog in these things, and because the other two are so obviously superior to him in every facet of singing and performing, Jon could easily reap the benefits of that pity vote—“aw, poor thing, he tries so hard and it just doesn’t work out for him, aww, I think I’ll spend a euro fifty on a text message to vote for him.”

The final is tomorrow night. In case anyone cares.

And after this overly exhaustive overview of OT 2009, I’ll follow this up with some Young Nickels the Great shit. Just like last year. (You’ve been warned!)

The months and months of delay in posting here can be blamed on various factors–being busy, moving to a new apartment, cutting off the internet at the house etc., etc.  The main problem though has been utter lack of inspiration.  Really wasn’t feelin’ the need to type type type away about my mundane bullshit.

That is until I got a request, again from Kate (thanks, Kate), to talk about football.

Barcelona football, to be specific.

Well, for those of you (the vast majority) who don’t know or don’t care, Futbol Club Barcelona completed the best season in its 100-some-odd-year history this year.  They won la Liga, la Copa del Rey (a “K.O.” tournament involving teams from both Primera and Segunda División), and most importantly the Champions League, defeating the defending champs Manchester United in the final.  The triple crown, or “triplete” as they call it here.  Something only five teams in the history of European football (and no other Spanish team) had ever done.  Also, they beat Real Madrid twice, which is nearly as important as winning a championship–especially if you win 2-6 (!) in the home field of the eternal enemy (note: I have both matches on DVD if anyone’s interested…) .

Of course, in the midst of the economic crisis and all that crap, unemployment, etc., etc., well, of course people went absolutely nuts, in an explosion of euphoria and jubilation.  And of course,  each title won came with its corresponding celebration in the center of town, and the destruction and chaos that that entails–for those North Cackalackians reading this, imagine Franklin Street in Chapel Hill after a national championship multiplied by about (at least) 5,000 or so .

Then for weeks all you heard about was how great Barça was (true), what a great coach Pep Guardiola was (also true), how great the players were individually and as people (ditto), how historic and important this achievement was (yup), etc.   Plus, for a solid week you heard assholes beeping their car horns in that “S-A, T-U-R, D-A-Y! Night!” Bay City Rollers rhythm and setting off fireworks and bellowing like stuck pigs in the street.

Which got old after a while.    It got to such a point of saturation and media overkill here, and I (yes, me, an adopted Barça supporter) got so sick of hearing about ”Barça! Barça! Baaaarça!”, that I was starting to doubt whether being a Barça fan was such a cool thing after all.

Then something happened, which brought me to an  important realization, namely this one:

It could be worse.  Much worse.  You could be a Real Madrid supporter.

The Barça euphoria only died down in the media because of the mega-million dollar movements made by the once-and-future president of Real Madrid Florentino Pérez, just days after being voted by acclamation back to his throne atop the club of the Generalísimo himself, Francisco Franco.

First, he paid AC Milan (property of everyone’s favorite Mafioso politician Silvio Berlusconi) €67 million euros for the right to sign Brasilian midfielder Kaká.  Well, okay.  That was the second most expensive deal made in the history of European  football, after the €77 million deal for the legendary Zinedine Zidane (also perpetrated by Florentino Perez, in his first period as Real Madrid’s president).

Then as if that weren’t enough, shortly thereafter the most perfect marriage imaginable.  The most disgusting,  arrogant, and ethically dubious football club on the planet made off with the rights to the most disgusting, arrogant jackass chasing after balls in short pants in the world today–Portugese striker Cristiano Ronaldo.  All for the low, low price of €94 million.  A bargain.

And what did “CR7″ do to celebrate?  It seems he headed off to L.A. and managed to get a quick limpieza de sable from none other than Paris Hilton (ewww…).

Mind you, these astronomical figures don’t include the yearly salary that these players will receive personally, just the money paid to their previous clubs.

So, that definitely made me feel O.K. about liking Barça again.

Why, you ask?  How can I explain it?  Real Madrid is like the New York Yankees, the Duke men’s basketball team, and  I dunno, the Lakers, all wrapped in one.  (Eww!)  And that would make CR7  like a hideous mutant mixture of  Christian Laettner, A-Rod and a young Kobe Bryant.  (¡Que asco, por dios!)

But we’ll see how that all works out next year. In the meantime, savor with me some beautiful moments such as these.

This is the best starting place.  The goal by Andrés Iniesta in the 92nd minute which put  Barça in the final of the CL.  They had drawn 0-0 in the first leg at home, gave up an early goal at Chelsea and needed a draw to qualify.  This is easily the high point of the season, the apex.

It’s so good I’ll put it twice.  I like the first one,with the audio from Canal+, because your homeboy the announcer screams like somebody just cut his fucking legs off .  The second one, featuring Alfredo Martínez of the radio Onda Cero: “¡Bestial! Brutal! Total! Descomunal!”…”¡Como la pegó! ¡Como la pegó!”…”¡Con la ilusión! ¡Por el futbol! ¡Por el arte! ¡Por el talento! ¡Por España! ¡Por Iniesta!” “¡Andrés, te quiero! ¡Te quiero!” “¡Iniesta! ¡Es Dios!”…and his colleague is like “Alfredo se ha vuelto loco…”

And you gotta give it up for Xavi Hernández as well, it’s disgusting what this dude does with the ball.  You can’t take the damn thing away from him.  And the passes…oh, the passes he makes.  (For these next two, I’d advise you to hit the Mute button, the music is super wack.)

And one of my personal all-time favorites, Mr. Samuel Eto’o.  I liked him from the very beginning, just because he had kind of a cocky, NBA thing going on which I always liked.  Even during the era when he was just putting all of his teammates on blast in the press conferences and what not, talkin’ ’bout, “Ronaldinho es mala persona” and all that.  Who scored the first goals in both the 2006 and 2009 CL final?  Your boy Samu.  That’s why I got my “Eto’o 9″ pin on my man-purse, what y’all know about that?:

And finally, here’s the video Pep Guardiola showed his players before the Champions League final in Roma–clips of each player doing their thing interspersed with Gladiator.  Genius.

So, yeah, if anyone wants to take me up on the offer to watch this year’s Barça-R.M matches on DVD, holler.

Not too long ago now, I finally saw the dreaded Vicky Cristina Barcelona. We watched it via one of these free movie watching sites they have, “peliculasyonkis.com” or some crap like that.  (It was the first time I’d watched a movie on one of these sites and I tell ya, it’s a royal pain in the ass.  I don’t see how people are so into this.  I mean, yeah, it’s free, but it’s fucking annoying–aside from the huge advertising banner we had at the bottom of the screen the whole time, there’s the whole time-limit thing: if you watch more than fifty-two minutes you have to unplug your router and restart your computer to get a new IP address or some shit.  Yeah, a real gratifying cinematic experience, that.  We won’t be canceling our membership at the video club anytime soon.)

Point being, the latest Woody Allen film.  Worst.  Movie.  Ever.

O.K., maybe that’s being a little harsh.  But it’s right up there with Marie Antoinette on my list of all-time suck.

Below I shall ennumerate some of the reasons why.

1.  Uh, the script?  As a general rule, any film that relies so heavily on a narrator and a voiceover tends to suck balls, to be frank.

There are some exceptions, of course.  But in this case?  Come the fuck on!  All the scenes where they show Scarlett Johansen traipsing around town taking pictures and the narrator’s all: “Cristina was very happy and her friends were happy for her.”  It’s like your kindergarten teacher reading to you at storytime.  Breaking the first rule that they teach you in any crappy, two-bit creative-writing course: “Show, don’t tell.”

2.  The characters.  Totally and completely unsympathetic, unrelatable, unreal.

First off, who the fuck studies a “Master’s in Catalan Culture”? What the fuck is that? I’m sure this is a case where the Ajuntament de Barcelona made some demands on the script–I’m willing to bet that in an original version, she was studying “Spanish”–i.e., castellano–and the people at the city were like, “Uh-uh.  We giving you free access to all monuments and much money, you making publicity for the catalanisme.”

But at least the Vicky character has some sort of conflict going on, as she is torn between her corny American husband and her stormy Lah-teen Loe-vair.   Scarlett Johansen’s character?  It’s really a case of not being able to tell why the character came out so, so…vapid. Was it because her dialogue was poorly written, or because the character was intentionally just a vapid person, or (my suspicion) that Scarlett Johansen is kind of a shitty actor? Maybe her existential dilemma of “appreciating art but not having talent to create it” hits home with some folks.  Ay, pobrecilla.

Also, they should have gotten Bardem and Cruz some dialogue coaches to make their English worse.  To pronounce things worse and make more mistakes.  Otherwise, I’m not buying it.

3.  The pijo atmosphere.  I wanted to take a fucking flame-thrower to all these people.  Vicky, her friends, the stupid-ass painter guy and his crazy ex, all of them.  Driving down from their chalet up in the hills, full of pretentious abstract paintings, with the top down on the convertible, to have dinner and drink wine in some fancy-pants restaurant and then listen to some relaxing “Spanish guitar music.”  If you want to make me puke, why don’t you just stick your finger down my throat instead?

4. Speaking of “Spanish guitar music”.  For all the talk about “Catalan culture”, why did they play “Entre dos aguas” by Paco de Lucía every six seconds in the film?  Is he from Barcelona and I just didn’t realize it?  Did I miss something?  Why not put something truly autoctonous in there?  Why not give Peret some shine?

5.  The story in general.  Aside from the empty nothingness of the characters, there’s nothing to really grab hold to, story-wise.  Yeah, OK, we’re in suspense about the character of Maria Elena at first and then she shows up, and there’s sparks, and then a threesome.  But basically, the problem is this:

Okay, this story about a love rectangle between the two innocent friends, a womanizing artist and his neurotic, borderline artist ex-wife would maybe work if they had set it in, I don’t know, Manhattan or something.  But then of course, it would be just like any other Woody Allen movie.  Plus, he wouldn’t have gotten to hang around and shoot in Barcelona all expenses paid with the entire city government licking his ass the whole time.

Es que esta historia aqui no pega ni con fiso, macho.  A mi no me jodas.  Pero, qué falsedad, por favor.  Anda ya.

There I’m through venting. Here’s hoping that the film Bardem just finished shooting here with Alejandro González Iñarrítu is better.

COMUNICADO SOBRE SÓLO LOS SOLO

Desde Enter Booking, agencia de contratación y management del grupo Sólo los Solo, queremos comunicar que tras una larga carrera que nos ha dejado alguna de las obras cumbres del Hip Hop hecho en este país, su andadura llega a su fin por lo que no habrán nuevas actuaciones de esta formación.

Guiados por la necesidad de abrirse a sus proyectos personales y dar rienda suelta a su creatividad fuera del entorno de Sólo los Solo el grupo ha decidido dar por finalizada su carrera en común.

El fin de esta etapa en todo caso no es más que un nuevo comienzo para los dos artistas que ya tienen en marcha nuevos proyectos que mantendrán o incluso superarán ese nivel de excelencia musical a la que nos tenían acostumbrados.

Juan Solo prepara nuevo disco, esta vez tomando el control de todos los detalles, desde su nueva faceta en la producción musical con unos beats increíbles que sorprenderán a más de uno, hasta su habitual maestría en el micro y las letras.

Griffi sigue adelante al frente de la factoría Del Palo y con su proyecto principal Chacho Brodas, del que se encuentra actualmente puliendo los detalles de su nuevo disco de inminente publicación, donde consolida su formación junto a los ‘chachos’ habituales Tremendo, Aqeel, Mbaka y Quiroga. Un trabajo con el que volverán a la actualidad para reafirmar su posición como una de las propuestas más frescas del panorama nacional.

Yup.  The suspicions of many a head have been confirmed.  No more SLS.   I must say that I feel quite lucky then to have been a witness to one of their last shows in Barcelona (if not the last) 19 July 2007 in the tiny Sala Sidecar, and I’m thankful, for that matter, to have arrived in Barna right around the time their last album,Todo el mundo lo sabe–in my humble opinion, easily the all-around best hip-hop album yet produced in this country–was released.

Hugely underappreciated on a commercial level (they’ve never been as popular as, say, SFDK or Violadores del Verso, for example), I suppose Juan and Griffi decided it was time to stop splitting the pie in half, and that each one needed to get his on his own.

Hopefully, the Juan Solo record will be dope.

Also, it’s been awhile since I posted some translation madness.  One of my favorite SLS tracks: “Como podamos ser”.

Directly from the red stone, I am called versatility.
You do not know who I am?
I invented rap in Spanish,    boy. Listening.
More and more immersed,
explain me how to measure the universe.
My verse, the life in the paper Annex,
I begin to see all the much more clear things
under my gooseneck lamp.
I know well who is who,
enters they temples and temple,
surely one hundred percent.
For a long time I have been knowing what I want,
saw some it in one, and I was of first, yes.
We learned to make the things without money,
to eat the entire world to us to have tea sky.
I and my eight tracksuit and my Edding and average,
more bond than you leave the track,
takes away of in the middle.
Put that tape, leaves that song I recorded,
it of the radio and turkey says to us who is.
Memory days, days of when song twelve could.
It was accustomed to be temazo, you take it?

Hip-Hop taught,  danced break
when your older brother with the horse played.
That she gives white, black or yellow equal,
that each person has her brightness,
to discover it.
Much that to find out under a blue sky,
fell some tears listening to Paid in Full.
Heavys kies us they wanted to warm up,
I prefer those of now that they want to do rap.
We were pringaos, but pringaos advanced,
I dance from side to side, right, not k.o.
Now complain because my disc is expensive,
my disc would have merit twenty million of turkeys.
I am the unique turkey that stays fresh,
Christmas after Christmas non-unemployment,
become conceited.
You ask if me for the old school,
I will say that I am the school, the old man and new.
Slippers with fat laces, I always keep a new trick.
You do not look for more, you have to me it faces,
to this one I gain it battle by my people.
My parrot in the 86, Run DMC, Mantronix or Cool J.
So many things as we pruned to be,
everything what I do not know lets me grow.

Directamente desde la piedra roja, me llamo
versatilidad. ¿No sabéis
quién soy? Yo inventé el rap en
español, niño. Escucha.

Cada vez más inmerso, explícame
cómo medir el universo. Mi verso, la vida
en el papel anexo, empiezo a ver todas las cosas
mucho más claras bajo mi flexo. Yo
sé bien quién es quién, entre
sien y sien, seguro cien por cien. Hace tiempo que
conozco lo que quiero, algunos lo vieron en uno, y
yo fui de los primeros, sí.

Aprendíamos a hacer las cosas sin dinero,
comernos el mundo entero para merendar cielo. Yo y
mi chándal y mi Edding ocho y medio,
más vale que salgáis de la pista,
quitaros de enmedio. Pon esa cinta, sale esa
canción, la grabé de la radio y el
pavo nos dice quién son. Recuerdo los
días, días de cuando la
canción doce podría. Solía
ser un temazo, ¿lo coges?.

Hip-Hop enseñaba, bailaba break cuando tu
hermano mayor con el caballo jugaba. Que da igual
blanco, negro o amarillo, que cada persona tiene
su brillo, descubrirlo. Mucho que averiguar bajo
un cielo azul, cayeron algunas lágrimas
escuchando playing fun. Los heavys kies nos
querían calentar, yo prefiero los de ahora
que quieren hacer rap. Éramos pringaos,
pero pringaos avanzados, bailo de lado a lado,
derecha, no k.o.

Ahora quejaos porque mi disco está caro,
mi disco tendría que valer veinte millones
de pavos. Soy el único pavo que se mantiene
fresco, Navidad tras Navidad no paro, me crezco.
Si me preguntas por la vieja escuela, te
diré que yo soy la escuela, la vieja y la
nueva.

Zapatillas con fat laces, guardo un nuevo truco
siempre. No busques más, me tienes
enfrente, ésta batalla la gano por mi
gente. Mi loro en el 86, Run DMC, Mantronix o
Cool J. Tantas cosas como podamos ser, todo lo que
no sé me hace crecer.

But now, your girl Pene has won herself an Oscar.  Is she really that good?  Did any of y’all actually see the film?  Help me out here.

I may have to actually see the film.  Download off the ol’ inter-web, at least.  If nothing else, out of morbid curiosity.  Honestly, I suppose there may be something to her performance, especially taking into account that the basic gist of all the praise she’s gotten is something along the lines of: “The movie is pretty sucky until she comes along, and she makes it suck less.”

(Plus, like a lot of people, I was prompted to go to the cinema, not having seen any of the films nominated.  We ended up seeing The Wrestler. I thought it was pretty rad–Mickey Rourke kills it, Marisa Tomei was good (not Oscar material, I suppose–anyway, no way the Academy was gonna give her the award for a role where her ta-tas are hangin’ out half the time she’s on screen), and the soundtrack and wrestling scenes were pretty ace.)

But speaking of Penelope, and her boyfriend too for that matter, what I really to do here was put my cents in about Spanish cinema–God forbid that folks get the idea that el cine español begins and ends with the cover of People magazine.

Spanish cinema, like so many other parts of Spanish culture, is plagued by several complexes.

One, the all-too-common practice of shitting on people as soon as they triumph in their field.  (The Spaniards perfected player-hating before we even had a word for it.)

The other, an inferiority complex, especially with regard to French and Italian cinema.  Think about it: big names from the golden age of European cinema–Godard, Truffaut, Antonioni, Fellini, Pasolini, etc. etc.  No Spanish name really has the same kind of glamour and renown as their French/Italian counterparts.

Now, I am by no means an expert on film, Spanish or otherwise, but I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a few films now, so all I’d like to do is just quickly recommend a couple, for example:

Plácido, El Verdugo (both by the great Luis García Berlanga–other titles such as  ¡Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall!, La escopeta nacional, or La vaquilla are also generally recognized as masterpieces, but I haven’t seen them…basically if you wanna know about Spanish cinema, start here), Amanece que no es poco (by director José Luis Cuerda , another big name), La mitad del cielo (featuring the legendary Fernando Fernán Gómez), El sur (by Víctor Erice, which I liked a lot more than El espíritu de la colmena (also with Fernán Gómez–I kept falling asleep), 800 balas (my favorite that I’ve seen so far of Álex de la Iglesia), and ¿Quien puede matar a un niño? (a totally kick-ass horror flick from the 70s that has like a million different names in English, to wit: Death is Child’s Play (UK), Island of Death (UK) (video title), Island of the Damned (USA), Lucifer’s Curse (USA), The Killer’s Playground, Trapped (USA), Who Can Kill a Child? (International: English title), Would You Kill a Child? (UK)), and just to wrap things up here, La soledad and Las horas del día (see this film!!!), by director Jaime Rosales, of whom I am a big fan.

I could go on but I’ll spare you.  The Oscars was a while ago already and so the topic is not so hot.  Plus, you could probably just watch Versión Española every Friday night and get caught up with things pretty quickly.  So yeah, get on that.

My main question was: is this–meaning the “doblete” of Supporting Actor/Actress for Bardem/Cruz–a cheap ploy on Hollywood’s part to put the Spanish film-going public and market snugly in their pocket, the way some people have alleged that the Slumdog Millionaire phenomenon is a case of shameless pandering to the Indian demographic?  Thoughts?