Stuff

Tulum phootos. Very slowly…

So much to post about last week, so I’ll probably end up not writing anything so just in case, highlights included: putting the world to rights with Roberto, fine eats and DIY with Martin & Sally, painless tax filing with Sally’s accountant, catching up with lots of friends and family, Guelaguetza (sp?) oaxacan restaurant in central LA, Frolf with Matt (FRisbee goLF, although I’m told only newbies call it that as it sounds far too precious), red zinfandel comparative tasting with Meg, boozing with Liz, and hassle-free immigration and dog repatriation. and more I probably forgot. So that’s that for now, on to what inspired me to blog today.

Toilet repairs.

So the downstairs toilet wasn’t filling/flushing right, so I had to repeat the DIY shop experience I had in Santa Cruz a few years back when I went to buy a replacement part. I spent a few minutes explaining what I needed with hand gestures and everything, a flapper thing basically, and the bloke got what I was after. It’s called a flapper. Today I went to Santa Tere to a Tlapaleria (DIY shop, more common than the Spanish Spanish, Ferreteria) and had the same conversation in Spanish. Turns outs it’s called un Flapper. Things they never teach you at school…

Atticus is settling in. He’s going to be sleeping in my office to keep him from barking at the various sounds that occur during the night here (road sweepers, door-to-door salesmen, Ralphy Gutierrez, peripatetic mariachi bands, etc.) He met Juan, the water bloke today and barked away at him. (Bonafont’s just hiked the price up to 23 pesos a garafon and I think Atticus sensed that…) but I’ll forgive him anything after his exemplary behaviour on the plane and in the airports yesterday. As I wrote that he started barking up a storm again… ah well.

For proper blogging, there’s always M & D’s travelogue over at ChiliCatInLa.blogspot.com they’re in Oaxaca… And that’s all for today, glad to be back home again and looking forward to catching up with the Guanatos crowd and seeing all the semana santa shenanigans. Hasta pronto!

Here’s the dog before 6 hours sedated in a cage:

more vids soon… Wish us luck!

More than half of these’ll just get you funny looks when spoken in Guanatos, but if you’re heading Madrid way check out these 12 phrases to get by with in the Spanish capital… ¡Qué guay, tio! Son de puta madre… Aah, the Españolitos and their funny ways…

New Flickr toys from Dumpr include this museumr one. Vanity publishing:

cos it’s a huge waste of time. But it was that or Pacman and we got our taxes done today and had the dog innoculated against every plague going around so I don’t feel too bad… Anyroad, it led me to this page of winning entries for a “Make up a Jack Handey Deep Thought” compo and for that I thank it… almost as good as the old-as-the-hills originals. My faves?

Give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big bag of money.

Once, I wept for I had no shoes. Then I came upon a man who had no feet. So I took his shoes. I mean, it’s not like he really needed them, right?

your one-stop-shop for schipperke animated gifs and other delights…

Click the lovingly rendered graphic below to go there:

don’t forget to sign their guestbook and web design like it’s 1999…
in other news, Atticus met his “cousin” today and is now knackered. 7 days to “Schipperkes on a Plane!” insaniddy.

and caught up with lots of old friends from Santa Cruz in the Biltmore Hotel slap bang in the centre of L.A. All expenses paid by USC and a stretch from the usual Hotel Universo (with its Bar Galaxia…). Waking up the next day I looked out the window and saw a complex sprinkler system I wasn’t sure what it was until I remembered we were in LAlalandia and they were filming some scene for a pilot tv episode which required rain and lots of extras with umbrellas… We got the dog transport cage, located last year’s tax forms, and have more or less arranged Thursday’s trip north…

Plans for the next week: a fair bit of painting / decorating and at some point I want to fit in a trip to the cinema to see 300.

For a few pix and a fine description of last night’s nonsense, hie thee hence to Monica’s blog. An evening that involved Monica uttering the immortal words, Work Shmerk…

Here’s a slightly photoshopped pic of monica’s of the Peripatetic Electric Shock Bloke:

Today we’re off to Californialandia for all kinds of fun. As ever, wish us luck. Looking forward to catching up with family, old friends and pets… Blogging might become even more sporadic than usual. Pa’que sepas…

but not Tapalpa nor cafe clandestino… So it’s been a quiet few days catching up on still more films (see reviews) the occasional one-to-one Spanish class and getting things ready for a 10 day leave of absence to California…

It’s become decidedly hotter round Gwod way. Trees are blossoming, grass is turning brown, and at risk of looking even more like a foreigner I’ve taken to wearing shorts. Yesterday the city ground to a halt for Benito Juarez Day and that’s about it. It’s harder to sleep and productivity’s slid downhill too. Hopefully after the US trip things will cool down a tad and I can start doing more long term projects, like PHP classes, photo projects and maybe a podcast… Anyroad, just a post to let the world know all’s still well before next week’s chaos, like importing dogs, H & R Block and bunny home finding…

I’ve YouTubed some more stuff too… Here’s a badly sung Levellers song called Hard Fight. It’s a little out of my singing range, especially the first couple of lines, and I couldn’t find my capo so bear with me…

This evening Casa Gaytan-Fisher-Seltzer-Garcia is hosting a German evening. Daniel’s been cooking for what seems like a fortnight and some mates are coming round tonight to sample his gastronomic meat and potato based delights. Tomorrow there’s a party (all are welcome) round Amour Fou way, email me for details. And on Sunday, we may well be off to Tapalpa for the day. If I’m not knackered and we’re back in time there’s cultural goings on at Café Clandestino, who’ve gotten themselves a fancy YouTube page and sent out the following invite for Spanish poetry readings on Sunday evening at 8ish :

Thanks Christina from Canada for your comment in the Guestmap. Glad to be of service 🙂 And if any of you haven’t yet guestmapped yerselves it fair makes my day to get new little guestmappees.

A mamey is sort of a cross between between a papaya and a yam. Sweet and potatoey. Not to be confused with mangos. Here’s Dr. Ana with her mamey:

So we’ve had the plumbers/gasfitters round today (and yesterday) which led to some new vocabulary for bits of pipes, tools and suchlike. Basically the gas tank on the roof’s been smelling of gas occasionally and the water went out for longer than usual so we called in the experts. After daubing soapy water on the gas tank there was blatantly a leak, “ah, licenciado, el regulador está madreado” they explained. Madreado being a Mexican scientific term for “buggered” so they swapped it for a new non-leaky one. The water took longer to fix, getting the pump going, cleaning the well that I was previously unaware of and other stuff… But anyway, as of today our little house is less likely to explode or suffer drought and that has to be a good thing.

It’s Shaun the sheep.

Went to see The Fountain last night too… Slowly catching up on films. Anyroad, here’s my take on Ghost Rider…

Ghost Rider (2007)

A comic book adaptation whose premise lured me into the cinema on my own on a Monday afternoon…

Nicholas Cage is in his element (fire) playing ‘Johnny Blaze” a motorbike stuntman who gets royally ripped off after selling his soul to the devil. Instead of ending up in hell, or whatever (I never got the hang of the Terms and Conditions chapter of the bible in divinity classes), he ends up turning into the devil’s collector of souls, or the Ghost Rider, a nocturnal fiery skellington on a bike who makes life thoroughly miserable for naughty people.

Eva Mendes is his love interest who is dull throughout despite plunging necklines and necking a bottle of wine in a restaurant. Wes Bently is the devil’s son who, together with some wholly ineffectual and cack-handed fellow demon-goons, is trying to either take over the netherworld or create hell on earth or just gorge on souls. Not wholly clear again which. They’re meant to be evil since they have no problem turning bikers into dust, including, gasp, a lady and some interloper who was ‘just 3 weeks from retirement”. However they have no decent dialogue, don’t kill anywhere near enough people and, most importantly, lack imagination in their modus operandi for dispensing souls. Not worthy adversaries for Johnny B. and I don’t know why the devil couldn’t just get rid of them himself with a plague of boils or whatever…

There’s a strong sense of déja-vu not uncommon with this type of B-movie. The carnie scenes are straight out of DIRE Batman Forever (1995) where Robin gets his pitiful back story. Also, DIRE Little Nicky (2000) has the same Satan’s-offspring-want-to-take-over-the-world nonsense. Any werewolf film you care to mention probably deals better with the subject of nocturnal transmogrification and the consequences on your love life/ work/ friends… Crossroads (1986), about the karate kid duelling with the Devil’s guitarist, Steve Vai covers much of the same ridiculous Catholic ground… So what rescues Ghost Rider from being a directing-by-numbers clichéd bag of arse? Well there’s a few things…

Sam Elliot (the cowboy in The Big Lebowski) seems to take the whole thing in his stride and effortlessly conveys a mythic element to the proceedings. He’s not exactly stretching his acting abilities but gives the film his much-needed seen-it-all, world-weary attitude. The Ghost Rider abides… Nick Cage plays up Johnny’s quirks well and you warm to his special brand of stupid, making you believe that it’s not impossible for your head to periodically turn into a grinning, flaming skull. But it’s the CGI and the sound effects that carry the film. If you go to see this film it’s probably because you want to see an overly anorexic biker dispensing fiery justice and so it’s entirely a good thing that for roughly a third of the film, you’ll be watching just that. The sound effects left me with tinnitus for half an hour after leaving the cinema- it’s like sitting in the central reservation of the M5 motorway for 2 hours with someone lighting a gas boiler next to you- whump!- from time to time. And all in all, it’s a superior summer blockbuster delivered early.

In summary then, though far from intelligent, nowhere near dark enough, and clichéd to the point of plagiaristic it’s a big, brash, loud and eminently watchable piece of theatre.

How Harry Potter should have ended…

And I’m not sure if Ms Bennet reads this rubbish I call a blog but, thanks for the Ghost Rider critique- I watched it yesterday and a review is forthcoming which shall speak to your pertinent observations… for me, a success… it does exactly what it says on the tin, stunt motorcyclist sells his soul to the devil and becomes an avenging nocturnal flaming skeleton on a bike. Great stuff… (I then watched Cinema Paradiso to counteract the adrenelin…)

Anyroad, off this afternoon with Ana for multimedia filming fun. Expect more agave photos soon…

M & D and a great time round Morelia way. Monica even found time to record for posterity her encounters with the monarch butterflies. I gave it an appropriate soundtrack and uploaded it to YouTube, have a gander over at their blog.
Not for those who suffer from seasickness…

Stocked up on some videos this morning… Los Infiltrados (forget the name in English, the Scorsese oscar one), Borat (because I feel I ought to have an opinion), The Last King of Scotland, and Apocalypto (apocalypso?). I made a dog’s dinner of the oscar nominations this year because I hadn’t seen most of them. In February’s film reviews there’s hardly anything too, so I hope to make up for that a bit this month. The only film I did see in Feb was The Color of Paradise and I was on the verge of tears for the next 5 days after that one so didn’t manage to review it. I may correct that later…

Anyroad, then we went to Home Depot for floor tiles for the bathroom and I’ll be barbying arrachera later. Looks like life’s returned to normal again.

Here’s an addictive little Flash game that’s taking over from Scrabble in my affections for the next day or two. Change the colour of the bottom left tile to join it up with other tiles of that colour until the whole board’s monochrome. Tewbewks: I thrown down the gauntlet: get to the level “do it in less than 26″…

Well, if you can fit more into 3 weeks that we did with my folks, then you have my admiration. From Ajijic to Zacatecas we did pretty well what with sight-seeing, gastronomy, celebrations, social events and even cultural “stuff”.

Yesterday we planned to go to Magdalena to see the opal mines, but the Guachimontones in Teuchitlán proved to be a full day out in themselves. They date from around 1,500 BC and since no writings have been discovered are a fairly mysterious bunch of ruins. For the equinox (incidently, clocks go forward tonight I think, well they do in the States anyroad, and Mexico tends to be in sync just to harmonise business hours…*EDIT* nope, 1st of April…) there’s going to be all kinds of celebrations over that way. Get there by heading out of Gwod towards Tequila on the carretera libre and taking the Ameca turn off, then about 2km after Tala turn off right at the Pemex, and follow the signs to Teuchitlán and beyond up into the hills. We’ll definitely be back if only to try taste the wares at the pulqueria on the way to the site…

So, here’s a very public MUCHISIMAS GRACIAS to Mum and Dad from Sita and me for what I hope were mutually beneficial holidays giving us the chance to see no end of places we certainly wouldn’t have had the funds to visit and all in the finest of company. Have a lovely time with Sally, Martin, Atticus and the buns and we’ll skype yas soon 😀

In addition to the hour+ of slideshows set to music DVD (available from all good record shops) everything’s backed up over at Flickr… Tulum and thereabouts here and then Weeks 2 and 3 (Ajijic, Tlaquepaque, Tonalá, Zacatecas, La Quemada, Tequila, y mucho más…) here.