Facebook…

…is a nice way to see what people you´d lost touch with are up to and also an alternative scrabble interface. But it´s best when you go to the recently updated bit and see gems like this:

“Monica added “shoes” to her interests.”

Maybe you had to be there…

Knocked Up

Despite the neglected state of the film reviews box on this site, we´ve seen a fair few lately. The Simpsons is just like a 90 minute Simpsons episode with slightly more CGI of Springfield (4 stars), but today we saw one of the best comedies I´ve seen in years, Knocked Up. Brilliant it is. There. That´s my review. 5 shining comedic stars.

While we´re on the subject though, Next was perfectly fine aeroplane viewing. The Queen was awful. Awful awful. I was trying to work out who was the most odious character. Sita reckons the Duke of Edinburgh, but I´m still torn between Cheri and the Grieving British Public. I´m glad I missed the aftermath of all that 10 years ago, as two days after she popped her clogs, I was flying to Guadalajara…

Team America: World Police has moments of genius. Idiocracy: nice premise, shame about the film. Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol is a) not as funny as it was when I was 12 and b) really does not do well dubbed into Spanish (Loca Academia de Policía IV) especially the sound effects bloke and Bobcat Boldthwait… Still such are the delights basic cable has to offer at 5 am on Thursday mornings…

Kate Nash…

…sounds a lot like Lilly Allen, but that´s not necessarily a bad thing:

Au revoir, Martin

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Martin, Ana´s bloke has been here for the last month or so and today sees him heading back to Belgium. It´s been grand having him around and not just because he bowls as badly as I do… Don´t be afraid to leave comments, Sr. Devos 🙂

In other news, this video is painfully funny and comes from Sita via Notorious Fig…

Jardin de Virginia

I love the way the shadows seem to have nothing to do with the lettering. The colour too is quite pleasing…
Once again, taken in Tequila, Jalisco, Mexico, a couple of days ago.

Pimp my ride

Tequila again, but the car’s from Michoacán. The loudspeaker on top is to keep you posted as you lie in on a Sunday morning of the latest prices of veggies, local politician´s promises, the times of lucha libre or bull fights and sometimes just music for the sheer hell of it. Love it!

“Pull over now. JIMADORES!”

I was having a fine old time today in Tequila. Sita’s contacts are paying off nicely and we were “gifted” all manner of tequila-related multimedia on everything from mp3s to a set of vinyl records from the 70s. Including a VHS of “Tequileros” which had parts filmed in Columpio, my favourite Destilado de Agave factory.

Anyroad, driving back we noticed there were workers close to the road in the field jimando, ie harvesting and chopping the leaves off the agaves, so I leapt out with my camera and started photoing them. They posed and everything. Naturally, when I got home I realised I had me camera on the wrong setting which has led to some very grainy shots, still it was a great experience. And I’ll not make that mistake again. With highly configurable cameras comes great responsibility it appears.

Here’re me faves (that’ll probably find their way to my photoblog soon):

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Number 37

It got a bit hot today in Tequila. The dog here had the right idea. Stay in the shade. Maintain as much body contact with the concrete floor as possible. Do no exercise more strenuous than opening one eye occasionally. The green shadows are from the roof tiles.

Washing clothes

Too late to post anything of note. Suffice to say washing your clothes is a lot harder in Tequila, Jalisco, Mexico…

Dr. Simi

There´s a chain of chemists in Mexico called Farmacias Similares. They sell generic medicines at bargain prices generally because the main brand´s patent has expired. They’re a fairly large corporation that competes with independent chemists. Visit their godawful website here. Their main method of promotion is having someone in a Dr. Simi costume prance around outside their shops to a reggaeton beat or worse. I snapped a photo of Dr. Simi a few days ago in Gwod:

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And here he is again in Zacatecas:

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Mario alerted me to an extreme sport sweeping the nation, flooring Dr. Simi… It’s like Mexican happy slapping. On YouTube there’s several videos of Dr.Simi being run at and knocked to the ground by young naco scoundrels with nothing better to do. I felt sorry enough for the poor buggers sweltering in their costumes for 50 pesos a day before seeing them have to contend with these antics.

Anyroad, just a quick post to say support your local chemist and be nice to Dr. Simi.

Plans for tonight? Bowling…

Chameleon Car

I’ve been taking photos of cars that blend in with where they’re parked for the last couple of years in Guadalajara. People have even started sending me examples by email. Anyway, there’s about 100 in the set now. A year ago I made a video of them. It’s probably time to have another go soon.

Any chance you could vote for me with the button to the right, below. It’s a vanity photo competition that might drive a bit more traffic this way. Only if you like the photos though. Thanks!

Mischief

Siteground, who i´m well chuffed with have various advanced stats systems. That means I can see which sites out there are hotlinking or stealing images and using up agaveweb´s bandwidth. Turns out lots of young scamps have hotlinked to a picture of “American History X” as their favourite film. I couldn´t resist a bit of mischief and swapped the image for another movie. With amusing results….

Spot the odd film out on these people´s MySpace pages: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. There´s scrolling to be done. Looking forward to seeing how long it´ll take for them to notice.

That´s the thing with hotlinking pictures, the people serving them up at their expense can change them to whatever they like. I think I´ve been relatively benign with the swap. Word.

Mario´s blog…

Fellow Flickrite Mario has a blog (usually in Spanish) and he posted a Divine Comedy song to accompany a piece about his folks which led me on to browsing more of Neil Hannon´s YouTube output…

This song, Something for the Weekend reminds me of listening to Radio 1 while working for Four Winds Landscape gardening for minimum wage many summers ago in 1996…

Dodgy´s Good Enough is another one. And Boo Radleys´ Wake Up Boo though it was released a year earlier… Ah the UK in the 90s… good times…

Flickreros despidiéndose

A nice weekend all in all. Saturday night Aranza invited us all round to bid farewell to one of the Tapatian Flickreros, Laura who´s off to France for a good while. There was much singing, toasting, guitarring and even Atticus danced… Colibrí has some photos as does Elias which capture the spirit nicely…

The Hitatchi thing finally $orted itself out… * edit Cheque bounced…. * Finished another translation of subtitles for an upcoming film presentation…

Yesterday we had a nice lie in then I bussed it to the baratillo street market. If you go late it´s extremely crowded so I ended up buying nothing (I even passed on Crochet World’s Book of Slippers, yours for 5 pesos…) and just went off photographing things in an area I hadn´t really been (on foot) before. Then a few raindrops fell so I ended up getting the bus the last few blocks to protect me camera… Anyroad here’re the photos from there and below, a couple of faves… And there’s another one over at my photo blog.

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After that we nipped out to McDonalds, cos I was starving then rented a couple of videos on the way home. I’d not seen the 6th Sense before, thinking that if you know the twist there wouldn’t be much point, but it turned out to be eminently watchable all the same. Then a quiet night in front of the telly and a few quesadillas and surprisingly good red wine from Washington state. Red Diamond. Recommended…

This week… web designery, more translation, and a trip to Tequila on wednesday I think. I’m looking forward to hitting the agave fields with DSLR in hand.