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…
Trees are blossoming, grass is turning brown, and at risk of looking even more like a foreigner I’ve taken to wearing shorts
So I thought why not head out into the 35 degree afternoon heat, or whatever it was, and publish some evidence of the flora jalisquilla. Here comes the colour:
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.
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.
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 😀
After a successful BBQ on Saturday night with José, Ana, Jorge, Victor, Jana, El Rufles, Fernando, Ana, Javier, Monica, Daniel, Sita, Mum & Dad and a fair bit of partying around Gwod afterwards, Mum, Dad and me drove to Zacatecas on Sunday, which is one of me favourite towns in Mexico. We stayed at the Hotel Condesa (40 US bucks a night, clean, quiet, central, with views of La Bufa and around, Av. Juárez # 102, Tel. (492) 922 1160). Thoroughly recommended if you fancy a trip… It takes around 4 hours to get there from Gwod on the toll road via Aguascalientes. Anyroad, lots to see and do there. I signed mum and dad up for the city tour the next day and made my way around on foot listening to the usual podcasts (This American Life and Total Podcastrophe (check out Paul and Judy’s new WordPress site) taking photos of all around me. I even went up to the Bufa on foot and met me folks at the top. It’s a steep old climb, but the toothless bloke who was walking up at the same time felt compelled to tell me he was 84 (you know) so I can’t feel too proud of meself…
We had lunch in the old bullring, the Quinta Real hotel, where there was a 1-1 waiter/diner ratio and our food was revealed to us from under silver domes in unison at the table. Lovely, t’was, then a bit more shopping/wandering, a siesta, and then a nice little Italian place that has the only decent wine in Zacatecas- “Locando la tana” (C. Genaro Codina # 714) for lasaa and apple pie.
The next day we got up early and visited the La Quemada ruins which was stunning. I was expecting a pile of stones but it was a huge landscaped hilltop with steps and columns, you name it… After moseying to the top and back we found out it also harbours a wealth of rattlesnakes, which I’m sort of glad I didn’t know. I assumed the scurrying in the grassland and cacti were desert squirrels (if such things exist)… Mum wasn’t too keen on that aspect but enjoyed the rest.
After that we took the non-toll road all the way back to Gwod stopping for lunch at a mariscos place in Apozol, Zac for delicious, cheap fish. The scenery all the way was stunning- vast, desert plains, rustic villages and omnipresent mountains, finishing with a drive into Guadalajara’s barranca (enormous gorge/ valley thing) and back up it, which I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Gorgeous all round… A great couple of days.
Today I’m meeting up with Ian for a bit of a Leo Sayer starting in La Fuente and ending up who knows where?…
Thanks to el “Chiva Congelado” for this brilliant explanation of insanely common Mexican gestures that will save you time in restaurants, on the beach and avoiding squeegee merchants at traffic lights… His blog’s also great if you’re interested in Belgian beer reviews from a Mexican perspective, bilingual sports coverage, and, *edit* bizarrely, pan-global teeniebop phenomenon, RDB *edit* other fine topics…
So after a relaxing day breakfasting in Chop!, looking at terrapins, squirrels and hummingbirds in Colomos park and phoning the world, we made it to the Santo Coyote restaurant (Av. Lerdo de Tejada 2379; Guadalajara; Tel: 3616 6978) to celebrate mum’s 60th in style. As ever, the food was excellent. They’ve recently opened several new sections in the already huge restaurant and since we managed to hold off arriving till 8pm which, though early, meant there was plenty of atmosphere. The mariachis strike up around 9pm… FYI.
I’m not going to review this place, so in summary: Excellent ambience, fine wines, fantastic food, pricey-but-worth-it. Here’s some pix to give you a taste:
Another lovely day… met up with Ian, Adri and Larisa this morning in Cafe D’Val for chilaquiles and coffee. They’re all doing fine minus having their car impounded for inscrutable Mexican bureaucratic reasons… We’ve arranged an all-dayer for next Wednesday starting in La Fuente so catching up should continue then… They won’t be able to make it to tomorrow’s celebrations with Mum and Saturday’s official “Meet/ Rekindle Your Relationship with the Parents” BBQ, but there’s quite a few people coming so never mind. Anyroad, I left mum and dad to fend for themselves in the city centre and by the looks of dad’s photos they saw a lot and got around v. well in the afternoon heat.
That’s all for now. Have some photos of Dad and Sita frolicking with dolphins in Xel-Ha water park in the Yucatan…
And while we’re on the subject have a pun via b3ta.
The John and Jennifer Mexican Tour 2007 continues in fine style taking in local sights, learning exotic vocabulary (“pinche”, “tahona”, “abarrotes”) and honing the use of the pinche subjunctive… I wish pinche telmex would hurry up and double our bandwidth as promised a month ago so I can upload the dozens of pictures without slowing down the interweb to a crawl though…
So in summary (cos it’s getting late, I’m knackered and tomorrow morning there’s a potential breakfast meet up with Ian and family, and the following dates / days might not be quite right…), Sunday was Tlaquepaque for better than average crafts with prices to match followed by a meatfest BBQ on the “lawn”. Monday was rejigging flights and a quick look at Chapultepec’s cows.
Tuesday was Ajijic for crafts and lakeside wandering and breakfast, followed by furniture hunting in Tonalá (a failure, forgot there’s no market on Tuesdays there…) but fun all the same. Evening meal in MaComeNo, highly recommended italian place in Avenida Americas.
And today: mum, dad and me went to Tequila and were v. happy to discover that El Columpio was open for visitors, that’s the olde worlde distillery where they make tequila using centuries-old techniques (so old that they don’t / can’t be bothered to qualify for their product to be labelled Tequila…). A v. friendly bunch there and Cofradia also gave a fine tour through their new museum and cellars. We added another 4 litres to our well stocked bar today…
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…
