Julieta Venegas, an important exception to the general ruling: Play an accordion, go to jail. (or gaol… Sarah)

Make yerself dizzy watching badly filmed footage from Tonala today, if it looks less busy than usual that’s cos it’s near the edge, the only place where filming from your waist doesn’t result in a permashot of people obstructing the way… You don’t realise how loud it all it till you listen to it in the comfort of your middle class barrio and it’s just the fruit, veggies and DVD bit…

Sita bought plenty of artesania & pressies, including 2 huge mirrors for MX$300 the pair of ’em. No idea how we’ll get those back one day. And also the following DVDs found their way into my hands (reviews soon, and Superman too 3.5 Lulus):

Batman Begins : saw it on 4-8-05 “Formidable rendering of Batman’s backstory. Nice understated CGI too. Yay. 4 Lulus”
Cronicas: (Sebastián Cordero) s’posed to be good
Jarhead: to take my mind off the incipient WW III brewing to the East…
Good night and good luck: Was misadvertised at the cinema and we ended up having a coffee instead
City of God: Saw this before I started reviewing films. One of my all time favourites.

Here’s a state-of-the-art, bleeding edge out-of-the-box, envelope-pushing web design agency in a back street, Felipe’s:

We’ve been planning the trip back, and shall probably only slightly vary the stopping points. Any recommendations for places to stay/eat in Hermosillo and Culiacan?

Blimey, me blog’s pagerank’s just gone up a notch to 5/10… search for ‘Gwyn’ on google and I’m result number 4. Take that gwynfisher.com, my namesake in New England… You might have got the domain name before I did, but I outstrip you in the SEO stakes. To celebrate, here’s a photo of the church in me little village in Zummerzet…

I like this…
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

It had just started to pour down so we though we’d head for the bookshops in Chapultepec and then a restaurant, so we jumped in a taxi and checked out the bookshops for some scholarly tomes and investigated the space where Sita’s doing her talk next week. All v. nice though they didn’t have the books we were after. Anyroad, then it really started to piss it down, vertical sea type stuff with hail and all, and within a matter of minutes cars were practically floating past. A bus crossed the central reservation and everyone went searching for higher ground. After an hour or so it stopped but the streets were still rivers and it became an urban jungle type scenario having to edge around walls and find lower waters and all that. Quite fun, but I soaked the only shoes I own (except me flip flops). Anyroad we went to Funicular to eat and then Sita stayed home and watched crap on the telly and me and Jose went round Fernando’s for snacks and ales and met some more really sound friends of theirs. Fernando shot some nice footage of the floods and if he sends it to me as promised I’ll post it… On the way home I had my first tacos de carnaza in Av. Americas, and they were surprisingly good, even though you can eat anything at 3 in the morning and it’ll taste good. “Al buen hambre, no hay pan duro” can be your Spanish phrase of the week… “when you’re really hungry, there’s no such thing as stale bread” is a rough translation.

And for your word: naufrago – Shipwrecked person.

Jose’s been trying to persuade me to put this one in too, but I’m buggered if I can translate it decently: El que es perico donde quiera es verde y el que es pendejo donde quiera pierde. Literally: “He who is a parrot, wherever he goes, is green, he who is an idiot, wherever he goes will lose”…. more loosely, “A parrot will always be green and a loser will never win” and looser still “You are who you are no matter where you go”. It doesn’t quite trip off the tongue for me mind…

Plans for today, you ask? Translate a load of Sita’s talk, and then Superman and bowling/pool. Stu and Anne rang me this morning at 9:30 when I was fast asleep, but it was 3:30am their time in NZ so I couldn’t complain. Nice to reverse the situation a bit there. That’s yer lot for now. Sorry bout the lack of posting lately, I’m all involved in the LAUlens site, trying to get it to do discounts on bulk orders and suchlike, and am back updating one of my first sites from 2 yrs ago, GO joven. Have a grand weekend, cheers : )

Thrill to the 84 frames of, frankly, very similar looking glasses… HERE

Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts news | Syd Barrett dies aged 60

It was the size of footballs, so it was… it just melted while I tried to find the macro settings on the camera. Actually not even pingpong ball sized, but hefty all the same.

Graniza?.. Anyroad, hopefully it’ll destroy all the black widow spiders… like the one we found lurking yesterday. Hang on, what if they come into the house to shelter? That’s it… I’m sleeping fully clothed clutching a spray can of RAID EXTRA (the adverts for which show the insects actually EXPLODING after you zap them) and commending myself to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Friday night: Sopranos x 4, TV at its best
Saturday: Designing logos for Kevin’s construction then Jose came round and we all headed off to play pool, cos it’s been a while… had a chat with me mate in New Zealand, started watching the Life Aquatic, and peacefully nodded off around 2am to awake on
Sunday: with a World Cup bbq/beers party to get going. Dramatis personae included: Sita, Ana, Jorge and Maya the Xoloitzcuintli (Mexican Hairless Dog, pictured), Jose and Fernando.

Today, monday, is best represented by a picture of my desk right now… :

Word of the week: Armazón
I may have mentioned I’m doing a website selling glasses frames. Well, spectacle frames in Spanish are armazones. I was hoping to get some mistyped traffic from amazon.com but armazon.com was already taken… and your phrase is:

“No quiero queso sino salir de la ratonera”- I don’t want cheese, I just want to get out of the mousetrap.

Suggestions on when you could use this in the comments, por favor…

A couple of weeks ago I got thoroughly fed up with WalMart, it’s the nearest supermarket to our house and Guadalajara’s only supplier of Portabella Mushrooms (casi regaladas). It was over a special offer on Heineken, but I digress. Anyroad, I’ve been boicotting it for 2 wks, but I just saw this on cartalk.com’s site and think I’m going to change my tactics….

The following letter was sent to a long-time patron of a local Target store. After receiving this letter, she vowed that she would NEVER take her husband shopping with her again!

January 12, 2006

Re: Mr. Bill Fenton
Multiple Complaints

Dear Mrs. Fenton,

Over the past six months, your husband, Mr. Bill Fenton has been causing quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this type of behavior and have considered banning the entire family from shopping in any of our stores. We have documented all incidents on our video surveillance equipment.

Three of our clerks are attending counseling from the trouble your husband has caused. All complaints against Mr. Fenton have been compiled and are listed below.

15 Things Mr. Bill Fenton has done while his spouse is shopping:

1. June 15: Took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in people’s carts when they weren’t looking.

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.

3. July 7: Made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the restrooms.

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official tone, ‘Code 3’ in housewares….. and watched what happened.

5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and asked to put a bag of M&M’s on layaway.

6. September 14: Moved a ‘CAUTION – WET FLOOR’ sign to a carpeted area.

7. September 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told other shoppers he’d invite them in if they’ll bring pillows from the bedding department.

8. September 23: When a clerk asks if they can help him, he begins to cry and asks Why can’t you people just leave me alone?’

9. October 4: Looked right into the security camera; used it as a mirror, and picked his nose.

10. November 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, asked the clerk if he knows where the antidepressants are.

11. December 3: Darted around the store suspiciously loudly humming the “Mission Impossible” theme.

12. December 6: In the auto department, practiced his “Madonna look” using different size funnels.

13. December 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browse through, yelled “PICK ME!” “PICK ME!”

14. December 21: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumes the fetal position and screams “NO! NO! It’s those voices again!!!!”

(And; last, but not least!) 15. December 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door and waited a while; then, yelled, very loudly, “There is no toilet paper in here!”

Check back for updates on this… ; )

In other news… agaveweb.com/lens and 3 wks to the next road trip to gringolandia…

Back to work after a good few days seeing the sights of Guanajuato with Monica and Daniel. Click on either photo below to be magically transported to Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende. Might manage a post or two on Friday… agaveweb.com/kevin and the spectacles site’s what I’m up to for now…

Guanajuato

San Miguel de Allende

Click to biggify

Sita’s presentation on Pancho Villa, Tequila and Mexico went extremely well. She’s a star, anyroad the location for the conference was pretty spectacular being on the 12th floor of a hotel in the town centre. Daniel’s on the right.

We’re still stocking up on booze for the ‘dry weekend’ and are planning to go to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato… Last night Jana and Victor invited us round and it was a fine party, and we spent a fair bit of time on the roof where there we had a grand view of an impromptu fireworks display down the road. Good times… Tonight it’s more Chicano/Latino studies fun, but this time in the Santo Coyote. I’ll be having the arrachera please.

and it’s mainly for the chorus: “Vamos a aclarar el panorama, hay pinguinos en la cama…” and the rest of the rhyming-dictionary-3rd-rate-singer-songwriting…

Just for the record: Fantastic meal in La Matera again with Victor, Jana and family last night. Picked up Sita’s fancy new business cards. Tidied the house a bit and now I’m off for web designery… ooh and I’m at 1070 at the scrabble. 4 off my all time best. This can’t last… More meaningful posts soonish. Cheers : )

I briefly made it into the 1000s again in Scrabble at the weekend (I’m back at 950 now…) I’m enjoying the 3 minutes per side games most. It’s like table tennis without the exercise. Although, apparently the harder you think, you more calories you burn… Anyroad, to celebrate here’s a few handy tips:

If you’re starting, make sure the vowels in the word aren’t adjacent to the double letter score spaces on the board. Your opponent is more likely to score highly if (s)he can put a high scoring consonant on those squares. Eg if they’ve got a J, X, Q, Z, etc. they’re in fine form. Ex 1,2

When starting, see if you can reach the double letter scores with your word. Can you rearrange the word so the highest scorer is on a double letter score?

If you’re starting and your tiles are rubbish, change some of them. Often your scrabble partner will change theirs too. And if not, I don’t see a huge advantage in starting except for the double word score. Hopefully, you’ll have a longer word to start the game which means a more enjoyable board ready for bingos, instead of the dreaded X-shape made of 3 letter words. Which starts off ok, then gets harder and harder. Ej 5:

It’s all about the bingos (7 letter words). Playing low-scoring words is fine as long as it’s strategic and heading towards getting a rack more likely to get you a bingo. RETAINS has the letters you should aim to keep until you have a bingo.

That’s all for now, the best ones are on the back of the lid of most scrabble boxes. And to protect your marriage, invest in a good scrabble word dictionary.

Simplicity, that’s the name of the game when it comes to seafood and mushrooms, reckons I. Butter, salt, garlic and robert’s yer father’s brother… And a litre or so of lighter fluid for that slightly chemical edge, naturally…

Another weekend of gastronomic thrills and spills. Friday night we went to Lunico, the new Italian restaurant on Ave. Mexico. V.v. good food there. And the wine was a Zinfandel/Shiraz concoction from Chile just perfect for washing down the bovine chunks. The Greek-Italian owner charmed the socks off Sita with his mediterranean shmoozing. “Oh yes, not just anyone orders the Zinfandel/Shiraz and medium rare steak… bla bla bla”. Anyroad, the next day I ran errands in the morning, watched Mexico bow out of the world cup gracefully. The flag for the car I bought didn’t seem to help them… Then José came round for a sophisticated dinner evening (portabellas’n’burgers, since you ask) and we watched a film “Benjamin Smoke”, a documentary based on an extremely odd geezer in Atlanta. (see the review iFrame for more info soon). The lightening was strobelike most of the night, but I won’t foist another video on you just yet… Have a picture of a lime with droplets of the previous night’s precipitation instead:

You know when you’ve been tango’d

Today I nipped into Santa Tere for tacos and DVDs in the morning since the England match was only on Sky and chilled with a Sunday paper in a cafe on Chapultepec (They had Nacho Libre but the quality wasn’t great so I passed, shall wait for it to come out in the cinema methinks). Came home then went to Centro Magno to watch “The Squid and the Whale”. Which was brilliant. Review presently. then fired up the barby again and grilled the life out of some onions, shrimp and zucchini courgettes. Delicious.

If you’re wondering what I’ll be eating tomorrow, well, my usual chocolate chip croissants for breakfast, followed by a slap-up meal in La Matera in the evening. Just for the record, the plan to eat in an Argentine restaurant was formulated before Mexico’s defeat at their hands on Saturday…

All the local businesses are into the World Cup too even allowing for the time difference: Translation: “Enjoy the World Cup Here! Free beer with every breakfast ordered”

EDIT: Just putting the brief film reviews up here as well as in the iFrame:

25-6-06 The Squid and the Whale (2006)
Or the less intriguingly titled Spanish version: Historias de Famila (Family Stories). Philip Larkin would approve of this gripping film about a family falling apart and the effects on the kids. Has some great comic/cringeful moments and recreates 80s New York just like it looked in Ghostbusters. Great performances and oddly heartwarming. Thoroughly recommended.

24-6-06 Benjamin Smoke (2000)
Banjos are my anti-drug… Innovatively shot, but ultimately hollow documentary about an Atlanta-based transvestite and his unique take on music.

3-6-06 X-Men: The Final Battle (2006)
An appropriately dazzling climax to the (undersold) trilogy. Centred around some relatively high concept sci-fi about minority relationships, but buoyed by spectacular effects and snappy dialogue. Vinnie Jones is brilliantly cast as a mutant whose superpower is smashing through walls. Recommended if you’re into this kind of thing… Reminded me of a recent Onion infographic about how TV series were trying to increase ratings: ‘LOST: A crate of radioactive vegetables washes up on shore giving all characters superpowers.”

22-6-06 The Break-Up (2006)
Your enjoyment of this film will depend heavily on your tolerance for Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston. I thought my threshold was pretty low, but I laughed out loud several times at this well-observed comedy. Starts off as High Fidelity then goes into War of the Roses ‘Lite”. Not a suitable ‘date movie” by any length of the imagination…

I finally got round to checking out my web stats today. They’re an odd bunch them anonymous googlers… Here’re my top 5 keywords that arrived at these here pages:

1: “this is how i got those pesky cats to stop crapping in my yard”
2: “it has been brought to management’s attention that some”
3: “mexican swearwords”
4: “cockeral sounds”
5: “pendejadas”

Hope they all found what they were looking for… Anyroad, as promised here’s the full set of photos from yesterday. and below a nifty little video autoproduced by the latest version of Picassa and hosted by our friends at YouTube. It’s Javier the barman mixing a Batanga for Sita in the Capilla cantina in Tequila. She’d worked hard for it…