when a Brit of Trivia happens at local bar, 99 bottles of beer, and lo and behold there’s a picture of us from a while ago. Have a look here. We’re half-way down, on the right. After Sita QEs on Wed, we’re going to spend the evening there and have a fiesta of sorts on Friday too. Anyroad, just finished a nice meal and may well head off to Blockbuster for more entertainment. righty, hasta pronto, gwyn
We had a nice old evening round Joop’s last night. Barbecue, guitar, office gossip, fine wines and house prices. Anyroad, went to town this morning to pick up tickets for star wars and sell some books and the streets were deserted ‘cos there was to be some parade or other. I wished I had my real camera with me, but I took a few snaps with me PDA. Sudarat and friends are coming round any second and I’m in charge of rice. Oh, the responsibility. Might manage some proper blogging tomorrow. Feels like it’s been a while and I think we have some dates for the next few months’ plans… The Gaytán-Fisher World Tour 2005-2006 should be passing through: L.A., Zummerzet, London, Brissle, Bournemouth, Oakland, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Zummerzet again, L.A., Nevada, Guadalajara… anyroad, as i said last time, still have to buy the tickets. The selling everything we own has so far netted: $15 for a guitar, and $27.50 for some books. Hoping to get a fair bit more and buy a superlight notepad/lappy for freelance webdesigning and suchlike. Blogging from the beach…
Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes and such, much, much obliged, big up to the pan-global massive, my peeps meg, matt, bethan, ali, mum, dad, nanny, grandma, tanya, juicy, bert, stu, anne, annelise, amy, stu’s parents+ others. 30’s treating me okay so far. I just got b’n’ali’s pressie, a DVD of Marion & Geoff series 2, and watched an episode last night, and it looks like quality entertainment. Also listened to the first CD of ‘The Mighty Boosh’ which is an education in itself.
Anyroad, felt I ought to blog. I can’t really carry on with the narrative about the weekend from the last entry (below), but I can tell you that Sita’s netball team lost but she was a star in the game especially considering she hadn’t played since she was 15 or so. “Go Monarchs!” as i couldn’t quite bring myself to shout on monday. I would have felt weird taking photos of the all girl teams so here’s a couple of photos of moody santa cruz mountain snaps. 
and another.
I was starting to feel guilty watching so many Strongbad cartoonswithout sharing the joy. Thanks to Annelise for the post in her blog ‘and if you are feeling down, there’s always Strongbad’… never a truer word blogged. Never fails to cheer me up.
In other news, if you’ve been following the ‘hello Swedes’ plotline in the blog. I’ve finally found out who it was since they put a pin in my Guestmap. Apparently Austria sub-contracts their ISPing to Sweden. Hello Mike, if you’re reading. Good to know that’s two people from Kingston St. Mary who blog. We should set up a web ring. Blogging Link Up Readers or summat.
If you’re a regular and haven’t shoved a pin in the Guestmap yet, please, pretty please, have a go. I can offer up Gmail account invites for the next 5 brave pioneers. (& let me know if you’re interested, Michael)
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?…
First off, Manu Chao 101. He’s a French/Basque/Spanish bloke who used to be in (French band) Mano Negra. In ’98 or thereabouts he released his first album, Clandestino which is a fantastic mix of songs about his life as a world traveller sung in French, Spanish, English and nonsense, among other languages, (‘I’m the king of bongo baby, I’m the king of bongo bong”…). Laid back rhythms, sampled loops and irresistible grooves all feature prominently. Also there’s an effect which I’m fairly sure he nicked from an 80s electronic keychain that makes a whistling noise then arcade machine explosion which he’s well fond of. It was followed up in 2002 with Proxima Estación: Esperanza which was more of the same; and when your first album’s as good as his was this is no bad thing. In fact, Radiohead could learn from this stick-to-what-you-know approach to writing albums… but I digress. A live album came out relatively recently which I never got round to downloading, but since I’m not writing for Rolling Stone or Q, that’s allowed… All in all tuneful, politically-aware hippy music.
So what was he like on Sunday? Well we arrived at 7:30, doors were billed for 8 and we queued for quite a while building up a quite a thirst and admiring the t-shirts, listening to some kind of musical mayhem inside… we finally got in and found our seats right at the vertiginous top of the bull ring to the left of the stage and established base camp. I went to get a round of Estrella dobles in. The first bar had sold out so they sent me to the next which was also dry, I then made it to the last bar and managed to get to the front without too much elbowing only to be ignored for 15 minutes. Victor had come looking for me by this stage, and helped me get their attention but even then it took forever. I managed to get the last 5 beers in the whole stadium. Amazing if you ask me that an event like this was going to end up beer-free. This is Mexico, not Massachusetts… Victor has a conspiracy theory that they were holding back the booze to prevent trouble. But I don’t reckon so as the beer was warm and they obviously weren’t prepared… Anyroad… during the queueing about fifty people without tickets stormed the entrance gates chucking bottles and suchlike at the security staff and streaming into the building. There were a fair few flashes going off, but I haven’t managed to track down any pictures on the intarwebs. These things always happen when you’ve not got your camera. Maybe it’s time to upgrade my mobile phone… anyroad, it was a little hairy for a few minutes there, but all part of the colourful Mexican concert-going experience. And most of the broken glass missed me…
Back up the 6 flights of steps to the top of the bullring and the lights went down and Mr Chau and band took the stage setting the musical agenda for the evening. Live it is a very different beast. Studio albums rely on carefully crafted editing and samples whereas live it’s an all-out ska-fest. Even gentler numbers got the Dreadzone-at-Ashton-Court treatment, which is all well and good if you’re in the moshpit at the front, but less so for a sedate 31-year-old married bloke sitting comfortably far from the speakers. The energy from the mosh pit and crowd surfers soon worked its way around the crowd and despite the lack of booze I found myself risking my neck by jumping around on the precarious seating. The sound system left a fair bit to be desired and it was hard to hear what the between-songs patter was all about. Something about democracy. I’m guessing he thinks it’s a good thing, but we’ll never know… They played for more than two hours which is fantastic value and it was great to watch the crowd getting more anarchic and the security guards slowly edging away in growing terror. So despite major logistical problems as a spectacle it was great, far better than my last Mexican concert (Oasis in el D.F. in 1998) where everyone behaved far too normally.
Lessons learnt:
Another expat’s reviewed the gig here . And even has a camera phone photo of the bullring… Tell him I sent you 🙂
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TelMex saw fit to block the internet tubes to our house yesterday, hence today´s early morning location. It’s always when you’ve got lots of work on that the interwebs stop. Hey ho, it means that yesterday I got to finish a novel for the first time in ages, Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down, which was alright as a novel but a tad grating due to his (characters’) overuse of similes. It’s like when you’re watching a daytime Antiques program on BBC 1. And all they do is use puns. But in the long run, it’s like you appreciate it. But sometimes, puns are like a comfortable cushion. Etc. that kind of thing. On the plus side it means I can finally start The Hummingbird’s Daughter, which after 10 pages looks like just my kind of thing. Atticus * also got more quality time than usual. And I spent a while strumming away at the gee-tar. So every cloud etc… And I love Starbucks’ burnt coffee too. So swings and roundabouts are the order of the day.
Ever wondered how to count to 1023 on your fingers? Cesar’s put his vast intellect into creating a demo. My fingers aren’t quite that flexible… The real challenge would be combining counting to 1023 while performing this Daft Punk track (it gets good at about 1 minute in).
Alrighty, back to my research y chamba.
* ‘Cus looked starving at 5.30 yesterday and Sita wasn’t back from the gym yet so I made him a gourmet meal with leftovers from Sita’s steak on Sat night. A couple of hours later and i remarked to Sita that the dog looked chubbier than usual, then I asked her if she’d fed him and she said “Of course, with the leftovers from Saturday mixed in”. So he’d had two huge meals. Anyway, several miles of running up and down the garden later and he puked like a good’un in the living room. There’s a lesson in there somewhere… We need some kind of “Dog has been fed” system in the kitchen. He’s full of beans today though. Not literally.
