Vacas

sunny and windy. Hope I’ll not freeze when i get to London manaa… Yesterday I tagged along with Sita and her entourage of professors to a Citrus Museum in Riverside and some Mission or other. Photos here: Slideshow, separately. Amongst many other things, learnt that lemons are a genetically diverse bunch. Bit like dogs, I s’pose. Hence the Buddah’s Fingers variety, which we may try to cultivate one day:

(c) Mariola Zepeda 2006

(c) Mariola Zepeda 2006

For a fine set of pix from last night, check out Mariola Zepeda’s Flickr photos

He referred to the Smiths obliquely as a ghost who is always nearby but still gave it some welly with songs like Panic and Girlfriend in a coma. The crowd, myself included, couldn’t help but join in more with those songs rather than his relatively sedate solo stuff. He made the odd stab at Spanish with some, frankly, baffling dialogues seemingly influenced by his recent move to Italy. “Is there a Julia in the audience?” which is something to do with the police in Italian. (pull)Fair play to him for shouting “Tapatios” to the crowd though, we liked that.(/pull) And there was the requisite booing when he mentioned that tomorrow he’d be playing in Mexico City. Sita especially appreciated the changes of shirt with an average of 4 songs to each ripping off of silk shirtery…

Interesting backing band too, shaven-headed 25/40 yr old men forced to wear some bizarre dungaree outfit. They had the songs down pat.

Overall a fantastic concert and it was definitely worth arriving early to get to the rows where you could see every passionate expression. Even if it meant watching Eurovision clips from the 60s, New York Dolls footage and a Bjork/Kate Bush percussionist/keyboardist act named Kristeen Young.

The setlist via a source I will soon track down:

William
In the future when all’s well
Don’t make fun of daddy’s voice
Panic
Dear god please help
I’ve changed my plea to guilty
First of the gang to die
Disappointed
You have killed me
Ganglord
Let me kiss you
Everyday is like sunday
Girlfriend in a coma
I just want to see the boy happy
Life is a pigsty
Please please please
How soon is now?
Far off places
Irish blood English heart

Doubtless you’ve heard the furore surrounding it as American Christian Fundamentalists adopted it as their own citing the penguin’s incredible journey as evidence of God’s work and pro-family values. The other side came back with, but they’re only monogamous for one year, it’s a very hard life for a benign deity to proscribe, and that’s not even mentioning the whole gay penguins “thing“. If you never got round to my review (and I won’t blame you) here’s an easy to follow link to the review I wrote in August. On Amazon.com, 1 of 5 people found it helpful, so there you go.

I went to the Parque people today to find out the latest on the site and they’re only asking for it to be a scalable size, ie. 95% of the screen rather than a fixed width. That’s not a minor change. But they’re on ‘oliday till 6th Jan so that gives me a chance during the “Guadalupe Reyes” period (an expression Jose explained last night as being from the 12 Dec to 6th of Jan). Oh, and they’d like a visitor counter too. See here under “You Know You’re In Content Hell When You See…”. Ah well, I’m just the designer… Jose reckon’s there’s a 90% chance I’ll get the kindergarten gig though v. soon and he’s invited me’n’Ed to christmas dinner round his house. So it’s all good.

Flash recently alerted her readers to the existence of cow magnets. Which I think is delightful. I’m pondering ordering the Bessie Bovine explains all educational package (ages 6 and up)… Nothing worse than Hardware Disease… particularly relevant for Michael Eavis and his surfeit of tent pegs apparently.

So yesterday we wandered over to Berkeley Marina, a place I’d been before back in the dark old days as a NGO program manager for various conferences. It was nice to reclaim it as a site for walking and photography rather than learning about sustainability and human resources. We wandered along the lengthy pier and then had a Flip This House marathon evening with the remains of Meg’s surplus wine from the night before.

This morning we helped shift a few boxes for T’s move-in over in Oakland and discovered the delights of Zachary’s pizza and I had my first ever go on a Nintendo Wii. This afternoon, we’ll probably get out to enjoy the sunshine somewhere local and stockpile vitamin D for the deskbound coming week.

In Taunton’s local rag, The Gazette, there’s a first for local small-town journalism. At the time of writing, they managed to publish a headline for an Easter Extravaganza without resorting to spelling it Eggstravaganza. Which I think is laudable and without precedent. Maybe they’re moving upmarket or have just hired a new staff writer…

American Visa is about a Bolivian English teacher who’s trying to get to the US but faces no end of troubles getting his visa at the INS. He eventually turns to crime to get enough money to bribe his way through the red tape. It didn’t quite come to that in my case, but very nearly… Anyroad, the film ain’t bad, it has some very nice shots of La Paz, especially by night, and it’s fast moving enough. Where it falls down (heavily) is the ‘love’ story between the main bloke, Mario and lap dancer Blanca (Nefertiti) which beggars belief. Once again, corruption and crime is the main theme for the film which sits in firmly in the Latin American school of cinema. Nice to see the US getting the same treatment too, though. Unfortunately there were no subtitles and I had a fair bit of trouble with the accent, especially Blanca’s who sounds like a Bonaerensian with a speech defect. So maybe that’s my fault. Overall, to use local newspaper, El Público’s rating system, dominguera (Sundayish) but with some nice cinematographic flourishes.

Yes it is. I had my first 13 hour day yesterday and I have four meetings to attend today at the last count. Definitely won’t be many new book and film reviews for a while…