Imagine, o reader, my unlimitable joy on receiving the sublime invitation to be the godmother of the latest addition to the churumbelesque of my dearish friend and, dare I conjecture, distant cousin Leire?
For ‘tis I, Sheen Martínez, risen (as it were) from the oblong tombness of oblique oblivion, squared up to the unreasonableness of reason its very self, yea verily I rant unto ye. Many micks mack a muckle and thereby hangs a tale, as the Wife of Bath was wont to giggle in the sullied and grungied earlobe of Thee Who Is Unto us, atop the peak, that peak, oh for God’s sake you know fine well wtf I’m on about, D-O-I-H-A-V-E-T-O-S-P-E-L-L-I-T-O-U-T-T-O-Y-O-U.
So my dear cousin Leire calls me out of the blue (I mean, the bitch hasn’t as much as friended me) and says do I want to be the godchild of her hang-on-let-me-get-my-calculator fifth child, a winsome young chap who will go by the name of Gaylord until he sees reason. So I says Yeah, go on.
The momentous occasion will take place either on:
a) The pitch of Atlético de Madrid’s ground, the Vicente Calderón stadium (the father of the creature being an avid fan of this shall-we-say somewhat second-rate soccer consortium) or
b) The Towers of Silence – the Parsi funereal ground on the outskirts of Mumbai, where sacred vultures devour the flesh of the rotting remains of the Zoroastrian faithful.
She’s nothing if not adventurous, my maybe-cousin Leire.
As you can imagine, I’m literally tearing at the leash. Oh lemme be that godmamma. Bring on that baptism, oh Lord.
It takes me back to the time when I was christened, along with my twin brother Heen, needy-less to say, many crimson moons ago, besmirched with the passage of time , ay Dios, si yo les contara…
If I were to grant you a million guesses as to the wherewithal of our christening, I assure you that you would never ascertain the name of our godfather.
Amazingly, it was Ismael Rivera.
And, what is more amazing, is that today so few people know who Ismael Rivera was. OK, if you go to Puerto Rico, you will find thousands of people who will instantly leap up and say “¡Claro! ¡Ismael Rivera! ¡El sonero mayor! ¡Maelo!”
It hurts to have to tell the tale of Ismael Rivera, aka Maelo, the first great salsa singer, the man who created a style, the man who illustrated a generation… oh my God if I had to justify the legend himself and yet, painfully, I see I could almost have to…
Amazingly, and every time I say the great man’s name it should be prefaced with an “amazingly”, he was a friend of our father’s. He happened to be in Zaragoza on the day Heen and I were baptized in the Basílica del Pilar and of course our dad said Hey Maelo, wanna be the godfather of these two kids that are probably mine? And Maelo said Sure, if you get the next round in.
As a godfather, Ismael Rivera wasn’t the best. Dying of drug abuse in his fifties wasn’t exactly role-model material, and he ignored us in his will, but ohhhh, what a voice… Twenty-five years ago, he was outrageously famous, now he’s forgotten in these parts. Ah, vanitas… Thank God his recordings are still there and few things thrill Heen and me as much as listening to the thunderingly politically-incorrect plenas, boleros,bombas and salsa of our godfather Maelo.
I will godmotherize the offspring of my neo-cousin Leire, and I will do it with gusto. If the priest asks me how I intend to my job, fulfill my role and generally be there for the kid, I’ll hand him this memory stick on which I have a tasteful selection of Maelo’s greatest hits.
One of the most frustrating films I’ve seen recently is The Tree of Life, (Terrence Malick, 2011). I felt frustrated because it was simultaneously dazzling-and-original and weary-and-hackneyed. If it had been just d-and-o, I would have loved it to death and if it had been just w-and-h I could dismiss it as just another crappy movie, thus feeling less frustrated.
Brad Pitt’s character is the hard-working, frustrated-dreamer-type of American father who treats his three sons just as the Hollywood manual says 1950’s fathers should treat their sons: teach them to box, be strict and God-fearing and make them afraid of him so that they swing towards their mother (in this case lacklusteredly played by Jessica Chastain) and become emos or gays or serial killers or Nobel prize winners. Brad has a hard time expressing his feelings through words, so he plays the organ, which leads us to the other annoying cliché – the choice of music that Malick fills his film with.
It’s annoying because we’ve heard it all before. And usually in tear-jerking films, or TV advertisements, which makes it worse. Per se, I have nothing against these well-known snippets of Mahler, Holst, Brahms, etc. (might draw the line at John Tavener’s pseudo-funereality, mind you), but I would have expected him to search a bit further and maybe stumble across something like the work of Julia Holter.
The photography was striking and mostly beautiful. It’s no novelty to have the jerky hand-held thing nowadays, but Malick makes it look original by unusual angles, unexpected use of zooms and, obviously, the massive mash-up cosmo thing – space, dinosaurs, wowy special effects and gigantic trees lovingly blended with close-ups of kissable twitching babies’ feet, Brad’s cool glasses, Jessica’s watery smile.
One of the boys looks like Barcelona defender Dani Alves. (This was very disturbing for me.) 50 years later, we see him grown up in the form of Sean Penn, who hopelessly scours the steel and glass of the modern city in search of the God who he had no time for in his childhood as he played with his brothers.
The themes of hope and desperation are universal and the director wants us to appreciate just how universal the universe really is. It’s a wildly ambitious film, with long shots of the Milky Way and swirling nature scenes, and numbingly domestic at the same time – one boring family who rarely have conversations. The most interesting thing that happens is the death of one of the boys, but we get to find out very little about it – the director concentrates on more on the ensuant grief, and how that meshes with the sense of wonder of creation that the boys’ mother tries to infuse them with while they’re not being shouted at by their dad.
I don’t know if this film is minimalist, as some people have said. Its meticulous attention to detail and the fact that there are long periods where nothing at all happens might suggest so, but Bach and the dinosaurs lean in the opposite direction. Epics can’t be minimalist.
Another adjective often used to describe this film is “pretentious”. I would say, “Definitely not”. I reckon it’s almost embarrassingly honest and sincere. Malick has really gone for broke here, spewing his heart out. There is not one moment of mauvois foi here, whatever your aesthetic opinion of it may be.
So what beverage would go with this film? What drink can encompass the whole of God’s creation and run the gamut of human emotion? The final scene has a whole crowd of people wandering around on what looks like a huge frozen lake, spaced out, “at peace with themselves” or a little bit stoned, and yet they look round in happy curiosity. This self-same effect can be achieved with the judicious ingestion of gin and tonic and I’d like to say a few words about that, if I may.
Of course you may, it’s your blog, dammit.
Why, thank you, old fruit.
Not of a bit of it.
Well, as I was saying, gin and tonic. I am amazed at how easily impressed my fellow Spaniards are in matters regarding fashion. It has become fashionable, would you believe, to drink gin and tonic. That is “la moda”. Imagine. Like people have never drunk gin with tonic before. Now it is the summum of cool. But, whoah… you can’t just order any old gin and any old tonic. A suspiciously impressive publicity campaign has catapulted Hendricks gin into the position of being the “right” brand of gin to order. Hendricks has been around for years, for crying out loud. It’s perfectly all right, but it’s no better than your average gin, and it’s certainly no better than it was, say, 5 years ago, or 25 years ago. Spain has some very sound gins and I’ll just mention two here: Xoriguer and Larios.
The first is a work of art, with a dazzling-and-original bouquet of chamomile which isn’t to everyone’s taste and I tend to think it clashes with tonic, whatever the brand (and you can climb back into your fever tree, you naughty Mad Men monkeys or should that be Mad Monkey Men).
My defence of Larios gin is not a case of snobberie invertée, it’s simply a case of a good, straightforward, clean, pure product that, for those very reasons, lends itself to The Tree of Life.
Pretentious people (i.e. people who drink Hendricks gin with Fever Tree tonic, in a balloon glass) will watch The Tree of Life and secretly think, “Oh my God that was awful and I didn’t understand anything!” and will say, “Oh my God that was sublime!”
People that ZaragozaTwins like will drink the gin and tonic of the brands of their choosing, in a tall glass, and watch The Tree of Life and say, “Thank you” and think, “Thank you” at the same time.
… So anyways I make my way to Samarra. I never like to be late for my appointments, and I had a long ride from Baghdad, so, straight after breakfast I saddled my horse and set off. The journey was uneventful, my horse had done this trip several times in the past few months so I was able to relax, do some useful daydreaming and, above all, reflect on how I was going to visit the merchant’s servant that night. I always use the word “visit” – there’s no point in scaring people.
I got to Samarra just after sunset. I get myself a bite to eat and settle down in a small alleyway next to the market where I figure the servant will be hanging out. It dawned on me just then that I’d never even bothered to find out the guy’s name. Oh well, it was just a job.
He seemed kind of flustered when he came round the corner, dead on time.
Suggested usage: As a dietary supplement, take one capsule daily as needed.
Never try to open the case or remove the back cover.
Not suitable for home freezing.
Chiliastic: Relating to or believing in the millennium of peace and happiness.
Keep out of the reach of children.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Planchar a temperature baja. Cold iron. Repasser a baisse temperature. Engomar a temperature baixa.
The Palestine Papers reveal ‘a security drive’ with the objective of “degrading the capabilities of the rejectionists: Hamas, PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], and the Al Aqsa Brigades – through the disruption of their leaderships’ communications and command and control capabilities; the detention of key middle-ranking officers; and the confiscation of their arsenals and financial resources held within the Occupied Territories. US and – informally – UK monitors would report both to Israel and to the Quartet.
So… you’re telling me those goals against… but what about the time I…. and hang on I have this Ballon d’Or to prove that I… you mean to say that none of that…
It all swirled around and took him nowhere. Leo sweated as he lay on the couch, staring up at the fan swirling round on the ceiling, still imagining he was signing a thousand autographs a day, his arm twitching, his hands twitching and his eyes gazing upwards beyond the ceiling where the fan was swirling, to a heaven where God was acknowledging his raised arms, his elbows bending towards the firmament of gratitude and something we mortals can barely comprehend.
The millions of headlines of achievements of magic of admiration of greatness of what am I doing here this can’t be…
Now I see I have this guitar in my hands and you want me to but you know I am not…
Untie me, let me go, back to what I am, the real me, not the false memory you want me to have, I am not Robert Fripp, I am not Robert Fripp.
His arm twitching, his fingers twitching, his eyes gazing onto the frets, his figure crouched onstage alongside Bill Bruford and the roar surged from his Gibson Les Paul echoed from the Camp Nou to Andromeda and then on to the white walls of this miserable clinic and his free kick crashed into the white wall…
Eat what you want! (It’s got nothing to do with losing weight!)
I just want to make it perfectly clear that I'm pretending to bite into this apple because I want to, not because it is having any measurable effect on my BMI, ok?
A few days ago I mentioned that I had lately been putting on a few kilos or pounds or whatever unit of weight you prefer. (Personally I’ve always had a soft spot for the !Ñui` system, used by the Hopi Indians. By their standards, I weigh in at a mere 22 ui`.)
Like everybody else, I’ve dabbled with just about every diet this side of the Sun, with limited success. This latest fad, the Dunkin’ Donuts diet, definitely DOES NOT work, take it from me. I tried the grapefruit diet, the West Coast diet, even the hilarious Jack Daniels diet… all were a waste of time, money, effort, pain, suffering, frustration, angst, heartache, guilt, remorse, I think you got the message so I’ll stop.
I weigh myself religiously and by that I don’t mean I hold a crucifix as I stand on the scales, or face Mecca or anything, I mean I weigh myself with patience and dedication every morning prior to my, ahem, frugal breakfast. And I noticed a bizarre pattern emerging… Sometimes my body weight was as much as 2 kilos greater than the day before, and other days it had plummeted by just as much. Something peculiar was going on. And it wasn’t just the food I was eating, or the exercise I was getting – naturally, a girl checks these variables before she considers other factors, right?
Scrutinizing my every move, I started to entertain the possibility that there could be some relationship twixt my intellectual pleasures and my Body Mass Index…
I observed with trepidation how my cellulite and the pudginess around my lower thighs practically vanished overnight after a three-hour session of How I Met Your Motherand by that I am referring to the TV show, as if I need to add. To my chagrin, it started to creep back over the next few weeks and I was able to put this down to reading El año del diluvio and La verdad sobre el caso Savolta by Eduardo Mendoza. Was my weight gain exponentially related with the books I was reading, and the loss with the television I was watching? I tucked my reading glasses away for a month or so, and spent a long time watching TV. And, sure enough, my incipient flabbiness began to dwindle. Remarkable but unquestionable.
However, I was unable to ditch the whole reading thing altogether, and this led me to think there were probably some authors who were more fattening than others. In the best interests of science, I plunged into some heavy research, risking my waistline in exchange for literature, and I am now in a position to be able to assert unequivocally that John Irving, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Walter Eissman are lots more calorific than, say, Robert Walser, Yukio Mishima or Julia Navarro. What qualities make one author more weightgaining than others is a mystery to me.
Who? Me??
Not all TV viewing, however, proved efficient in the task of shedding those unsightly pounds. No amount of CSI seemed to make the slightest difference, and I have never been swayed by the slimming qualities of Extreme Makeover or I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, verbigracia. Again, a comprehensive field study was called for and after exhaustive studies I can conclude that the TV series that burn off most fat are Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy and Top Gear. I cannot bear the sight or sound of Jeremy Clarkson
Qué asco de tío
, so Top Gear’s out, for starters. All these shows have at least one instance of the letter G in their name, so I will investigate further – The Gilmore Girls looks very promising, for instance (I’m aiming at my tummy here) and there’s a South African kids’ programme called Gary, The Giggling Gay Gorilla whose name practically guarantees instant skinniness, doesn’t it.
The Most Tip Top!
I wondered for a while whether cartoons would do the trick. Manga is hopeless for this. I thought I was getting somewhere with Top Cat (adorable vintage classic stuff) but it was a false alarm.
Stop! Surely it should matter what one eats, I hear the purists shriek. Yeah, well, it might, but that’s all down to science and metabolic burn-off, innit. I know some bovine slobs who starve themselves for months and don’t shift a kilo, and I know some anorexo-bulimic neo-skeletons who have a Big Mac Ultra-Maxi-Special for breakfast and it has no impact whatsoever. So I’m through with dieting. Burn your books and burn those calories while you’re at it. Get stuck into a good soap opera. “Weight watching” takes on a whole new meaning!
Do yourself a favour. You won’t lose any weight but…
Whooooah…………. Minutino, minutino………… Allow me to pounce in here and reply to my twin sister’s latest ravings. What on earth was she thinking of……… Lana del Rey……….. those new meds are playing havoc with her ghirioch….. Just as well I got wind… Oh it’s not easy being a twin…… si yo te contara…
Right. Well. Sheen is obviously more than entitled to her opinions, faltaría más. But to broadcast them in this way… I mean… to bullhorn her ill-gotten musings… I could withdraw them, I could axe her views, censor her writings, delete her post, but then what… No, I shan’t be a party to that.
I just want to say that Sheen has become rather narrow-minded of late. She is swerving towards a blinkered outlook on life, and her tastes are shrivelling towards the weak and the paltry.
Sheen isn’t wrong. What she says is true. For her. Today. But there is a bigger truth. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.
She can waffle about Lana del Rey all she likes but she is blotting out the sun with her little finger. I offer you Sharon Cuneta.
And here we go. Sheen sinks into the most vulgar ethnocentricism when she lauds Lana. I know, she knows, we all know that what Lana del Rey would most like is to reach the heights of Sharon Cuneta.
Go anywhere in South East Asia and mention the word “Sharon” and they know who you’re talking about. If there were ever a living legend, it is she. Her job description in her native Philippines is “Megastar”. She has made dozens of films and records. Compared with her, Jennifer Lopez is a puny amateur. True, she has Aretha-ed out since I first made her acquaintance in the early 90’s, but she is a monster. Yeah, J-Lo is big, Whitney (pbuh) was huge, but hell, you can see Sharon Cuneta from outer space. Keep your Adeles and your Lanas, please… we’re talking enormous here.
So I offer you the chance to bask in her amazingness. I could have (and probably will) pointed you in the direction of Runa Laila or Teresa Teng, but there will be an occasion for them in the coming months.
Sia, Wild Belle and Lana del Rey all have their place. But it’s all about perspective. Perspective is everything.
I don’t suppose for one minute and by that I don’t mean a New York minute whatever that is it sounds like a steak or something no wait I think I.
Any road up I want to talk about some singers I think I like quite a lot but not enough to recommended by various sources of note I am not suggesting you aim to enjoy what I say here here.
I will start by mentioning Lana del Rey for no better reason she is on my short list is best defined by the way she has become popular and unpopular at the same thing happens once in a blue moon.
So this is Lana del Rey who reminds me of a goldfish. I don’t like her voice and I don’t like her songs but the overall package well of course it’s a package and very nicely packaged it is a product they could have made 20 yrs ago if they had known how (and why) and 40yrs ago if they had been paying attention to the future is never what you expect. The King’s Wool, indeed. She was born to die if you believe what she has to say here :
I will continue in this vein runs down the side of my skull I sometimes suspect I can feel it throbbing no no now now don’t get all psychosomatic on methinks that Wild Belle is a sound feature and deserves greater acclaim if only for the timbre is that the word I want which rings like a copper tubular bell of her voice obviously I’m talking about her voice. Somebody mentioned Althea and Donna no way you are very wrong more like Lucy Chino now sadly forgotten what I was talking about. Tuck into this. It will “keep you” busy for an idle while you.
Have I mentioned Sia is moving on up there once you get used to like her then I went off her then I started liking her again and again. Again you need to pay attention where attention is due and it’s all about the little things make the world go round like money and wars and faithfulness and derision seeping out of the crack her mouth becomes as she bites her lip. Crack! Crack! It’s like a whip. Have you changed since then? I know fine well that I.
That’s enough is enough and more besides.
I am on a diet and I have lost a lot of weight off my mind you, you would never notice because I’m always as fraught as anything. Being me is all about me, though, isn’t it. H’mmmm…. SHEEN MARTINEZ LOVES YOU
To leave my cell on a Wednesday, not return until Saturday, for warm rolls with soft cheese, and know I have outfoxed your Madame Nhu, for a start.
Dodging all manner of how’s your father on the Ho Chi Minh trail, whilst notching up a treble word score and getting shot of that Q, hey, that’ll do nicely.
Sink back, lush hair scuffing against the antimacassar, arms stretched and resting, celebrating the Tet offensive with a pint of Guinness, ah to be young again.
It's off to work we go
He wasn’t even sure he was still alive, as he woke up in slow motion and pushed the door open and saw everything was brighter than it had ever been. He wanted to cry out and couldn’t. This wasn’t the first blessing in disguise he’d been granted.
“Fortunata y Jacinta” is a meganovel which must have taken Benito Pérez Galdós absolutely ages to write. If you ever decide to read it, be warned that it is thousands of pages long and, depending on the edition you get hold of, the footnotes will add umpteen hours of reading time. Not a book to flick through on a lazy Sunday afternoon. (No bursting into song, thank you, you oldsters.)
So you will take your time over this book. Lots of things will happen around you as you are immersed in the tale of these two married women – the original subtitle is “two tales of married women” so I’m not making anything up, ok, or spoiling anything for those who have never read it.
Spoiler alert!! Achtung!! Achtung!! Fortunata has Juanito’s babies. No!! Yes!! Two of them. One before he’s married to Jacinta, and one after Fortunata is married to Maxi. No!! Yes!!
Well. I mean, imagine. This is Madrid in the middle of the 19th century. Imagine the palaver. I mean. Honestly. Did you ever. Things move at a slow pace. You could dance a million chotis and crunch a million barquillos before you get to the end of this sorry saga. There are dozens of colourful minor characters who pop up and liven up the proceedings but basically it’s all about the girl. Will she or won’t she. She will. And she screws up. But we knew that already.
And it’s true that there’s nothing out of the ordinary in this extraordinary novel. It’s exceptional in that it is the quintessential 19th century novel which would have been written by Balzac if it were French or Tolstoy if it were Russian (although he would have added a few more serfs) and ranks up there with the best of them. Naturally it is quirky – the obsession with buttons, for crying out loud, what is that all about…?? – and because it is set nay rooted in the heart of Madrid which is virtually unchanged since when it was written, Fortunata and Jacinta can be read as a Google Street View experience. You feel you can knock on Estupiñá’s door in the Cavas by the Plaza Mayor, check out the Santa Cruz family house in Pontejos, see where Maxi lived with Aunt Guillermina, drop in for a coffee at the watering holes favoured by Maxi’s brother Juan Pablo … Why, the last time I was in Madrid, I called on Juanito and Jacinta, only to find that they’d moved to an urbanización in La Moraleja.
ah, sweet mysteries of perfidy
Juanito really is a scumbag, isn’t he. Fortunata isn’t as depraved as she thinks she is, largely (I reckon) because Maxi’s madness has rubbed off onto her.
(An aside here, if I may. The only actress I can think of who would do her justice is Claudia Cardinale circa 1960. I have thought hard and long about this, so don’t bother contradicting me, thanks.)
Fortunata Cardinale de Rubín
So, anyway, as I was saying. Galdós must have got up to all sorts of stuff while he was composing Fortunata and Jacinta, and we the reader have that right, too. We must get on with our lives. Read the book then put it down and do something else. Then pick it up where you left off. The author has thoughtfully chopped the book into fun-sized chapterettes so we can have a nibble at will. We should eat and drink and sleep and work and whatever else gets us through the night and the day and then the next day and tomorrow night and the day after and so on and so forth so help me God. We can play Monopoly and take snuff and plant seedlings and laugh at funny videos of cats and read misguided accounts of the siege of Sevastopol, it doesn’t really matter. Do so, then wipe your nose, wash your hands and sit down. And give over wasting time. Honestly.
