19 Jul
Little Boots in Tortilla Flat / Tortilla Flat in Little Boots
In my recent post about running the bulls, I introduced you to my friend Danny. Now, the sharp-eyed of you will have also recognised the mention to “Tortilla Flat”. Bear with me, o reader, as I expound upon this subject.
“Tortilla Flat” is by far the most readable of John Steinbeck’s novels. Yes, of course “The Grapes of Wrath” is a magnificent classic, and far be it from me to disparage “The Pearl”, but Steinbeck often grates on me, as though his pathos weren’t exactly sincere. His characters suffer in a maudlin way not unlike the anguished heroines of Lars Von Trier’s films. However, in “Tortilla Flat”, he throws off his weepy tragic blanket and lies there under a sheet of bawdy humour and nonsensical adventures, encouraging the reader to leap into bed with him and share the fun.
Danny is the quintessential red-blooded, work-shy bum that so many novels and movies have had as their hero since time immemorial. Imagine “Tom Sawyer” being re-written by Irvine Welsh, then edited by Julian Barnes and Miguel de Cervantes. “Tortilla Flat” is sparkling and erudite, earthy and touchingly sad and Danny is a heavy-drinking, heavy-whoring, fight-loving racist with a heart of gold, so I was delighted when I got a call from him a few weeks ago, telling me he was in Zaragoza.
He’d changed quite a bit since Steinbeck’s time. He was more reflexive and peace loving, but still in touch with his inner paisano. His wit was as sharp as ever, and he kept Sheen and I up till all hours with his amusing anecdotes. The most bewildering change in him was his obsessive taste in music. He was now a rampant fan of Lady Gaga and Little Boots. This wasn’t in keeping with the Danny I’d learned to love, I told him.
“It’s not as much evolution as ex-vulotion as a neoplasmic extension of the outsides of volition,” he explained. “Seeking out the fringes of one’s will, exploring one’s interethical taboos in a, dare I say, Marcusical sense, dabbling with the hideous unknown, atavistically feared through the anti-aesthetics of the subconscious, and, basically, just going for it.”
“Example?” I said, echoing Jules in “Pulp Fiction”.
“OK. Right. Imagine you are inordinately adverse to the idea, I mean, the very concept of, say, octopus-flavoured whisky…”
“But you don’t drink any more,” interrupted Sheen, sagely.
“Exactly!” said Danny. “And why don’t I drink? Is it the whisky or the octopus? Is it the chicken or the egg? Is it the sunrise or the sunset? Is it the Holy Quran or the New Testament? Is it Real Madrid or Barcelona? Is it the you-that-is-me or the me-that-is-you ? I mean, is it?”
I was lost for words. This was the man who had agreed to race through the streets of Pamplona with me, inches way from the ferocious horns of rabid bulls..? I began to question everything I held sacred.
“Pop music is the vanguard of the sacrosanct,” Danny went on. He was unstoppable. “This electro-substitute for everything we have understood as music in a, dare I say, Mahleresque sense, is the sword that thrashes open the jugular of our mundanity. We should pounce upon it, loving our hate, hating our love, being one with the multiplicity of our objections.”
He told us that he recently acquired a “tenori-on”. For those of you unacquainted with this monstrosity, I submit you to this link: http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on/index.html For everybody else, I beg you to get down on your knees and pray.
“The tenori-on is to music what LSD was to transcendental meditation”, said Danny, his eyes infused with …er… infusiasm. “You want results without the hard work. You get to the other side without having to pay the ferryman. Imagine a synthesiser with the interface of a Gameboy. It’s the new seedless watermelon. It’s instant karma. It’s Everest without the dizziness. We are here. This is now. This is us.”
I got up and prepared another Cola Cao for my friend. When I returned to the living room, he and Sheen were watching a YouTube video of his new idol, Little Boots.
“She can’t sing! Her voice is appalling! The music is artificial, tasteless, completely without imagination! And yet… and yet… She’s amazing! What a star!” he thrilled.
We ploughed through “Hands”, Little Boots’ supposedly amazing debut album. My cluster headache kicked in half way through “New In Town”, just as Danny was explaining how this Little Boots played the tenori-on with her left hand while caressing the microphone in a, dare I say, Freddy Mercurial way with her right.
I was sure I’d heard the song “Perfect Symmetry” before and Danny agreed it sounded an awful lot like Duran Duran or ABC or one of those exceptionally badly-dressed New Romantic groups. “Ah yes, but listen to those keyboards,” he added. “I would like to vomit all over them,” I added.
“It seems to me ..,” said Sheen suddenly, arising from her futon with almost parsimonious grace, “… that you have been taken for a ride, Danny.”
“You have no taste, Sheen. You are blinded by what you would like to see as artistic superiority, but it’s no more than snobbery,” countered our tortillero.
“Cut the crap, Daniel. What is this:
so don’t go messing with the heart,
or messing with the mind,
or messing with the things that are inside.
don’t know what you’ll find.
don’t know what she hides.
she still remembers like its yesterday.
she still remembers you so well.
she still remembers all the things you swore.
forever more.
she still remembers but won’t tell.
cuz she’s a mixed up girl,
in a mixed up world.
and you know she don’t mean any harm.
so please understand,
if you take her hand
you’ll get much more than you bargained for.
“Ah yes, that’s Meddle, truly sublime. Critics and the general public for once concur,” said Danny.
There was an awkward pause.
“OK, so it’s not exactly Shakespeare,” he gave in.
“It’s not even Steinbeck,” I muttered.
“Danny, old pal…,” said Sheen. “… I’d like to do you a favour. Here, let me give you this memory stick. Plug it into your laptop and listen to these songs by Brian Eno, Elvis Costello and Robert Wyatt. Come back in a few days and we’ll have a nice quiet chat.”
“But I…”
“And chuck out your tenori-on.”
“No, wait, you don’t seem to…”
“Danny. Do it for old times’ sake. Think of Pilon, Sweets Ramirez, Enrique, Pajarito, Rudolph, Fluff and Señor Alec Thompson.”
I thought I had lost Danny for good. He looked mystified and defeated as he wandered in the direction of the bathroom.
“You’ve disappointed me, Danny,” I said.
I saw him acquiesce through his drooping shoulders. Would he recover in time for the sanfermines? Would he see the error of his ways? Would Little Boots win the Mercury Prize? Would Barcelona sign David Villa? Would a tree falling in a forest make no noise if there was nobody around to Tweet?
14 Jul
Running The Bulls, Pamplona 2009
Spot the eight differences!
Heen says:
Well, I’m back. My friend Danny and I have been running the bulls in Pamplona.
The sanfermines are a delightfully stupid way to spend a few days in July. The object of this fiesta is to get drunk and then expose your anatomy to a bunch of charging bulls. In many ways, it’s the ultimate extreme sport and a great opportunity to meet people.
I chose to go with Danny because he’s a teetotal animal-lover, the perfect companion for this adventure, I thought. He recently completed an online Master’s degree in Bull Whispering, a technique which consists of murmuring a few well-chosen words in the ear of the furious beast, persuading it not to gore or trample you. He passed on some of his knowledge to me, but as I was keen to indulge in the ethylic aspect of the sanfermines, I couldn’t remember much of his advice, sadly.
In the first encierro, Danny and I took up our positions in the Estafeta, kitted out in the traditional white outfit and sporting a red kerchief as dictated by the hardened gurus, the fashionistas of this millenary tradition. You’re also allowed to carry a rolled-up newspaper, but after weighing up which paper to buy, I decided to wield my lucky copy of Playboy, June 1987, the one with the centrefold of Dolores Spatzenburger, who would have been my childhood sweetheart if I had happened to be living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As well as a brutal hangover, I also had diarrhoea and what I suspected was a twisted ankle, but adrenaline was surging through my veins as I awaited the thundering toros. Danny was by my side, calm and collected. He was empty-handed, of course, so that he could curl his fingers into the mudra position while he chanted his bovophile mantras.
“Here they come!”, yelled somebody. And sure enough, the stampede was upon us. The average Pamplona bull weighs about 800 kilos, has razor-sharp horns two metres long, and runs at 120 miles per hour. Well, OK, I’m just making these figures up, but that was what it felt like.
The first bull ignored me as I shouted “¡Cógeme, a ver si te atreves, maricón!” This was probably because I had slipped into a doorway and was crouching behind a group of schoolboys.
I looked up to see a few squashed bodies writhing in blood and another couple of bulls bearing down on my doorway, now empty of schoolboys. Just as the horns of one of these savage mythological creatures was about to perforate my aorta, I noticed Danny leaning over to mutter a bon mot into its left ear. The bull’s furrowed brow changed to a quizzical angle as Danny’s information seeped into its brain and the huge animal stopped dead in its tracks. It opened its vast mouth and politely licked my face before turning away. It then proceeded to thrust its right horn into the groin of a passing American tourist, tossing him up in the air as though he were an empty Mountain Dew bottle.
“What did you say to the bull?” I gasped to Danny, who viewed the whole scene beatifically.
“It was a koan I picked up in Tortilla Flat”, he answered enigmatically.
I don’t know what he was talking about, so I ran like a mad thing towards the bull ring. The manada has split into two; half the bulls were ahead of us and the other half were just behind, and I got the impression that one of them had its eyes set on Dolores Spatzenburger, thus urging me on even more. I didn’t dare risk trusting in Danny’s solipsisms any further – once potentially gored, twice shy, as the saying goes.
Pure fear drove me onward. I could hear, nay, smell the impending onslaught. To my right and left, corredores raced, jostled, tumbled and frolicked, shrieking and panting, and I outstripped all of them as I fled to the relative safety of the bull ring. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Danny in the lotus position, extolling the virtues of peace, love and understanding to a couple of sitting bulls who were nodding appreciatively, paying no attention to the violent youths who were pulling their tails and smacking them with copies of El País.
Dolores and I were intact, a little bit worse for wear, but relieved that we had escaped death in the quaint, greasy, blood-stained, urine-soaked, cobbled streets of the fair city of Pamplona.
I met up with Danny a few hours later in a restaurant called “Más Cornás Da El Hambre”. He explained that he had added a few of the bulls to his friends list on Facebook and that, all in all, it had been a lovely experience.
“I just love these local traditions, unchanged since the dark ages”, he sighed, as he tucked into his tofu burger, nestling in a bed of rocket, with a coulis of acai and a quinoa timbal.
5 Jul
… While Watching “Caramel”
I would like to start this post by saying that I can imagine very few people enjoying this film. For those of you who have never seen it, I am going to summarise it in the next paragraph. This is what is known as a spoiler, in the sense that it could spoil the viewing pleasure of those who wish to approach the film with no prior knowledge. If you think that is your case, please do not read further. If, however, you are curious as to what this film is about, and don’t mind knowing what happens, please continue reading. If you have already seen the film, and are curious to know what the Zaragoza Twins take is, please continue, also.
The original Arabic title is Sukkar Banat. This translates as “Sugar Girls” in English and it’s pretty obvious why they decided not to use this as the title of the film. There are probably at least three hundred and fifty Japanese porn films downloadable on emule with “sugar girls” in their title, and it brings to mind “Spice Girls”, doesn’t it, whether you want it or not.
Directed by one Nadine Labaki in 2007, it deals with the varying fortunes of four youngish Lebanese women. It’s interesting in that it portrays a side of Beirut that we Westerners don’t usually get to see; we automatically think of Islamic fundamentalists, Hezbollah, wars with Israel, bombs and fanaticism, where women are reduced to black-gowned, repressed, frustrated non-entities who spend their time ululating as their sons and brothers blow themselves up in shopping malls trying to become martyrs.
First of all, there’s Layale. She’s beautiful and in love with a married man who is obviously just messing around with her and everybody knows it except her. Well, she ought to know it, too, because she’s played by Nadine Labaki, the director, but there you go.
Then there’s Nisrine, about to get married, terrified that her future hubby will realise that she’s not a virgin.
And there’s Rima, who works with these two girls in a beauty salon. To cover all possible angles, the director makes Rima a lesbian, who has a crush on a client which is only culminated when she symbolically (hello?) cuts all her hair off.
And let’s not forget Jamale, who refuses to admit she’s getting old. Her pathetic attempts to convince those around her that she is still menstruating are actually the most touching points of the film.
Now. How on earth could I identify with this film, with these disparate characters, these Christian Arab women, these Lebanese one-offs that 99% of the film’s viewers must think, “Huh? What has that got to do with me?”
Well, you know, life is funny sometimes. Parallels appear in the strangest places. Leprechauns leap out of the most lop-sided keyholes. Serendipity is the science of the unexpected. Kismet isn’t a place, it’s a destination.
Watching Caramel the other day, I was frozen. Not that I felt chilly in any way (hey, come on, it’s July in Zaragoza, sweating is the norm, not shivering), but rather, as I viewed this movie, I felt gripped by the harsh claws of reality. This film was about ME and (perhaps, even more so) about my friends. Well, OK, it was more about me, but as this is my blog, not theirs, I feel justified to narrate their vicarious impressions.
The thing is, I felt that I was Layale. Like her, I am furtively in love with a member of the opposite gender who just happens to be married. She belongs to a superior social class, like Layale’s lover, and our brief encounters are tense and fraught, magnified by my own sick fantasies and permanently thwarted by the cruelty of the inevitability of what in Zaragoza and Beirut count as urbanity and decorum. It’s never going to happen, but we fool ourselves and sob into our pillows, putting on a smiling face when somebody comes to the door and sighing ghastly sighs when nobody can hear us.
My friend Manuel Zelaya is the tragic equivalent of Nisrine. He used to be the President of Honduras, would you believe, but has been ousted. He knows he’d be great if he could run for President again, but his people have turned against him. Or maybe not – maybe it’s just his parliament and the armed forces and his own political party… Can he prove to everybody, for once and for all, that he’s up the job, and that the fact that he’s already been President isn’t a handicap for his being President again? Does it really matter that he’s not a virgin, for God’s sake?
And Rima, the lesbian hairdresser, bears an uncanny resemblance to my friend Cristiano, who’s just signed for Real Madrid. What he really can’t understand is that everybody knew fine well he was gay when he was signed, so why the big fuss right now? He played along with the staged performance with Paris Hilton, he forked out a fortune contracting girls who swore he was a tireless stud, he has done his utmost to deny his “gay icon” status (even refusing to have breakfast with Guti) but, alas, the whole thing has backfired. Poor Cristiano is wrecked with self-loathing, and all because he daren’t just say to the wretched wardrobe doors those magic words of the Thousand and One Nights, so well known to the Sugar Girls of Beirut: “Open, Sesame!”
And let us not forget dear Jamale. As I watched the film, my friend Neil came to mind. It’s 30 years now since he uttered his immortal NASA words about a giant step for mankind, bla bla bla. Ever since, he’s been in a daze, poor guy. His friendship with Michael Jackson can’t have helped much (“Here, try this morphine,”) but the fact of the matter is that poor Neil has never really got over being the first man on the moon. Whenever I text him, he replies with some cliché about space, the final frontier, bla bla bla. I mean, come on, Neil, get your act together, you’re an old man, come to terms with it. But, no, he prefers to wallow in his moonwalk (thanks again, Michael, for nothing!)
So, all in all, Caramel is the kind of film you can only enjoy if you have the right friends, and when I say “friends” I don’t mean Facebook friends, I mean people that you don’t have to wonder if it’s OK to hug in public, I mean people that matter, and for me that means Manuel, Cristiano and Neil. If we were female and lived in Beirut, we’d run a beauty parlour and we would ROCK.
1 Jul
Unspeakable Confessions
Sheen says:
I’ve been watching a lot of television lately. I don’t really know why, but I’ve become attracted to the sort of B Movies that never made it onto the big screen. I think it’s because they always have a formula which is kind of comforting because of its familiarity; I never have to think too hard, I never have to worry that I’m going to miss anything, I can skip a few minutes without getting lost… I know what the characters are going to do and I can predict how they’re going to react. I can tell who they’re going to fall in love with, who is going to betray them and who is going to save them.
And, as I say, I enjoy this knowledge. It makes me feel involved with the film, as though I had had a hand in the production. Occasionally, there are surprises; my guesses are wrong, the wrong guy dies, the daughter turns out to be somebody else’s, the grandfather survives the operation, but I’m never entirely confused and disappointed, everything slots into place after a time.
So, equipped with many years’ viewing this kind of trash, movies made for TV, I have written the screenplay for a film that is guaranteed to satisfy the demands of a public that is as undemanding as me. I am in talks with a number of producers with a view to actually getting this made into a product. I don’t know how long this will take, and I know you can’t bear to wait to see the magic words “Written by Sheen Martínez” on your little TV screen, so I’ve decided to share it with you today.
It’s called “The Shadow of Suspicion”. I tried to think of a title that wasn’t too original and which reflects the truculent nature of the hackneyed plot. Heen reckons I should have called it “Unspeakable Confessions”, which I quite like, too.
Anyway, here’s the story: Anne is a successful lawyer in her mid-thirties with a son called Tommy. Her husband died in a tragic airplane crash a few years ago, and it was only after the accident that she began to find out some strange things about him – apparently, his real estate business wasn’t doing as well as he’d always boasted, and maybe he was having an affair with his secretary, Amy. However, Anne and Tommy have now moved on, and are settling down in a small town in Minnesota. It should be said at this point that Anne is a bit of a mystic, and is able to see events before they happen, and often helps the local police solve baffling murder cases, etc. Tommy is a perfectly normal child except that he suffers from a mysterious illness that doctors haven’t been able to explain.
In this small town, they meet Jim, the owner of the local hardware store, when Anne pops in to buy some tools to fix her kitchen and of course Jim ends up doing the job for her and it turns out that Jim is also a single parent. His alcoholic wife tragically left him (and his mysteriously shy, friendless daughter Ashley) for a gambler.
Hardened viewers will automatically think at this point: Ah ha! Anne is going to get off with Jim, but she will discover some sordid secret about him. His redemption will only come about when he cures Tommy’s illness.
And they will be right. Jim is not Mr Right at all. In fact, he murdered his wife and buried her in the basement. His daughter Ashley has been brainwashed and is terrified to speak out. Tommy is tragically bleeding to death in hospital and the only person who has the same weird blood group as him is Jim. Anne only realises that Jim is a murderer and a liar as the transfusion begins, and is tragically torn between revealing this information to the police or letting her son get the blood he needs…
Tommy also has a dog (Wally) who plays baseball, despite losing a leg in a tragic accident a few months before. The dog has lost all motivation to play, and it’s only thanks to Ashley that Wally gets up off the bench and starts training properly. This way, Ashley becomes popular again in school.
Jim confesses to his heinous crime, but goes to prison a happy man, knowing he’s saved a boy’s life. Anne says she’ll wait for him – she knows that, deep down, he’s a good man. Tommy is lively and healthy and wants a place on the school baseball team but, hey, Ashley is the new captain, and with a star like Wally on the team, it’s not going to be easy, folks!
Auditions will be held next Tuesday morning at Soraya’s. Bring your own bottle.
26 Jun
Jacko Not To Chill Out In Zaragoza – Official!
It's so lonely without you...
Jacko Not To Chill Out In Zaragoza – official.
ZARAGOZA – 26 June 2009
Contrary to initial rumors, Michael Jackson will not be frozen in the “Dead Cold Cryogenia Center” of Zaragoza, we are able to inform this evening. Despite the agreement subscribed between the “king of pop” and Heen Martínez, director of “Dead Cold” three years ago, Jackson’s lawyers have ruled out any possibility of the corpse being shipped to Spain.
“It’s a logistics thing”, explained an anonymous source, close to the family. “And anyway, Zaragoza is, like, miles away.”
“Until the autopsy is over, there is no question of this stiff going anywhere”, announced a police spokesman.
“We are disappointed with the Jackson entourage”, said Sheen Martínez, president of the Zaragoza Branch of the Jackson Five Support Committee. “It’s obviously a huge blow for cryogenics in general, and Zaragoza in particular. We were really looking forward to freezing Michael here.”
“However, this shouldn’t dent Spain’s hopes in next year’s FIFA World Cup”, she added, unnecessarily.
Heen Martínez confirmed that the “Zaragoza Twins and Michael Jackson On Ice” spectacle, programmed for next October, will probably be axed.
“It’s just not a happening thing, is it”, he regretted.
Meanwhile, Zaragozan beauty Soraya Campos, has revealed that her 2 year-old-baby is the fruit of a one-night stand with Michael Jackson.
Blond, blue-eyed Prince Wacko bears no earthly resemblance to Michael Jackson, but has been known to hum along to “We Are The World” and apparently feels “restless” when he hears the line in “Billie Jean” that goes: “The kid is not my son.”
“I think the very least Jackson could do is admit he impregnated me”, said Campos. “I mean, OK, when he was alive, he wasn’t going to, but he could just sort of give me a sign or something.”
Her lawyer, Mr Somontano Monkey, promised firm legal action. “Pounding fists of implacable fury shall prevail; it don’t matter if you’re black or white”, he observed.
- Zaragoza Twins Impossible News Agency.
9 Jun
What To Drink While Watching “Marley & Me”
If you are like me (OK, you’re not, I know) there will be about 500 films that come out every year that you actively avoid going to see. Unfortunately, some of these are literally unavoidable, especially if you’re trapped on a plane crossing the Atlantic and they show the thing on those screens you can’t help looking at even though you’d rather read your book.
This is what happened to me the other day when I was flying to New York. They showed three films and I’ve tried my best to forget them all but “Marley and Me” has proved to be unforgettable, even though I watched it without sound (would I bother to use a headset for this kind of dross?)
So I’ve decided to include it here, in this “What to drink while watching…” category of our blog.
It stars Jennifer Aniston and that guy whose name I can never remember, something with Owen in it – Michael Owen? Clive Owen? Wilfred Owen? I’ll just stick to Owen.
Anyway. From what I surmised, viewing this movie without hearing any dialogue, Owen is having a serious relationship with a puppy called Delta Airways, which seems a bizarre name for a dog, but there you go. He adopts a hysterical woman (Jennifer Marley) who is now out of work since Friends finished, and things go well for a time until she develops some kind of eating disorder, and has to be put down.
I must confess there was a big chunk in the middle of the film that I didn’t see, because I was reading the Mahabharata, and just as the film was finishing the stewardess was asking people if they wanted tea, coffee, water? This may explain why the movie made so little sense. In the final scene, Owen buries Jennifer in his garden while Delta is fixing a sandwich in the kitchen. Such a poignant moment, o reader.
What to drink while watching this masterpiece? Well, my choices were limited. American coffee is bad at the best of times, and airline coffee is even worse. Ditto, tea. They always say you should drink lots of water on planes, for some reason, but I was in an obstreperous mood, so I went for coffee. It was atrocious, and went perfectly with the movie on my screen.
9 Jun
The Zaragoza Twins Guide To New York
Sheen says:
There are, to the best of my knowledge, 45,389 published guidebooks on New York, and that doesn’t include websites, which must be around the 10 million mark. Now I’m not really a guidebook reader (I leave that to Heen), but I wanted to get the most out our recent trip to NYC, so I went to the trouble of reading half a dozen of the most famous books as well as about 20 websites.
Was I happy with my prep? Well, actually, no. I found a lot of the information to be out of date and misleading and found myself disagreeing vehemently with what the critics had to say.
So, lest you travellers fall into the same traps as me, I have taken upon myself to write this here Zaragoza Twins Guide To New York. I pre-acknowledge that my tastes may not coincide with yours, but I swear that my impressions are genuine and that the factual information is accurate.
I have divided this short guide into the following categories: Hotels, Restaurants, Bars, Museums, Shops and Others. I have limited each category to three so as not to be excessively prolix in my exposé. I was thinking of including another list of places NOT to go to, but that would be too much. Some other time, maybe.
So here we go.
Hotels:
The Bliss Pit. Nicely tucked away beside the Chrysler building, this family-run hotel offers everything the discerning tourist could dream of. 18 rooms, 12 with en-suite shooting galleries, a communal bathroom and orgy facilities make this the ideal choice for those who want to taste the real New York.
Barney’s Hotel. Located in the heart of the Bronx, Barney’s is something of a legend. It was here that Lucifer Kluxheart strangled and maimed 14 guests in 1987, and the dining room hasn’t been touched since. Each room is soundproofed and has tasteful chains and bars on every window. Free taser on request.
The Chang Yu. Not easy to find, down a back alley just off Mott Street in China Town, Chang Yu has recently made its name as a boutique hotel for Jonas Brothers fans and other miscreants. Hilarious prices, dysfunctional staff and outrageous bathroom designs are the hallmark of this memorable hole.
Restaurants:
Qaldo’s. Serving anything from a burger to a 9-course meal, from 8 a.m. till midnight, since 1966, Qualdo’s has satisfied even the most demanding palates. Handily located on the corner of W 44th and Fifth, this eatery is a must.
Doris and Maurice. A fascinating fusion of Cajun and macrobiotic cuisine, in the heart of Greenwich Village, with just one vast rotating circular table and all the vodka you can drink for just 5 dollars. It’s important to book, as this hot spot is crammed with starving locals at practically all hours!
Morsels. It’s worth going to Queen’s just to come to Morsels, where they specialise in road kill dishes: bring anything you’ve accidentally slaughtered and they’ll serve it up with rice or fries. Don’t miss the squirrel sorbet!
Bars:
McWicked’s. E 22nd St, next to the Jewish bakery. Happy Hour: 5pm till 11pm. Lively atmosphere, topless waitresses on ice skates, deafening house music, explosive cocktails.
The Harlem Boozer. Like it says, in Harlem. Minimalist/baroque décor. Vast selection of draught ales. Discounts for war veterans.
Blindfold. A curious goth bar, dark leather and incense; Asian chill out music with a karaoke room. One of the few bars in New York where you can find Somontano wine! It’s on Madison, but I can’t remember where.
Museums:
Apart from the Met, the MOMA, etc., New York has several fascinating museums not quite on the usual tourist trail. Check out Dr Sylvester’s Traveling Fruit Museum (last seen in Washington Square), the New York Hairdressing Utensils Museum (Upper East Side) and the Brooklyn Vintage Stocking and Sock Museum. Closed on Mondays.
Shops:
Void Boutique. Somewhere in Greenwich Village but again, I can’t remember. It’s got a huge light green sign and it’s one of my favourite stores. Oh, and they sell great clothes, funky hats, that kind of thing. Mind you, it’s not cheap, so don’t bother if you’re a cheapskate.
Hyunis. Amazing multilingual bookstore in W 55th, literature, current affairs, baseball, necromancy, apiculture… Six floors of new and second hand books. Happy hour Wednesdays 6pm – 7:45pm.
Skylight Pharmacy. Union Square. Easy-to-bribe sales assistants will sell you just about anything, no prescription required. Ask for Jimmy and leave a nice tip.
Others:
It’s worth seeing the disused tin mines on Staten Island if you’ve got a spare hour or two, rarely visited by tourists nowadays. Also, the Little Zambia neighbourhood, and Blind Luigi’s Floating Tattoo Studio on the Hudson.
Useful Advice:
New Yorkers make a big fuss over tipping, working out 18% for everything. Follow my advice and give your tips in rare postage stamps from small European countries they have never heard of, like Monaco, Slovenia and Germany.
Smoking is forbidden just about everywhere. The best way round this fascist legislation is to wear a huge plastic bag over your head; tie it round your waist so that no smoke gets out, and nobody can complain.
To avoid paying exorbitant taxi fares, insist that you are allergic to the colour yellow and just a few minutes before you need to stop, induce vomiting and pretend to struggle with the car door. Once out, run into the nearest building and hide on the roof for at least 36 hours.
Most Americans speak and understand English fairly well. However, it’s a good idea to learn a few words and expressions in their own tongue. Be patient with them; repeat your words slowly and clearly in simple English and you should have no problem.
And, above all, ENJOY! New York is a great place. Honest.
24 May
New York
One of the nice things about not having a job is that you have more time to go away on holiday. This is what is known as a “perogrullada” in Spanish. Sheen and I are not constricted by things like timetables and annual leave and when we want to go away, our only restriction is our bank account.
Rather than, or perhaps as well as, going away anywhere this summer, Zaragoza Twins have decided we deserve a break before the summer as such is upon us, and our destination is going to be New York City. Why New York? Well, Sheen wants to go back to look for the young man who stole her heart and her wallet in Greenwich Village in 1999, and I’ve only been to the States once and never got round to New York – it was on my route but I was arrested in Cleveland, but that’s a long story.
We have a cousin called Sacha who lives just outside New York. He is obsessed with country music but apart from that he’s a perfectly normal person. His wife has six fingers on her left hand, which is handy because she plays the lute. No, I don’t mean the flute, I mean the lute. Were she to be a flautist, I doubt it would help her much as the total number of employable digits when stopping the holes with one’s left hand could never exceed four unless she were to attempt to play Fiorec’s Sonata in C which, exceptionally, calls for five fingers, and for this reason has never been performed as far as I know and Sacha has confirmed this although he is hardly an authority since, as I have said, his speciality is country music and the flute does not figure to any great extent in country music, at least, not as much as, shall we say, the slide guitar, which produces a sound that inevitably verges on weary whenever I hear it, apart from in the song “Blackmail” by 10cc and I know what you’re going to say, that it’s not a slide guitar properly speaking, but that would be like saying pelargoniums aren’t really geraniums when, in popular usage, we use the two words to refer to the same thing or, rather, we use the word “geranium” to refer to both, and if one is to be a stickler, I ought to have written “pelargonii” and “geranii” but I shan’t be entering into a debate about this so don’t bother sending me any comments to this effect, although if any reader can provide any evidence that the flute has ever featured in any country music recording other than “Minding Mandy’s Mean Mama” by Hank Zowie, I would be grateful to know about it and, indeed, I might even be persuaded to tempt myself to look for it when I go to New York next week.
By the way, this is Zaragoza Twins’s 100th post, and for that reason, and no other, I wanted to write the longest sentence we have ever posted. On our return from the Large Apple, Sheen will regale you all with an entertaining narrative which, suspiciously, she has already begun.
21 May
The Red Priest
I would like to think that there are very few people out there who have never heard of Antonio Vivaldi. OK, I’m sure if you asked certain deprived Chinese peasants or nomadic Bedouins or Andean sharecroppers who Vivaldi was, you might not get the right answer (“Does he play for Inter Milan?”), but in more-or-less sophisticated Westernish societies from Tokyo to Toronto, most people would be able to place him. And 90% of those would mention the Four Seasons.
Poor Vivaldi would hate such reductionism. The man wrote over 500 concerti, dammit, plus dozens of sonatas, symphonies and operas, as well as a whole load of religious works. Are “The Four Seasons” his greatest works? Well, the Zaragoza Twins don’t think so. It’s almost embarrassing when I say I like Vivaldi. People say “Oh right the Four Seasons” and I have to say “Well, no, actually, I mean the concerto for two trumpets and strings in C major and the Dixit Dominus.”
The Four Seasons would be fine if I didn’t hear snatches of it every so often, whether it’s in a commercial for an insurance company or played by well-meaning buskers or used as background music for corny documentaries about saving the planet (yaaaawn…)
Vivaldi is one of the few great classical composers who actually had a nickname. The guy was known as The Red Priest, and I’m not making this up. Just as David Howell Evans decided that Dave Evans was far too boring a name and that if he called himself “The Edge” he could go a lot further, so our friend Antonio chucked in his real name and adopted the moniker “Il Prete Rosso”. He was really a priest, in fact, ordained in 1704 at the age of 26. Where the “red” comes in is not so clear, however. Biographers have come up with several theories (the colour of his hat, would you believe, is the most popular one) but it wasn’t until I actually spoke to him the other day that I finally got the real answer.
I was browsing through the “World Music” section in the FNAC the other day when a gentleman politely tapped me on the shoulder and said (in curious English) “Excuse me, do you know where I could physically locate some sound recording in contemporary format by a Caledonian musical consort who go by the name of Camera Obscura?”
Now, there aren’t exactly hordes of Zaragozans who are Camera Obscura fans, so I was delighted to help this chap out. We went over to the Indie Pop section and soon enough I picked out “Underachievers Please Try Harder”, their second album, which I handed to my new friend.
“Oh gratefully thank you so much. I will seek to put this on my gramophone immediately,” he beamed.
“You will enjoy it immensely,” I assured him.
“You have heard of this orchestra, then?” he enquired.
“Oh yes.”
“That is good. I would not enjoy enjoying it in solitude”.
“No. Well, yes, you’re right. But don’t worry, they have a burgeoning fan base.”
“I cannot claim to admit to understanding what a burgeoning fan base is. Is that a kind of wind instrument of the 21st century?”
And at that moment, o reader, I knew I was talking to somebody special. I whisked him off to the check out (where I paid for his CD because a. I wanted him to owe me something and b. He had no money on him except for some peculiar golden coins.)
“Maybe you’d like a drink or something?” I offered. I have used this chat up line on 34 girls so far, with a success rate of 21%, but I had never used it on a male before, but I was desperate.
“Eh? Ah, a drink. Ah, yes! A tipple, a wee dram, a pint of bitter, yes, that’s right, I remember…”
“Excuse me?”
“I would be greatly and gratefully chuffed to express my thanks for accepting your kind invitation.”
We went into the nearest bar and I ordered a couple of Ambar. And that’s how I met Antonio Vivaldi.
His story was at once amazing and straightforward. He had built a time machine and had zoomed forward 300 years to 2009. He’d wandered round Europe for the last few days and eventually wound up in Zaragoza, on his way from Barcelona to Madrid.
“And when I was in Barcelona, I spoke to a minstrel who had great words for Traceyanne Campbell, choir mistress for this orchestra that bears the title Camera Obscura”.
“Well, he was right. She’s a got a great voice,” I agreed.
“I intend to make her mine,” he announced.
I spluttered into my beer. “You what?”
“I have lived my celibacy to the full. I need a woman with the voice of an angel and have the unbreakable certainty that this Traceyanne Campobello will fully comply with the melodious requirements as dictated to my heart by the universal pentagram of eros”, was his reply.
“But hang on, Antonio…”
“Call me Toni.”
“Ok, Tony.”
“No, it’s Toni, with an “i””
“How did you know I’d spelt it with a “Y”?”
“Just a guess.”
“But, hang on, I mean, have you ever heard her sing? Have you ever seen her?”
“No, I haven’t. And that answer is equally valid for both of your questions.”
We finished our beer and I took Toni back to my place. Vivaldi earnestly watched me put the CD on. It was obvious he’d never seen this process being performed before.
“Put your feet up, Toni. Make yourself at home. You are going to love this.”
The first track was “Suspended From Class”. I could see my guest screw his face up in disgust at first, then his features relaxed a bit, with one eyebrow raised as if mystified.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“It is scarcely angelical. So unlike the anticipated musicality.” He was trying to be diplomatic.
“You mean you don’t like it.”
“It’s not that… It proves challenging to my inner aesthetics, the parameters of which are firmly anchored in the baroque, as you ought to realise”.
“Ah.”
“And correct me if I’m wrong: this lady sings “I should be suspended from class, I can’t tell my elbow from my arse”. Is that right?
I agreed that was what Traceyanne was saying.
“The metaphor escapes me yet. No doubt the English language has evolved fancifully since I tried to learn it.” He sighed. “No matter. She will be mine.”
I suggested we look for a biography of Traceyanne Campbell before he proposed to her. We had a quick Google and there she was.
“Ah ha! She is not married!” announced Vivaldi, happily.
“Er… well, it doesn’t say if she is or not…”
“See? She is a virgin. Ready to be whisked away to marital sublimity by her elder and better.”
He was full of himself. He demanded to hear more of her voice. I played “Books Written For Girls”.
I detected a change in Vivaldi’s demeanour as soon as the lyrics got through to him. He sank into his armchair, eyes wide open, staring down. He also seemed to be blushing.
He began muttering in Italian. I couldn’t follow him.
The song came to an end.
“She hates me,” he said simply.
“Eh?”
“That song… it reveals exactly how I fear she will perceive me. Ah, how subtle… she transmits this rebuttal through her singing voice…”
“You mean, she sees through your perfect smile?” I asked, referring to the words of the song.
“There’s more to it than that, but yes, sort of. She sings “In the darkest of places he gets his thrills.” She detects my furtive intentions. I cannot wed her now.”
“But, Toni, it’s just a song. She isn’t referring to you. She could me referring to anybody,” I protested.
Antonio Vivaldi looked up at me, his face crimson with shame. “I have travelled through time and space for nothing.”
I felt very sorry for him. Then I had a brainwave. “Hey, have you ever heard of Amy Macdonald?”
Three days later I saw Toni off at the airport, bound for Glasgow. He was rather drunk, and all his hand luggage consisted of was a bunch of flowers. “This is the life!”, he cried as he went through customs.
