My friend, Christophe, sent me this, allegedly from Craigslist. Albeit pre-crisis, the fact that is in New York almost makes it believable:
And the response: Continue reading
Category Archives: Digressions
I Am Back
Been offline and busy, got married in Morocco, still waiting for the music to stop playing in my ears. But now. I am back.
And I don’t feel like talking about politics.
Filed under Digressions
Let’s Get Lost
Last night I saw Let’s Get Lost, the most chillingly disturbing film that I can remember having seen in a long time. It wasn’t horror movie, but a documentary about the Jazz trumpeter and singer, Chet Baker. In the film, director Bruce Weber goes back and forth between 1988 interviews of the then 57 year old Chet Baker (who would later fall to his death at 58) and interviews with various people who had been closed to Baker during his career, including ex-wives, former lovers and his estranged children.
I became a fan of Chet Baker back in 2000-01 when I first moved to Madrid and was living in a beautiful but unheated apartment (with limited hot water) in the Barrio de Salamanca. My memory of that winter and that apartment is of being wrapped in blankets and listening to Chet Baker. I would listen to “Time After Time” to fall asleep and “Let’s Get Lost” to wake up in the morning. Baker had a weak, yet completely distinctive singing voice, that regardless of its obvious limitations was able to transmit such great emotion and tenderness — similar perhaps to Billie Holiday.
Also like Billie Holiday and so many other Jazz musicians, Baker was a drug addict. Unlike the majority of his junky contemporaries who died in their 20s and 30s, somehow Baker was able to stay alive until he was 58 — but at an incredible cost. Instead of coming off as the sensitive and profound man behind the tender voice and virtuoso trumpet, the Chet Baker portrayed in Weber’s film is an apathetic, emotionless and decaying man, on the verge of death, constantly fading from consciousness. Then there is the video footage and photography of the once youthful and beautiful Chet Baker who over the course of 30 years goes from resembling James Dean to becoming the spitting image of Charles Manson. And finally there is the damage left in the wake: the bitter former lovers and the jaded, borderline white trash offspring.
In his film, Sweet and Lowdown about a fictional Jazz guitarist, Woody Allen does an excellent job of separating the musician from the music and musical genius from other forms of intelligence (ie, someone could play beautiful music but be an otherwise uninteresting person). But in Weber’s film, the total asymmetry between the man and his voice is truly disturbing and even haunting. I don’t think I will ever listen to him the same way again, unfortunately.
Filed under Digressions, Jazz
Been Busy
Sorry for not writing much these days, but I have been real busy (who hasn’t?). I’ll be back in full swing once things calm down a little.
Filed under Digressions
Paris in the Spring
Here is a video from this spring in Paris (sorry if it is a little out of season), shot from Rivoli overlooking the Tuilieres gardens and the Louvre, not far from where I had my civil wedding earlier that day. The music is “I love Paris”, interpreted by Frank Sinatra from his 1957 album “Come Fly With Me“. As I have said before, on a clear, sunny day, Paris is arguably the most beautiful city in the world. We had one of those days.
Filed under Digressions
Too Hot
It’s hot, too hot. The daytime temperature in Madrid has not gone below 90F (30C) since the beginning of June, and I don’t have air conditioning. Three months of this continuous, unwavering heat takes its toll on you.
I could cool off at the local public pool, but that would be communism, right? Actually, I don’t go because a recent Leonard Lopate Show podcast totally turned me off to water leisure.
Sure, I would love to let myself get all worked up about
- More torture
- Outsourcing the assassination program and arming drones to private, non-uniformed (and arguably unlawful) combatants scamming the tax payers out of millions without any congressional oversight (as required by law).
- Former Bush era Homeland Security Secretary admitting to bogus heightened terrorist threats for purely political gains (always coinciding with any time I had to travel). Is anything that we have been told about the War on Terror, Iraq or Afghanistan true?
- Americans continue to be unforgiving when it comes to the treatment of dogs but indifferent towards the torture of other human beings.
- Health Care, even the free marketeers at The Economist are calling the Republican propaganda dishonest and unhealthy to the US economy.
- Armed Americans who increasingly resemble the Taliban, are reminiscent of the Oklahoma City bombers, and were they Muslim, they’d be labeled Al Qaeda for their rhetoric alone.
- Mike Huckabee’s religious fanaticism and extremism towards Israeli settlements that break with two decades of official American policy, countless U.N. resolutions, and the entire international community. Veiled as patriotism (though he would blindly defer American interests to a foreign state that is bankrolled by the U.S. taxpayer), the Huckabees of America base foreign policy on an anti-Semitic reading of the Rapture that requires the return of all Jews to Israel and their total subsequent destruction.
- The Gang of Six senators, representing less than 3% of the U.S. population now deciding health care for the entire country.
- Obama’s willingness for a “compromise” that only benefits the health insurance industry, regardless of the fact that politically he doesn’t need to reach a compromise. By punking his base and losing progressives, Obama is safeguarding the health insurance companies from real competition, as reflected by their soaring stocks in response to the Gang of Six’s anointment.
But it’s just too hot. Instead, I would rather spend time wedged between my fan and humidifier, finishing Olive Kitteridge, re-reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, watching the new seasons of Mad Men and the continuously disappointing Weeds, following the revived Real Madrid, and stressing about my upcoming Moroccan wedding.
Filed under Digressions, Essays, Literature, Living la vida española, Obama 44
A Short Hiatus
I just got back from a short, offline hiatus in Menorca only to find that my Internet service was not working and that Obama had sold out again, pathetic. I think it was a sign to get back to reading books and not the news.
Filed under Digressions
Desperate Times
Normally when you see someone asking for money on a Metro train in Madrid it is an Eastern European Gypsy woman with baby in arms chanting her “una ayuda por favor, que Dios te bendiga” lament, or a musician or group of musicians playing for change. More and more, especially in my neighborhood, I am seeing homeless men from Eastern Europe who have lost their jobs due to the total paralysis of the construction sector.
But, I was truly shocked this morning when the person on the Metro begging for money was not a Gypsy woman or out of work Romanian but none other than my middle-aged castizo Spanish neighbor who I have been saying hello to in the hallways of my building for the past eight years.
President Truman had said, as I was reminded by my friend Angel, “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours”.
Filed under Digressions, Living la vida española
Tropic of Not Reading
I am in a bit of a reading funk and have been stuck on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer for over a month. Part of the problem is that I can only get myself to read the book when I travel. For practically a full month, it has been over 90F (+30C) in Madrid and I don’t have air conditioning. The last thing I need is to have the lights on at night to read, making the whole house even hotter.
The other problem is that, while the story is well written and interesting, once I put it down I am simply not motivated to pick it up again. Sure, part of me must have subconsciously (or consciously) bought the book because of the naked girl on the cover. But what made the story controversial, groundbreaking and exciting a few generations ago, now makes it feel vulgar and misogynistic. It is almost as if we’ve gone full circle: from shocking because it was vulgar to no longer shocking, making it just plain vulgar.
In any event, I think I have gotten to the point of the book where I’ve gotten the point of the book. Also, because the story really has no plot or suspense, I don’t feel compelled to learn how it ends. Add to the fact that I have a very interesting roster of books on deck, and things don’t look so good for the Tropics. Only the summer heat is keeping me from moving on. Well, that and maybe complaining about torture.
Filed under Digressions, Literature
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
I often look at people of all ages and think about who they’ll become or who they were at previous times in their lives. And I think about the different stages and manifestations of beauty throughout the course of their lives. I wonder whether little kids will maintain, grow into or lose their beauty, and whether old age will reveal the beauty in their youth and vice versa. I wonder whether there is an eternal quality to beauty that continues to make us recognizable even when our earliest and most recent portraits bear almost no resemblance to each other.
Last night my wife (I am legally married, but that’s another story) showed me photos that I had never seen before of her as a child. I was left speechless. Of course, I see traces of her present posture, gestures, and features. But most of all, when I look at that little girl in the photographs, I can see clearly everything that is beautiful about the woman that is today my wife.
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Filed under Digressions, Friends / Family
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