Piano player extraordinaire?

I had this dream the other night which included, to my foggy recollection, a huge elevator that had stairs in it, a large glass office building and a fund raiser. Sounds boring, right? Well hold on to your seats. Sylvester Stallone and Vanessa Carlton were giving a benefit concert for some African Relief Fund. Stallone announced that it would be his farewell performance, both in the piano jazz genre and as an actor. As a bonus, the whole shebang would be televised. We were all very excited. It came out during the telecast that the duo had not sold a single ticket to the event, and were given the live broadcast as consolation by the executives of whatever channel. There were even shots during the show of a completely empty theater. It was great. So Stallone started out, polished to a burly sheen in a tux and a three day beard, pepper gray, blowing us all away as he unveiled himself to be the best pianist the world had ever seen. Bravado of Cliburn, stylistic sensitivity of Glen Gould, with the jazzy moves of Harry Connick. To boot, he had this awesome jazz voice, not unlike Tom Waits, but in a high tenor register, which he worked with his little crooked mouth. Vanessa Carlton couldn't match, unfortunately. Right during her opener, the infallible "Makin' My Way Downtown," the promo for the relief fund came in: "We feel that this fundraiser is so important that we're not even going to listen to the music." I feel it important to stress that the televised Stallone/Carlton Extravaganza was different from the fundraiser involving the elevator with the staircase, though I'm not sure how.
I woke up absolutely astounded, half ready to write the Italian Stallion a letter begging him to bring his true artistic calling out of the closet. I think the dream was inspired by my recent revelation that David Hasselhoff is busy composing and producing a musical based upon his own life, in which he himself will star.

What a crazy world.

Boooooo.

I had pardoned this particular airline's previous sins, commited on my Eastbound flight in June, but since they seem to pride themselves on consistent unprofessionalism, I'll just go ahead and expose them, and omit NOTHING.

The rigormoral began in Chicago, on June the 17th of this year when I and my fellow passengers were waiting to board the overnight flight to Madrid. Official boarding time, 4:50. At 5:30 a stewardess got on the mic and announces to us that we would all have the privelege of boarding the flight just as soon as they were able to locate the flight crew. Not a good start. Things didn't improve on the actual flight, when during both drink services and the meal service they were out of just about everything that I would ask for:
"What do you want to drink?"
"I'll just have some juice."
"Sorry, I'm just down to soft drinks."
"Do you have Ginger Ale?"
"What's that?"
"Guess not. Sprite?"
"Just out."
"Lemonade?"
"Nope."
"Coke?"
"Um....Diet Pepsi OK?"
"I guess. Can I have the can?"
"Sorry, cutbacks."
Sigh.

Equally:
"How about for dinner?"
"What do you have?"
"Beef or Chicken."
"Okay, I'll have the chicken."
"Nope. Here's your beef." Toss.

You know, compromise just comes with the territory when you're flying, as you're locked in a bunker with hundreds of strangers all reaching around each other for pillows and stuff, and I was going to Spain, which I'd wanted to do since I could talk, and they were getting me there, so I was willing to let bygones be bygones.

They didn't restore my faith when the pilots of the above airline went on a ten day strike not long before my return home. Despite being somewhat pleased about the prospect of an excuse to hang around Granada a few more days, I knew that any extra time there would be spent on the phone with other airlines trying to fenagle passage home. Thankfully, after hundreds of cancelled flights, the management and workers came to an agreement days before I was supposed to fly again.

Needless to say I wasn't expecting the VIP treatment on any leg of my homeward journey. My worst fears didn't come to fruition in that my bags made it home with me, but my westward experience matched my eastward one in measures of migraine inducing meddlesomeness. The cabin was filled to capacity with Spanish youths from the ages of 15 and younger who, between their howls of the damned, would run down the passageways playing catch with each other and grabbing on to my arm and head rest, regardless of whether or not my arm or head was using them.

To top it off, everyone jumped into the aisles and started pulling down their luggage the moment rubber touched runway, inducing mass panic amongst the flight crew, who took to yelling over the intercom and running, literally running, up and down the aisles telling people to plant it. Meanwhile, the plane was breaking and navigating the difficult turns toward the concourse, causing everyone to sway madly to and fro like passengers on the freakin' Titanic.

The prize winning moment which sealed my oath to never fly Iberia again (barring the Apocalypse, of course), was this: the plane reaches the concourse, and comes to a stop. The usual mass confusion ensues, elevated this time by the fact that everyone is already holding their bags, guitars and bouquets in their laps, after which the pilot gets on the mic and issues this missive, "Everybody will you please return to your seats, I've come up about a meter and a half short of the concourse and will need to relight the engines to pull forward just a little." I was going to offer to establish the old "tennis ball on a string" method which has worked without fail for years in the Holyoak garage, but was distracted in my efforts to find the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels stashed in the pilot's suit coat.
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Barring any amazing events that warrant documenting, this will be my last post from Granada. Here´s a shout out to Molly, Marité, Robin, Laura, Shanika, Diane, Gina, Beth, Oliver, Sean, Lauren, Kynae, Joann, Amalia, and all my crazy professors. See most of you in September, and to all those who I won´t, you´ll be sorely missed.

Top five things about Granada, leaving out the obvious things like "I learned a lot," and "Gee I´m sure excited to start school," not to mention such sweeping generalities such as "The Culture":

1. Tapas- finger food dinner for the price of your drink. How much better can it get? Start with a coke, get a potato with garlic mustard on it. A lemon soda for a second round, get the most delicious bite-sized hamburger you´ve ever had. Arab tapas, Mexican tapas, brie with honey on it, it just goes on and on. All of my dreams of massive weight loss went right down the toilet.

2. Spanish people- yes, I suppose this technically violates my omission of cultural generality, so I´ll add to the category, "including citizens of the EU who are here on vacation," because they´re just as fun. Seriously, you gotta love ´em. If they´re not running you down on their moped (be-mulleted girlfriend on the back), they´re making you their best friend for life. Granted, nobody moves when you´re walking right toward them on the street, but I never expected to meet such a wide collection of interesting bastards in a mere five weeks. Bless you all and your amazing talent for relaxation and staying up until three every night.

3. The World Cup- be it Germany v. Australia or Mexico v. France, I could always go into my local tv bar to cheer for...whoever. Truth be told, most games I really didn´t give a crap who won, but the fun came in oohing, sweating, clinching and cheering for the country whose colours flecked the cheeks of the onlookers. Or against them, if the case turned up, and it did, once or twice. But I lived to tell the tale, so...

4. Lemon Soda- no complicated explanations, here. The stuff is delicious and you can´t get it state side. Darn you, FDA!

5. Federico García Lorca- what a guy. Check him out.

Top Five Things I Could Have Done Without:

1. Americans. I realize the irony of this. We´re everywhere. Granada in particular, though, has an amazingly high student population and thus an amazingly high number of students who come in for a language course for a few weeks and, according to my personal experience, do little more than drink and stand under my window yellng for my German roomate to come out and get a drink with them. Oh yeah, and they all haunt the MacDo´s just down the street from my house. I think two of them are surrounding me right now, and one of them is looking at porn, and I´m being serious.

2. Lack of Air Conditioning- What a wuss I am, but dammit, when it´s 100+ out there every day, it´s nice to have somewhere to go to get out of the heat. There isn´t.

3. Distance from my wife. Sheri, I love you dearly and am greatly anticipating seeing you again. Come out here and we´ll travel together, though in the off-season when we can separate ourselves from the heathen mobs.

4. Homework. We had a lot of it. I´d rather we didn´t, despite the purported "leg up" we´re getting on the opening semester of our program in California.

5. There´s this nasty clog in the drain on the floor of our bathroom that makes it so water runs out of the bathroom and into the entry way and on into the living room at times. Seeing as how we don´t have a mop that works, it not only sucks, it´s a major drag.

End Transmission.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

As a temporary EU citizen, I believe it´s time I come forth and comment on the World Cup. Let´s forget for a moment that both of the two teams in the final kind of lucked out (don´t get me wrong; I love both Italy and France, but let´s face it: world soccer champs?) and turn to the real conundrum: Zinedine Zidane. ZZ, the Ice Man, this year´s winner of the Golden Ball (snicker), in the last game of his career, in which he was pretty much guranteed to win both MVP of the tournament and become a world champion, what a way to end. Oh, wait a minute, except for the fact that he got ejected from the game in the second half for head butting an Italian player in the chest. When asked about it later, he said that the Italian had "made a very serious comment" to him during the match. Well, it must have been. Having been given a red card, Zidane was irreplaceable on the field, putting France at a one-man disadvantage, which may have explained their crushing defeat. My favorite part of the debacle, though, was the fact that Jaques Chiraq himself made a public statement, vindicating Zidane (my personal favorite Frenchman) as someone exemplary of all that is good in the sport of soccer.

Allons-y, les enfants de la Patrie!

Quick entry here to make known somewhere in the lonely universe the coolness of a time that I´m having reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" while listening to my iPod on random shuffle. In a way that´s too complicated to explain, I´m having a total, and I mean total, Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz experience. It´s becoming eerie. One minute Atticus Finch is about to nail a rabid dog and the most tense song from the Fight Club Soundtrack comes on. The next, all the people in the neighborhood are sitting on their porches drinking iced tea and what should follow but some classic Tom Waits, King of Porch-Sitting. A fight nearly breaks out at a black church and Outkast takes control. Amazing. Every time without missing a beat. I should be studying.

One of the occupational hazards of becoming a translator: not seeing the film you want to.
So all this month is some sort of dance and music festival here, which seems to include films, somehow: every night there´s a music concert, and dance concert, and a free movie playing somewhere in the city, usually in an open-air setting. All the listings appear in the paper.

One day I look at the listings, and to my delight I see the title, "Tocando el Viento, un film de Marc Berman." And I think to myself, "hmm...that title looks like a pretty decent translation of the title Touching the Void. And wasn´t Mark Berman the director?"

Tocando= touching

Viento= the wind

I begin that morning to spread the word to my classmates that this cool film about a mountaineering accident and incredible survival story is playing tonight, and wouldn´t it be fun if we all went, etc, etc. One by one, they all turned me down. Well, I was feeling particularly intrepid and decided that those wet blankets weren´t going to stop me, so I walked up to the plaza where the film was playing.

I got my first indication that things were not as they had appeared to me when I looked up at the screen and saw Pete Postlethwaite talking to Ewan McGregor, who was holding a trumpet in his hands.


"I didn´t know Ewan McGregor was in Touching...the...Oh."

Tocando= playing

Viento= brass/woodwind instrument

The film that ensued (I didn´t want to take the walk of shame all the way back home just yet) was "Brassed Off," as I later came to know, about English miners who, despite the fact that their mine is closing, enter themselves in a brass band contest. Well, it didn´t have mountains, or shattered legs, or guys falling into crevasses, or even the hint of crampons and axes, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless and would actually recommend the film to any fan of Mr. McGregor, Mr. Postlethwaite, British cinema, or brass band music.