Anyone heard of the Premios Goya? None of the nominated films got play in the United States except Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside). The award ceremony had low-plunging necklines and ugly men kissing supermodels. Yet one difference between the Goyas and the Oscars was the great effort made to keep things short and sweet. When the awardees talked for more than 45 seconds, the microphone would literally drop away and cut them off.
Verdcel chanted a lot in Valenciano. Watching the band was fun, but I really wondered about the lyrics. Some of the songs seemed political. But they kept putting on funny hats and dancing spasmodically around the stage.
Many American nearly-30-year-olds have four decades worth of pop music lyrics in our heads. We were subjected to our parents’ Beatles albums. The 1970s never went off the radio. The 1980s and 1990s were our musical decades. Spaniards grew up with Madonna and Metallica and Marilyn Manson, but likely didn’t understand most of the songs. What would it be like to have a lyrically uncluttered brain?
Verdcel’s manic energy bordered on completely uncool silliness. I like that. They also occasionally used four guitar players. Sometimes three guitars just isn’t enough.
*the entry title references the Green Bay punk band (and fellow East High School graduates) Boris the Sprinkler .
Bad American cinema has already taken on a nostalgic feel for me. Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore seemed cute in Fifty First Dates. Jack Black and Ben Stiller were hilarious in Envy. How did Hollywood movies become adorable after only two weeks away from home?
Catximba wants to rock. But the band hasn’t mustered up enough angst for punk or shamelessness for good pop. The members sing in Valenciano, a dialect of Catalan. So maybe lyric-wise there’s more going on than is obvious musically. The room had a good vibe. Yet not enough piercings and tattoos for a hipster to feel entirely comfortable with the crowd.
Small mountains appear to snuggle up to the coast north of Valencia. That discovery was made while walking along the beach for the first time today. Definitely need to check it out. I’ve got the hiking itch that was not salved by a too-long walk home along sidewalks littered with dog shit.
My favorite picture was of a woman breaking the ice off of a large paella pan.
It seems like the women really like the cold because it gives them an excuse to wear fur. In the Corte Ingles supermarket the other day (on a fruitless search for peanut butter) Imatriarchs with fur down to their knees maneuvered to get in front of me at the cheese counter.
Today things seem to have warmed back up to normal. The livingroom windows are open and the sun makes one feel cat-like.
Score! Two herbolarios within a ten minute walk of the apartment sell veggie burgers, soy milk, tofu, wheat-free pasta and even those tiny little yellow seeds my mother puts in bread. Spain has always seemed unadventurous and unhealthy, food-wise. Yet in the past eight years, it looks like tastes have begun to change. Now, Mexican-style tortillas get stocked at the Corte Ingles. Yet where’s the peanut butter?
No longer a displaced person, I’ve started exploring my new neighborhood. Ruzafa appears to be full of immigrants with lots of locutorios for making international calls as well as countless import stores. Food-wise, I’m set. There’s paella and Indian food as well as Galician and Basque cuisine within two blocks.
Everything happened fast. To sum up, I won the first apartment popularity contest of my life and scored a gigantic room in an apartment with three students, two from Germany and one from France. So now I live on General San Martín street next to the plaza de toros (bulfighting ring.) Olé.
