"You have to understand, I've been all over the world and not even the herdsmen of Turkmenistan dared pull these shenanigans. And the protestant lord knows they wanted what I had on me."
That's how my personal friend Kelsy Nelsonson, norwegian-new yorker royalty introduced herself after a year of almost inexistant contact with her extradited friend.
"Kelsy, you must be careful. These twelve year olds here... they don't fuck around. They'll put a bullet in you if you're not grateful enough to be able to pay back on the imperialist ways of your race."
She quickly forgot about her barely missed and hastily replaced belongings and shifted her attention to more pressing matters. "Oh, dear. Forget those ugly things. They were last season's anyways. Wouldn't be caught dead on Main (that's East Hamptons) sporting those. Tell me about your troubles. But first, let's get a bottle of champagne. I'm parched."
So we called up the waiter whom dressed like a buccaneer carried all the hopes and dreams of the working class on those skinny but overworked shoulders. "Happy hour Cristal, dear sir. Make it snappy." The waiter of course knew not what she meant so I explained in Spanish what the lady wanted. There was no such thing as happy hour Cristal, so he just brought out full priced Mumm.
"It is terrible. I've been stranded in this country for six months. Nothing goes on here and the embassy keeps ignoring my calls. I was hoping your political connections..." She interrupted my desperate plight and said. "Oh, dear. Let's get a second round for that. It is truly tragic, what you have been suffering. It is nigh impossible to withstand it on just one bottle." So we ordered a second round. My happiness to finally be in the presence of someone from the inner circle who had arrived to help me out was unsurpassed.
The waiter/pirate was hacking at a fourth bottle of Mumm and Kelsy was possitively trashed. When I finally got through my story and my request for help getting back home she could only muster the words "Darling, I seem to have left my purse behind at the hotel. Would you be a dear and get this tab. Please, don't you ever think not to remind me to get you next time." With which she got up and stumbled away, stopped a cab and mumbled "Four Seasons."
I lived among the Argentinians long enough to know this called for the skipping of a tab. That is how it would be done.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Hot Wheels~
I recently befriended this Argentine who has become my urban sherpa so I keep him around. His name is Nicanor "El Lagarto" Fletas. Much like the Himalayan variety he's not a talker. This helps him exudes an aura of wisdom which is really no more than familiarity with the place in which he's been stranded for life.
Just as when I was trekking the Himalayas, sometimes keeping up with these folks in their natural habitat can be perilous. But here it is way more dangerous. There is no Base Camp to fuck around here, you'd get pick pocketed in a minute. Traversing this city should be illegal. Maybe that is why anything can be delivered: ice cream, booze, cigarettes, and the local favorites: strippers and pizza. Of course the army of delivery scooters is more hazardous than the Grand Duke of Baden's feldjägerkorps and equally mean spirited.
Jaywalking maneuvers that normally kill your average DCite are easily performed by Porteños. These people are like ninjas of pedestrian infraction. But Darwin said it, other lifeforms adapt as well or perish. In order to catch up with Porteño pedestrians, Porteño drivers have developed astounding assasination skills, sometimes a driver will divert three or four blocks from destiny to take down one of these street lynxes.
This in in part why Argentines never really converted to automatic transmission. You gotta have that quick acceleration to run over grandma trying to cross on yellow. But grandma is not that easily caught. These people are like Emperor Penguins, the ones that made it past 18 are probably gonna push it to 90. Imagine if Oprah Winfrey's Katie Holmes debacle Tom Cruise had played Maverick in TopGun. Now add more hand gestures and a burgee of their soccer team, voila, your average Porteño driver.
A serious problem compounds on this: the car park is what some might call full of "classics." Between the Ford Falcons, Renault 12, Fiat 600 and IES (which is a ripoff of the shittiest Citroen) one really comes to understand what it is to be among people of faith. Faith makes your 1940's-60's piece of shit car perform like a Ferrari Enzo (in your mind, of course). The 1960's Fiat 600 outperforms every Ferrari in the local form of abstract pavement anyways. I keep telling them to no avail that the similarities between the Enzo and the 600 really end at four wheels and Italian. Their ego is writing checks their car body shop can't cash.
But one might ask, how does grandma survive thus far when her speed is severely diminished by arthritis, high cholesterol and 50 years of psychoanalysis? Well, abuela is no longer an ordinary human.
When you're crossing an avenue there is no calculation, cars are coming too fast, their course is too erratic (they side swipe to maximize contact), too many new objects are popping into the picture. You just got to do, and she does. That is how one learns to let an out of control bus flash inches front of one's face at 60 mph. It's all about reacting to the environment, it doesn't matter if it's one inch or ten meters. Apparently the more you do it the better you get at it.
A major cause of death is "loss of conentration due to Porteñas wearing a jean miniskirt and high heels at a busy intersection." I've been told it's an actual line in the statistics ministry's records. The same ministry which claims claims inflation is 0.7%.
But these Porteñas are just one more trap this city lays for you.
Just as when I was trekking the Himalayas, sometimes keeping up with these folks in their natural habitat can be perilous. But here it is way more dangerous. There is no Base Camp to fuck around here, you'd get pick pocketed in a minute. Traversing this city should be illegal. Maybe that is why anything can be delivered: ice cream, booze, cigarettes, and the local favorites: strippers and pizza. Of course the army of delivery scooters is more hazardous than the Grand Duke of Baden's feldjägerkorps and equally mean spirited.
Jaywalking maneuvers that normally kill your average DCite are easily performed by Porteños. These people are like ninjas of pedestrian infraction. But Darwin said it, other lifeforms adapt as well or perish. In order to catch up with Porteño pedestrians, Porteño drivers have developed astounding assasination skills, sometimes a driver will divert three or four blocks from destiny to take down one of these street lynxes.
This in in part why Argentines never really converted to automatic transmission. You gotta have that quick acceleration to run over grandma trying to cross on yellow. But grandma is not that easily caught. These people are like Emperor Penguins, the ones that made it past 18 are probably gonna push it to 90. Imagine if Oprah Winfrey's Katie Holmes debacle Tom Cruise had played Maverick in TopGun. Now add more hand gestures and a burgee of their soccer team, voila, your average Porteño driver.
A serious problem compounds on this: the car park is what some might call full of "classics." Between the Ford Falcons, Renault 12, Fiat 600 and IES (which is a ripoff of the shittiest Citroen) one really comes to understand what it is to be among people of faith. Faith makes your 1940's-60's piece of shit car perform like a Ferrari Enzo (in your mind, of course). The 1960's Fiat 600 outperforms every Ferrari in the local form of abstract pavement anyways. I keep telling them to no avail that the similarities between the Enzo and the 600 really end at four wheels and Italian. Their ego is writing checks their car body shop can't cash.
But one might ask, how does grandma survive thus far when her speed is severely diminished by arthritis, high cholesterol and 50 years of psychoanalysis? Well, abuela is no longer an ordinary human.
When you're crossing an avenue there is no calculation, cars are coming too fast, their course is too erratic (they side swipe to maximize contact), too many new objects are popping into the picture. You just got to do, and she does. That is how one learns to let an out of control bus flash inches front of one's face at 60 mph. It's all about reacting to the environment, it doesn't matter if it's one inch or ten meters. Apparently the more you do it the better you get at it.
A major cause of death is "loss of conentration due to Porteñas wearing a jean miniskirt and high heels at a busy intersection." I've been told it's an actual line in the statistics ministry's records. The same ministry which claims claims inflation is 0.7%.
But these Porteñas are just one more trap this city lays for you.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
A taste of the old country
I've hypothesized that one of the reasons for the ensuing wilderness of these parts is the lack of decent food. Everyone knows, from the halls of Montezuma to the walls of Tripoli that America has the best food in the world. God being one of the founding fathers was also the first American Chef.
Argentina's meat is deplorable. It is not hard nor fatty. Instead of burning the outside to a crisp to a gasoline powered flame while the inside remains frozen straight from the meat packer (to keep the hormonal effect) like we do in America, their beef is soft and flavorful, generally slow cooked to an open wood-fire. There's not even any steak sauce to be found! How is one to ingest a healthy dose of high fructose corn syrup this way?
The trials I'm facing here seem to have no end. I was escorted by some locals to a "parrilla"*. In this dreadful honky-tonk the backwardness of third world countries is fully exposed. A man in a filthy getup violently tossed wooden plates on a surface officiating as a table. Quite a stretch in my opinion, but it is unfair to compare advanced societies with their less gifted brethren.
The culinary nightmares did not end there. When one of my shirpas deciphered the menu for me my choice was that of a skirt steak. I recalled wise Charley's words:
"When ya' dout, skertsteek's da way. Nut ev'n dem Apache coulda mess dat wun up!"
What that primeval version of a waitperson brought from the back was truly appalling. Two sizzling brown skirt steaks glittering on a metal grill, pink on the inside. Mouthwatering if I had been a caveman! "El sauzo del steak-o senor." No answer would follow. It is no coincidence that this grub was the equivalent of nine US dollars.
The night would end with a huge attempt at desert they call "panqueque de dulce de leche." Truly scandalous. The lack of decorum of this society was materialized on that plate. And these are my burdens at the moment.
----------------
*pah-rrEE-shiah
Argentina's meat is deplorable. It is not hard nor fatty. Instead of burning the outside to a crisp to a gasoline powered flame while the inside remains frozen straight from the meat packer (to keep the hormonal effect) like we do in America, their beef is soft and flavorful, generally slow cooked to an open wood-fire. There's not even any steak sauce to be found! How is one to ingest a healthy dose of high fructose corn syrup this way?
The trials I'm facing here seem to have no end. I was escorted by some locals to a "parrilla"*. In this dreadful honky-tonk the backwardness of third world countries is fully exposed. A man in a filthy getup violently tossed wooden plates on a surface officiating as a table. Quite a stretch in my opinion, but it is unfair to compare advanced societies with their less gifted brethren.
The culinary nightmares did not end there. When one of my shirpas deciphered the menu for me my choice was that of a skirt steak. I recalled wise Charley's words:
"When ya' dout, skertsteek's da way. Nut ev'n dem Apache coulda mess dat wun up!"
What that primeval version of a waitperson brought from the back was truly appalling. Two sizzling brown skirt steaks glittering on a metal grill, pink on the inside. Mouthwatering if I had been a caveman! "El sauzo del steak-o senor." No answer would follow. It is no coincidence that this grub was the equivalent of nine US dollars.
The night would end with a huge attempt at desert they call "panqueque de dulce de leche." Truly scandalous. The lack of decorum of this society was materialized on that plate. And these are my burdens at the moment.
----------------
*pah-rrEE-shiah
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