This site sells pictures that morph as you walk by them into horrible… hideous… fiendish things!
OooooOOOOO!!!!!
Sweet shower fixture
// October 31st, 2005
The Big Rain shower makes it look like your ceiling is raining! Check out the pictures.
Which Sci-Fi Character Are You?
// October 20th, 2005I usually shy away from these “Which X Are You” quizzes, but in this case:
I’m James T. “I don’t believe in a no-win situation” Kirk! Kick ass!
Which Sci-Fi Character Are You?
An Ability Every Man should Have
// October 13th, 2005A few months ago I was at a Mexican restaurant with Marcy, her sister, and her sister’s husband. The place was pretty authentic, with gaudily painted, hand-carved furniture with pictures of toucans and geckos on the seatbacks. Pretty neat place, and very decent food, but the main draw was the live mariachi music with dinner.
So we’re just getting served when the mariachis start up. They head back to where we’re seated, surround our table, and ask if somebody there is having a birthday. We all look at each other as if there was something we didn’t know. It was nobody’s birthday.
Suddenly the mariachis and I noticed the young man at the next table trying to get our attention, a nervous-looking young guy, probably in his late teens, sitting with a cute teenage girl. He indicated that it was his date’s birthday. The mariachis happily played some birthday-appropriate tune that nobody recognized at the embarassed girl.
When they wrapped that up, they turned back to our table. The singer and guitarist asked us, “Is there anything you’d like us to play?”
I looked around the table at three blank faces. For a moment, the three of them knew… just knew that we were going to have to ask for La Cucaracha. We could feel ourselves right on the precipice of a moment of Ol’ Fashioned Amurrkin cultural ignorance.
That is, until I looked up at the head mariachi and said, “Si LitoCielito Lindo, por favor.”
“Cielito Lindo?” he asked.
“Por favor,” I replied.
They launched into it. If you don’t know Cielito Lindo, it’s that prototypically Mexican song, the one most of us gringos know as the “Ai… Yi.. Yi Yi!” song. As an aside, I mostly find music in restaurants to be annoying. It’s a nice idea, and it’s good when the performers are at another table. But when they’re singing to you, it’s hard to know what to do with your hands, exactly. And it’s nice for the first verse or so, but these mariachis knew all seven verses of Cielito Lindo, and damned if they were going to leave any one of them behind.
They wrapped up, I said, “Gracias, amigos!“, and we happily got down to the empanadas at hand.
The title of this post is “An Ability Every Man should Have”. I believe that being able to credibly request a song from a mariachi band is an ability every man should have–and indeed, after reading this post, will have.
Here’s the back-story to my knowing this fine song. When I was in my early teens, my family took a trip to San Diego with the family of my dad’s business partner, the Mariotts. They’re a lot of fun, and we did a lot of traveling with them.
At one point we took a day trip to Tijuana, and did the typical Tijuana things. When we were coming back across the border, there was a long line of people waiting at customs and, as there seems to be everywhere in Tijuana, young children selling things and begging.
One young boy, probably seven or eight years old, had a beaten-up guitar with four strings on it, and was playing (and pretty well) mariachi standards and corrido ballads for handouts. When Carole, my dad’s partner’s wife reached where guitar boy was in line, she said, “I want to hear Ai.. Yi.. Yi Yi!” The kid immediately plunged into Cielito Lindo. Carole gave him a dollar–more, I’m sure, than this kid got in many hours of playing for the line.
Here’s the great part: the line moved on and Carole moved past guitar boy. Guitar boy, peso signs in his eyes, packed up his guitar and moved up the line too, about ten people ahead of Carole. When he saw her coming, he launched into a high-volume, full-energy “AI.. YI.. YI YI!” and played the most empassioned, exuberant Cielito Lindo that had been heard before or since. This time Carole gave him two dollars.
Guitar boy knew he had a fish on the line, here. He looked up the line and saw he had time to reel her in once more. So he took his guitar right up to the head of the line, maybe ten or twelve people ahead of Carole, waited until he saw her coming, and… “AI… YI.. YI YIIII!!” I believe his voice may have actually cracked the customs-house adobe. Carole knew she was landed, and gave the boy a fiver. Before long, she was safely across the border with the boy’s voice ringing in her ears.
UPDATE: A big gracias to Juan Carlos for the spelling correction, translation, and further Mariachi suggestions!
You Knit What??
// October 13th, 2005
This is one of the best blogs I’ve found recently.
My lovely wife has a date very soon with a friend of hers who is going to teach her to knit. I hope she’ll peruse this blog thorougly, so she goes in with her eyes open.
Is anybody missing their keys?
// October 12th, 2005
I just found these in the pocket of a coat I haven't worn in 9 months. No idea where they came from. Any claimers?
Jesus Inspirational Sport Statues
// October 6th, 2005
Stuff On My Cat
// October 6th, 2005
In honor of our new addition, here’s a great new blog: Stuffonmycat.com.
You know. For people who put stuff. On their cat.
We See Things Differently, by Bruce Sterling
// October 6th, 2005In light of Bush’s newly reiterated policies on terrorism, it seems a good time to read this brilliant 1998 speculative short story by Bruce Sterling about a Muslim reporter’s visit to post-collapse America.
We See Things Differently, by Bruce Sterling