Auld Lang Syne

My summer holidays. That was the boring subject of the writing assignment we’d get on September upon going back to school. And with it, the inevitable writer’s block. Well, that’s how I am feeling today. Ironically, because New Year’s Eve provides with plenty of subjects, memories and minutiae for my wandering mind. Let’s see what I can come up with.

As you, faithful reader, should know by now, in this momentous occasion of the end of the first decade of the 21st century I am bedridden and home alone (don’t feel so sorry though, I have a small but very gracious army of chocolate supplying, coffee making, small talk talking friends a phone call away, thank God). Anyway, this very peculiar situation I’m going through provides me with the perfect occasion to reminisce of New Year’s Eves of yore.

I could write about the 1980’s TVE specials, Martes y Trece’s Encarna and the empanadillas sketch and Sabrina's wardrobe malfunction, instant pop culture hits before youtube and its viral videos.

Or my first awkward New Year Eve's parties, boys with ill fitting suits and ties, girls in shiny shoulder padded numbers with big bows and bigger hair… Just me and my fashion impaired friends would give gofugyourself.com material for a year’s worth of bitchy posts. And no, luckily there are no pictures.

Or the realization, once in Marbella, that, apart from the inevitable and heavenly jabugo ham and Sanlúcar shrimps, one could have Korean bbq pork or chicken yakitori as part of the dinner’s menu (sacrilege!).

Or the Geneva year, with the Swiss un-joie de vivre, a bad flu and Dan’s ever-awesome food.

Or, most appropriately, my first holiday in NYC exactly 10 years ago. When the world was supposed to come down in flames because of the Y2K bug (what a great marketing strategy by the IT people); nobody had heard about Al Qaida; Eliansito and Marisleysis (God bless Cuban name creators) were all over the networks; an almost dead Apple computers had just launched these awesome turquoise eggs called iMacs; and the big hit online was Napster…

Who would have thought that in 10 years I’d be watching again the Times Square broadcast from my apartment in Midtown Manhattan. High on vicodin instead of Australian shiraz. With a broken leg instead of a party outfit. And with no hair left on my head but going wild in all the wrong places.

Oh well, too many things to write about and this damn block that just won’t leave me alone. So I think I’ll just let it be, close my eyes and party in my head with Dan, John and Chris like it’s 2000 and I am walking down Christopher Street for the very first time…

Give me a reason to love you

The magazine care package that thoughtful as ever Tony brought me to fill my endless hours had a bit of everything. Of course the fist thing I jumped on was Globe magazine. I mean, when a cover includes pictures of Tiger Woods, shirtless Obama and Sarah Palin, headlines like “Scandals and Shockers” and captions such as “sex secrets, suicide dramas, dirty divorces, medical ordeals” (sic), all punctuated with more exclamation marks than my average Facebook status message thread, you know that the Economist can (and will) wait. After just glossing over OK magazine (sorry, Hello! person here) as well as the special end of the year Time issue, I started reading the New York magazine.

Its main article is called Reasons to Love New York, and as it is usually the case in this type of lists, it’s a mixture of more or less whimsical stories that make this city the object of our love and, while at it, the alleged capital of planet Earth. I definitely agree with this last conclusion (if only because I live here and therefore it’s the capital of the world I care for, i.e. mine-my excuses to traditional contenders like Paris, Tokyo and London and up and coming metropolises such as Shanghai, Sao Paulo and Minsk). However, the reasons of love they give, for the most part I frankly don’t care so much for. Maybe I’m too uninformed, unhip or un-local, but Jets Coach’s antics do nothing for me nor does the lesbian bar scene in Williamsburg. So anyways, why do I like New York?

It’s a tough question to answer simply. There are many little things I like, small, almost trivial details here and there that make this place appealing to me, but not one big huge reason I can point out. At first sight NYC is not particularly pretty. Not in the European way at least. It’s not terribly clean, with sidewalks invaded every other day by mountains of trash teeming with creatures you prefer not to think of. Public services are not exactly Tokyo level. The subway, well it’s functional, huge, 24/7, I know... but also eminently nasty and ugly. And so on and so forth.

However, from a safe distance, just like an impressionist painting or an elegant lady slightly past her peak time, New York is simply magnificent. Back in 2000, when I was first being driven into the city, I saw in awe Manhattan skyline cutting the horizon. By the time we reached downtown I knew I loved the place, even though back then I had no clue I would end up living in the middle of it.

New Yorkers are not a bad bunch either. Beyond all the clichés and common places (which they themselves love and promote by the way, you know the ‘only in New York’ thing that they live for) I find them a pretty funny, helpful and even pleasant crowd, considering the little hell that urban living can mean sometimes. Of course you have the nasties too, but if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have overheardinnewyork.com and that would be unforgivable.

Damn. I think in this post I bit more I can chew. My list has to be be enormous. And the four-paragraph limit for my posts I imposed myself is clearly broken. So I will just say that I like many many other things about this town, e.g. the chute in my building (pure awesomeness); brunch in the East Village; same day shipping for online stuff; General Tso chicken from the Chinese place downstairs; policemen and firemen teams in my street during the General Assembly; walking cross town from Tompkins Square to Christopher street piers on a Sunday afternoon; white haired elderly ladies with red lipstick and big berets; café frappé with plenty of eye candy in Astoria’s Athens Cafe; a new Apple store every other month; and of course, the Statue of Liberty (come on, Rosario, it’s very beautiful). I just don’t care so much about A-Rod Having Babe Ruth in His Sights. I guess I’ll never be a New Yorker.

The fool on the hill

So things keep getting better. For my people, the equivalent of April Fool’s Day is December 28th, Holy Innocents Day or Día de los Santos Inocentes. Today is the day to prank people because you are supposed to get away with it.

Well, who would have thought, today my fucking luck fooled me again all right. I was so anxious to be seen by the doctor that I didn’t realize my appointment was for tomorrow. Of course I only learnt this at the doctor’s office. If I had any sense of humor left I would laugh about it. I just feel stupid and tired. Happy Innocents Day.

Good Day Sunshine

The sun came out at last. I hope it’s a good omen for my visit to the doctor tomorrow. Since my fateful fall, the weather has been mainly crappy and deep inside of me I don’t mind that at all. My world has been so dramatically altered for the worse that somehow I resent the universe for not stopping for the coming weeks just like my life will. Talk about sucking at being Zen and stuff. But anyway, truth be told, even limited as I am to the patch of uptown Manhattan sky I can see from my living room, blue and bright really does something to your soul, to the point that my leg almost feels a little better.

Being born in southern Spain, I used to take good weather for granted. I don’t mean to sound chauvinistic, but Mediterranean weather really rocks. It seems to be the exception in a world full of really shitty climates. I don’t care what Mike says: homo sapiens is a tropical animal, and the Belorussian Riviera (whatever that is) will not be in my beach travel plans anytime soon.

Of course during the summer it gets hot back home, but you have the beach and none of that nasty humidity that wraps New York in a thick sweaty layer during the hottest weeks of the year. Nights are especially delightful. I remember the childhood family dinners al fresco in Chiclana or more recently the dama de noche scented Marbella nights after one of Dan’s amazing meals.

Also of course in winter it will get chilly. My father used to say “But it’s never cold in Cádiz!” -his favorite quote when he caught me with the electric heater pumped up to the max in my room. Well, trust me on this one: it can get pretty damn frigid. But still, many times you will be able to enjoy a beer and a tapa de ensaladilla in a terraza under the December sun with as little as a shirt on. And unlike in scorching August, those sunbeams feel so right on your skin…

I don’t know why this post turned out so meteorological and nostalgic at the same time. It must be that today I saw the sunshine on my window. Or that according to my original plans today I was supposed to have an outdoors barbecue with high school friends several thousand of miles away. All I can say is that today I saw the sun and felt a tiny bit happy. Now that’s something to blog about.

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PS: This may sound a bit desperate, but writing is quite lonely so if anybody is reading me and wants to leave a comment, that would make my blogging day.

I Wanna Be Sedated

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans (John Lennon). That’s how my older wiser brother explained my accident. Spending all this time locked in my apartment in pain and discomfort clearly wasn’t among my plans.

The worst is at night. Waking up tired and in pain and not being able to even change position. Closing your eyes and wishing real bad to be asleep again, to fall back to drug induced weird dreams. Hating the darkness and hoping for a relief that won't seem to arrive.

Of course feeling helpless, vulnerable and incapable of performing the most basic tasks doesn’t help. When dragging yourself to the bathroom is an ordeal and taking a glass of water from the kitchen to the table a physical impossibility, cursing becomes a very very frequent activity.

There are obviously much worse things in life that can happen to you. Among them, going through this nightmare without my friends. I knew they were great, that’s why they are my friends in the first place. I didn’t know they are extraordinary. Thank you.

Jingle Bell Rock

Ok, so here's the thing: I do like Christmas. I believe it's a damn good idea.

Don't think that I am being naive or, even worse, cynical. I get the haters. It's commercial and stressful. The weather is cold, even in Cádiz. No one likes to pretend that the cheap cologne your aunt gives you is the best present ever, etc. etc.

However you also get to hang out with people you love. Or share most of your gene pool with. You can eat without guilt ridiculous amounts of very delicious food, specifically amarguillos de Medina (when my Amish Market finally discovers those, it's gonna be its definite graduation to coolest food store this side of the Guadalete). And, what the heck, cheap cologne or not, at the end of the season you get presents.

I mean how much of a bitter anorexic bore do you have to be to not like all or some of that? None of my readers, I am sure. All three of them (myself included).

The serious drawback of Navidad is that no matter how hard you try you can never reproduce that perfect Christmas of 1981. When, even though you knew there was something clearly non kosher (pun intended) in the Three Wise Men presents on January 6th, you still kind of believed in them and left them milk, cookies, and hay for the camels. When grandma cooked turkey with almonds and cyclopean mountains of pestiños. When mom bought the turrón de fruta that no one else liked just for you. When mom was there.

But no matter what I still refuse to join the ranks of of the jaded santaphobes. I still think it's the most wonderful time of the year. Sort of. Some years. So now, on to my 2009 Nochebuena dinner spread...

Evidently some green motherfucker stole my left ankle and my Christmas. Feliz Navidad everybody.

57 Channels (and nothin' on)

On the mend for several weeks... what to do? Finally taking on Don Quixote as I have been planning since 1988? meditating? taking Philosophy of Law online courses?

Nah, I’ll probably just watch some television.

I won’t pretend otherwise, I like TV. A lot. From the mid-seventies Japanese cartoons, wildly popular among the Spanish kids of that time (Mazinger Z, Heidi, Maja the bee…), until today’s Glee and Modern family, my life has been punctuated by a long succession of prime time quiz shows, comedy series and geeky nature documentaries.

My preferences are a little neurotic though. On the one hand I love science documentaries. Things like Life after people or Walking with Cavemen (presented by Alec Baldwin, woof!) I simply can’t get enough of. I love to order Chinese food and watch the two or three-hour specials without interruption. Hadn’t it been for those stupid logarithms and integrals in high school maybe I would have chosen the scientific baccalaureate and would have ended up discovering gigantic sauropod fossils in the Argentinean Pampa or scrutinizing the night sky from Mauna Kea...

But. There’s also the dark VH1-Bravoish side of me. The one that enjoys extremely guilty pleasures such as Rock of Love, Project Runway, Charm School, Top Chef and, of course, the latest of masterpiece of trash tv, Jersey Shore. I am sure that treatises are being written in universities around this country about all that crap, trying to explain why, oh why, we found so irresistibly fascinating the semi scripted romantic affairs of STD ridden big haired ladies or the last minute sewn chiffon ensemble conceived by some screaming queen from Ohio. I really have no explanation. Maybe it’s just that we love to see shameless people doing really stupid things to feel better about our not so remarkable selves. I don’t know. In any case it’s already Wednesday so only one more day till I get my fix of Mike the Situation and Snooki’s adventures in glamorous Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Thank God.

I'm bringing sexy back

So.

This is it. For the next few weeks this is gonna be my vantage point to the World. Fascinating, huh.

As usual I am late. Blogs stopped being cool circa 2004. But Rosario, not only does she make for a great daytime nurse but can also give some pretty good advice, so here we are. Ready to take by storm the blogosphere (that word sounds so silly already, talk about quick turnover of buzzwords).

As of right now I have no idea what I am gonna be blogging about. Will this be the new huffington post? Dlisted for geeks? A moving tale of self discovery and overcoming the hurdles of life, aka Jersey Shore? We shall see.

In the meantime you can have a look at my sexy legs and the awesome black cast (I could have had a purple one too, but I opted for Manhattan bitch black with a Chanelesque white fringe, so fashion forward) If only my real calves were as big as that cast...

Anyway Rosario and Massi are cursing my Cuisinart in Italian, I think it's time for dinner. Buon appetito!

What a difference a day makes

Three days, one hour and 4 minutes ago I was walking towards the East Village to have delicious Serrano ham eggs Benedict with a group of good friends. Apart from a couple of Duane Reade medicines and cornhusks (wtf, I know, one of Dan’s “indispensable” cooking utensils) my Christmas gift shopping was done. In two days' time I was flying home to Spain for the holidays. The first snowstorm of the season began hitting Manhattan right after I exited Astor Place subway station surrounded by the usual Saturday crowds in St. Mark’s place.

Three days, one hour and 3 minutes ago I was lying on the cold icy street, my leg broken and my prospects for the next few months irreparably disrupted. This is the chronicle of my new life out on a limb.