The flamenco flop.

Last night The Mister, my friend Claire and I went to a flamenco show at the cool old theater in town, the one Antonio Banderas sometimes makes a showing in.  It wasn't one of those touristy polka-dotted-skirts kind of flamenco shows, but the good authentic kind. The dancers were local and the three of us were rather conspicuous as the only non-Spaniards in the place (a good sign).

The theater was beautiful for the occasion, all lit up like a Christmas tree, and everyone was prepared in their fancy clothes. 

Lights dimmed, curtain went up.

As soon as the first note sounded, it was obvious that something had gone badly awry. The singers sounded like - I hate to use this cliché, but there's no way around it - they sounded like a pack of wild cats. Yowling and screechy and sharp as cheddar cheese.  The sound mixer guy must have been drunk during rehearsal (or perhaps there wasn't a rehearsal?) and the sound volume was cranked so high that everyone's voices blended together in one unbearably shrill howl.

I started giggling. I couldn't help it. It sounded so awful. I put my hand over my mouth. I tried to ignore The Mister's elbow digging in my side because I knew if I made eye contact I'd go over the edge.

At the end of the first song, the audience sighed in relief. Old people were shaking their heads and muttering. The man to my left looked like he'd just eaten a whole lemon.

In the silence between the tepid applause and the start of the next song, a man in our aisle yelled "Baja el sonido!" which means "turn down the sound!"  It was like the first raindrop of a downpour. Every old person in the house suddenly started yelling some version of LOWER THE MOTHERLOVING VOLUME POR FAVOR. 

I slid down in my seat and gulped air, trying to hold myself together. Why are things so much funnier when you're not supposed to laugh?

The music started blaring again and the singers resumed their screaming, blithely unaware of the audience's pain. They probably thought that everyone was yelling compliments. Everyone groaned.  The woman next to me scowled at the stage and brought both hands up to cover her ears.

And that's when I lost it.

At the end, Claire was worried that I would think the fifteen euro ticket fee was a waste since the show was decidedly sub-par.

No way, I told her. I would pay fifteen euros for a belly laugh any day.

I would and I did.

Spain, land of paradox

If you learn nothing else from this blog, let it be this: that you really ought to conquer a good plate of paella in your life. Real paella that is, paella valenciana, with rabbit and chorizo sausage and crack cocaine. Avoid the fishy, soupy ones they'll sometimes try to serve you here in the South, and go for the real thing, even if it's just at a particularly ambitious Spanish restaurant in Boise. You won't regret it.

Modern Spain is a bit like its famous dish; sparklingly, astoundingly good in parts, a disappointing mess in others. The stereotypes are true, to a point--it really is the land of siestas and bullfights, flamenco and whitewashed pueblos sloping gently into the glittering Mediterranean, flowery hillsides and everlasting sunshine. But it's also a land of crippling inefficiency, apathy, racism, graffiti, underemployment, under education, and worst of all, insufferably awful bread.

Seriously, it's a mystery how they've managed to live in such close quarters with the French all these years and not pick up a single tip to make a passable baguette.

It's a country of paradox, as I suppose all living things when examined up close. There's romance and prejudice, passion and profound malaise, weeks of sunshine and floods of torrential rain.

The United States from afar looks different than it does up close, like a good Monet. It's a brash, headstrong young country, pulsing with vitality and a vigorousness that's unseemly to our more stately European sisters. The fearsome dowagers of the Old World eye us a little askance, drawing in their skirts as we strut by, astounded by our youthful impetuousness, our manic, frightening energy and our mischievousness in hoodwinking them into occasionally disreputable schemes.

From the orange grove to my basket

The countryside outside of Málaga, just inside the province of Cádiz, is filled with bulls and orange groves. I know that sounds like an odd combination, but I'm telling the truth - drive through there and it's all grazing bulls, orange groves, then more grazing bulls and more orange groves. Since we were there last week, our friends Pilar and Juan took us to her grandfather's patch of land to pick oranges.

We learned the proper way to pick them - there's a little secret. It's called girar y tirar, which in Spanish means "twist and pull," because if you pull without twisting the peel will break. 

When we had picked a whole crate we realized the surprise was on us because Pilar gave us all the oranges to take home, all three thousand kilos or so, and now we are supplied through the winter.  They are perfectly tart and sweet and juicy. I know, because I tried them. In the orchard. While I was supposed to be picking. I have trouble staying on task when food is involved in the chores.

  

Also, as if The Mister weren't cool enough -- he sings, he plays guitar, he's got a dimple in his right cheek that could stop traffic -- he can also juggle. Some people get all the cards.

Dreaming of sunshine

It's a rainy, cold day on the Costa del Sol - the kind of day that makes you wish you owned an umbrella that didn't turn inside out at the faintest sea breeze (can you tell I had umbrella troubles today?). So in honor of blue skies and sunshine, here are a few more images from our weekend in the countryside.

One, two, three

Today I wanted to share three really special photos with you.

Number 1:

This is the biggest snail I have ever seen. If you are French, kindly try to restrain yourself from thinking about its culinary value - you're freaking the rest of us out.

 

Number 2:

 This sign? Really? Someone thought up this sign, and then a committee of other people greenlit the project, and then someone painted it and stuck it in the ground. This is groupthink at its sordid best. It reminds me an awful lot of this glorious signage, though, and that makes me smile.

 

Number 3:

I am in love with these tiles. I saw them last Sunday on the side of a little house in a little pueblo on a narrow little street. Everything about the setting was impossibly cute. I want to frame this photo.