A Passionate Title

Living in another country is interesting. I try to keep an open mind, and understand that some things I might find strange here are really just "different"...and usually these differences are a big part of what makes it interesting to live here in Mexico. But...sometimes there are differences that you just have to laugh at, and not in a "that´s strange", chuckle-contemplative kind of way...no. You have to laugh in a hilarious, mocking "that´s absurd" kind of way. One of these things I´ve had many a good laugh at are the translated names of American movies. Granted, translation can be a tricky endeavor...many of the clever phrases we use for titles just don´t exist in other languages. But, even after accounting for that difficulty I´ve found the following titles to be to ridiculous and hilarious:

It goes like this. Original Title - Spanish Title: English Translation of Spanish Title. My comments.

1. Rainman - Cuando los Hermanos Se Encuentren: When Brothers Find Each Other.
Two brothers hanging out, catching up, remembering old times.

2. The Notebook - Diario de una Pasión: Diary of a Passion.
This one captures the latin-lover sentiment, while showing the tendency to change titles that would have made perfect sense if translated literally. El Cuaderno...perfectly fine.

3. Thelma and Luise - Un Final Inesperado: An Unexpected Ending
This might be my favorite. You might be thinking "How will this movie end?" I´ll tell you, in the title...unexpectedly.

4. The Sound of Music - Una Novica Rebelde: A Rebelious Nun
This is awesome. They took a masterpiece of musical movie-making and made it sound like a low-budget tele-novela, the one that comes on after Ugly Betty.

5. Jaws - Tiburón: Shark
Obvious

6. The Departed - Los Infiltrados: The Infiltrated
I guess this one isn´t so ridiculous, but it surely misses the point of everyone in the movie dying (except Mark-the-body-Walberg). Post-spoiler alert! If you haven´t seen it already, there´s nothing I can do for you now anyways.

7. The Shawshank Redemption – Sueños de Fuga: Dreams of Escape
Exchanging redemption for escape in this title just cheapens it. I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight, and the Sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that...it´s good thing he had his dreams of escape to pull him through.

8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – ¡Olvídate de mí!: Forget about Me!
(I believe in Mexico it´s The Eternal Resplendence of a Mind without Memories)
They tried with the Mexican version...but in Spain, come on! Forget About Me! makes it sound like a romantic comedy where someone gets bonked on the head and amnesia induced hi-jinks ensue. (ps. 50 First Dates, which should be titled Forget About Me!, is called As If It Were the First Time)

9. Groundhog day – Atrapado en el tiempo: Trapped in Time
Sounds like some Orwellian sci-fi thriller...Quantum Leap the movie...gone terribly wrong!

10. Scarface - El Precio del Poder: The Price of Power
Yeah, it´s a heafty-effing-fee.

Also, as a funny sidenote, Kermit the Frog is named Rana René (Renee the Frog) and Barny Rubble is called Pedro Marmol (Peter Marble)....so weird.

Here´s a few of my proposed Spanish titles.

Harry Potter - Travesuras del Joven Mago: The Young Wizard´s Mischief

Lord of the Rings - El Chaparro que Destruye el Anillo: The Short Guy that Destroys the Ring

New Moon - Una Pasión Supernatural: A Supernatural Passion

Back in Mexico

Of the countless ways to analogize the chronology of life's passing (book chapters, sands of time, play acts, etc) some of you may remember that I prefer the movie analogy to these other, more archaic comparisons. A movie has a soundtrack, action, scene changes, comic relief, drama, attractive people, and--unless its a bad indy film--a happy ending.

Well, another scene in Joey's movie has begun. The scene set in Fort Collins Colorado-where I was a graduate student-segues into this new scene when a week or so before graduating, I sent an email to the contacts at the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan, who I was working with this summer suggesting that they should hire me back on as a professor of the same Intro to Sustainable Enterprise class that we improvised this summer. To my surprise, a few weeks ago, I got a response saying that we should go for it and why don't we start working out the details...classes start February 3rd! So, now I find myself in Merida, Mexico for another 6 month stint. You know times are tough when graduate students have to emigrate to Mexico to find work, but I guess that's what it's come to...it's not surprising given my past tendencies for taking off and ending up in Mexico.

From February to July, I'm going to be teaching one section of Intro to Sustainable Enterprise (it's a new class, so new, even I don't know what it's really about!) at the UADY Business School. My class will be undergraduate students, in their 3rd or 4th year. I'm excited to be here, work hard, have fun and learn a lot...as I always do in my time spent outside the US, and my comfort zone (speaking of comfort zones, I'm crashing at my buddy Harry's house, where I'm sleeping in his guest hammock). This scene has promise, stay tuned, keep your fingers crossed that the peso doesn't continue devaluing, and that this scene introduces the señorita of romantic interest.

Create your Fame and Go Back to Sleep

One thing I like about Mexicans is their usage of sayings (folk wisdom if you will). In Mexico they´re called Dichos, and it´s not uncommon for people to say them in everyday settings. During my summer practicum in Mérida, I picked up a few more, and in the process realized that these sayings remind me a lot of the sayings my grandpa used to use. It seemed like he had some Western/Cowboy Witicism for just about every setting and situation. Here´s a shortlist of some of my favorites from Mexico and some of my Grandpa´s doozies.

Niño que no llora, no mama - Baby that doesn´t cry, doesn´t nurse. Mexican equivalent to ¨squeaky wheel gets the grease¨.

Arbol que nace torcido, jamas su tronco se endereza - Tree that springs up crooked, never straightens its trunk. This is like saying that someone who´s proven to be a bad egg from the get-go will always be a bad egg.

Plantado como novia de rancho - Stood up like a small-town fiance.

Como perro de rancho despues de la boda - Like a ranch dog after a wedding. This is for when you´ve eaten way too much food...ranch dogs are supposedly skinny, and at the wedding they binge.

Crea Fama y Echate a Dormir - Create your fame and go back to sleep. This one refers to the fact that once your reputation for a certain type of activity is set...it doesn´t matter what you do (you could just go back to sleep), people will continue to believe the image you initially created.

Vestido Quemado, Vestido Comprado - I actually made this one up, and it means ¨Burnt Dress is a Bought Dress¨...I actually burnt a dress, and had to buy it...but in a less literal sense, the saying could refer to having to own up to your actions. (ie. if you knock up your girlfriend...vestido quemado, vestido comprado).

Here´s some of my favorites from my Grandpa´s list. Some of these are pretty strange, and I have no idea where they came from...but it was always funny to hear my Grandpa in his thick Texan accent say them, and for some reason they seemed to make sense and fit the situation:

On Food and Eating

After one of Mom’s meals – “There’s something good about everything, but there’s everything good about that”.

About Injuries

“Why, if I was a hog and had that on my nose, I’d go ahead and root.”

On Children and Youth

To a youth (usually a boy) – “How old are you? How did you get so ugly in so few a years?”

About his grandsons – They were either “little farts, shit-eaters or roundheads”

On Animals:

Horsess – “He run like a striped-assed ape”.
“That horse was wound up as tight as an Elgin watch”.
“That horse was so poor he wouldn’t make glue”.

About People:

Someone inept – “He couldn’t piss out of a boot with the directions on the heel”.
“He couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle”.

A reckless driver – “Take it away Leon, born in hell and homesick”.

A slow driver – “That guy’s got no place to go and all day to get there”.

This one really cracked me up: “She’s so crossed-eyed she’d have to lay down to look down a well”.

“She’s so skinny she’d have to stand in the same place twice to cast a shadow”.

“You need two of them hats, one to shit in and the other to cover it up with”.

“He was nervous as a whore in church”.

“If I had a mechanics job and another job, I’d take the other one”.

Someone cheap – “That guy was so tight he squeaked like a new saddle”.

Person with a hangover – “he was so hung-over, his eyes looked like two eggs in a slop bucket”.

“A woman can love a monkey as well as a man.”

On Nature & the Weather:

Good grazing grass – “The grass was stirrup deep”.

Rain – “It was a turd-floater between San Ysidro and Bernalillo”.
“It was raining so hard the ducks came inside”.
¨It´s a Toad-strangler¨

Cold – “Cold as a well-digger’s ass”.
¨Colder than a witches tit in a brass bra¨

Water – “The man that made that sure knew what he was doing”.

Cold Water - “As cold as a whore’s heart”.

Snow - “The snow was ass-deep to a tall Indian”.
“It was snowing so hard you could poke a hole in it”.
“The snow was so wet you could fill a gallon bucket and when it melted it’d run over”.

A hot, sweaty day – “Sweating like a nigger at ‘lection time”.

About the Man-made World:

Trucks, etc. – “I wish I had that “truck” and he had a better one”.

Money – “I wish I had the money to buy that truck (a new Kenworth)”. Daddy @ 75 years
“What would you do with a truck like that”? Calvin
“I didn’t say I wanted the truck I said I wished I had the money for a truck like that”.

“I wouldn’t buy that if I had your money”

Witticisms:

“If you get there first, make a mark. If I get there first I’ll mark it out”.
“If it wasn’t for work, I wouldn’t have anything to do”.
“It was slicker than snot on a doorknob”.
“If I was any better I couldn’t stand it. If I was any worse, you couldn’t stand it”.
“Give a man luck and shit’ll do for brains”.

I´ve been considering taking a more active approach to incorporating these sayings into my everyday speech, but you can really only get away with most of them if you´re an old cowboy with a Texas drawl.

Farewell FireCamp

A close friend of a close friend came to Mérida to visit for about a week...it was great to have Nicole around, and we had some great Mexican adventures together...crazy extreme spelunking and two run-ins with the Mérida police force without having to pay a single bribe. This campfire (fondly called a FireCamp in honor of our friend Harry) on the beach was a last hoorah farewell for Nicole. It´s just a hug in pelotas Nicole. Click the link to see the whole set of photos.

Early Morning Basketball

Sporadically over this summer, I´ve been waking up to go exercise at the Salvador Alvarado Stadium. It´s a big, open-air stadium that´s open to the public, and in the mornings it´s full of Yucatecan people doing tae-bo, jogging, playing tenniss, swimming, and to my suprise...a vivacious early-morning-old-guys pickup basketball league.

My personal history with early-morning-old-guys pickup basketball leagues goes WAY back. I think my dad started waking me up to go play basketball when I was in like 4th grade. In those days, in Eagar, the basketball started at about 5.15. You had to get there early to get on a good team, so in order to get there on time we woke up around 20 till 5, swung by to pick up Nathan Thurber (on several occassions I was sent to sneak into his house...go down to his room in the basement and wake him up). Only now is the insanity of all this occurring to me....sending your 10 year old into someone´s house uninvitedly at 4:40 in the morning??

These epic Stake Center battles were multipurpose; teaching younger guys how to play dirty, exercise for the old guys (side note...I spell the word exercise wrong about 97% of the time), reliving glory days, for the love of the game, and paying homage to the sport that saved your life in my Dad´s case. Something I´ve learned by playing here in México is that early-morning-old-guys pickup basketball leagues are the same wherever you go. The old guys think they own the court, and can get away with whatever they see fit. They´re always trying to rig the teams to their liking (Don´t deny it Dad, you would purposely miss his free throws to be on the same team as Leon Slade). They play dirty...¨hey, nobody´s counting fouls, right?¨ The old guys will also try to get points without actually making baskets...¨weren´t we 5 already??¨ They´ll also make up rules on the fly, and try to get in your head by cracking old guy jokes. Well, Mexican E.M.O.G.P.B.L.´s are the just the same...only it´s all in Spanish.

All that being said...I LOVE early-morning-old-guys basketball leagues. I actually think the shady behavior of the old guys is kindof endearing....and am looking forward to the time when I´m old enough to be one of those Old Guys.

A Shoutout to My Sources

I probably love music to a fault. I´ve loved music ever since I was a kid, riding around with my dad in the mountains listening to his tapes of KDKB radio with Led Zeppelin, Eagles, BTO, (yes, in order to listen to classic rock on his car stereo my Dad had to tape the music when he was in the big city).

This is a shortlist of the people who I owe big-time for introducing me to artists, genres, beats, hooks, lyrics, melodies, rhythms, etc. It´s actually a little long, but I´m writing it for myself as much as any of you three readers.

My Sources.

My Dad and his buddy Leon: These guys used to be like the non-bearded ZZ Top of still-touring-70´s-rock-bands concert attendance...prolific and classic concert goers. I remember a trip to Sedona, squished in a bench seat of Leon´s truck with Jeremy, listening to a Led Zeppelin Remasters tape into the sleepy hours. I have these two to thank for my burning testimony of all Classic Rock.

Sister Melony: Mel showed me the beauty in Gay Euro-pop by forcing me to listen to hours of Depeche Mode. I think Catching up with Depeche Mode was one of the first CD´s I ever bought (it was in my first big order from BMG...remember, you got like 11 in the first order??...man, bittorrent was inevitable). Years later, I cursed her when I became addicted to the song Enjoy the Silence for 2 months...that was the only song I could listen to, seriously.

KQAZ: We only had a couple radio stations in Eagar, and this one actually had a guy that did the worlds worst impersonation of John Wayne as a station identification. I thank KQAZ for my knowledge of every top ten country hit from ´89 to ´95. Spencer, what´s your excuse? If it´s on a ¨classic¨ country radio station, there´s a good chance that I´ll know the lyrics.

Mom: My mom´s strict enforcement of the Sunday-is-for-boring-classical-music rule helped me grow to love George Winston´s December album and other operatic overtures. I like some Opera, there, I said it...man cannot live from indy-alt-country-rock alone.

Devon: Devon was there when I got invited to the U2-athon at Bret Shield´s house. We watched Zooropa, and I was hooked. He kept me on a pretty good diet of U2 and REM for the next couple years. We listened to Dead Presidents of blah blah, Bush, some Green Day, etc. Devol was with me when I watched Pink Floyd The Wall...and those shared emotional scars will always bind us together. (Addendum for Devon, he also showed me They Might be Giants, and Dinner Bell might still be the most sticky song I´ve ever heard).

J-low Wilson: Jared was from cholo-land-border-town, and I´ll always be indebted to him for my appreciation of hip-hop type music...which all started with his Warren G Regulate CD. ¨It´s kinda easy when you listen to the G´d up sound¨

Stanley: Stanley loves to tell the story of how I flinched when he first said hi to me...but the first thing I remember about meeting him was connecting over music. Pink Floyd to be exact. The list of artists I´m indebted to him for is long and includes heavy hitters like Ray Lamontagne, Jeff Buckley, M. Craft, Doves, and any random Techno that I might have hidden away in my iPod.

Tom: Tom plays one CD in his car FOREVER...and for the whole semester when we were the only two back from our missions, it was Lauren Hill. And I love that album now. I also had a couple mix CD´s labeled Mellow like Tom and Tom´s Mellow Goodness...which had some good songs by Huffamoose, Martin Sexton and Mazzy Starr. I guess they were from Jill.

Spencer: Spencer started me down the path of mass piracy. Before I left for DC, he suggested some artists, I made some playlists and burned a few mp3 cds. I ended up with a lot of the music that I´ve been listening to ever since...Josh Ritter, Bob Schneider, Ryan Adams, Wilco, and I think I even got my Rage Against the Machine from him then. It would sound super gay if Breckan hadn´t been third-wheeling, but I remember the drive up the canyon when I first heard Josh Ritter very vividly.

Jeff: I have Jeff to thank for Pearl Jam and Radiohead...two bands that I somehow didn´t realize were THE BEST TWO BANDS...according to Jeff anyways. Jeff would be proud to know that the ¨greatest hits¨ disks he made me for these two bands have flowered into discographies. I love these two bands.

Robert: I know few people with such a thirst for media (and I´m talking complete albums only). Robert and I set up a piracy shop that would have made any chinatown $4 DVD salesman envious. The list of artists for which I am indebted to Robert is longer than the list of dudes who´s lives he´s ruined...and that´s long. Magnet, The National, CYHSY, Andrew Bird, and on and on.

Kristen: Kristin is a DJ for ASU´s radio station. I think we connected more over music than anyone else I´ve known. Any ¨indy¨ appreciation I have came from her. But also my Jenny Lewis, Gillian Welch and Neko Case are from Kristen.

Deke: Deke recently Pando´d me Lupe Fiasco...which has changed my life.

Angie: Band of Horses equals Awesome.


There´s too much crappy music for us all to sift through on our own...we need sources we can trust. I count on you people, so keep em coming.