Everything In Its Right Place
Rio de Janeiro,
carneval. Yeah, I went there a couple of years ago. Searching for a life-changing experience, I ran into a different cliché. I joined three other dudes seeking to make a splash in the biggest party of the year. Turns out a few million others heard the rumor along with us. We searched deep into the night for the hidden samba party that did not show up on the news. We hunted through neighborhoods away from the main strips for a cool restaurant with a killer band in the bar that played on until dawn. Meet some cool people from a different culture and contemplate future experiences to share. Funny thing about the cliché we encountered, it was not too far away from what we originally sought. It’s just that we started looking for the experience in the wrong place.
What Is Rio?
In a few weeks Rio de Janieiro will host the greatest party on Earth—carnival (
carneval, in Portuguese). Beginning this week BlackNotBlack will offer an overview of this majestic event, written from firsthand experience by myself and guest poster Ari Sawyer.
What is Rio? A lush and exotic paradise filled with sunbaked cariocas swaying in ecstasy to the throb of the samba? A hellish urban maze where the elite flaunt their treasures while turning a blind eye to the sufferings of the impoverished? Perhaps it’s both—golden city and dystopian slum;
Brigadoon and
Bladerunner. One thing is certain—carnival galvanizes the city each year. It is a ceasefire-as-worldwide-party, with more than a million travelers arriving to satiate themselves in a seething bacchanal of food, music, dance, sun, and sex. It is all of humanity in orgiastic release, and when the four day weekend passes, Rio becomes itself once more, whatever that may be.
Anatomy of a Smear
If you have any doubt that ultraconservative Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Network is a tool of the rabid right, check out this transcript from
Think Progress.org which details the network's recent attempt to "Swift Boat" U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama. It's half-hilarious, half-tragic, and completely disheartening, because as you read it you understand clearly that one hundred million frightened American heartlanders are swallowing this whole. The only armor against shit-slinging subhumans like the Fox gang is the truth, but truth has taken a hike from that channel, probably never to return. Weep once more for the American IQ.
The Anti-Anti-Politically Correct
The flap in Britain over the possible racist treatment of Indian movie star Shilpa Shetty on the television show Big Brother shows no signs of abating. Tony Blair himself felt compelled to weigh in last week, offering assurances that England
condemns racism in all its varied forms. In so doing he confidently invoked the royal “we” for a nation of millions who don’t seem to agree with him on much, yet presumably are in lockstep with him on this one.
Meanwhile in India there was both support for and criticism of Shetty. While nearly all felt she had been racially insulted, some blamed her for exposing herself to the racists. Indian filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt said in Mumbai's newspaper DNA: “I believe no one can insult you without your permission. Shilpa Shetty has paid the price for trying to desperately seek the approval of the West.” He went on to add: “It is pathetic how we can go on bended knees and lick the boots of Westerners in an effort to be part of their world.”
Is it just me, or does it seem obvious that what Shetty’s roommate/
tormentors—Jane Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jackiey Budden—hate about her is her beauty? Surely this is a conflict the producers of Big Brother counted upon, though they may not have expected a racial confrontation per-se. Nevertheless, in the world of gonzo television the incident can only be termed a success. There’s reality, and the reality behind the reality. And back there, in the offices and boardrooms where hyperstressed men in suits reside, ratings are up, profits are up, and jobs are safe for another quarter.
But this post isn’t about Shilpa Shetty or Big Brother—it’s about the anti-politically correct crowd who have once again reared their ugly heads like a hydra, hissing that they are weary of being told what they can and cannot say. Once this dubious decree is parsed to its root sentiment, what is left is a vaguely nationalist defense of the right to insult other ethnic groups—
invariably those who possess darker skins. Implicit is the assertion that if the positions were reversed, they would not be so fragile: “If I were Indian (or black, or Hispanic, or Jewish)” they say, “I wouldn’t give a good goddamn what anyone said about me.”
An effective response to such a statement might be to reframe the issue around something the person actually cares about. If they are short, attack their height. If they’re overweight, suggest they get off their ass and exercise. On Big Brother the contestants who bullied Shilpa Shetty often deliberately perverted the pronunciation of her name or simply referred to her as “the Indian.” How long would it be before an obese man cracked if those around him referred to him as “lard-ass,” or constantly called him “jowl” instead of “John?” Not long, I wager. If you say you’re too solid to fold under such pressure, I have my doubts. Everyone has a trigger. Did your father leave when you were ten? Did your sister die of cancer? It’s all fair game, in the anti-politically correct jungle.
Whereas many bristle that political correctness is an attempt to stifle free expression, I see it as a simple suggestion that people be polite. 100% free expression doesn’t exist in any society. It is frowned upon to use obscenities in most circumstances, and if you violate this rule people disapprove. Only when race is involved does the issue of polite behavior suddenly boil over like a pot on a stove and become a question of free speech. What does this tell us about the anti-politically correct crowd? That their refusal to be constricted by notions of politeness in the area of racial speech may be indicative of underlying racial resentment? I think it’s a reasonable deduction, since if they were truly concerned about free speech as a broad issue they would address hundreds of forms of censorship, rather than just those few relating to whether they can hurl ethnic slurs.
Those who find it a constant irritant that racial insults are frowned upon expose themselves as shallow, at the very least. I’ve seen surveys in which a substantial percentage of Americans, to raise an example, believe this is one of the major problems facing their society. In a world of environmental disaster, corporate enslavement, government corruption, and rampant terrorism, their major gripe is that they can’t insult people. To make this a core issue of one’s politics is evidence of a joyless and unfulfilled life, in my opinion, and is astonishingly sub-mental. Behind the complaints you can envision the precise moment when they became fed up. It was the day someone chastised them for using the word nigger. Or the day they were reprimanded at work for telling the old joke explaining why God gave women legs. Anti-political correctness seems to be a movement fueled by people who have been burned. It appears nobody likes being singled out for negative attention, even them.
In my life political correctness doesn’t apply because I have quality friends. They are diverse, interesting, kind, and worldly—all while being epic level hellraisers. They have disliked people, argued with them, and even left some bleeding on the floor, but the concept of equal standing in our group is tacit, as is the understanding that there is polite and impolite behavior. When my friends behave impolitely, they do so in moments of weakness or drunkenness, understand this is the reason, always apologize for their behavior, and do not generally blame those who were offended. In short, they are secure enough to accept being corrected and criticized. It’s part of being a worthwhile person.
So while the anti-politically correct crowd fight tooth and nail for the right to insult people of other races, I guess the rest of us, those of us I am now calling the anti-anti-politically correct, will concentrate on the small issues—our government, our environment, our future.
Labels: big brother, political correctness, shilpa shetty
A London New Year's that Wasn't
Buddhists and quantum physicists will tell you with utter certainty that time is an illusion, but I believe counting the days has concrete rewards, and that New Year’s celebrations are one of them. Although I’ve been fortunate enough to be stationed at ground zero for some of the biggest parties in the world—from SXSW in Austin to Carnival in Rio—I’ve never really celebrated
western New Year’s in grand style. On two occasions I was in the Caribbean, on three I was in Los Angeles, and I spent one uneventful New Year’s in the coach section of a United flight from Spain, pathetic as that seems. But I’ve never rung in the New Year with fireworks, champagne, and a hundred thousand people screaming, dancing, and swapping kisses.
This year I decided London was the ticket.
London’s official celebration, a gargantuan fireworks display that draws multitudes, takes place on the River Thames with the famous London Eye as the backdrop. I really meant to attend this event, but a funny thing happened on the way to London—I ended up in Hastings with friends. Clearly Hastings is no London, however it is historically significant. As anyone who retains a sliver of high school history somewhere in their brain can tell you, it was the site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the most decisive Norman victory in the Norman conquest of England.
On October 13th of that year a French army led by William of Normandy clashed with English warriors led by Harold II. There are numerous conflicting accounts concerning the battle, but the long and short of it is that the English lost the next day after Harold was killed. Some versions have him cleanly slain, while others have him felled and subsequently decapitated, de-legged, and de-everythinged by the savage French, who apparently intended to dice him up for mauviette pie. My friend Davis (not his real name) summed the entire event up in a deadpan I found quite comical, though I’m not entirely sure he meant it that way: “They fought, Harold was killed, arrow in the eye, French win.”
These days Hastings is a beachy seaside town, heavily trafficked in summertime by London tourists. My friends had in mind a New Year’s pub crawl, but as often happens with pub crawls, we lacked the will (and coordination) to continue after bar number two. So while masses of hearty souls braved chill temperatures to watch fireworks detonate above the London Eye, I was in a pub in Hastings, where the last fireworks were in 1066. While I didn’t have the Eye or the pyrotechnics, I did have excellent company and saw several men you’d think would possess more dignity reenact the stripping scenes from The Full Monty. Lacking the French killer instinct, I couldn’t muster the nerve to photograph their doughy cavorting. But my girlfriend, bless her evil heart, felt no such qualms.
Sometime in the deep a.m. the festivities shifted to Davis’s (still not his real name) and his girlfriend Naomi’s (op.cit.) flat and evolved into an all night drug party, which is why I’m not using their real names. This was something of a surprise, even though the last time I saw the two, Davis dosed me with what he called a “Jesus cookie.” It’s a funny story, actually. He asked me if I’d like a Jesus cookie, but I only heard the word “cookie.” It tasted like a regular cookie. Forty minutes later I achieved geostationary orbit approximately 350 kilometers above the planet.
Two days after Hastings I found myself in London, too late for the fireworks, but not too late to sip the dregs of New Year’s by riding the London Eye. While my friends waited patiently below, my girlfriend and I went up for the bargain price of fifteen pounds each—about sixty dollars total, folks. Still, if the chance arises to ride this marvelous contraption, I recommend it. The Eye is an engineering miracle, unlike any other ferris wheel in the world. The view from the top is what you’d expect,
with London laid out like electric embroidery from horizon to horizon. But as beautiful and gaudy as the panorama is, and as spectacular as the New Year’s fireworks must have been, I’m certain nothing could have been more entertaining than the night in Hastings with friends (and their drugs).
As for attending a big league New Year’s party, I guess I’ll have to try again next year.
Labels: hastings, london, london eye, travel
Mel Gibson Can't Help Himself
As you know if you've read my postings, I worked in Hollywood for a few years and still have many friends there. Some work in the always dynamic film industry, and others work normal jobs. A screenwriter friend sent me this response to the post
Mel, Movies and the Maya. It's rather revealing. Check it out:
I just finished 'Mel, Movies, and the Maya' and have a story for you that you may find interesting.
Four days ago, Tuesday the 9th, Lia was working at Cafe del Rey in Marina del Rey. I don't know if you've ever been there, (it's in the Marina next to the Ritz-Carlton, has valet parking and a $48.00 New York steak on the menu) but it's nice.
Here's the scene - It's about 8:00PM and Lia waits tables on a fairly busy evening. A single woman enjoys a cocktail at a corner booth. Lia notices the woman has been joined by a man, and she approaches the table to offer him a drink. The man turns to Lia - it's Mel Gibson. Lia makes a joke "I guess you won't be having a drink with us." Mr. Gibson laughs and orders a soda water. He and his dinner companion (not his wife, I might add) stay for a couple hours. Mel drinks only soda water. By the end of dinner Lia and Mel are chatting about movies. She informs him she loved Apocalyto (I know she really did love it because we talked about it before this) and asks if he's seen Pan's Labrynth? "No I haven't," Mel replies, "thanks for the recommendation."
All is well. Mel's female companion goes to the bathroom. Mel pays the bill and heads for the exit...
Mel walks out the front door and flashbulbs go off everywhere. He storms back into the restaurant screaming "Who dropped the fucking dime?! Who the fuck dropped the fucking dime!!" He demands to see the manager and screams at her in the lobby area, dropping f-bombs loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear. "I'm never coming back to this fucking place. You people called the fucking paparazzi fuck fuck fuckety fuck" (I'm paraphrasing). He wants Lia to bring him his bill so he can tear it up. The manager tells him that they have celebrities in all the time and they respect their privacy and assures him that no one employed by the restaurant called the tabloids. The manager insists he must pay his bill and leave. Mel yells a bit more and then storms out to his car which the valets have pulled out front. He cusses out the valets and peels out of the parking lot.
Lia is visibly shaken as she returns to her section. A customer consoles her: "What an asshole," he comments. Lia checks Mel's bill. He has left her just over a ten percent tip. That was before he went beserk, mind you. What an asshole, indeed.Thus ends my friend's account. You're saying it's hearsay of course, and you're right, but anyone who has lived in Hollywood will sense the truth of the story. Hollywood people know that, even under the microscope of magazine shows, tabloids and paparazzi, ninety percent of what celebs do goes unnoticed and unreported, save to employees of the various projects on which they work. I've heard verifiably incredible things about everyone from Eddie Murphy to Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and had personal interactions with a pretty long list of celebs myself. The nights of ecstasy and coke, pranks and general fucking around, are too numerous to list. It's what makes Hollywood go, and is why it's so much fun.
Anyway, the above story is just some amusing Gibson FYI. It isn't the sort of thing I usually post, but as an account of Mel's behavior a.a. (after arrest), it's a fascinating postscript.
Hotel Yang, Part 4
While it’s true I’ve saved the yangiest for last in my account of zero-star hotels, since I continue to find new flops I reserve the right to revise my top picks in the future. To review, we have the
Tortuga Surf Lodge in Playa el Tunco, El Salvador, and the Hotel Happy House in San Salvador, El Salvador, at numbers two and three, respectively. A while back I described the beach town of Monterrico, Guatemala, but I didn’t offer details about lodgings. There are actually several decent hotels in town, but I never stayed at them. Instead I restricted my patronage to two—El Delfin, which is only somewhat yangy, and Johnnie’s, which is the archetypal third world flop.
El Delfin had the misfortune of hosting two days of my traditional birthday fortnight a while back, an affair that saw a number of friends fly in from various chilly northern climes. They arrived fairly well revved, and El Delfin seemed the perfect choice for them to cut loose, with four groups of large bungalows clustered around four swimming pools. We had reserved a group of bungalows in advance, but when we arrived there were problems checking in and the pool hadn’t yet been filled. The management wasn’t particularly responsive to the problems, and this gave us the idea they weren’t eager to host us. But with people arriving all day by car and ferry we couldn’t change hotels without creating mass confusion, so we checked in—but with attitudes.
Not long afterward the manager wandered over and told us we had to leave. Seems the desk clerk had erred checking us in—the place was reserved already. No, we couldn’t switch bungalows. The entire hotel was booked. As a Central America vet I can tell you this is what is called a shakedown, and it’s because of this sort of foolishness that a hotel reservation in never quite safe in Guatemala. We had long ago learned to play the game—I mean, what’s an extra twenty in the scheme of things? But sometimes enough is enough, and so we surprised the manager—we told him, in so many words, that we weren’t moving but he was welcome to try if he had (a) the huevos and, (b) ten to twelve security guards.
We didn’t see the guy the rest of our stay.
We had brought everything a good party needs—loud music, fresh fish, steaks, veggies, beer, coconuts, deadly Zacapa rum, and plenty of mojito fixings. But we soon realized we didn’t have enough firewood. It’s always something, isn’t it? We reconnoitered Monterrico’s few tiendas for replenishments, but to no avail. Somewhere along the way we saw a monkey chained to a car, and my friend Charlie hatched a plan to spring the poor creature, a plot he dubbed Operation Monkey Smuggle. This scheme never came to fruition, which was unusual, because Charlie and I had smuggled animals before, specifically coatimundi, which we conducted from mainland Honduras to the island of Roatan. But I’ll discuss that episode—and I know this is getting tiresome to hear—in a later post.
Anyhow, back at El Delfin my friend Brendan, a brilliant and violent lunatic who I may dedicate an entire post to someday, decided that the easiest way to remedy the wood shortage was simply to break up the hotel furniture and toss that in the fire. It was an uncool move, I admit, but he was still angry with the management and knew repercussions were unlikely because Delfin was a cash only establishment—which meant they didn’t have anyone’s credit info. By this time everyone had arrived and the pool, which had taken an hour-and-a-half to fill but was brimming now, became less a place for a dip than a place to piledrive unsuspecting friends. I won’t go into details about the party itself, save to say it was like all my parties—except wetter.
The next morning we awoke with the idea of a dip foremost in our minds, but stopped short as we neared the pool. We couldn’t see the bottom of it—the water looked like lobster bisque. We spent a long time puzzling over this and finally decided the filth was a mixture of dust, sand, sweat, spilled drinks, dropped food, and various biological emissions which shall remain nameless. I asked, with a tone of horror, “Did it look like that last night?” The answer: “It must have.” I hit the showers immediately.
Cleansed and marginally more alert, I emerged to survey the full extent of the carnage. Empty bottles, scattered plates, fish bones, shrimp shells, plastic cups, and unclaimed clothes were everywhere. And besides the usual post-party detritus, there was also burnt furniture in the coals of the cooking fire. We shifted quickly into get-the-hell-out-of-there mode. I mean, you can face down a hotel owner, but Guate cops are a different story. Before we left, Brendan decided to play one last trick—he buried the uncooked seafood behind our bungalow. Again, an uncool move, but Brendan specializes in this area—on a previous trip to town he stole a horse. We managed to get out of there before the owner saw what had become of the place, but word arrived from the coast a week later via the Guate grapevine that my friends and I are barred from El Delfin for life.
I certainly don’t blame the guy.
Luckily there are other dives in Monterrico, and only a few doors down the beach from El Delfin is the infamous Johnnie’s. Doubtless there are far scummier hotels in the world, but my room (pictured below) looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since Cortez landed. The bed was a straw mat on a concrete slab, the shower (far left in the photo) looked like it had been used as a spittoon, and the toilet (at right) was triple-crusted with filth and had no seat. I took a look at it and said to Diana, my longsuffering girlfriend, “I’m sorry to say this, but if the toilet and your skin make any kind of contact I’m not going to be touching you this weekend.” Anytime she went into the stall and I’d yell out, “Are you squatting? You better be squatting.”
Despite these flaws, Johnnie’s occupies a special place in my heart because it was the first hotel I ever stayed at in Monterrico, during the events detailed in my post
Clan of the Drum. Basically, Johnnie’s is part of a weekend during which I realized a more fulfilling life awaited me outside the States. The hotel and the nearby bar El Animal Desconocido are a tandem in my mind, extensions of one another. It’s always the same—Johnnie’s for a swim in the pool and a few beers, then a trip down the beach to El Animal. My first visit there was during a blackout. Second trip, a fella pulled up on a five thousand dollar runabout, unholstered what looked like a nickel-plated .44, and fired a full clip into the air to announce his presence. It’s always something. Another time, the aforementioned Brendan went for a nude swim after dark and lost his clothes. He walked into El Animal completely naked, picked up his glasses and walked out.
Johnnie’s is a catalyst for romance. Difficult though that may be to believe based upon the photo, several of the great expatriate romances began there. I won’t name names. I’ll just say that after Monterrico weaves its tropical spell, Johnnie’s is the hotel du nuit for consummations. Returning there in the wee hours can be like walking into a symphony mid-movement, so abundant are the sex sounds. Once, I accidentally left a bottle of pretty good red wine in a room that was being used by friends for a tryst, and my friend Peter simply walked in and grabbed it. I asked him what he said to the lovers. His response: “I didn’t say anything. What is there to say? We needed the booze, they had it.”
Because the walls of the rooms are only eight feet high, while the thatched ceilings are about eighteen feet high, each wing of Johnnie’s is actually more like a single room with dividers. Moans and cries travel from one end to the other with nothing to muffle them. Unless the surf is rough enough that night to drown out some of the noise, you get a ringside seat. The next morning you ask your friends, “Did you hear X and Y going at it?” The answer is always yes. You ask your other friends, who were further down the hall. They say, “Oh God, yes we heard them. It was like they were in the room with us.” And you realize that nobody is getting any sleep. You’re either having sex, or waiting for it to finish. When the lovers are done and the noise fades to sighs and whispers, the whole hotel seems to let out a deep breath, roll over and go to sleep.
So for its role in facilitating some of the epic romances of our time despite looking like cellblock C at San Quentin, Johnnie’s earns my highest rating—five yangs, and first place on the list of yang hotels. In my collection I found one photo of the place that makes it look passably habitable (left). In the very best light, after an amazing night sampling the wonder, romance and danger of Monterrico, you awaken and realize you've survived again, and this is what it can look like.
This concludes the Yang series, and I hope the info is of some use, if you have Googled your way to my little blog while looking for Central American lodging info. In the meantime, I am in search of more yang hotels even now, as I make a loop through Portugal. I will certainly keep you posted on my discoveries.
Paz y amor.
