A Really Drunk Carmen

There is a bar in Brooklyn that has an opera night once a month. As a big fan of opera, I found this NPR radio article really interesting - I especially liked the bar owners motivation: opera was meant to be fun and entertaining. How the heck did opera (and classical music to a lesser degree) get all 'cultured' and 'snooty' anyway?

Here is the description:

Brooklyn Bar Serves Opera On Tap
Just off Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, a dive bar has become the local watering hole for murderers and tyrants, adulters and virgins, Don Juans and divas. In fact, all of the great characters of grand opera have found a second home in the backroom of Freddy's Bar, where the company Opera on Tap serves up a monthly recital.

The audio length is about 8 minutes. Enjoy the "real" Carmen!

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War, Unstuck In Time

As many of you know, Kurt Vonnegut passed away on April 11 at the age of 84 from brain injuries suffered from a recent fall in his home.

In arguably his most important book, Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut's main character Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time. This enables him to view his life and those around him in a 4-dimensional space that includes time. He can look up and down at time (his life) in any order. Here is Billy Pilgrim's description of war when one is unstuck in time.

I think it's a beautiful passage for it's simplicity, it's twisted perspective and view of war.

"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. . . .The bombers opened their bomb-bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes.

"When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and snipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again."

Kurt Vonnegut
1922-2007
Slaughterhouse Five

And so it goes...

Puerto Vallarta 2007

I just came back from four days in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. As is typical for me this year, I had major problems getting out of Dallas on Tuesday. First there was weather (storm rolling in). Then there was a mechanical (something about a map light or the airplane equivalent and the lack of a copilot. The mechanical was solved before a backup copilot could be found. Finally everything was ready and we were off for the evening (and a late arrival of after midnight). One half-hour in the air, the captain said that we were going to have to turn around and head back to Dallas as the Puerto Vallerto airport was having some maintenance work done that they hadn't known about when they took off.

Oh brother....! Keep in mind that I had to totally cancel a ski trip a month ago because my outbound flights were cancelled because of extraordinarily high winds in Dallas. I never did get out for that trip.

Long story short - they put us up very close to the airport for a morning departure (I opted to stay at the hotel to avoid the drive to/from my house) and I had to live without a toothbrush and toothpaste.

Mexico, however was wonderful! We had beautiful weather and the Westin (Regina Club) where my friend Susan does her time-share contracting through is just really wonderful and top class the whole way. In a very pleasant surprise, I was at our pergola outside on the beach in trunks within 50 minutes of landing.

I made a photo album of the trip here: Puerto Vallarta 2007

This vacation included my good and long-time friend Susan, our mutual friend Jill (Susan's college sorority sister), Susan's sister Julie and Julie's family (husband Mark and girls Lauren, 16 and Catherine, 10). I've had the pleasure of knowing them well throughout the years and can remember the girls when they were in diapers.

We had a great time! Highlights included the pergola on the beach every day (see pictures), the beach pina colada's (I'm not even a huge pina colada fan but these were really good), the fish taco's at Victor's, the walks to the Marina, the great company, the weather, the resort, the trips to the heart of the old city, and the very small amount of shopping that we did.

Also great fun was making fun of the banana-boat riders as they regularly rode in front of us (four stages - stage 1: great fun!; stage 2: act like it's still fun so others will think I'm a good sport; stage 3: Why isn't this holy hell done yet?; stage 4: aaaaaaahhh, OVERBOARD!), watching Mark and the girls negotiate and cooperate on a sand castle, dodging volleyballs from the throng of really poor players on the court in front of us (Sachi - you spoiled me!), and entertaining each other by sharing our iPod favorites! (my favorites were Lauren's "Shoes" and "Let Me Borrow That Top" by Kelly. Oh - Jill just reminded me of the cookie parties too!

What surprised me? Well - the margarita's are better in Dallas. Even though I attempted to order the "top shelf" and even though they were "super-sized" (kind of a gimmick - give me a smaller one and more of them) they were not very good at all. Victor tried by giving us multiple complimentary shots of slightly watered-down tequila, but give me Mi Cocina any day!

Another surprise - the best food we had there was a Mediterranean restaurant called Trio. Good job of finding it Susan! From a Mexican food perspective, the "touristy" place was inferior to the smaller, more homey and better priced alternative.

I had some type of mishap on my first day where the middle of my chest got a bit burned compared to the rest of me. I was very good about using sun protection and it was a very strange pattern. Somebody conjectured that perhaps after going for a swim, I accidentally toweled off my front and with it took off some of the waterproof protection.

Viva Mexico!