Good Weekend/Bad Weekend

Here’s a best of times/worst of times scenario for you: Not only did the trip to Porta Vallarta fall through, leaving me in Guadalajara instead (something about Sonya getting in a fight with whoever we were meant to stay with), but then I found out that half of the other students had already made plans to come out here as well, including Riverside Girl, awkward baggage and all. Irony is a funny thing, isn’t it?

I spent all of my time here with Paulina anyway, and since Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico I was able to avoid any run-ins with You Know Who. But I was nervous all the same, sure that it would happen like some bad romantic comedy that I couldn’t escape. I guess there are worse contrived genres to be stuck in, like Slasher Flick or whatever you call it when someone has to co-star with an animal, but it almost spoiled the weekend.



Luckily, I managed to have a blast with Paulina regardless. On Friday, she helped me track down the new Portishead album here (record shops in Morelia are the drizzling shits), and it’s pretty damn great. If you don’t know who they are, I won’t bore you too much, but I will say that their singer, Beth Gibbons, is easily my favorite female vocalist ever and her ability to sound both otherworldly and sexy hasn’t diminished with ten years out of the limelight. The music has gotten less cosmopolitan and a lot more psychedelic and paranoid, like a female take on Radiohead or TV On The Radio. I feel stoned just listening to this wonderful thing. Below is a clip for the first single, the appropriately-named “Machine Gun”:



Afterwards we met up with Paulina best friend Liz and a bunch of other people I can’t remember right now (one of them was named Sergio). We rolled out to a very chic bar that played lots of loud techno and served us fruity drinks with names like “Gummy” and “Diablo.” Somehow I’m more attracted to Paulina after finding out she only likes drinking beer. But her friends talked way too fast for me to even hope to understand, and Sergio seemed a little too comfortable touching my special lady while I sat there looking sheepish. When we left it wasn't soon enough for me.

We tried to head out to a party afterwards, but there were many parents there and we ended up horsing around in front of the house, with Liz driving Sergio’s car and – from what I can tell – causing its radiator to overheat. Needless to say, that kind of ended anymore plans for the night, and Paulina and I fell asleep during the long drive home.



Yesterday proved more fun: we went to see “Get Smart” (or, as it’s known here, “Espia Agente 86”), which had enough naturally-funny people in it (even a Bill Murray cameo) to be enjoyable despite a pretty lousy script. Plus, I’m starting to catch on to this “foreigners just don’t get Judd Aptow” thing, because most of the jokes in this movie drew crickets. Way cooler was the “VIP” theater we saw it in, where you watch in L-Z-Boy chairs and order from a menu (yes, there are waiters) that includes burgers, sushi, and a wide range of cocktails. I’m wondering why someone in the US hasn’t figured out a way to make this work.

Also, in another example of my notoriously weak gay-dar, Paulina helped me realize that Lorencito is definitely not playing for the same team as me. As if him only listening to disco and being part of the Madonna fan-club (serious) wasn’t enough to tip me off, I found out that “Naco”, which he uses liberally, is a really catty term that only girls use for people with no fashion sense. I had previously just assumed that his impeccable style was part of the “metro” trend catching on here (it hasn't), and I had dismissed his touchiness with his friends as part of the “friendly” Mexican culture I keep hearing about. This doesn’t change anything other than making me feel less bad that Lorenzo hasn’t invited me to go out with him and his friends more.



Anyway, today Paulina has to work and I’m being shipped back to Morelia, where many hours of compositions await me. But as far as expensive and completely unproductive weekends go, this one was, to quote Larry David: “pretty….pretty….pretty good.”