Obreros

Once a friend of mine in Cali questioned my friend selection. She said I should only befriend people with PhDs. The painter asks me why do I hang out with an obrero. Today on a train I've seen a group of businessmen dressed in Armani, showing off with their iPhones and other gadgets and I thought to myself: look, these people are the ones responsible for the crisis we are experiencing now. I've got the answer.

Bravo, Google

Somehow I like you even more.

Hot, Hot

True Blood is becoming THE must-see show. Nicholas González, one of the hottest men on Earth, appeared in the last episode as a cameo:

Puglia, Ti Amo

Last week I spent in Lecce, Southern Italy, with my "endomembrane" colleagues. The conference was quite time consuming, but every evening we found some time to enjoy the city. I was impressed how stylish the place actually is, even though it has only around 100,000 inhabitants. There are some baroque monuments on almost every corner, the people are polite, very well dressed and very, very good looking, too.

M30

Last week Madrid experienced some quite heavy storms and as this city is never ready for any rain, the M30 tunnel system was again flooded. The M30 tunnels were used as an example how wonderfully can Partido popular govern Madrid province and the whole system was wisely opened just before the local election. Obviously, any problems turn quickly into a political issue. Today, the newspapers report that after some investigation, another public project works were found responsible for the flood by making holes into the existing M30 structures. It's not clear to me whether it was the same reason for the flood we witnessed the last year (I personally doubt it), but whatever. More importantly, the designer of the M30, Manuel Melis, said yesterday: "Estoy deprimido por lo que les están haciendo a mis túneles". He's downhearted for what they were doing to his tunnels. Priceless.

Nancy No More

The fourth and so far, the darkest season of Weeds just ended. The DEA agent was found skinless on the US-Mexican border fence, Doug called the INS to have his girlfriend deported, Celia was kidnapped while in Mexico, Shane has started do deal pot at school... There were no guns aimed at Nancy's head (Season 2 finale) or her house burning to the ground (Season 3 finale) but when she was in the car heading south and calling the gift shop to order a delivery for Silas, it was one of the saddest scenes I've ever seen on TV. Finally, when the alcalde confronted her with the photograph, I though there was no way she could survive that but well, who knows after the second photo presented. Now it'll be long nine months to figure it out.

Genius

The new iTunes version introduced an interesting Pandora-like feature: when playing a song, you can let the Apple database suggest you other songs that can complement nicely the one that you like. Today, I put my all-time-favourite, There Is a Light that Never Goes Out by the Smiths and this came out:

• Life on Mars by David Bowie
• To the End (La Comédie) by Blur
• The Killing Moon by Echo & the Bunnymen
• Starálfur by Sigur Rós
• Motorcycle Emptiness by Manic Street Preachers
• Suzie by Boy Kill Boy
• Moving by Supergrass
• Gold by Spandau Ballet
• etc.

Simply amazing! These are all songs that I love to death. Bravo Steve, well done.

True Blood

HBO started to broadcast their new original TV series called True Blood. Takes place in Bon Temps, Louisiana and depicts a world where vampires are not drinking human blood but Japanese synthetic substitute and thus can live among us. Sounds pretty lame at first, but based on the screened episode premises the show is likely to be extremely stylish, cool and worth checking out.

LHC Take 2

There is a great site showing the Large Hadron Collider-related "end-of-the-world" status.

Sweet 21

Blind Melon - Toes Across the Floor (1995). BTW, the toe at 2:08 is incredibly hot.

LHC

Today, the free newspapers published a truly shocking article about the end of the world that is undeniably coming due to some obscure experiments performed at the CERN. Well guys, you have to wait a little bit longer. What happened today that has caused such an outrage? The first proton beams started to circulate in the Large Hadron Collider, one of the most expensive and groundbreaking European projects. But no real experiments will be performed until the end of October, when the "journalists" should turn on their computers because that will be the time to write about the end of the world and when the protons beams will finally collide to produce some particles which existence has to be proved to support a Grand Unified Theory. The GUT is trying to unify electromagnetism, the weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces through the theoretical Higgs boson, which is the main objective of the collision experiments.

H&K

Over the weekend, I watched both movies with Harold and Kumar and I have to say that I won't trust the critics so much. While the first movie was critically praised, the second one was just so-so for them. For me, it's the opposite, while the first one was just OK, the second one was a pure joy to watch. Making fun of so many stereotypes is truly refreshing. I'm happy to know that Harold was actually an emo boy back in college (using an eyeliner, LOL):

Waking the Dead

Today I have finally made it to an exhibition of the Renaissance portrait in El Prado. The unification theme was a great humanist message that the portrait was here to keep the dead alive, illustrated by the changes of the focus from the religious themes archetypal for the Gothic artists to, at first, the noble and rich families and later even to the workers and peasants in the Mannerists' works. My personal discovery was this great portrait of a tailor by Giovanni Battista Moroni:

East Coast vs. West Coast

The eternal rivalry moves to another battlefield: this week premiered both the second season of Gossip Girl and the reborn 90210 TV show. Now imagine the Upper East Side style with gloves, sweaters and raincoats from Bergdorf, and then the So-Cal swim trunks and wife beaters. Then imagine the almost Bergmanesque dialogues between Blair and Chuck at the Hamptons (GG) and the trashy tease with the pigs on some football field (90210). Continue with the Manhattan girls and guys actually looking seventeen years old and the sundried "sweet-sixteeners" from the West Beverly Hills who might actually be born in early 70's. The disparity couldn't be more obvious and I have a clear winner.

Autumn

Though far away from the coast, today we have a quite humid air in Madrid. Checking the weather forecast, we may even get some rain tomorrow. As the sun rays need more and more time each morning to chop the clouds and the trains becoming more and more crowded, it likely means the only thing: the autumn has arrived in its full glory.

A card game

Extremely interesting.

The Palin's Powers

She is a creationist, a book burner, a homophobe, a proud NRA member, a militant pro-life activist etc., but she's delivered what the audience wanted to hear. Scary, indeed. There are not just these thousands at the Republican National Convention but other millions of the US citizens who love these simple solutions for difficult issues. I am not a big fan of Obama and I always thought that Hillary would be a better candidate, but watching the faces and reactions in the audience, there is no other but the Obama way.
Her daughter licking her palm to groom the little one's hair reminded me of Paul Wolfowitz licking the comb:


It must be a republican thing.