Saturday-Sunday: Boremageddon

Goodness - Skipped another one. Last night was kind of a blur. I tried to go see Harry Potter at 9:25, but the line was unbelievably long. Puerto Ricans love to go to movies as late as possible, it seems - the lines were kind of long when we went to the 6:25 showing the other day, but nothing like this. I showed up, waited in line to get cash (the movie theater in the mall only takes cash), and then said "Screw it" and went home. So I got in late and went straight to bed.

'Cuz I was up this morning at 4:30 again to go film the sunrise on the face of the Santurce market that the sun actually hits. Got there on time (barely) to film the first lights coming on inside, but I was jiggling my tripod around when they went on (D'oh!) and settled on a spot that, once the sun was fully up, turned out not to be as nice as the one I had started in. Drat. And the day dawned overcast, so the sun never directly struck the face of the building, which I was shooting for. I'll try again Tuesday, 'cuz it's closed tomorrow.

Yesterday? Wow, kind of hard to recall. We did household chores in the morning, lunched, and hit the beach, I think - yep, that's it. Though I did take a run right before lunch, which was nice. Hot, but nice.

I also did a recycling run, and on the way I listened to 94.3, I believe, which is a regaetón station. Those of you who don't know what regaetón is, listen up: It's a new-ish form of urban music that was born in Puerto Rico and involves a mixture of Caribbean-style rap beats and sort of hypnotic, repetitive, Jamaican-influenced melodies. Four years ago, every single regaetón song sounded exactly alike, but now, it's really grown up, and there are complicated melodies and downright thoughtfully produced, nifty arrangements of beats that still qualify enough as regaetón to be played on this station. And then there was
this song. It's very funny - it's a long list of silly, ridiculous things that the singer can supposedly do - things like "I can cross all of the borders and don't need a visa, I finally got a decent smile out of Mona Lisa," etc. "For you - Everything I do I do it for you..." That's the refrain. I found it wonderful, came home, and found it on iTunes.

The song itself is played on ukelele, with the slide guitar as a key element, all Hawaiian-style; and I suspect that they just didn't know how to end the song, so they had it end with the gunshot and the sound of a breaking ukelele string, and then called it "Death in Hawaii" because of the ending. The video? Well, if you have a song strangely titled "Death in Hawaii", that actually has nothing to do with death, what are you supposed to do? So they do this video of two of the band members as a couple being gunned down on a beach in Hawaii. At the end, it says "25,000 dolphins a year - eventually, they were going to get their revenge." Apparently they just shrugged and said "Look, the title is a joke anyway - Let's turn the video into a joke / protest about the massacre of dolphins, which is another thing we don't like." I like that kind of thinking.

I researched the group a bit: Puerto Rican, called Calle 13, and they achieved notoreity for writing a song in 2005 as a reaction to the death, at the hands of the FBI, of Filiberto Ojeda, a nationalist resistance leader in Puerto Rico. I had no idea - I'm listening to the song as I write this for first time. It's a rap, and I suspect I'm going to get a looooot of mileage out of it in class. And out of Calle 13 in general.

And then, around 4:00, I departed to go to the market and chat with my friends there, including Basi, the owner of the botánica, who was very happy to see me and chatty, and who agreed to let me film her store and interview her all I like. Great. Also met Oscar, who does spiritual consults there on Saturdays, and his mother Aleira. Great people who are form the area where we spent last weekend.

Back home, supper, after-dinner reading for the kids, and then we settled in to watch "The Mask of Zorro"'. And I left at 9:00 to go see the movie.

So, was this our least interesting day yet? Possibly.

This afternoon we're thinking of going to fly kites near El Morro, the old fort in Old San Juan. And the dryer dial broke, so we got no dryer. And that's the end of the news. Hasta luego, mis amores!