Madrid, Spain - May 9, 2004
Sleep deprived
Hello! I´m in Madrid, enjoying my friend Crazy Spaniard's hospitality and am loving it, despite not having slept much since thursday. That´s spanish life. It´s past 11pm and we´ve just started thinking about having dinner. I requested an early night (to catch up on sleep and to overcome jetlag) and Jose assured me that I´d get to sleep by around 130am tonight.
Not a clean toilet to be found
Let´s go back a couple of days to friday afternoon. After a long, uneventful flight from San Francisco, I had 3 hours to kill at JFK airport. I ended up spening that time looking for a clean toilet. Before I left SF, I had naively thought that I´d be assured dependable plumblng until I arrived in Casablanca. However, for some inexplicable reason, Terminal 3 at JFK had one functioning men´s bathroom. After impatiently enduring a 10 minute line to get in, I discovered that 3 out of 4 toilets were roped off. The last one was worse than some of the latrines I experienced in Cairo so I resigned myself to walking to Terminal 2. Imagine my disgust when I learned that two out of three bathrooms there were also out of order. A walk to Terminal 1 finally yielded a clean toilet.
"Benga! Benga! Take cover my friend!"
Fast forward several hours. After an uncomfortable cross Atlantic flight marred by a baby that wouldn´t stop crying, I finally arrived in Madrid to find a grinning, black-clad Crazy Spaniard waiting for me. He let me nap for 1.5 hours before the Weekly Family Lunch where we enjoyed a wonderful meal before the news broke: today we would celebrate C´s final day as a bachelor. C, Crazy Spaniard's best friend, speaks perfect english, and had just accepted a residency in Salinas, California. To make it easier for his girlfriend to join him in the US, he decided to marry her. I´m not so sure about that logic, but I´m more than happy to join a good party. The first stop was an afternoon of painball. The adneraline kicked in and and I was soon in a mud-filled bunker with paintballs whistling over my head. The highlight was a game that loosely translated into "hunt the bachelor." We were each given six bullets and C was given a full cannister. C got a two minute head start to hide and we then had to find him. If he hit us, we were out. C only managed to kill one of us and took at least ten shots before the referree called a mercy ending.
A sea of spanish mullets
While the others bbqéd, I managed to sneak in an hour nap. We finally feasted at 1am and, after a good hour and a half of eating and telling stories, decided to get ready for the club. Crazy Spaniards´s brother knew a dancer at the club, so we all got in free. The club was impressive. Smoky, cosy, loud, and full of energy. Gorgeous dancers strutted on stages, flashing skin and body parts not usually seen in American clubs. As we weaved through a crowd of sweaty, scantily clad, gyrating bodies, I couldn´t help notice how many men sported Mullets. Business in the front, party in the back. And all grease. We danced until 7am and as I took breaks from the Euro Techno beats, I not only admired the dancers, but also entertained myself by giggling at the different types of mullets : Unkept, straight mullets. Curly ones, immacutately groomed in the front, wildly savage in the back. Conservative, slickly combed mullets. Macho, long braided mullets. Thank god I got my hair cut before I left San Francisco. Otherwise, I may have ended up with the Classic Spanish Cut.
Hello! I´m in Madrid, enjoying my friend Crazy Spaniard's hospitality and am loving it, despite not having slept much since thursday. That´s spanish life. It´s past 11pm and we´ve just started thinking about having dinner. I requested an early night (to catch up on sleep and to overcome jetlag) and Jose assured me that I´d get to sleep by around 130am tonight.
Not a clean toilet to be found
Let´s go back a couple of days to friday afternoon. After a long, uneventful flight from San Francisco, I had 3 hours to kill at JFK airport. I ended up spening that time looking for a clean toilet. Before I left SF, I had naively thought that I´d be assured dependable plumblng until I arrived in Casablanca. However, for some inexplicable reason, Terminal 3 at JFK had one functioning men´s bathroom. After impatiently enduring a 10 minute line to get in, I discovered that 3 out of 4 toilets were roped off. The last one was worse than some of the latrines I experienced in Cairo so I resigned myself to walking to Terminal 2. Imagine my disgust when I learned that two out of three bathrooms there were also out of order. A walk to Terminal 1 finally yielded a clean toilet.
"Benga! Benga! Take cover my friend!"
Fast forward several hours. After an uncomfortable cross Atlantic flight marred by a baby that wouldn´t stop crying, I finally arrived in Madrid to find a grinning, black-clad Crazy Spaniard waiting for me. He let me nap for 1.5 hours before the Weekly Family Lunch where we enjoyed a wonderful meal before the news broke: today we would celebrate C´s final day as a bachelor. C, Crazy Spaniard's best friend, speaks perfect english, and had just accepted a residency in Salinas, California. To make it easier for his girlfriend to join him in the US, he decided to marry her. I´m not so sure about that logic, but I´m more than happy to join a good party. The first stop was an afternoon of painball. The adneraline kicked in and and I was soon in a mud-filled bunker with paintballs whistling over my head. The highlight was a game that loosely translated into "hunt the bachelor." We were each given six bullets and C was given a full cannister. C got a two minute head start to hide and we then had to find him. If he hit us, we were out. C only managed to kill one of us and took at least ten shots before the referree called a mercy ending.
A sea of spanish mullets
While the others bbqéd, I managed to sneak in an hour nap. We finally feasted at 1am and, after a good hour and a half of eating and telling stories, decided to get ready for the club. Crazy Spaniards´s brother knew a dancer at the club, so we all got in free. The club was impressive. Smoky, cosy, loud, and full of energy. Gorgeous dancers strutted on stages, flashing skin and body parts not usually seen in American clubs. As we weaved through a crowd of sweaty, scantily clad, gyrating bodies, I couldn´t help notice how many men sported Mullets. Business in the front, party in the back. And all grease. We danced until 7am and as I took breaks from the Euro Techno beats, I not only admired the dancers, but also entertained myself by giggling at the different types of mullets : Unkept, straight mullets. Curly ones, immacutately groomed in the front, wildly savage in the back. Conservative, slickly combed mullets. Macho, long braided mullets. Thank god I got my hair cut before I left San Francisco. Otherwise, I may have ended up with the Classic Spanish Cut.
posted by Ace at 6:58 PM
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