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Staring at Strangers

Staring at Strangers
From New York City to Michoacan, we stare at strangers.

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Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Articles

For Those Who Simply Can't Get Enough
2008-05-05 07:13:00
The Sunday edition of The New York Times had an article about web services, such as FriendFeed, that allow people to "funnel all their online activities into a single information broadcast, and then blast that broadcast to anyone who wants to listen in." Thus, your friends can get all of your daily twitterings from Twitter, the videos you've posted on YouTube, and all of the photos you've posted on Flickr. But who would want to? Consider that if you subscribed to just a handful of friends' aggregator services you would be overwhelmed with digital nonsense, in addition to all of the email you already receive, why would anyone subject themselves to such torture? Apparently there has to be a good reason why, because the article states that there are a growing number of these services. Which only goes to prove that there are many people out there who have a...
More About: Simply

The 90's Version of If you remember the 60's you really weren't
2008-05-02 04:56:00
While at a digital media seminar this morning which I blog about below, a 90's version of the phrase that summed up the 60's popped into my head: If you didn't raise money in the 90's you weren't really there. Oh man, how mercantile, how cynical. Well, I don't believe it but I found it amusing. Hopefully you'll get a little chuckle out of it too. Technorati Tags: 60's, 90's
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The 90's Version of If you remember the 60's you really weren't there.
2008-05-02 04:56:00
While at a digital media seminar this morning which I blog about below, a 90's version of the phrase that summed up the 60's popped into my head: If you didn't raise money in the 90's you weren't really there. Oh man, how mercantile, how cynical. Well, I don't believe it but I found it amusing. Hopefully you'll get a little chuckle out of it too. Technorati Tags: 60's, 90's
More About: Version

Sometimes Old is Better
2008-05-02 04:14:00
This morning I attended a thought provoking breakfast seminar sponsored by the NYC law firm Herrick Feinstein entitled "The New Kings of Media - User-Generated Content: New Business Models & Legal Issues." They had some very good speakers there. John Rose, Senior Partner and Managing Director of The Boston Consulting Group, started by saying that getting old had its advantages because he was there when the first web-based companies were formed. He made the very interesting observation that people today have no idea what the business models will be for user generated content websites, just like they had no idea what the business models would be for eBay and Yahoo!, which have gone thru numerous changes. Lydia Loizides, a governor of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and who at most appears to be in her early 30's, strongly refuted his point, saying that the business model is...

Rocky Takes Manhattan - Part II
2008-04-29 18:24:00
Last night, my friend Rocky , after leaving the hospital where he landed due to a broken wrist gotten from flirting with a redhead while crossing the street (see my full account of this incident here), explained to me his philosophy on communication between men and women: Men just want to give the right answer, they don't care what it is. So while their wife, girlfriend or woman that they just met at the bar is talking away, the guy is only listening enough to figure out the best bullshit response. And the guy doesn't care what it is he has to say - he'll say anything, whether he believes it or not, whether it's true or not, just to make his lady happy. Especially when the woman asks that minefield question, "How do you feel about it?" Faced with that question, a guy goes into internal panic. "Holy shit, she...
More About: Part , Manhattan

For Those in Search of a Sweet'N Low Daddy
2008-04-28 21:36:00
As the Reverend Al, who moonlights as a lawyer, puts it: I'm also at an age at which, when younger women "look" at me, I'm not quite sure whether they're flirting, or thinking I might be a good match for their mother. Go the Church of What's Happening Now! to follow Rev. Al's trek from making meaningful eye contact with a twentysomething to his first unsolicited senior discount. Technorati Tags: Sugar Daddy , Los Angeles lawyer, senior discount
More About: Search , Sweet

Girls Just Want to Have Fun
2008-04-28 20:57:00
Not too long ago, those who considered themselves a notch above declared the quinceañera dead, substituting a cruise, a vacation trip or even the fifteen-year old's first boy-girl party for the big event. Even in those times, it was a rite of passage that just wouldn't give up the ghost. A few summers ago, old man Jacobo's granddaughter and her chambelanes practiced their dance steps with a choreographer in the moonlight for weeks in front of my house. It would take them at least a year to pay off that party. You saw the movie Quinceañera a few years ago, but it's more than just a Latina Bat Mizvah. Estadounidenses have caught on to the rage, too. Hearst Communications, Inc., publisher of the bible of my youth, Seventeen, now publishes MisQuinceMag.com, in English and in Spanish. Like Estadounidenses who try to cut costs by scheduling a wedding or other event...
More About: Girls

Cash Before Chemo: Hospitals Get Tough
2008-04-28 19:04:00
It's getting rough out there for sick people. A article in today's Wall Street Journal describes a growing practice of hospitals demanding payment up front before giving treatment. Demands of more than $100,000 have been made for chemotherapy. The article focuses on the experience of Lisa Kelly who was diagnosed with leukemia. One day, Mrs. Kelly says, nurses wouldn't change the chemotherapy bag in her pump until her husband made a new payment. She says she sat for an hour hooked up to a pump that beeped that it was out of medicine, until he returned with proof of payment. Patients in a hospital's business office now wonder if the clerk sitting opposite them is going to permit their cancer to be treated. Technorati Tags: health insurance, Wall Street Journal, chemotherapy hospital
More About: Hospitals , Cash , Tough

Outsourcing the Presidency
2008-04-24 23:40:00
Estadounidenses really don't have much choice when it comes to presidential candidates: a witch, a guy with a foreign-born father, and an ex-con. The U.S. is already outsourcing everything else, so why not the presidency? It outsources the nasty job of fighting its wars to poor folk and convicted felons, customer service, tech support and even legal research to India, and everything else to China. Being president really isn't something to be learned on the job, so it should go to a guy with some experience under his belt. And you really ought to have a president who has some familiarity with the U.S. and doesn't have to move a long distance. Can we lend you Vicente Fox for the next eight years? Or even Carlos Salinas de Gortari? All right, so Ernesto Zedillo and Miguel de la Madrid but be better choices, but they're not around stirring up a...
More About: Outsourcing , Presidency

Trapped in an Elevator for 41 Hours
2008-04-24 01:28:00
A fascinating 3 minute video of the 41 hours that Nicholas White was trapped in an elevator in the McGraw-Hill Building in NYC. It was a Friday night in October 1999 when Mr. White, returning from a cigarette break, walked into an elevator that changed his life. I found the related April 21, 2008 New Yorker Magazine article, at http://tinyurl.com/572u5f, an interesting read. Technorati Tags: elevator, Nicholas White, McGraw-Hill Building, trapped, New Yorker Magazine
More About: Elevator , Hours

Apron Strings
2008-04-23 22:55:00
Billie Mercer, who writes about ordinary and extraordinary lives in central Mexico, took on the topic of aprons, and I just had to comment about what aprons represented to my generation, which gave her fodder for more. So I went out to the kitchen, where my thirty-something housekeeper was washing dishes, dressed in an ironed t-shirt and jeans, and asked her why she wasn't wearing a mandil. "Oh, those are just for working around my own house," she told me, rolling her eyes. She obviously hadn't read Billie's blog -- or The Wall Street Journal article. Technorati Tags: mandil, apron, maid, servant, housework
More About: Strings , Apron

Rocky Takes Manhattan
2008-04-23 21:52:00
Don't keep me from the millions of women out there balancing themselves on high heels! My friend Rocky is an irrepressible force here in NYC. Recently, he landed himself in the hospital from simultaneously attempting to cross the street, talk on his cell phone, and flirt with a woman walking towards him. He collided with another pedestrian, sending him spinning in a fashion which assuredly was not going to win the heart of the lady who was the source of his distraction. Gravity won & Rocky went sailing to the ground, fracturing his wrist in the process. In the hospital Rocky was a restless creature. He demanded to know when he could leave. A nurse explained that he'd have to wait, that they just wanted to be sure that he was stable. "Stable? Stable? Of course I'm stable, just look at me!" The nurse was far too polite to point...
More About: Manhattan

al-Gore Kills Baja California
2008-04-23 17:05:00
And Puerto Rice and the Virgin Islands. And Madagascar. And Newfoundland and Iceland. Global warming's more serious that I thought. Technorati Tags: Al Gore , global warming, Baja California

Why Move to Mexico?
2008-04-23 06:27:00
Mark Shead asked a handful of expatriates what prompted them to move to Mexico . Read on. It's a question I tire of answering, but at least I answered truthfully. Because I could. Technorati Tags: emigration, expatriates, Mexico
More About: Move

Buy Her a Bra!
2008-04-22 23:41:00
From the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog, we bring you Astrid Hadad. Technorati Tags: Astrid Hadad, Mexico, breasts, bras, social commentary

Do You Look Like a Gringo?
2008-04-19 07:30:00
"This Warren Hardy tote bag just shouts 'Look at the gringa who can't speak Spanish,'" complained a friend who fit the description at the time. Kelsey Mulyk offers up some advice about the sure markers of a gringo in Mexico: Wearing a fannypack Dressing like a hippie Wearing short shorts To those, I'd a few more identifiers: too much ethnic clothing, shorts worn outside of a resort or sporting activity, tire-treaded huaraches, campesino clothes, makeup-free eyes, shirt and jeans which have never seen an iron, and oversized clothes. Who hasn't read the travel literature telling foreigners to leave the name-brands and jewelry at home? If you're going to fit in in Mexico, you'd better put on some makeup (at least if you're female), get rid of the gray hair, become acquainted with an iron, wear a good watch, and let Ralph Lauren, Coach, or Burberry see the light of day....

The CIA's Men in Mexico
2008-04-18 04:33:00
Y0u already knew about Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to Mexico two months before that fateful day in Dallas some forty-five years ago. The CIA's men on the ground knew about it, too. But did you know that two Mexican presidents were on the CIA payroll? In "Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA," Jefferson Morley takes the reader behind the scenes during some interesting times, inviting comment at his blog. And what happened to Scott after Kennedy was shot? Read Edward Jay Epstein's review in The Wall Street Journal. And Ken Silverstein's Six Questions for Jefferson Morley. Technorati Tags: Jefferson Morley, CIA, Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy, Adolfo Lopez Mateos, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, Winston Scott

True Confessions of a Trash-Tale Junkie
2008-04-18 01:23:00
I am a true crime addict, unrepentantly so, and it’s all Truman Capote’s fault for writing that "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood back in 1965, about a Kansas farm family’s murder by two ex-cons. Before long, Anatomy of a Murder, a criminal defense lawyer’s true story of a bartender’s 1951 murder in Big Bay, Michigan, came into my hands, and I was on my way to ruin, descent and Helter Skelter. "Filthy trash," snorted my high school English teacher. My explanation that true crime was the perfect education for a would-be lawyer fell upon deaf ears. Little did she realize, I’m sure, that In Cold Blood would be hailed as a literary triumph in years to come or that Robert Traver was the pen name of a future Michigan State Supreme Court Justice. Never once in two decades of trial practice have I ever put Milton’s lessons to work, but...
More About: Confessions , True , Tale , Trash , Junkie

The End of the World - Coming this Summer!
2008-04-15 14:25:00
I knew it! I knew it! For years now I've been worried that those mad scientists in Switzerland who were constructing the Large Hadron Collider ("LHC" for those in the know) would destroy us all when it started spitting out black holes, sucking the LHC and the rest of the world into the void. What a way to go! I felt like some nutty person walking down the street with a big sign proclaiming in a crazed scrawl "The End of the World is Near!" But now you only have to look at today's New York Times to confirm the truth of this possible outcome from the startup of the LHC this summer. Yes, scientists say, the LHC could create mini black holes, but they almost certainly would immediately dissolve without doing any damage. First, let's look at the term "mini black hole." Sort of an oxymoron if you ask...
More About: Summer , The World , End Of The World

Seriamente Chido
2008-04-15 14:06:00
That's what C.M. Mayo called David Lida's new blog, David Lida: Mostly Mexico City, and we have to agree. You'll never look at the D.F. with the same eyes again. Technorati Tags: David Lida, Mexico City

Brown Tits at OXXO
2008-04-15 00:48:00
Yes, we know what it means. And so, too, do the vendors. But we were shocked by the billboard on Av. Camelinas just the same. Technorati Tags: truth-in-packaging, marketing, Morelia, brownies, Familia Orozco
More About: Brown , Tits

The Lesbian Locksmith
2008-04-14 01:09:00
As Zsa waited for the locksmith to appear to change the locks on a rental house, she told me that the locksmith was a lesbian. I'd never really never given much thought to locksmiths' sexual orientations, figuring that what they did on their off-hours was pretty much their business, but I was about to learn a lesson. "I think a lesbian locksmith is a really good idea, because they're better at keeping secrets and confidences," she said. "You know, that closet thing that they used to have to do." Sometimes I feel like Edith Bunker's ghost. Technorati Tags: locksmith, San Miguel de Allende, cerrajero, lesbian
More About: Lesbian

Sign of the Apocalypse?
2008-04-13 18:59:00
Seen today on West 35th Street, NYC. Technorati Tags: Apocalypse , NYC, West 35th Street, Statue of Liberty, mannequin
More About: Sign

Money for Nothing, and Witches for Free
2008-04-12 19:27:00
It's not always easy to find a witch when you need one. Catemaco, the brujo capital of Mexico, is far away, and from time to time, the witches of Cheran just aren't in the mood. That means it's often a matter of finding someone who knows someone, and that someone isn't always in the phone book. And you know how those witches can be, charging whatever the market will bear. An advertisement which regularly appears in the Saturday magazine supplement to the local newspaper caught my eye. Brujo y Curandero de Nacimiento, read the ad, promising immediate results from an authentic Indian from the Amazon forests. Taita Curandero not only had three telephone numbers, answered around the clock all year long, but e-mail as well. And even radio programs throughout the country. Could it get any better than this? I wonder if Taita Curandero offers free Internet consultations like Vandammed,...
More About: Money , Free , Witches

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