Staring at StrangersStaring at StrangersFrom New York City to Michoacan, we stare at strangers. Articles
NY Governor Eliot Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring
2008-03-11 02:21:00 What can I say? Mr. Clean is "Client #9," a code name given to him at the high-priced prostitution service he used more than once, according to transcripts of phone conversations between himself and the service. The women charged as high as $5,500 an hour for their services, and the Governor is said to have paid $4,300 for "Kristen." That's close to $100 per minute. You wonder just what could be worth that. Maybe the woman was a particularly good conversationalist. Not! Perhaps one could feel just a little bit of pride from the fact that the lady in question stayed for almost two and a half hours. You go Governor! I sure do wonder what goes on inside the head of a man like Governor Spitzer, who has made many enemies of politicians and executives at companies from a number of industries here in New York. With so many... More About: Prostitution , Ring , Eliot , Eliot Spitzer
Bring Me the Head of Doroteo Arango
2008-03-10 17:51:00 92 years ago, Los Estados Unidos placed a bounty on the head of a common criminal who terrorized northern Mexico, even invading the E.U.A. and killing red-blooded American citizens. Not only did it not recognize the efforts of José Sáenz Pardo, who did the trick, but the state of New Mexico went on to honor the lout with Pancho Villa State Park. What's next—Al-Qaeda Towers? Technorati Tags: Doroteo Arango, Pancho Villa, Columbus, New Mexico More About: Head
What Language is She Speaking?
2008-03-10 14:10:00 Not all Spanish sounds the same either. Technorati Tags: English, dialects More About: Language , Speaking
When Will You Wake Up?
2008-03-09 04:16:00 Tomorrow morning Los Estados Unidos springs forward, which means that its denizens will lose an hour. We're smarter than that in Mexico, waiting until the civilized date of April 6 to make that change. But that means I'll spend the next month guided by Post-it notes plastered everywhere to remind me that Daylight Savings Time means that Chicago is now one hour later than here, New York is two hours later, and that San Francisco is only one hour earlier. Or I could just pretend that I'm living in Denver for the duration. DST is brought to you by the same folks who came up with the idea of fluoridated water and sex education in the schools: the New World Order and the vast left-wing conspiracy. Let's give some credit to the souls in Arizona and Sonora who have the brains to resist. Technorati Tags: daylight savings time, DST, Mexico,... More About: Wake , Wake up
Words to Swear By
2008-03-07 06:08:00 Hardly a day goes by that I don't mutter at least five of the words George Carlin couldn't say on television. (For the law-related post of the month, see Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).) Why, trained professionals have even been known to place bets on whether I could make an hour's presentation to a group of lawyers without uttering at least one of those words. My language has offended others more than once. When I took up the matter of slipping on dog shit with the manager of PetSmart in Texas, he took me to task for using the word "shit," insisting that it violated his born-again Christian beliefs. I really think he should've been more concerned about a personal injury claim than words which most likely wouldn't have bothered Jesus Christ himself. A stewardess who awakened me from a peaceful mid-flight slumber by pouring... More About: Words
J. Peterman Comes to Mexico
2008-03-05 03:38:00 Back in another era, the end of the day at the law factory meant spending some quality time with the daily harvest of catalogs, which often would amount to a foot-high stack. In a small rural Iowa town where Walmart was just about as good as shopping got, unless you trekked all the way to Red Oak's K-Mart, those catalogs were a window to the world beyond. Customer service working the night shift and the fax machine meant that the UPS man could deliver some of the treasures to my door even more quickly. Shopping from a mail-order catalog is far from boring. The enjoyment of reading and dreaming and dog-earring the pages, debating about what to order, placing the order, and waiting eagerly for delivery is just as important as opening up the package and enjoying the goods. There are those who can remember some line from a movie,... More About: Mexico
God, Mammon and the Mountain
2008-03-04 05:26:00 Swing past the bronze statue of John Paul II on the eponymous boulevard, and la Nueva Morelia, now re-christened Altozano, nee Montaña Monarca, bounds with options -- the Tec de Monterrey's Morelia Campus, the yet-unopened golf course, and Paseo Morelia. The university has been up and running for several years, and bets are still on about when Latin America's next big shopping center will be open for business. Will the chapel open first? This is beginning to sound more and more like Mexico's version of Ave Maria, the Naples, Florida, planned community. Technorati Tags: Ave Maria, Morelia, Montaña Monarca, Altozano, shopping centers, Michoacan More About: Mountain
No Country for Old Peyoteros
2008-02-28 03:56:00 Those were the days, my friend, and at least for this one, they came to an end. But the dreams lived on. Did you know that there are only three people in the entire Los Estados Unidos who can legally sell peyote? And the crop's drying up. But there's still a supply up and around Real de Catorce. Technorati Tags: drugs, peyote, mescaline, San Luis Potosi, Texas More About: Country
Why McCain Will Win
2008-02-27 16:05:00 He's a regular John, that's why. Estadounidense voters like their president to have a regular all-American sounding first and last name, names which signify stability and the mainstream. Names like Ronald, John, James, matched with a surname which at least sounds all-American, not too ethnic, and easy to pronounce make a difference. Candidates with names like Ron Paul and Ralph Nader (even if his parents were Lebanese) just don't stray from the fold. Women's names come under even greater scrutiny. Nothing ending in an i, ie, or y. Nothing too sexy or frivolous or cute. And nothing too exotic. Take a name like Martha or Ruth or Abigail. Those names are old-fashioned, but they signal a take-charge, dependable kind of girl, one who kept to her books and might not even have made homecoming queen. Hillary, your mother should've named you Gertrude. Now, we all know how you transformed yourself...
Hillary, Your Slip is Showing
2008-02-25 21:21:00 Is Clinton’s staff retarded or just worn out and ready to quit? Making a big deal out of an old photo of Barack Obama gussied up in traditional African dress, taken when he was in Africa on some kind of official business is just plain silly, stooping the level of the PAN presidential candidate’s intentional mispronunciation of opponent Francisco Labastida’s last name as “La Vestida” (the dress) and suggesting he was a sissy back in the spring of 2000. Hillary , get a clue. It’s not just your politics. It’s not just your husband. We just don’t like you. By the way, you really need to upgrade your look. Those pantsuits are really ugly. And as for that killer bee yellow blazer, can you say “Lime green polyester leisure suit?” Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, leisure suit, wardrobe More About: Slip
And Now We Must Talk of New York
2008-02-22 22:49:00 Stuff White People Like. Just go there. Technorati Tags: white people, New York , Mexico City, humor, gringos, fresas, nacos More About: Talk , New-York
Putting Pemex in Private Hands
2008-02-22 04:32:00 Will Felipe Calderon's legacy be known for privatizing Pemex , Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly? At first blush that might appear as heretical as the Pope giving his blessing to priests who marry outside of the faith. But it could happen, and the times may be just as right for privatization as they were for expropriation back in 1938. As every schoolchild in Mexico knows, the hallmark of President Lázaro Cárdenas was expropriation of foreign oil companies. There's even a holiday, albeit not one of those federal holidays where everyone takes a day off from work, celebrating the expropriation. Now, in a curious twist, writes Hector Tobar in La Plaza, rumors float that Lázaro Cárdenas' grandson, Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, the ex-governor of Michoacán, could be just the guy to head the new Pemex. That could be daring and "too insane to be believed," some might say, but possibly politically astute move. The... More About: Hands , Putting , Private
A Smoke-free Mexico? Not in Your Lifetime
2008-02-21 19:00:00 In the decade past, cigarette prices in Mexico have doubled, restaurants and public buildings have banned smoking, and anti-smoking campaigns rage on. But are Mexicans actually smoking less? You may find few lighting up among the buena gente, but the poor, and we've got a lot of them in this country, still smoke on. And we have that certain resistance to matters of order and control that make even the fresas light up. Read on. Now, if the government subsidized Nicorette and its generic kin, instead of whatever else, including free condoms, that it's handing out, there might be a solution. Technorati Tags: nicotine, nicotine gum, smoking More About: Free , Smoke , Lifetime
Objects of Desire
2008-02-21 04:39:00 In accordance with our mandate, we must present to you the obligatory monthly post about sex, law, New York and Mexico. Kindly discontinue reading if you're a card-carrying member of the Landover Baptist Church or belong to a monastic order. Up until last week, anyone in the State of Texas who sold, advertised, gave, or lent an obscene sexual device to anyone else for a purpose other than a bona fide medical, psychiatric, judicial, legislative or law enforcement purpose faced up to two years in the slammer. In its infinite wisdom, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit gave the green light to ordinary citizens who wished to sell, advertise, give or lend obscene sexual devices for use in prurient pursuits. The lawsuit was brought by vendors of sex devices, but this ruling now opens the door for anyone to advertise used dildos freely on Craigslist, give... More About: Objects
Great Danes in Mexico
2008-02-19 05:00:00 Mexican President Felipe Calderon wants to work out a trade deal with Denmark. This won't be a first in Mexico -Denmark relations. The first documented contact by Denmark with this country took place almost five hundred years ago when Franciscan Friar Jacobo Daciano, son of the Danish King Hans and Queen Christine landed in Michoacán to spread the word in the Meseta Purepecha. Not all of the Christian brothers were native Spanish speakers. But the Danes didn't ignore Mexico after that, sending on Baron Henrik Eggers during the French Intervention and Frans Blom to study indigenous culture in Chiapas. Technorati Tags: Danes, Denmark, Frans Blom, Henrik Eggers, Jacobo Daciano, Michoacan More About: Great
Endangered Species
2008-01-29 03:57:00 Vegetarians and their righteousness have a way of making my skin crawl. More than once I'd like to smack the tofu-munchers up the side of the head with a slab of beef. Now Mark Bittman, who wrote How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and by his own admission is not a vegetarian, has joined the fray, in Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler. Eating beef has now become as socially distasteful as driving a big ol' car and smoking cigarettes. And wearin' shit-kickin' Western boots. Wait: that describes some of my best friends. One cup of broccoli, a cup of eggplant, four ounces of cauliflower and a half pound of rice, according to the accompanying graphic, supply 320 calories -- the same as six ounces of beefsteak --yet consume one-sixteenth as much fossil fuel energy to produce. Let's not even address the vast nutritional difference between this lame vegetarian diet and a good serving... More About: Endangered Species , Endangered
Cultural Literacy
2008-01-28 03:51:00 Last week I asked several Mexican friends a few basic questions about this country, just to test their cultural literacy. I started out with asking them to name a few Mexican writers. The first insisted that Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Mexican writer. Doesn't Colombia ring a bell? The second came up with Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes, claiming that he couldn't think of any more off the bat. The third admitted that she could not name a single one. Haven't these folks heard of Juana Inés de la Cruz, Carlos Pellicer, Denise Dresser, Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, Ramon Lopez Velarde, Manuel Othon, Manuel Gutierrez Najera, Elena Poniatowska, Anita Brenner, Carlos Monsivàis, Homero Aridjis, Juan Rulfo, Guadalupe Loaeza, Laura Esquivel, Margo Glantz, Sara Sefchovich and and Guadalupe Marín, just for starters? Do they ever read the newspaper One out of the three could not name the jefe de gobierno of... More About: Literacy , Cultural
Elefant's Shingle and the Cover of the Rolling Stone
2008-01-27 22:02:00 District of Columbia lawyer Carolyn Elefant was one of the pioneers in the world of law-related blogs, and her new book Solo by Choice has just been released, and who's name is on the cover? Click and find out. David Leffler's quoted inside and more than once. You now have three good reasons to buy this book. Technorati Tags: Carolyn Elefant, MyShingle.com, jennifer j. rose, marketing, solo practice More About: Stone , Cover , Rolling Stone , Rolling
The Moment of Truth - Getting the Right People on the Show
2008-01-25 20:42:00 There's another ridiculous show on television called The Moment of Truth . The contestant gets hooked up to a polygraph machine and then is asked a series of increasingly embarrassing questions, right up to "Are you attracted to your wife's friends?" Marriages have broken up on less. The longer you stay in without the polygraph machine nailing you as a liar, the more money you stand to make. Lie once and you lose it all. No pressure, eh? What is missing from this show are contestants that have something major to lose beyond their personal relationships (yes, I know, isn't that enough?). What they need are politicians. How about getting some of the candidates for the 2008 presidential race up there? Here's my fantasy of Hillary Clinton appearing on the show: Host: Do you forgive your husband for Monica? Hillary: That bastard! Host: Has Bill gotten any since then? Hillary: Do... More About: People , Show , Ruth
When Illinois is Mexico
2008-01-21 22:46:00 Let's suppose that the U.S.A. was the world, and each of its states was renamed for countries with similar Gross Domestic Products. Illinois would be Mexico . (In case you're wondering, Mexico's GDP is the 14th largest in the world at $741 billlion, give or take a million.) Technorati Tags: GDP, world economy
McDonald's Was Here
2008-01-18 18:23:00 I remember the anxiety I felt in grade school when waiting for my report card at the end of each year. I always worried that somehow I might not get promoted to the next grade, and anticipated the humiliation amongst my fellow students as I was left behind while they all advanced. Report cards have changed a lot since then. While I was never left behind, report cards today provide a whole new set of bad consequences. Now they have advertising on them. Advertising from companies that have been identified as one of the prime causes of childhood obesity and the diseases which follow, such as diabetes. In today's New York Times there is a report on McDonald's decision to end its promotion on the jackets of children's report cards in elementary schools in Seminole County, Florida. The "food prize" program gave children Happy Meals as a reward for good...
New Career Opportunity
2008-01-16 05:47:00 There was a fascinating article in the January 14, 2008 edition of The New Yorker about . . . scrap. As in the American scrap metal industry. While I found the entire article interesting, I thought that the most intriguing part described what the street value is for various metal objects in this era of fast rising commodity prices. Here's some pricing information in case you want to enter the illegal side of the scrap metal industry: A metal street sign might bring a dollar; a manhole cover fetches about five. Beer kegs, swiped from behind an Applebee's, bring upward of forty dollars each. A phone booth will net fifty dollars or more. A condenser unit from a central air-conditioning system is worth about a hundred dollars. Aluminum bleachers, guardrails, streetlight poles, storm drain grates, copper flashing and the nozzles of firehoses are also popular among metal thieves. Probably not... More About: Opportunity , Career
What Color is Your Underwear?
2007-12-29 20:24:00 During Christmas week the lingerie store windows all over Buenos Aires were decked out in pink underwear. Pink underwear bodes good luck in the coming here in this part of the world. In Mexico, we wait until New Year's to change our Fruit of the Loom, and then we have to go through that ordeal of making decisions. Red for passion, yellow for month, or white for health. And then you're supposed to wear it inside out or keep it on for 24 hours, or something like that. But then you could always wash the red with the white, which eventually always seems to happen even to the most fastidious laundry-sorters, giving yourself a head start on next Christmas. Technorati Tags: holidays,customs,marketing,underwear More About: Color , Underwear
Working Grandmother
2007-12-27 15:14:00 At the next table at my café in a small corner of Palermo are a grandmother and the child of her child. This is a neighborhood café, a relatively upscale place in an upper middle class neighborhood. The teenager, who appears to be about fifteen years old, has long dirty dishwater blonde hair and is dressed in nice jeans. The old lady’s clothing, linen pants, silk blouse and her Ferragamo Vara shoes, clearly weren’t bought in Buenos Aires. Miami, most likely. The girl orders a pizza and a Coke, and her grandmother has a glass of wine and a salad. Both are carrying on polite conversations, but the girl shows a level of manners beyond simply good breeding. She’s working on her grandmother for something, and the crescendo slowly builds. They are speaking Castellano to one another in quiet, measured tones. Finally, the girl bursts out with “So I can... More About: Working , Grandmother , Workin
Are You Really What You Read?
2007-12-27 05:52:00 At airports are the books Kinky Friedman once described as the “mandatory FAA-approved reading material.” Get on any plane, and you’re apt to see at least half of the passengers, at least the ones who can read, reading the latest Grisham. For some reason, hardly any are reading The Mile High Club. But for that matter, none of them are reading my book, even if it’s been a best-seller by some standards. Bookstores are the pulse of any neighborhood. In Buenos Aires, if you’re around the law school, there are lots of books about law. In Villa Freud, lots of books about thinking about what we’re thinking about and trying to decide what it all means. Go to Boca Raton, and you’ll find Carl Hiaasen, Carolina Garcia Aguilera, Dave Barry, and Florida’s other finest writers. In Naples, the shelves are filled with romance novels. At San Francisco’s City Lights, you’ll... More About: Read
Movies - A Future Without a Past?
2007-12-25 06:29:00 The New York Times had a pretty scary article this past Sunday entitled The Afterlife is Expensive for Digital Movies about the expense of preserving digital movies. According to the article, it costs $208,569 per year to store a digitally created film. I don't know if it's worth that much to forever preserve the image of Jack Black. Data stored on digital medium tends to degrade after just a few years. Hard drives can freeze up if not operated at least once every two years. And formats change so that even if a digital movie has been well preserved, there may not be any machines on which to play it. I guess my 3.5 inch floppy disks are done for. In contrast, 35 millimeter films can last for 50 years without much wear and tear provided that they are properly stored (in salt mines - really). Even more enduring can... More About: Future , Past
Units of Value
2007-12-24 21:19:00 There was a time when I valued everything in divorces. What I could spend was measured by the number of divorce clients. Some people think in terms of frozen orange juice and pork belly futures, barrels of oils, and dinars. And then I switched to measuring everything by the going rate for a pair of Ferragamo Vara. But then there are only so many shoes one can reasonably collect, and the price has nearly doubled in the past decade. The unit of value today is the eskandar, well-designed and finely crafted pieces of clothing designed by Eskandar Nabavi, an Anglo-Iranian designer based in London. Each time I'm tempted to buy something, I think of the purchase as one-quarter of an eskandar, half an eskandar. Sadly, neither Ferragamo nor eskandar is sold in Mexico. Or Argentina for that matter. That's probably in my best interests. But you can always find both... More About: Units , Unit
CompUSA - R.I.P.
2007-12-21 22:37:00 A recent announcement that CompUSA was finally closing all of its stores after 23 years in business came as no surprise to me. Purchased by Carlos Slim Helú, the richest man in Mexico (and now the richest man in the world), back in 2000, he reportedly has poured more than $1.5 billion dollars into the company in an attempt to resuscitate it. I could have saved Carlos a lot of money - really. Every time I walked into a CompUSA retail store I got a headache from all of the chaos in there. There was never an easy way to find anything. In my opinion, CompUSA had an opportunity to do something really cutting edge in consumer electronics retail stores, but they blew it. They were using the same retail store techniques that were used a hundred years ago to sell dry goods. If they had only come up with...
Bovine Rush
2007-12-20 12:41:00 Meat and magazines are benchmarks of a civilized culture, and Meatpaper, a new magazine calling itself “Your Journal of Meat Culture,” brings them both together. I'd love to get my hands on a copy. In fact, if you're reading this, please buy me a year's subscription for Christmas. It's not only about content; surely this one's got scratch-and-sniff advertising strip with beefy aroma and plenty of advertising for knives. And maybe shoes. Technorati Tags: tags,meat,beef,publishing More About: Rush
Bail Out for the Common Man
More articles from this author:2007-12-19 17:41:00 In reading the paper this morning, I was struck by two articles about bail outs. And I found a third article just filed while I was checking for web addresses for the first two articles! The first article reports on major banks, including Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, bailing out ACA Capital Holdings, a bond insurance company that has guaranteed $26 billion in mortgage securities. The second story covers the European Central Bank's "infusion" of $500 billion into the financial system to avoid a credit market crunch. In a report filed at 10:38 AM, the New York Times Online reports that the Federal Reserve is providing $20 billion in loans to banks "as part of an unprecedented auction process to ease a global credit crisis and make sure financial institutions can keep lending to their customers." Damn, there are billions of dollars whizzing around the globe to save this financial... More About: Common 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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