Notes from Madrid
Sep. 21st, 2009 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusConcert: At my Madrid concert I punctuated the songs with staccato announcements: "I have only three eyes", "Death is not not the end", "Revenge is best consumed sweet" and "This is not my real hair".
Bidet: There's a cultural fault-line that runs through Europe. Some countries believe in the bidet, others don't. France and Spain do, Germany and Britain don't. Personally, I believe in the bidet. I believe even more strongly in the washlet, which is an electronic bidet built into a toilet. But I wonder why adoption of the bidet -- a matter of basic hygiene and, if you like, human rights -- isn't something the EU is working on getting adopted on a Europe-wide basis. Why isn't it a party-political issue? Why aren't the Liberal Democrats saying "If we get elected, it's bidets for Britain!"? Why are bidets off the platform and off the table?
Hotel Wifi: My hotel has the worst wifi system I've ever encountered. You pay €10 a day, but 85% of the time it doesn't work. Given the choice between sweet-smelling hindparts and a connected brain... well, take the bidet away.
Contemporary Art: The best piece of contemporary art I've seen in Madrid is a video / sound installation by David Maljkovic called Out of Projection. Accompanied by soothing microsound music, we see some silver-haired seniors preparing (in sound-baffled rooms) to take part in some sort of sci-fi rally. There's something vaguely Matthew Barney-ish about it. I really enjoy art that sets up -- but doesn't attempt to explain -- alternative worlds.
Prado: The kind of classical art that fills the Prado might as well be a different activity altogether from what we now think of as art. It's closer to cinema, porn, religion, fashion and lifestyle magazines, advertising. I find myself largely indifferent to it, but I left convinced that Goya was a genius; he hated war and loved women and painted -- especially in his "black" series -- as though he was one hundred years into the future.
Food: Lumpen paella followed by bony fish, conveyor-belt sushi with no tuna. Outside a central Madrid McDonalds an animal rights protestor stood with a battery-powered LCD screen around his neck showing cattle being slaughtered.
Women: Spanish women catch my eye in a way German women don't. There are certain faces that recur, but it would be beyond my powers of description to catch them: I'd just pile up adjectives like simian, alert, trad, radical, dark...
Camouflage: An exhibition about camouflage at the Casa Encendida. I liked a pine cone bunker house at Vallerbe. At the Reona Sophia museum they had an interesting display of Oskar Schlemmer's Bauhaus theatre designs. At one point in the 1920s it really did look as though Michelin Man-type robots were the future of theatre. If only they'd known the future was actually going to be The Mousetrap and Les Miserables they could have got the students up to speed on the 19th century instead.
Bidet: There's a cultural fault-line that runs through Europe. Some countries believe in the bidet, others don't. France and Spain do, Germany and Britain don't. Personally, I believe in the bidet. I believe even more strongly in the washlet, which is an electronic bidet built into a toilet. But I wonder why adoption of the bidet -- a matter of basic hygiene and, if you like, human rights -- isn't something the EU is working on getting adopted on a Europe-wide basis. Why isn't it a party-political issue? Why aren't the Liberal Democrats saying "If we get elected, it's bidets for Britain!"? Why are bidets off the platform and off the table?
Hotel Wifi: My hotel has the worst wifi system I've ever encountered. You pay €10 a day, but 85% of the time it doesn't work. Given the choice between sweet-smelling hindparts and a connected brain... well, take the bidet away.
Contemporary Art: The best piece of contemporary art I've seen in Madrid is a video / sound installation by David Maljkovic called Out of Projection. Accompanied by soothing microsound music, we see some silver-haired seniors preparing (in sound-baffled rooms) to take part in some sort of sci-fi rally. There's something vaguely Matthew Barney-ish about it. I really enjoy art that sets up -- but doesn't attempt to explain -- alternative worlds.
Prado: The kind of classical art that fills the Prado might as well be a different activity altogether from what we now think of as art. It's closer to cinema, porn, religion, fashion and lifestyle magazines, advertising. I find myself largely indifferent to it, but I left convinced that Goya was a genius; he hated war and loved women and painted -- especially in his "black" series -- as though he was one hundred years into the future.
Food: Lumpen paella followed by bony fish, conveyor-belt sushi with no tuna. Outside a central Madrid McDonalds an animal rights protestor stood with a battery-powered LCD screen around his neck showing cattle being slaughtered.
Women: Spanish women catch my eye in a way German women don't. There are certain faces that recur, but it would be beyond my powers of description to catch them: I'd just pile up adjectives like simian, alert, trad, radical, dark...
Camouflage: An exhibition about camouflage at the Casa Encendida. I liked a pine cone bunker house at Vallerbe. At the Reona Sophia museum they had an interesting display of Oskar Schlemmer's Bauhaus theatre designs. At one point in the 1920s it really did look as though Michelin Man-type robots were the future of theatre. If only they'd known the future was actually going to be The Mousetrap and Les Miserables they could have got the students up to speed on the 19th century instead.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 08:17 am (UTC)scran
Date: 2009-09-21 08:51 am (UTC)callos a la madrileña-----------------veal tripe with cheeks ...its spicey and has chick peas
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hasta luego
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 10:23 am (UTC)That's a very Momus thing to say!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 12:33 pm (UTC)The Spanish guard glared at me in anger and disgust and I thought, hey, I'm just a kid. This is what we do. This happens.
Food poisoning from the hotel breakfast I think my dad said, as my mom wiped my face and felt my head for fever.
The stain, at least on a molecular level, must still be there on the floor. Though thirty or more years have passed. I wonder how close you came to it on your visit? Maybe you stood right on top of it, the place where I barfed my guts out in front of the world's greatest works of art.
prado
Date: 2009-09-21 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 04:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 09:23 pm (UTC)The next day the bidets owner, which was a girl i fancied, asked me what the hell i had done there.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 11:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-22 03:26 am (UTC)so... how did everything turn out?
usually thats a sign of sorts... for it not working out.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-22 03:54 pm (UTC)Romance and the bidet
Date: 2009-09-21 09:08 pm (UTC)http://honeymoons.about.com/od/smarttravel/f/bidet.htm
women
Date: 2009-09-21 03:31 pm (UTC)about camouflage
Date: 2009-09-21 04:43 pm (UTC)fed on lumpen nutrients surrounded by simian darkness in a camouflaged cinema displaying what may be porn.
A perfectly distilled microcosm to hate woman and love war!
I
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 05:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 05:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 11:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 06:49 pm (UTC)With a towel?
Which towel?
Not the hand towel, surely?
Or does one have to wander round with damp pants all day?
Or is bog roll used to dry off?
Confused...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 06:52 pm (UTC)http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-use-a-bidet_1/
That has potentially helped me avoid making an awful, towel-related mistake next time I visit the continent.
Definitely Pro-Washlets
Date: 2009-09-21 07:12 pm (UTC)Re: Definitely Pro-Washlets
Date: 2009-09-22 03:32 am (UTC)but yes, totally weird.... how did that end up on public tv?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 09:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-21 09:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-22 12:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-23 12:40 am (UTC)(Don't) Stand and Deliver
Date: 2009-09-21 09:22 pm (UTC)'German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them.
The WC ghost, a £6 voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate (known as "Stehpinkeln")':
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1469694/German-men-told-they-can-no-longer-stand-and-deliver.html
'Men standing when peeing, why is it so bad? - Germany
German women seem disgusted with "Stehpinkeln"':
http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t100148-0.html
Re: (Don't) Stand and Deliver
Date: 2009-09-21 09:29 pm (UTC)Re: (Don't) Stand and Deliver
Date: 2009-09-22 10:18 am (UTC)Re: (Don't) Stand and Deliver
Date: 2009-09-22 03:56 pm (UTC)I prefer to clean up the spillage, really, way less trouble