Feet Smell Fromnylons

SIN CITY BROILER

If you ever decide to go to Las Vegas, be sure to arrive at night, and the magic of the first meeting will last longer and the neon lights and neon signs allow large swallow, almost with gratitude, the world of cardboard and plastic that, under the protection of the shadows, the sound of slot machines and the curves of women who smile from generously displayed large posters that abound everywhere, lies a stunning machine-created under the aegis of the mafia, the blessing of dollars and lulled by the music of Sinatra, so that tens of thousands who visit every day squander what they have (and did not have) in this "Disneyland for adults" as someone explained to me.

arrived at noon, big mistake (I was dragged by the willingness of my neighbors-charming and hospitable sons of Mexico, who pass the test, always difficult, always fascinating, the journey together and coexistence-). Daylight, which makes the Nevada desert looks spectacular with red spots, is, however, very bad combination for the palaces of plastic, brass pyramids, sculptures, porcelain and all the paraphernalia made to look impressive covered by artificial lights, but unable to resist the kiss of reality.

fainted from hunger (the nearly four hours late, took flight and dream of dawn did little to my good mood and that "a matter of illusion with which I was warned when I started my criticism corrosive) and that, after completing the paperwork and leave your bags each in their rooms, got out and started walking to a hotel "is here no more" and we got twenty minutes to cross streets and bridges, escalators and up mechanical crossing with beggars best sneakers mine and avoid tripping over a hundred thousand other people who were going there who knows where, many with a beer in hand.

The hotel, like all the hotels around, it was awesome, huge, bulky, but not smart (so it seemed, after a constant in this city where everything "appears", but nothing "is" where the cult of forms has shifted completely to the core and their meanings). We had come to lunch "to the most expensive hotel in Las Vegas", as I reported, it was all lights, slot machines, long corridors, guards guards dressed discreetly disguised as civilians, and many people moving, playing and betting. "It has the best buffet" and not mistaken. We arrived to an environment where no one will glamor corresponding charged dollars before proceeding to one of the many great halls that made up the place, we were assigned seats and "turn to serve." What I saw was almost an epiphany, I found that for fat is the same as for a child a toy store at their disposal. He had everything and, in disproportionate numbers, huge, exaggerated (like everything in this country where the shortcomings of the soul are filled with the excesses of the body). Ate infamous and obscene. Mea culpa.

Passing hours, and give the sun into the shadows of the night, the lights that illuminated everything with its thousand colors, were drawing the face that I knew of this city, like the painted face of his dancers and waitresses, the face accommodated for the photos, the poses and flashes . The city that surprises the world from the movie screens or TV and tempts us all with its magnificence and the ability to become millionaires in a stroke of luck that allows us to join the list of those traveling by jet private and stay in the presidential suite until another stroke of (mis) fortune in charge of middle-class return to reality with accounts payable, credit mortgages and cards that are ballooning on behalf of a new financing (luck is a currency and as such, has two sides, but I forget).

hotels at night and shine in them-purpose and only true personality of this city, the casinos become crowded space that looks, each more exorbitant and stupid screen machine that promises I will make you rich while sucking, like a vampire and post-modern cyber, virtual dollars credit card. Something

attracted wide attention, I do not know if I disappointed or excited me, "the dealer , contrary to what one imagines, are older people. When one thinks of Las Vegas, in the light of the pictures, it is difficult to assume that they serve are young guys with tuxedo to yeimsbon and stunning blonde hiding a knife in the wrong league covering miniskirt. Nothing that abound, on the contrary, ladies and gentlemen faced have been handing out cards boringly two or three decades ago and who think more in retirement than to leave "to follow" when their shift ends at five o'clock.

Prostitution is a crime, of course, but it is not to advertise, for that they are "requested" that I won a legal battle by the city government can work freely. They are all Latino-looking (do not remember seeing Africans, Asians or gringos) placed at the end of streets, bridges, streets, where space permits, and there dealt a card with pictures of stunning women (race, age and various forms) that offer their services for a few bucks. Not only that, in free newspaper dispensers (in other cities are used to put the inserts from supermarkets or the magazine that gives the town) had just published, in full color, with an unimaginable number of women in this or fee which will "discreetly" to your hotel. Say it Sin City is, but I think that is different from any other city, perhaps more obvious and less cynical, but no more sinful.

However, there were no large buildings, or the luminous casinos or shows millionaires, or the prostitutes advertised or nocturnal bustle, as I say, is endless, so I left the clearest impression of the city. As I've always said, "places are the people" and to me Las Vegas is Mary, the hairdresser of Mexican parents born in San Francisco, with whom I spoke at length about being immigrants everywhere and on its third single than lets go "when want and wherever "Yessuf, the driver, an Ethiopian who came simpatiquísmo twenty years as a football player, he married a white woman (white woman whant only my money ) that the divorce was left with the house children and the guest house, a cheerful and optimistic man, John, another taxi driver, an elderly gentleman, he gringo from New York where the rents are very high, "he moved with his wife to the city in the desert" for save a little, because the pension is low "but at parties traveling to see family, or Hassan, the Moroccan who was selling neckties at a store that was broken tops all" because is no business for the owners, when closed it will open another, under another name, because they are the ones who never lose, but he was sure to get a job after twenty years of experience "ever in Las Vegas."

They are ordinary beings, those who work every day because the fantasy of this huge and expensive playground work and we give away, all that we seek not know what, that happiness is not the illusion that it is possible to have fun amidst props castles, pyramids and statues, plastic cardboard, deafened, the soul and worldly concerns- by ringing (electronic and artificial) of the many coins you earn to lose it later (along with half or retirement) away by the vain, ephemeral and delicious illusion of fortune.

Normocytic Hypochromic Anaemia

DAY DE PUEBLA

seems that the last two or three thousand years old civilizations that inhabited the region of Mesoamerica, had and maintained the habit of remembering their dead one day and there were the tricks to "bring" the other world gifts and meals that-somehow-they pointed the way back home. Product of religious syncretism, after the conquest, the party is confused with two Catholic celebrations, the All Saints Day and the Commemoration of All Souls, for the one and two of November, and today, (un) thanks to globalization, the ceremonies begin to mix again with the party of "jaluhüín" gringo.

No one better than Martin to walk the streets of Mexico City, so I called. He passed me in his green car with tinted windows ("is that it seems an official car and nobody messes with us," he told me months ago, when I landed in Mexico and wanted the chance to be the taxi driver who picked me up the airport for the first time), was, as always smiling and loved the idea of "around town" in the "Day of the Dead."

"We go to a cemetery, Martin, but first, I invite you to eat where you choose, though, that is meat," he said as he recalled that "no body no lunch", a wonderful phrase I taught once a friend and now-blame and forgetfulness while I repeat like a family tradition.

Martin did not hesitate and will fly to the south, a few minutes later we arrived at any street, "we are in Xochimilco" he said, parked the car and got out. A ten meters had a large booth with a sign immense that read "pork." "Here we had breakfast with my wife," he told me confident as we sat on stools in short supply around the post. The show was awesome, pork - poor thing! - Was divided, separated and cooked parts insatiable diners asked the cook. This, grab a piece of bofe (lung) and a master butcher jerky on a large trunk that served as a table for cuts. The corresponding portion placed in a block of corn, onion and parsley bathed, and is delivered to the customer who, in turn, smeared it with hot sauce, salsa cactus and chile ("this is the habanero, be careful," Martin told me.) My companion devoured several assorted tacos, which, I explained, contained, at random, filler, solid, crop, ear or other part of the slaughtered, while I, more traditional, I dispatched with his hands, like my ancestors, delicious Chamorro (the pork leg).

Well fed, heading to the cemetery. The traffic was unbearable around (and that's nothing, between last night and this morning there was a lot more people "), parked on the street (" ten dollars ") and walked the few blocks that separated us from the cemetery. Hundreds of people wandered there, at the entrance, dozens of vendors offering flowers, food, toys, liquor and a funny and colorful skulls (the "calaca" or the "Catrina", whose image became popular thanks to the wonderful lithographs of Joseph Guadalupe Posada, the artist who made these crazy immortal skeletons worshipful powerful characters or those who accompanied with a "skull" which was nothing more than a verse-couplet, quatrain or tenth, always anonymous, with which satirized the Time powerful "killing", even metaphorically). What happened

within the cemetery was really fascinating, each grave was clean, colorful, decorated with flowers and a series of objects that were, in life, important for the deceased. For example, on the tombstone of someone who had to be a singer, was a guitar, a pair of boots, a cowboy hat and, of course, two bottles of tequila. About five mariachis sang "Everlasting Love" by Juan Gabriel ("and there are many old rancheras speaking on the subject of the dead," Martin told me) and "shared" with the deceased agave distillate. It was not the only case, several graves had their mariachis and the cemetery was a symphony of harmonious voices and out of tune. At other graves were included entire families, dog-sitting at the marble slab, eating tacos, drinking tequila or simply talking. I was surprised to see that even some of the headstones recently, family members are or were sad lamented the contrary, talking animatedly, as if it were a family gathering in the living room. In the midst of such traditional ceremonies did not cease to amaze children dressed as Dracula, Frankenstein, or witches, carrying a plastic pumpkin in hand ("made in china") demanded some money "for my calaverita." Our tour continued

in the magnificent flower market in Xochimilco, passed by and saw the hundreds of pots containing the famous "marigold" or dead flower, colorful, sprouted, beautiful, with shades ranging from light yellow to orange on, fragrant and beautiful flowers at this time not only decorate the graves (with the "lion's claw" or "velvet") but also the altars in almost all houses are raised with a picture of who is remembered, along with offerings as varied as bread of the dead, sugar skulls and chocolate, water, tequila, a garment of the deceased and candles to guide the soul on its way back home.

Finally, aware of the impossibility of the task to go downtown by car, we rushed to the Metro-that fabulous road network in Mexico carrying almost daily to five million people, leave the car at a shopping mall and the station " Doctors "we climbed towards" Fine Arts. " When you exit the subway the show we found was wonderful. Almost all downtown streets were closed to traffic and thousands, tens of thousands of people walking down the tracks, whole families, friends, children dressed as "American", "darks", platoons of people (and lost up to half punk with a purple crest impressive), came and went. Means exhausted, we reached the main square and the tide was impressive there, twenty or thirty thousand people walked, calm and orderly, traveling, observing, photographing and admiring the dozens of altars and offerings to the various institutions and delegations, in a traditional competition, had built around more than four acres of endless space, exceeded in size only by the Beijing Tiananmen and Moscow's Red.

The day, exhausting but essential, he concluded, "and without Martin the next day in the theater Hidalgo, seeing, as tradition dictates, staging of "Don Juan Tenorio" by José Zorrilla. A lot has happened since it opened in 1863 in Mexico of English drama in the Castle of Chapultepec, and with the assistance of the Emperor Maximilian, and many versions, serious and comic and deplorable quality, memorable and forgotten, there have been through the years, however, people still attending, every first week of November, the chilling dialogue with the dead who engages Don Juan, his conviction and finally redemption through the love of Doña Inés, so chaste, so pure as virgin as ever.

The country never ceases to amaze, this holiday season all citizens, almost without exception and regardless of where they are in the unjust social pyramid, make a high, remember those who left and share with them, in cemeteries, on the altars with offerings, rituals, songs and drama, memories and emotions, nostalgia and dreams, old news and projects in a ritual that, contrary to what a superficial analyst might conclude, is not a cult of death but to life, a song to hope, a celebration of human existence, a time-reflective and irreverent, to stop, remember where we came from, plan where to go and tell the bald, the calaca, the Catrina, "today do not celebrate, today we celebrate what we were and what we are, today I noticed, in the light of our love and our traditions, not terrorize us, not rule, you are useless, never prevail and never forget your shadow will rule over us. "