Saturday, April 05, 2014

Back in Playa


Ah, Playa. One has so much to choose from when it comes to getting a souvenir for that special person back home. 



Anyway, here I was just about to start writing my magnum opus on all the ways Mexico and Mexicans get right up my nose*, when I arrived back here in Playa for the umpteenth time in 26 years and then suddenly all seemed well again with the world. 

The layers of tack keep getting laid down, one on top of the other. This time I note that since I was last here in June '13 one of my favourite sections of the Quinta has been demolished in its entirety and further up towards Constituyentes there's a really ugly new mall selling $90 plastic flip-flops. 

And yet still, I cannot find it in me to hate this town. 

* Not the food, I hasten to add. 



True Detective



Not sure I liked the way this wound up, especially Rust's epiphany. It seemed to be heading down the familiar James Lee Burke route - Louisiana as America's eschatological dumping ground, where unholy alliances between child molesters, soul-less capitalists, evangelical bullies and corrupt old southern dynasties form with the regularity of storm fronts. 

But then it sort of veered off into Texas Chainsaw Massacre territory. Frankly Reggie the Douche or whatever his name was, would have made a better principal nasty, though really the problem here was that the narrative was really about the mismatched relationship between the two guys from CID. They called the other cops Suck and Fuck, but were at times better deserving of the names themselves. 


Thursday, April 03, 2014

Isla Aguada




Soggy Island. 

Old school Yucatán; off-the-grid: no credit cards, no wi-fi, and no decent coffee, anywhere. 

I used to find these sort of locations relaxing. Nowadays there's hardly anywhere more stressful!