The Daily Mail Song

Fed up with all the parodies...

Pollo!!

Around this time last year I found myself on a flight from Comalapa to JFK where a significant number of my fellow passengers were wearing protective face masks, either because of the perceived threat of swine flu, or because of the more immediately looming menace of Pollo Campero odours wafting around the cabin.

A few years ago V was returning to London on a Continental flight which was diverted away from Houston by a severe storm. She did eventually reach her intermediate destination, but too late for the connecting flight, so she and a small group of similarly displaced chapines, found themselves being bused to a Day's Inn close to George Bush International for an unscheduled overnight stop.

For the duration of this extended detour V had found herself beside a lady of advanced years from Flores who was clutching a small box of chicken pieces from Campero. As the hours passed another passenger advised this viejita to cut her losses and just eat the (#&*%$) chicken herself — the airline hadn't exactly been falling over itself to pamper its inconvenienced customers — but she insisted that this whiffy little package was intended as her special gift to her daughter in el norte...with the implication that she'd rather starve than tuck in herself.

Yes, the people of this land sure love their pollo, and for those of us that feel a certain amount of disgust at both the factory-farmed, fast food and the off-the-tree, self-garroted options, Antigua offers a number of alternatives. (I for one can't take a bite of P.C. without thinking of that awful Gutiérrez bloke on Libre Encuentro.)

Not long ago Epicure was at the high end of the roasted chicken market in Antigua, charging Q57 for a dish which usually had to be ordered in advance. Elsewhere, pollos rostizados could be found for Q10-20 less in various parts of town, but for some reason there has since been an almost uniform price hike to the Q60 level, which has left Epicure's offering looking suddenly rather competitive. I do like the stuffed birds that they make available around Christmas, but recently, whenever I've bought the more generic model, it's been presented to me in a somewhat shrivelled state. Of course this may just be a result of poor timing on my part. Because when it comes to buying roast chickens in Antigua, timing is all important.

We've recently settled on Alina's (opposite Santa Lucía at the southern end of the Calzada) as the best overall bet for impulse pollo purchases. They start the spits turning early on and shut up fairly early, so this is essentially a lunchtime option, but a strongly recommended one, because the chickens are roasted to perfection — complete with hilo de amarre — and handed to customers in an attractive take-away container. (see pic)

After 7:30 pm there's always La Perrada (aka — affectionately — 'La Forrada') on the west side of the Calzada, but it's probably best to wait an hour or so more, because the last time we tried one of these, it had the rather rubbery texture of a pollo cooked con prisa. They also roast the somewhat greasier yellow (corn-fed) birds, which are less to our taste than the white ones, and shortly before serving, brush them with a blood-red sauce which imprints on them a Tandoori-style seasoning, more sensible to the nose than to the tongue.

Bien Cuillé

Then again, summer's back for a bit.

I like the transitional months in Guatemala, April and October, with their promise of change foretokened by the effloresence of colour in our garden.

However much I relish the sunshine, by the end of each dry season I'm usually starting to feel parched, as if I might at any moment desboronarme and instantly disperse along with the first gust of wind.

And yet I know that come October, I'll be well harto of all those puddle-induced roadblocks, the myriad of little nibbles around my ankles, and the wooden doors around the house which no longer quite shut without a hefty shove.

(Here's a lovely pic that V took the other evening...)

Welcome to the wet season

We've had smatterings of half-hearted precipitation around the same time every afternoon since Good Friday, but our frolicking in the fresh water pools of Paraiso Azul was interrupted around 4pm yesterday by the first truly torrential downpour of the new season. Well, by that and the almost inevitable bunch of late-coming stoners.

Up until then it had been such a swelteringly hot day, so that when the flash flooding around El Calvario eased, the paving stones still steamed like the early morning forest canopy around Tikal. Men were standing on the dry banks of the Pensativo awaiting the sudden gush of water from the hills which was sure to bring with it shovelable quantities of valuable arena del rio.

Perhaps coincidentally, the rough land behind our house was packed with fireflies in the night. I was beginning to wonder where they'd all got to.

Jumping

'Recien Robados'

We're watching an amusing news report this morning about the various techniques used by robacarros in Guate. Amongst all the horrors there's an amusing one which involves attaching a little collection of soft drink cans to the back of the car below the rear bumper. The driver sets off, hears the strange noise behind him, gets down to investigate, leaving his door open and the keys in the ignition....

Loic Le Meur and his new iPad

Isla Presidencial, fit the second

I'm posting this because I rather like the fact that the makers tipped me off that the second episode was now available!

The Road (2009)

Many of the same reservations I had with Blindness almost inevitably apply here as well, though perhaps to less deleterious effect.

Take away the prose style of the author and somehow the the smothering, holocaustic pall, the allegorical intent and the central emotional burden of McCarthy's story are all displaced from a foreground into which marches a cinematic realism, which is ultimately a poor substitute.

Realism is a particularly unwelcome presence at the end of the film. Elsewhere, its intrusion can easily be illustrated: we're told this is a world shorn of all animal life, and yet a beetle and a dog soon put in an appearance. And I don't remember wondering quite so much in the novel how humanity alone could survive such a comprehensive extinction event. (I also started asking questions about the pyschology of someone who knows no other world but this destroyed one, which the screenplay had but limited answers for.)

Oddly enough the least strictly realist moments occur when Hilcoat's direction strays into horror genre territory, but these scenes feel a bit like pre-set extensions from the visual medium, which impact on the audience mood in a subtly different way to that of their textual equivalents.

There's also a sequence which can only be described as one of the most downbeat, yet somehow highly effective Coca-Cola ads in history.

Mount St Helen's and Louisiana provide the very authentically ravaged backdrops, but there are times when this post-apocalyptic landscape seems little more unpleasant than the broken down parts of the northern climes I hail from on a particularly grey December day.

Anyway, I suppose it's an irony worth reflecting on, that hard economic times tend to produce a sudden slew of works about the end of days, but the movies we really seem to revel in when times are really bad are more lighthearted. This might explain why, in spite of fine performances from all the lead players, and a more than competent showing from the director himself, this movie was ultimately overlooked when the awards season got going at the end of 2009.

Grade: B(+)

Good Friday: Part 2, Escuela de Cristo

Good Friday: Part 1, La Merced

Monseñor on parade

Not sure which one though. (Not Quezada Toruño.)

Do you want absolution with that?

Good Catholics are permitted one good meal on this day after all.

Emergency repairs

This was the moment yesterday — at the end of turno 4 — when the Escuela de Cristo anda had to be lowered to the cobbles and a ladder hastily procured, so that one brave man in black could ascend to replace the little gold cross which had toppled from the the roof of the somwhat wobbly pavillion which sheltered the urna. This bore a striking resemblance to Bernini's Baldacchino in the basilica of St Peter's in Rome (see below) and set the tone for the decorative style across this year's procession, which eschewed the peachy marble-effect constructions of recent years.

The cause of this mishap? A gust of wind, Felipe reported to me. He'd been one of the devotos cargadores when the incident occurred.

Alfombra to go

Intruder alert

You say tomato...

When research was published last year suggesting that people whose Facebook friends are overweight are more likely to be piling on the pounds themselves, the story was handled very differently in the UK and US media, at least according to Harvard's Nicholas Christakis, physician, sociologist and all-round expert on social networks:

Standard US headline: Beware, your friends are making you fat!

Standard UK headline: Beware, you could be making your friends fat!

Now, what does this tell us about the differences an ocean makes?

Christakis appeared on a recent edition of the R3 Arts and Ideas pod, along with another American academic Philip G. Zimbardo who has just released The Time Paradox, in which he proclaims that societies which are more future-oriented are generally more successful (and more Protestant than Catholic), though apparently what we all need is a bit of balance in our approach to time.

He did not impress me all that greatly as a speaker and the host was right to pull him up for an notable American bias in his definition of success. However, I did like the story of a group of seminarians who were experimented on at Princeton a while back.

The ruse was to invite them to give a talk about the Good Samaritan. Nine out of ten of those who were led to believe they were running late by the experimenter were able to walk right past a groaning man on the street. On the other hand, nine out of ten who believed they had a little time to spare stopped to offer help. So, even with that highly relevant homiletic tale very much top of mind, our sense of urgency can radically distort our ethical nature.

Santos Tamalitos

Every day this week — water pressure notwithstanding — has felt like a Sunday.

Right now there are hordes of little old ladies wandering around outside delivering their pre-ordered tamalitos. As with frijoles, if you're brave enough to include this particular Guatemalan delicacy in your breakfast, you really ought to have a clear idea how the rest of the day is supposed to pan out.

The viejitas who sell us our Chapin snacks every Wednesday — which we have singularly failed to consume in snackish quantities — offered us some wonderfully moist tamalitos con chipilín this week for Q5 each. These are an annual highlight.

Meanwhile, Doña Mari's are super-sized and cost Q8 each. She makes them with two varieties of cheese, but I find them a little bland and masudos in comparison. The trick here is to serve them sautéed with a dusting of pepper, pimentón and a few aromatic leaves, as seen in the pic above.

We were tempted to add some yaki nori again, but we've found that it gives of its best as an alternative herb when lightly cooked as part of a salsa. (Tequila and honey seem to go especially well with this.)

I've been out front this afternoon reading from the device V calls my 'Swindle'. A tuctuc has just passed me for the umpteenth time, an apparent victim of directions dished out earlier by R.

I somehow doubt whether R could provide accurate instructions on how to get to his own house from the other side of the street. Everyone from Álvaro Arzú to Domino's Pizza (30 mintos o gratis...hehe) has fallen prey to his unique talent for confounding inquirers.

A Rake's Progress (8)

In the last painting in the series Sarah finally gets to spend some quality time with Tom, except by now he's lost his marbles completely and has been thrown into Bedlam with all the other chiflados. His semi-naked figure looms in the foreground in a pose suggestive of inner turmoil morphing into outer rampage. Meanwhile, in the background high society women are checking out the unblanced talent on display in this famous mental hospital come afternoon-out.