{now, im seeing but im not believing}

I got pulled over by the police today for making a U-Turn. I totally objected to the matter for the simple reason that there was no presence of an identificatory sign. I cried, and complained. I was "excused" in the end, happily ever after... It was a degree less embarrassing then when I got stopped by a cop-on-a-horse who wanted to fine me for J-walking!!

Above is one of my favorite scenes from the conveniently-named U-TURN movie with Sean Penn, Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix... It came from Stray Dogs by the master John Ridley and Oliver Stone had the heart to direct it. He brilliantly accomplished the task of bringing to life this little underrated gem of a film where humor is shielded by subtlety and taunting sardonicism. Needless to say I love it.  Have you seen it?

{chaos-control-chaos-control}

"We flip it around for variety" - Donald Sutherland´s character expressed delightfully during a very memorable scene from the movie Six Degrees of Separation. A side note on the brilliance of the film, strong characters and dialogue. Will Smith at his finest, particularly during his - Catcher in The Rye Thesis - monologue. Well worth watching several times to capture every word about imagination....

Another protagonist in this film is Kandinsky, the Russian painter along with two of his very famous artworks; "Black Lines" and  "Several Circles", except in this occasion they´ve merged them together into a one-sided form in order to create a meaningful correlation between art and the film. You can watch a mini clip of the characters showing off their multifaceted prized possession...

Duality. Isn´t everything in life some way double sided? We say that there are two sides to every story, and we flip a coin for head or tales in order to make a decision, right? The way I see it, we always have at least two choices in everything we face in life. You can take the easy way out or fight the hard way, you can change paths into a different direction or continue whatever it is you're doing. You can ride on the wave of chaos... or control...

Or better yet, find the balance between these two. This is something particularly hard for me. As Ive shared with you in the past (ok, yesterday), Im a bit of an extremist so balance is something Im constantly striving for. But I can´t help but think that things get much more interesting when you add up different angles or points of view, don´t you think? 

For example, I love pink. Im gaga for tutus, Audrey films, tea at The Ritz and baby pandas. But there´s a whole other side to me, the one that devours film noir and anything Orson Welles, respects sarcasm (Im obviously lying here and I despise it) and the obscurity of Edgar Allan Poe and other not so Winnie The Pooh-esh type of things... And don´t even get me started on the different types of men I´ve had the immeasurable pleasure of dating or being in a relationship with. Night and day. Oil and water.  My taste in music also has a wider range than Meryl Streep´s acting abilities and I can switch from Sporty Spice to Lazy Spice in a split second, not too proud of this last one...

Look at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the example may be quite exceptional but let´s examine this for a moment. Ok, so this guy is a little beyond bi-polar and I would imagine slightly aggressive during courtship but if I were to remove something so minor like his dissociative identity disorder, I would totally date him. You get two guys for the price of one! Perhaps a bit morally disturbing but the taste of both worlds nevertheless. Remember to "flip it around for variety".

And let´s not discount the universally acclaimed -Looking at the glass half full or half empty-, ok that´s a difficult one... How do you meet this one half way? If you have any ideas, please let me know, Im not very good at math to begin with! I guess technically, the glass is always full and Im getting pretty thirsty now so Im gonna go....  

{cinco de mayo! sales commission, bye-bye-o! }

We´re talking 1997 and since then every May 5th I can´t help but think of one thing: Seinfeld´s Millennium episode. Number 20 of the 8th season. This photo might stir up some memories for you...

The script reads: 

Elaine tries to run an ethnic-themed clothing store called Putumayo out of business after receiving bad customer service. First, she tries shopping at a competing store, Cinco de Mayo, but discovers that the same woman from Putumayo owns both stores. Later, she tries to get Kramer, under an alter ego named H. E. Pennypacker, to change the price tags on the labels, but he accidentally destroys the pricing gun before he can finish. Instead, he tries to take the desiccant packs from the clothing as Plan B, so he only manages to ruin the clothes in about five years, making Elaine more distressed and presumably gives up. Kramer then eats some free chips the store gives out to its customers and unknowingly drops one of the desiccant packs in the salsa dip.

We don´t actually celebrate this holiday in Mexico, even less in Argentina (my home planet) but if I had to party to this one, Id say get chips, salsa and watch this episode! 

Happy Cinco de Mayo, bye-bye-o!

{if you rely on hand gestures to get your point across, you can thank fish for that!}

Scientists have found that the evolution of the control of speech and hand movements can be traced back to the same place in the brain, which could explain why we use hand gestures when we are speaking. And you thought it was the italians!!

{Professor Andrew Bass (Cornell University), who will be presenting his work at the meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology on the 3rd July, said: "We have traced the evolutionary origins of the behavioral coupling between speech and hand movement back to a developmental compartment in the brain of fishes."

"Pectoral appendages (fins and forelimbs) are mainly used for locomotion. However, pectoral appendages also function in social communication for the purposes of making sounds that we simply refer to as non-vocal sonic signals, and for gestural signaling.

Studies of early development in fishes show that neural networks in the brain controlling the more complex vocal and pectoral mechanisms of social signaling among birds and mammals have their ancestral origins in a single compartment of the hindbrain in fishes. This begins to explain the ancestral origins of the neural basis for the close coupling between vocal and pectoral/gestural signaling that is observed among many vertebrate groups, including humans.

Professor Bass said: "Coupling of vocal and pectoral-gestural circuitry starts to get at the evolutionary origins of the coupling between vocalization (speech) and gestural signaling (hand movements). This is all part of the perhaps even larger story of language evolution." sciencedaily.com }

Above: John Cusack gesticulating away with his pretty hands. 

{and my buns, they don't feel nothin' like steel}

Im having a Tai Fraser moment. I know, I have many of those, I can´t help it... Amy Heckerling made Clueless my bible when I was a bitty witty teen. That woman has some word power!

Today I went hiking, as I do every morning (well except when I stay up really late watching Seinfeld reruns and I can´t get up the next morning, oh and Sundays, as if!). I absolutely love the feeling of accomplishment that I get when reaching further heights, I literally get high on being high... And I have so much fun up in the hills, when Im on my own and I can just play around pretending Im in a musical or some stage like The Voice. Ive been working on my coreo for Nina Simone´s I love To Love  ♪  ♬ ♩ "I just need a guy with a Frank Sinatra touch" ♪ ♫ ♬. You´d be surprised at how excellent Nina goes with hiking, good combo for any day of the week ... except Sundays!

As I was stabilizing my position for my grand presentation, I saw not one  but TWO hotties pressing their brakes on downhill grade and just passing me by. I got a little embarrassed of course, considering I was thinking that the hills were completely my own and being a Saturday I had the best idea of them all, I went hiking in my pajama pants! I was not feeling very sexy, needless to say. But the thing that worried me most were my buns (referred to as bums in some hemispheres). Ass, behind, gluteus maximus, all of the above! I felt very self conscious for a moment about that rear-end and the fact that despite all my efforts, you could still pinch em´ with a certain ease...

(About twelve years ago I embarked on a pilgrimage towards Basilica de Luján in Buenos Aires. Thousands to see the virgen, I went along to tighten my thighs! Im not religious but I really needed the exercise. As I recall, I kept stopping every few miles to check if they were getting a bit harder. I didn´t make it all the way but I did lose a couple of pounds along the way so it was worth the effort!)

So in this moment I started having doubts whether this type of exercise was working for me, if I shouldn´t try running or swimming instead... This uncertainty made me feel really sad, how could I go from having the best time ever to been nothing-butt depressed? 

And before you start jumping to conclusions of whether Im bipolar or straight up insane, I should make something very clear. I am a bit of what you would call an extremist, an all or nothing kind of girl, Im working on it and it´s one of the reasons I created this web space. Im sorry it´s not just to make you happy... So I did feel a bit of frustration when I realized there was still a lot of something hanging loose back there. I had an - Ive been on a diet for a month and I gained 10 lbs - moment! 

But then I stopped for a moment and I thought about all the reasons I began to hike in the first place and it became clear to me that having buns of steel was just one in a bunch. And if I had to live for the rest of my life with a jelly jiggling backside, I would be totally ok with that, after all it´s my backside. And I would still have the time of my life going up the hill (backwards). I do that sometimes, to change the scenery... 

Sometimes our view needs to be widened, we get stuck on the little things that make us uncomfortable or unfulfilled and in reality we have a whole lot more going on. There is never a sole purpose for doing the things we do, instead it´s a combination of many goals that we conveniently tie into one. So try breaking this combo down and you will find a million reasons to be motivated to pursue whatever it is you're doing...

“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” - George Eliot

{i love her. and true love lasts a lifetime}

Emma Thompson´s character in Love Actually spoke fondly about her idol Jodi Mitchell. I find her to be quite depressing, Jodi, not Emma... please! But they say we can´t choose who we fall in love with so my continuance of opinion shall remain locked inside my little Pandora box... (cont.)

Ohhh, I can´t help myself, but the word Pandora always brings to mind one of the best lines in cinema history... and from "Spike" nevertheless!

"I knew a girl at school called Pandora. Never got to see her box, though...." 

How can you not love Spike? He´s the all time fantasy roommate, if you live in Notting Hill, did you see the prices of those flats with blue doors?! Eventually you´ll meet a movie star in your local bookshop and move out...

And speaking of falling in love, I can´t believe I´ve waited all these posts to share this with you... I guess we had to be further acquainted, its a matter of trust, you see.

I have a very special love, unconditional (until further notice, who knows). A kind of love that you feel will last a lifetime. Cherish, adoration, admiration... I just sighed. And Im blushing, I feel like Im in a confessionary and Im not even religious!

And whom do I have all these feelings for, you may ask. Well those close to me already know who Im talking about and now so will you... That guy that wore a leather jacket and a cross earring in the 80s, the one who got caught in a Beverly Hills park bathroom doing who knows what, the boy that evolved into one of the greatest singing voices in history... more clues? c´mon, it´s pretty obvious by now!

This man made me do things I thought Id never do! Im not going to go into all the emotional linings, that would be like 150 different posts, but I am going to share with you this particular adventure that I went on starting in the year 2006. I took a year off, let´s call it a sabbatical, to go wherever he would go. He was on tour back then, 25 Live. My very first concert was in Rotterdam and from then on... 18 more concerts... London, Paris, Copenhagen, Vancouver, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Budapest... and the list goes on... You could say Im quite fond of him...

I had the time of my life, travel, meeting "OCFs" (other crazy fans), seeing the love of my life over and over again and after a very cold wait, the chance to meet him, believe me this merits a whole other narrative but at least I will share my photo... and before you say anything, yes, he´s looking in another direction. My emotions were all over the lace to even look at was going on with the camera so the whining came until later...

But one day I came back home, on the verge of 2008 and something happened. I was crazy excited sharing my experience with friends and family and then...  All of a sudden I was back in the real world, in real time and a feeling of discomfort became my full time companion. What was going on? Ive just had a million dreams come true, isn´t that what its all about? Apparently not. I was feeling guilty, dissatisfied with myself. Believing I had wasted an entire year of my life instead of focusing on goals, my career, my future. I started to panic. I became isolated and desperate trying to figure out a way to make up for all "the lost time". How could someone like me, so driven and focused pursue such insanity? I had to get into therapy!!! 

Well, I did, although no couch or hourly rate were involved. I organized a conversation group with friends and we called ourselves The Lost Souls. No joke, desperate times call for desperate measures!! The six of us started getting together twice a week, just chatting, sharing as much as we could. That is when I realized that all my friends were cuckoo, like I didn't know this already! Aside from the obvious, amazing things started to occur. Thanks to the ears and brains of these ladies I slowly began to relax about this whole ordeal and started to see the wonderful things that I had actually accomplished. Perhaps a little unconventional but dreams are unique and very personal. 

This changed my complete outlook on life, I became FREE. These were my choices, my decisions, my resolutions. Mine, mine, mine. I had adjusted my vision and it was the best thing that ever happened to me... And this is when all the cliches come in handy: No more regrets, live the moment, each day is a new beginning... If you want to add something, be my guest.

No matter how many plans we make, we can´t predict tomorrow and nothing can take away our life experiences, which is why I became very determined to live my life this way, in motion, not letting opportunities pass me by. As long as those opportunities rank high in my standards and not anyone else´s. No one can tell you what things are important to you, this is something that you have to discover yourself. Find your own path and lead the life that you want. It´s the only way that you´ll ever achieve true happiness and fulfillment.

Sometimes we need a little push to get us started, we may find it in our careers, our families, animals, the planet or even a pop star, a very talented one... Following passion and love, because true love lasts a lifetime...

With that in mind, his new tour started later in 2008 and guess who was there? And Symphonica 2011? An intimate gathering at the Royal Opera House in London, even Elton John was there! You think I was going to miss that? I even dragged my mom to the concert. Now she´s an OCF!! Like we say in spanish "quien te quita lo bailado?". It translates into something like "who can take away the dance you´ve already danced". It sounds terrible in english but you get the picture....

Get up, get out there and go find your very own George Michael because you´re not getting mine!!!

{drinking with dead women writers}

I think I need to start making a list of all the books I need to get my hands on. There´s so many I even thought about starting an excel document so keep things in account. What do you think, too nerdy?

I would certainly be drinking wine while making new entries, as well as asking myself if Dorothy Parker would read it, I was inspired by this particular book that is currently number one on my list...

{you have the nicest pair of rhododendrons in town}

Patrick Dempsey was once a regular teenage dork with an edge that is, as he clearly went from geek to chic (and back to geek... in the length of 2 hours!) in Cant Buy Me Love... He was suave with the ladies, he had a special touch. What was it? If you re-watch the movie, as I have done at least once a year for the past 20 years, you may find that you agree with me in assuming that it all comes down to the art of complimenting...

Cindy Mancini, the prettiest girl in school... "The most beautiful girl in the history of this county" - Chuck said. - And yet a so unsure of herself, that she had to go and borrow her mom´s suede outfit which she had strictly been forbidden to touch. She went to the party in the outfit, showed it off to her friends (saying that her boyfriend had sent it to her from Iowa, because that´s where the finest leather comes from...), got red wine spilt on it and well, thanks to all this dilemma, there is a movie we can share!

So, this happened with high school kids but it seems we never grow out of it. Why do we care so much what people think of us? Why do compliments sometimes make or break our days? Why do the lack of compliments weigh over our every relationship? I mean, I sure dumped the guy who was unable to tell me how spectacular I looked in that red dress, believe me, SPECTACULAR.

That´s what social media was invented for, right? Compliments. We live in a world of likes and retweets letting those define our taste, our mood and our wisdom! I personally get ecstatic when you share my posts with others, if Im feeling down, that´ll do it. Im just making a statement, not criticizing in any negative way, so please continue sharing and bringing a smile to my face... 

But I am (a little) opposed to letting these things master my decisions. If you narrow it down, who´s opinion matters most to you, that of a total stranger or one coming from someone who cares for you and who you respect? Both, of course! Apparently it´s getting harder and harder to set these apart as we are spending more amounts of time with our virtual connections and awarding them more meaning than we (perhaps) should. 

Fishing for compliments, means you might not catch any! No matter how well-equipped you find yourself to be... But there´s a higher chance you´ll get some if you reach out to a larger quantity of individuals, I understand. Quantity has taken over quality, big time. I once opened a fake facebook account to give a like to the posts I submitted on the real one!! Losers unite, you might as well confess that you did it too. Fake account is now closed, it started getting lazy and not liking my posts anymore....

And this works both ways, don´t you sometimes feel compelled to like or share something someone else posted out of guilt or to make that person feel good? Sure you have! I like posts all the time and I don´t even read them! 

If you want to get some good compliments out there, here´s a great list gathered by Huffington Post for you to take a look at, cut and paste. And if you are looking for a compliment, let it come naturally, without expecting it, it feels so much better... better make a recording yourself on your phone and play it back for as long as it´s necessary. Something like - "Ale, you are amazing. The diet is working wonders, you look so much thinner "- play it until it starts to sink in.

SPOILER ALERT ... Although I don´t know if that even existed in the 80s!

In the end, Ronald and Cindy get together. They each realize that neither of them have to change to accept the other nor do they care what anybody thinks about them anymore. "Cools, Nerds, your side, my side, man it's all bullshit. It´s tough enough to be yourself."...

{it takes years to write a great novel. and it takes you just as long to write a shit novel}

Truth be told. Albatross. Just watched this movie, one of those peculiar ones in which you are convey ed into a feel good place yet the plot is quite sketchy and insecure. I enjoyed it, naturally. There´s a writer involved (Sebastian Koch, yum!), talk about his novel...There´s also Emelia, who has been deceived her whole life into thinking she was Conan Doyle´s great granddaughter (a clever touch) and well, that´s about it... Some website described it as - A coming of age at the English Seaside - That´s plenty for me, I will forever more be front row audience to anything remotely: Bildungsroman / Künstlerroman

Even if the dialogue goes something like this:

Beth: Do you need to call your mom to check?

Emelia: I would but, she's a bit dead.

Beth: Oh. Sorry.

Emelia: It's okay. Not very fair for you to take the blame. She *did* kill herself.

And these movies always teach you something, the worn out "moral of the story", so you feel as though you were deceived... Although in this case, by the box office...

The title of this post really stood out because Im currently working on my first novel, and the words are so true! Since I was a little girl, I heard my mother saying something that influenced me a great deal. "There´s very little difference in doing things right or wrong. Think about it, you put in the same effort, the time and will. The only distinction is focus and attention to detail. The devil is in the detail". 

My mom is a wise woman and she's had plenty of experience doing things wrong, so I guess she knows exactly what she´s talking about. And this sound advice is incredibly simple to apply to our every day life, remember, it´s all about the little things. Adjust the wheels of the car just a little tighter or use a condom... the details!!!

Like the saying goes, - Im a writer therefore I rewrite. - This is exactly what Ive been doing and it´s also true that there comes a point when you need to stop with the revisions before driving yourself crazy... When your dog already knows the novel by heart, it´s a good sign that you've been through it enough...

So let´s carry on with this journey (some call it perfectionism), you and I, together... whether you're writing something yourself or making an effort to finish going through my posts. And let´s do it right, thoroughly and with conviction. Otherwise, you'll be hearing from my mother!

{celebrating the anniversaire of a sweet transvestite}

The great Tim Curry turns 68 today and we still love him. He´s one of those character actors that just seems to nail each performance and turning it into a classic! We worship Pennywise and Frank n Furter and so many other memorable ones.

Enjoy this sweet musical number from The Rocky Horror Show...