Blog: THEME FOR GREAT CITIES

A s concerts go, Kylie Minogue's Nov. 15 stop in Buenos Aires may not have been one for the history books, but there were a few great moments. Kylie looked healthier and more robust than I've ever seen her--My friend Luciano even thought she looked a tad, in his words, "chubby"--a vision at 40! I could have done without six different costumes and frequent stage exits in order to change into said costumes. Breaks between songs tend to kill the energy at live shows (even Madonna knows that!), but when you're Kylie, you can get away with more than most [...]

A s you may or may not have figured out from my previous post about great Kates, I'm slightly obsessed with names--their origins, their meanings, the forms they take in different languages. During my first trip to Buenos Aires, I actually spent an entire dinner writing down English names and their Spanish and Italian equivalents. And before you ask, I was dining alone, so I didn't bore anyone, not even myself, to tears. I've always thought that people sort of take on the personality that's associated with their name. In the United States, there are so many names [...]

E ither Hollywood is running out of movie titles or there aren't enough Spanish translations to go around. Today I saw several billboards for a just-released-in-Argentina Antonio Banderas/Meg Ryan movie called El Nuevo Novio De Mi Mamá ( My Mom's New Boyfriend , aka Mi Novio Es Un Ladrón or My Boyfriend Is A Thief --each as awful as the other). As I stood on the sidewalk and checked it out, three thoughts popped into my mind. First, why hadn't I heard of this film, considering that it's a mainstream release with two big names [...]

A while ago I posted about a controversial One Life To Live storyline that had me simultaneously rooting for the good guy and the bad guy. The primary players in this web that's way too tangled to fully explain here involves, to some degree, practically the entire OLTL cast: Todd Manning, the ringleader of a group of rapists back in college; Marty Saybrooke, his presumed-dead (by everyone except for Todd) amnesiac victim; and John McBain, her former lover now, incidentally, involved with Todd's ex-wife Blair. This week, just after Todd and Marty celebrate the just-declared love [...]

T he strangest thing happened this week at Rumi's Tuesday night Rube party. Halfway through one particularly thumping hard-house party starter, a video of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech began playing on a massive video screen. I would say, "Only in Buenos Aires!" except that's the last thing I would have expected in BA. I know that everyone here is excited about Barack Obama's successful presidential bid--three women at the pilates studio actually starting clapping and jumping for joy the other day when they found out that I was an Obama supporter--but I thought it was [...]

I was recently reading a chapter in the Time Out book 100 Films To Change Your Life in which Geoff Andrew (don't worry, I'd never heard of him before either) suggested that for those who choose to take up film directing, having a surname that begins with the letter K puts them at a clear advantage. Some of his hard evidence: Kazan, Keaton, Kieslowski, Kubrick, Kurosawa and so on. Garbage, I say. But here's some more junk food for thought, loosely tied to the letter K. For women with creative aspirations, does being named Katharine [...]

H oy estaba caminando al gimnasio en Avenida Santa Fe al borde de quedarme dormido cuando me amaneció algo. ¿El despertador? Una foto de Barack Obama en la primera página del periódico Critica de la Argentina y un titular grande: " MARTES NEGRO ." ¡No me digas! Por supuesto, era una referencia al triunfo de Barack Obama, que en enero va a ponerse el primer presidente negro de los Estados Unidos. Es un poco ingenioso el titular, aunque asocia este momento feliz y histórico con un dia en el año 1992 cuando la economía [...]

T his morning I was walking down Avenida Santa Fe on my way to the gym in my usual somnambulistic state when something suddenly jolted me to life. The wake-up bomb? A picture of Barack Obama on the front page of Crítica de la Argentina (see left) and the bold-type headline: " MARTES NEGRO " (translation: Black Wednesday). Say what? Of course, it's a reference to yesterday's not-so-shocking victory by Barack Obama, who in January will become the first black [...]

"N ow the drugs don't work/They just make you worse/But I know I'll see your face again." --The Verve, "The Drugs Don't Work I'm about to say something potentially controversial and definitely un-PC, so turn your head if you're not up for it. I can kind of see why people get hooked on pain pills. And what brought about this deeper understanding of the affliction of addiction? It started about a week and a half ago when I was at the gym. One minute I was happily pumping iron, the next I was practically [...]

I t's been years, decades possibly, since I've sat down and watched videos on TV. I didn't even know that MTV or VH1 even played them anymore. But this Saturday afternoon, VH1 is playing one after another. It's some kind of countdown. Of what, I can't quite figure out, and they aren't saying. I can't imagine what list would include Billy Squier's "Rock Me Tonite" (above), Maroon 5's "This Love," Beyonce's "Crazy In Love," Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" (No. 19) and Lenny Kravitz' "I Belong To You," (No. 18), but where there's a will, I suppose there [...]

(I originally intended to post this on Election Day, but decided to do it today in honor of R.E.M.'s headlining performance tonight at Buenos Aires's Personal Fest 2008. I'll probably sit this one out because I'm well past the age where I find outdoor festival concerts bearable, but at least I'll always have my fond memories of the Green and Monster tours, which I saw, respectively, in Florida and New York's Madison Square Garden.) Do you remember where you were one score minus four days ago? I do. It was Tuesday, November 8, [...]

E veryone remembers their first love. Mine was London. For most of the '90s and the first half of the '00s, before I discovered Buenos Aires in 2005, I was a die-hard Anglophile, obsessed with London and all related things. I went for the first time in the fall of 1994, and afterward, I visited so often (at least twice a year) that my friend Andrew, a Londoner whom I met in Prague in 1996, once joked that I spent more time in his town than people who live there. An exaggeration, yes, but I got his drift. In fact, [...]

L ast night Ariel sent me a string of text messages. And speaking of word games, he didn't play any, perhaps because he doesn't seem to have yet mastered his own language. He said it had been such a long time since we'd last spoken, and he wanted to know how I was doing. He invited me to get together soon, perhaps for dinner (my place, of course), if I was interested. A succession of strangely spelled and poorly punctuated sweet nothings followed: "kiero verte pronto MORENO HERMOSO," "tengo muchas ganas de verte, ganas de abrazarte fuerte y darte [...]

L iving in a foreign language for the past two years has made me more appreciative of English than I ever was during my lifetime in the United States. But sometimes as absence is making the heart grow fonder, it also makes the brain a little forgetful. The truth is that my decades-long relationship with my native tongue has had strained moments. Although I built an entire career around it, I didn't always understand it. We've all had those conversations in which there's such a disconnect between what is said and what is meant that all parties involved might as [...]

S ome posts ago, I griped about Beyonce's current single, "If I Were A Boy," an attempt to put a new twist on the old-as-dirt battle of the sexes that turns out a cliched mess targeted at simpleton mentalities. I thought about the song the other morning as I was walking to my Pilates class and my iPod's random play selected "A Woman Left Lonely," a track from Jukebox, Cat Power's recent covers CD. Now I'm ashamed to admit that although I downloaded Jukebox the week of its release last January, I've never listened to it in its entirety. (I [...]

"T ony Tony Tony/I know that you're horny/But there's something 'bout that Bush ain't right." --George Michael, "Shoot The Dog" Yes, it was biting (pun not intended) and cut right to the chase, indicting then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair's support of George Bush's War on Iraq, but I never understood what all the fuss and controversy was about in Michael's native UK. I guess every country has its hangups. In the UK, blasting the ruling government can seriously derail the seemingly sturdiest pop career, and for George Michael, it left him temporarily in the doghouse (pun [...]

I s it me, or does "Womanizer," Britney Spears' current electro-pop single, bear more than a passing resemblance to "Keeps Gettin' Better," Christina Aguilera's current electro-pop single? I never realized it until tonight. I went to a disco in Montevideo, Uruguay, and three or four songs after I arrived (and following Ida Corr Vs. Fedde LeGrand's "Let Me Think About It" and a particularly thumping mix of Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music"), the crowd began to squeal in delight at the DJ's selection. Ooh, I thought to myself. The new Christina! Then [...]

S ome posts ago, I griped about Beyonce's current single, "If I Were A Boy," an attempt to put a new twist on the old-as-dirt battle of the sexes that turns out a cliched mess targeted at simpleton mentalities. I thought about the song the other morning as I was walking to my Pilates class and my iPod's random play selected "A Woman Left Lonely," a track from Jukebox , Cat Power's recent covers CD. Now I'm ashamed to admit that although I downloaded Jukebox the week of its release last January, I've never listened to it [...]

I 've always been fully aware that I belong to the neediest of species. But recently, it's become a near-inescapable fact. It seems that just about everyone I know or meet has this desperate desire for companionship. I'm not talking strictly about the romantic brand but the platonic kind, too. These sociaholics avoid being alone like the plague, preferring to spend every waking hour surrounded by others rather than face a few hours in silent solitude and quiet contemplation. I'm not one of those people. Never have been. Despite my gregarious party-boy streak, my friends would probably describe [...]

H ere's what the New York Daily News had to say about Madonna's ridiculously titled directorial debut, Filth And Wisdom , which, to be honest, I'd never heard of until a few moments ago. (Between recording her latest CD, promoting it and planning a tour, when did she even find time to cowrite and direct a film?) "...an atrocious mess that feels like it was written by the Madonna character in Desperately Seeking Susan and directed by the Madonna character in Who's The Girl ." Pardon [...]