handyfloss

Pos eso, que el domingo tuve el placer de asistir al concierto que dio Joaquín Sabina en el velódromo de Anoeta (Donostia).

El tío se cascó dos horas y cuarto de canciones, con las pausas justas para soltar algunos versos, presentar a sus compañeros de escenario, dejar cantar sendas canciones a Pancho Varona (muy sexy con su mono de butanero), y a Olga (Google me dice que se apellida Román), y recoger un tanga que le tiraron desde el público.

A mí el tiempo se me pasó volando, para cuando nos quisimos dar cuenta ya habían pasado 2h y se despedía. Luego salió otra vez e hizo un cuarto de hora de bises, para, según sus propias palabras, “no hacer el teatro de salir y volver varias veces, y directamente aburriros de una vez”. La verdad es que se nos quedó corto, sobre todo porque se dejó un montón de canciones en el tintero (“Pongamos que hablo de Madrid”, “Ruido”, “Eva tomando el sol”, “Por el boulevar de los sueños rotos”, “Oiga doctor”, “Medias negras”…). Tiene tantas canciones que esto era inevitable, a menos que el concierto durara 10 horas.

En resumen: un concierto cojonudo.

Last night I went to see the movie Chaos (Caos).

It is a decent movie, with some thriller ingredients, following the “misterious” bank robbery theme I also saw in Inside man (Plan oculto). Here the plot is, maybe, more developed, but less perfect. It is not evident why some things happen, and the inclusion of chaos theory into the plot is irrelevant, but it has the makings of a good thriller, in which details fit together as the movie goes on. Not perfectly, but they do fit.

As a little warning, do not expect incredible amounts of action, just because Statham and Snipes are starring. It has some action, but the main dish is the plot itself.

Barring some holes in the script, and the usual unbelievable bits (some explosions, some bad guys escaping miraculously… you know, those things), I’d say it is well worth watching.

Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch Crash, and I have to say that I liked it a lot. The plot is very good, and the events flow naturally.

What I liked most was that the characters were, albeit sketchy (because there are many, and there’s no time for more development), quite more complex than your average black-or-white hero/villain type nowadays. There aren’t really good guys and bad guys. There’s racist idiots, but also people with prejudices learning to overcome them, apparently racist people acting as heroes, ethnic minorities clashing among them, appart from with white people, and “gangsta bros” becoming samaritans.

A great movie, really.

I read in BoingBoing that at least one of the 5 finalists to the 2005 Hugo best science-fiction novel award has published his work (Accelerando) under the Creative Commons.

Yes, free to download legally. Yes, a novel that is among the finalists for an international prize, won by people like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Orson Scott Card or J.K. Rowling in 2001 for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Viernes 5 de mayo, carretera N1 dirección Donostia, cercanías de Vitoria. Una inocente joven, a quien identificaremos como L., conduce su flamante coche nuevo con destino a Donosti, huyendo de la asfixiante y deprimente macrourbe conocida como “Madrid”.

No sabe si lo ha alcanzado o le acaba de adelantar, pero tiene delante un coche de siniestro aspecto, y con matrícula francesa. Hay algo en su manera de circular, lento pero con suaves acelerones ocasionales, que parecen indicar a L. “adelántame”. No, indicar no es la palabra adecuada. Retar.

“Lo que me faltaba, un pirado”. L. acelera y rebasa al amenazador automóvil, dejándolo fácilmente atrás. Respira aliviada, y prosigue su viaje.

Pero no todo queda ahí. Segundos más tarde un destello en el retrovisor la sorprende. “Si todavía hay luz, ¿qué hace ese tío?” Un rápido vistazo al retrovisor confirma su sospecha: es el coche francés de antes. “Bien, si quiere adelantarme, que lo haga”. Efectivamente el coche rebasa a L., pero en vez de alejarse reduce su velocidad hasta quedarse justo delante, como en la anterior ocasión.

L. decide no adelantarlo, reduciendo la marcha con la intención de dejarlo ir. Pero no será tan fácil… el coche también frena. Van tan lento que L. se extraña de que otros coches no los alcancen, pero el hecho es que van sólos por la carretera.

Al final, L. decide adelantar y acelerar hasta dejar el coche atrás. Pero este parece que no cede tan pronto, y acelera hasta alcanzarla. L. inicia una carrera desenfrenada por dejar al franchute loco atrás.

[…] Me salto 187 páginas de descripciones de acción a raudales, más que nada porque tengo más cosas que hacer […]

Cuando está llegando a Donosti, L. reduce la velocidad y se prepara para tomar la salida necesaria. El francés loco se posiciona a la par del coche de L. y por primera vez circulan en paralelo cierto tiempo.

L. mira horrorizada cómo dos pares de ojos rojos que parecen refulgir la observan desde los asientros traseros del coche francés. Fijándose más puede ver el contorno de unas cabezas enormes y ligeramente deformes, como la descendencia siniestra de una familia infernal. Lentamente, con exasperante deliberación, la ventanilla del copiloto se va abriendo, dejando ver tras ella la melena rubia de una mujer que bien podría ser una diablesa, con su rostro pálido pero hermoso entre la cabellera revuelta por el viento. Unos complicados gestos, posiblemente satánicos, de la mujer, empujan a L. a bajar su ventanilla, y prestar atención, contra todo lo que su ya torturada razón le avisa. Temiendo oir palabras terribles que perviertan su mente y la subyuguen al Señor de las Tinieblas, L. oye (en francés):

– “¡Gilipollas, llevas el intermitente derecho todo el tiempo encendido!”

Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch Failure to launch (Novia por contrato).

I went to Antiguo Berri, a cinema that is a 5 minutes walk away from where I live. That’s why I always get out 4 minutes before the movie starts…

Yesterday I got out 6 minutes before, congratulating myself because I had 1 extra minute. All was fun and rejoice until I arrived at the cinema ticket desk… and noticed I had forgotten my wallet at home (and had no time to go back for it). Wait, there’s hope! I had with me my coin wallet, in which I had enough money. The regular ticket is 5 euros, but a card issued to under-30s by my bank entitles me to a discount of one euro. Fine, I had 4.70 eur in my coin wallet! Now, the bad part: the discount card was in my other wallet, at home :^(

Now, I go to that cinema every week, so the clerk knows me. I thougth that she’d accept to make the discount even without the card, you know, my charming smile and all that… Tough luck, yesterday they had a new guy at the desk. My moral sank.

However, I thought “what the hell?”, and told him what the matter was. To my (mild) surprise, he accepted promptly, and issued me a discount ticket, making me pay only 4 eur. Bad part is he didn’t give me a “young discount” ticket, but one of “discount to the elderly” :^)

As for the movie itself, it is a romantic comedy, which says it all. It’s only moderately funny, but I had a good time watching it. It pokes fun at guys living with their parents, which is technically my situation… so I sometimes thought it was a drama, instead of a comedy!

I don’t think I spoil any big surprise if I disclose that the main line of the plot is that the parents of Matthew McConaughey hire Sarah Jessica Parker to make him fall in love with her, so that he quits living with them. Yeah, right, I thought the same thing: them bastards! My self-confidence was already low, I didn’t need the suspicion that next time a girl is “receptive” with me it’s because my parents hired her to make me move out of home, thanks!

I know, I know: it’s a movie. But… did they really think it would work? SJ Parker’s aim was to give MM self confidence, so that he’d shift to the next step in life, living alone. Now, if (or “when”) he did find out about the farce… wouldn’t his self confidence actually sink? Wouldn’t it be even more difficult to make him move away in the future (if it didn’t work out at the first try, as it was evident that it wouldn’t)? What kind of shit were those parents smoking when they came out with the idea, and were can I get some?

They are not my favourite, they are not the best of the best… But, what the hell!, their personal info (quoted below) caught my eye. You can find the music of this group from Madrid at Jamendo. They release their music (at least this album) under the Creative Commons.

Feel free to try, download, burn and share their songs, below. You can find more Creative Commons music I like at my site.

Dowload me!
MP3 192k Ogg 260k MP3 192k Ogg 260k
# Nombre

Desde la salvaje y peligrosa selva madrileña, cual canario entre leones, como un elefante entre roedores, como una abeja entre las flores,surgen TONTO… el grupo que todavia no sabias que estabas esperando. Tras 5 años mirandonos el ombligo hace pocos meses que TONTO empezó su andadura grabando sus temas en los prestigiosos estudios ZZ bajo la tutela sonora del afamado productor de la provincia el Dr Gustafsson que tambien se hace cargo de las labores bajísticas. A las 6 cuerdas el inefable y peligroso Jimi “Yimi” rodriguez , en la bateria Missis Marta acariciando bombos, platos y cajas y a la voz cantante el atractivo y afeminado hooligan Kaiser José!

I have read in menéame and Barrapunto (both in Spanish) that some folks have developed some tricks to solve Sudokus. Feel free to find more about it here.

Yesterday I went to the cinema and watched Spike Lee’s Inside man (Plan oculto is the Spanish title). I have to say that I wholeheartedly recommend this movie. It’s very well directed (although I don’t like Lee’s other movies all that much), and the photography is superb.

The plot is very nicely written and tied up together. There are, as always are, some weak points and things more or less difficult to believe. However, many real situations that actually happen every day are more difficult to believe, so…

For me that movie is what a movie should be. It tells a story the way the cinema should tell it. A book is a book. A song is a song. A picture is a picture. And a movie should be a movie. Each one has its tools and procedures, and this movie puts the ones of the cinema to good use, IMHO.

I am currently reading Terry Pratchett‘s Equal Rites, and enjoying it quite a lot, at that. It’s not his best book, which is to say it’s only ten times funnier than your average comedian.

What drives me to write this post is a comment Mr. Pratchett makes in page 97 of this book. May the potential propaganda it brings him compensate for the copyright infringement it might ensue quoting it here:

One reason for the bustle was that over large part of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disk had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry.

Self-explanatory, ain’t it? :^)