Total Cockup and Breakdown
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
1
34
110
Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
Malaga,
Spain
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Right
Bar Map
. Guadix sucked. Old people promenading, and high school kids counting the minutes until they can flee for the city - any city. Call it a night and get up early for the bus station. IT was easy enough to catch a bus, but those 80-odd miles took almost three hours to traverse. 3 separate traffic jams, despite our bus driver getting off the screwed-up highways and trying different routes, while several very back seat drivers kibbitzed. I don't know if it was the feria or accidents, but it sucked ass.Thus, I got into Malaga just in time for the heat of the day (again mid 90s or more) and headed into the center of town, that being the fest focus during the day, and a big fest-zone on the outskirts of the city being the focus at night, to find that this was more of the same. I had reached my limit of quasi-identical Spanish ferias. There were only two things different from most of the other ones I have been to: (1) the women wore different costume dresses; and (2) the drink of choice was cheap, locally produced sherry - gag me. I couldn't even gather up the interest to go out to the outskirts that night. I just hung out in the center at an Irish bar with no native English speaking employees.
I did make the outer festzone the following night (Sunday), finding a mind-numbing number of plywood shanty restaurant/bars lined up row after row, some catering to an older crowd, some pumping euro-crap for the younger, all offering basically only beer, tinto verrano (wine with soda), or sherry
Fan Shop
. Blech, plus I was bored and didn't want to deal with awkward Spanglish conversations, so I bailed and found some bar in the center of town with a Fraggle Rock theme. I kid you not, but I have no pictures because my batteries ran out before that.I made Monday my sabbath, and tried wandering around the town, but the fest dominated everything, and the main park was under reconconstruction or something, so I don't have anything else to say about the Feria Malaga, but I do have some random observations after visiting seven cities in Spain:
1. Fat researchers should utilize Spain when trying to figure out obesity in the U.S. versus Europe because Spain is trying not to let the U.S. stand alone. While there are a lot of fit girls, there are also a lot of chubbies. The "hiphugger with a belly t roll" and/or "fat ass in tight bottoms" fashion statements have strong support here.
2. As alluded to, allegely Irish pubs should have to have at least one native English speaker working in them at all times, particularly if they are named something like "The Celtic Cross" or "An Bodhran" as opposed to something less traditional like "The Dubliner."
3
Feria Grounds Entry
. The following songs should never again be played in my presence unless you want me to run screaming from the room frothing at the mouth and cursing your ancestors and progeny to unspeakable punishments:(a) Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie." Some rapper mumbles bad Spanish - "Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa" and she says that makes a woman go mad. Gag me twice.
(b) Seamus Haji's remixes of Indeep's "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" with a song. How trite.
(c) David Gray's "Real Love." Love is all you need. Give peace a chance. Imagine. Gag me with rose colored glasses.
(d) This happy-dippy electronica, house song with the the refrain "live life" or "live love." See above.
(e) The Pussycat Dolls "Don't Cha." If my girlfriend repeated the same inanities over and over again as often as I have heard this vapid song fronting for a bad burlesque show, I would cut out her tongue and sell her into slavery.
(f) Some dickheads Eurofied remix of "We Are The Champions." I would rather listen to someone rake their teeth across a chalkboard.
(g) Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Playing it repeatedly does not make it better. It makes me want to hurl.
Pixilate to you next in: Cork, Ireland.
