'cada uno da lo que recibe / luego recibe lo que da'
This week has been kind of intense, but very interesting, indeed.
We headed back to class on Monday, and got our grades, some of them, estamentally, and while they were not awful, and in fact quite respectable, we were nonetheless disappointed, in one notable case, that an top score had been lowered on account of a spelling error. Fortunately, these are partials, and I’m in no actual worry over what my final grade will turn out to be.
We also got (some) new teachers and we’re excited to report that, on the whole, they are all quite completely insane.
The first professor, Isabel Serrano Maillo, has an insanity of a very mild sort, and fortunately a “manic disposition” that limits itself to the superficial; indeed, one would not think her mad were it not for the fact that none but a lunatic would show up to class wearing purple gaucho pants. She is, however, otherwise mainly delightful and her course, Estructura Constitucional del Estado Español, is surprisingly interesting - as is the Spanish constitution, which we have begun deconstructing. My favourite line in the liberal work is the surprisingly conservative bit that constitutes part one of article 57, devoted to the monarchical line of succession:
57. 1. La Corona de España es hereditaria en los sucesores de S. M. Don Juan Carlos I de Borbón, legitimo heredero de la dinastía histórica. La sucesión en el trono seguirá el orden regular de primogenitura y representación, siendo preferida siempre la línea anterior a las posteriores; en la misma línea, el grado mas próximo al mas remoto; en el mismo grado, el varón a la mujer, y en el mismo sexo, la persona de mas edad a la de menos.
I mean, yes, obviously I guess it is to be expected, given the tradition of the Salic Law in Spain, but I still found it vaguely shocking that they go so far as to state (with unfortunate syntax) that the male will always be “preferred over” the female. One way or another, given that the current heir to the throne has, to date, himself produced but one heiress (with a second female confirmed to be on the way), the reform of this particular point in the Constitution is inevitable.
The second addition is María Clara D. Pérez Vila, the new Economía Aplicada al Periodismo professor, replacing the fat bastard from last semester. Ms. Perez-Vila is a woman of a certain age who wears sunglasses the entire time, and goes into lengthy monologues about things that have absolutely nothing to do with neither Economics nor Journalism. She makes dramatic gestures while saying utterly undramatic things. Upon arriving to class with only 50 copies of her syllabus, and seeing that over 70 students had shown up, rather than just handing out the copies and telling the kids who were left without them to grab some more from her office after class, the good woman blew half the period by having us guess, individually, numbers between 1 and 500, and those who guessed numbers that she liked “earned” themselves a copy. She also dropped a number of gems, quote-wise, during the class. Recalling her youth as a student at our beloved university, for example, she remembered how the Civil Guard (nicknamed “Grises” due to the colour of their uniforms) routinely charged the campus and beat / arrested any of the students who protested against the Franco dictatorship. Says Pérez-Vila:
“Es muy sano, de vez en cuando, correr ante los Grises. Se los aconsejo a todos. Y no dejen que les mientan - muchos lo pasamos mal durante el régimen de Franco y, sí, los Grises a veces nos daban. Pero déjame decirles que aunque nos pegaban, eran encantadores - y guapísimos! Será color de fascistas, pero mira que les quedaban bien esos uniformes!”
(“It is very healthy to run, every so often, before the Grises. I advise all of you to do so. And don’t let them lie to you - some of us had a very bad time during the Franco regime and, yes, sometime the Grises beat us. But let me tell you that even though they would hit us, they were really quite charming - and gorgeous. It might have been in a fascist colour, but they did look amazing in those uniforms.”)
Our third professor, Luis Felipe Solano Santos, is the professor who has the great distinction of being the first that I ever suspect of having shown up to class drunk. Indeed, despite my suspicions that he is probably a ridiculous person sober, I have the earnest notion that this man was inebriated during the lecture; he was sort of swaying the entire time, and his comments…well, his comments were so outrageous that I stopped taking notes and devoted myself fully to transcribing the most ridiculous ones during the entirety of the period. Despite being our Teoría de Relaciones Públicas professor and, indeed, being licensed in Publicity and Public Relations, Solano Santos enjoys saying that he is a journalist, and devoted most of the time assuring us that “I am one of you!” Indeed, he even delivered a rambling ode to the journalistic profession, saying:
“Ours is by far the most attractive profession in the world. The most attractive. Unrivalled. There is none that can compare. None…”
(He is momentarily distracted by a car honking its horn outside.)
“…As I was…saying. Journalism. This is amongst the many attractive professions of the world. And I should know: I almost got arrested last week.”
You’d think he would continue that with an explanation. But he didn’t. (Because he was drunk.) But he did continue. After some more, asinine opening remarks, he made his first ridiculous declaration:
“I will learn all your names. I will not remember them. But I will know them. What’s your name, boy!”
“Diego.”
“Diego. Hmm. What?”
“My last name, sir?”
“Not necessary.”
“Then…?”
“Moving on.”
He kept the name game up for the rest of the class, asking for people’s names randomly. He would then continue talking, and suddenly ask a student a question, very dramatically, by name. The only problem was, he was incapable of remembering any of them, despite the fact that he kept repeating that he knew them all, on account of his prodigious memory.
“…And that’s where I studied. Do you like studying…MERCHÉ?”
“…My name is Laura.”
“Right.”
He then went on to talk about his work at a local public access television station. It should be noted that public access TV in Spain is the lowest of the low, and due to the scarce legislation in regards to the matter, it is almost completely free from the grasp of the censors, and some of them therefore devote their lineup to rebroadcasts of porn, infomercials, or pornographic infomercials. Says Solano Santos:
“I work in a local television station, and not one of those that exclusively broadcasts porn or fortunetellers or infomercials all the time. We have a few news programs as well and, let me just tell you, the porn that we broadcast is quality stuff, not like the trash on channel 21. And, also, we have some bullfighting.”
Only very briefly, near the end of class, did the professor actually talk about the class’s subject matter (Public Relations):
“Public relations consists in…doing good, and telling other people about it. MANUEL?”
“Jaime, sir.”
“Right. A bread-maker, Jaime.”
“…Sir?”
“What should a bread-maker do?”
“Eh…make bread?”
“What kind of bread?!”
“Eh…”
“What kind, Manuel?”
“Jaime.”
“Yes, yes. Public relations consists in...?"
"Eh...Doing good and telling people about it?"
"So, what kind of bread should the bread-maker make?”
“Eh…good bread?”
“EXACTLY. And then the people about the bread-maker’s good bread. Well done, Manuel.”
He finished the class by telling us that we had to somehow acquire some book.
“This text can be purchased… You can also check it out of the library… Make photocopies of it… Or you can just steal it. I have no problems with theft, and I think you shouldn’t either. In fact…I encourage it.”
Finally, the last of the new, nutty professors is our Teoría de la Comunicación guy, Miguel Ángel Sobrino Blanco, a poor fellow who is nice enough, but very likely suffers from classical Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s not just the horrible speech defect that involves a lot of stuttering and an equal amount of misplaced emphasis on the syllables of words. It’s the anger, the limping limps back and forth across the class, and the way he screams out his lectures and peppers them with sporadic bouts of cursing. In fact, it seems that every time he makes a point, he summarizes it in one foul-mouthed line. For example, if he was talking about, say, Hamlet, he might shout:
“Rejected by Hamlet, who murder her father, Ophelia goes mad, and lays herself in a stream and allows the waters to overpower her. In other words, Hamlet told the cunt to fuck off, and the bitch off’d herself.”
So it’s been an interesting week on the school front in general.
Life, in general, has been interesting, and amusing. I’ve been really enjoying work lately, and making the trek out to Humanes to tutor that young couple once a week. I’ve reached some unfortunate conclusions, of course. It is physically impossible to make a direct metro switch from line 5 to line 6 in Oporto station, as the station seems to purposely be built to make people make that connection by way of the obstacles presented by several sets of pointless staircases. Also, regardless of what station one is at, none of the train schedules posted on the platforms of the Renfe Cercanias lines actually correspond to the trains that run through those particular stations. On the track that goes to Aranjuez? The train schedule on the wall goes to El Escorial. The other day I even found myself in a station with a train schedule detailing the long distance Madrid-Jaén line on one of the local platforms (basically the equivalent of finding an Amtrak Northeast Corridor schedule on the wall of a subway stop in Queens). Despite these minor incongruities, the ride out to the village is generally a pleasure. For one thing, we all know how retarded I am about trains. For another, the Metro-Regional Train commuting is a shows of its own, with the citizenry of Madrid as its actors. The simple pleasures of watching onboard chivalry, with teenagers getting up to offer women and elders their seats, using the most polite grammatical forms. And the conversations one overhears…I heard an extremely straight man bitch to his wife for over half an hour about how disappointed he was with the offerings at this year’s Madrid Fashion Week. And the eye-flirting and so-forth…it’s all kind of great. And there’s a point on the regional line each evening, right around the town of Parque Polveranca, whereby the tracks are elevated to a point where the streetlights are at face level, and all one seas is an ocean of these intensely glowing orange bulbs, and it’s quite beautiful, it is.
In terms of the actual tutoring (which is largely comprised of conversation, with some mild reading comprehension ensconced therein), I brought a few English-language books back with me from Miami and, amusingly enough, I’ve been having them read Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Schlemiel stories with me - which, of course, provokes a lot of fucking hysterical situations because the stories have tons of Yiddishisms in them and, you know, these people have actually never met a Jew in their life (on account of that whole Inquisition business) so a lot of time is spent explaining the words “bagel”, “seder”, “cheder”, “yeshivot” and “bris” to them (no shofars have been mentioned in the stories just yet).
I think what I find most amusing out of all of this is the fact that, given that they’ve never heard the word “schlemiel”, they’ve no idea that the Schlemiel character is supposed to be the prototypical dolt - so they spend the entire time reading the story and saying things like, “Good god, this Schlemiel fellow is awfully stupid.” The husband, in general, really, really doesn’t seem to understand the concept, and is reading the stories as if they were non-fiction novels, and so he complains to me about how he doesn’t understand, how he must be misreading because there cannot possibly be anyone so stupid as to be tricked as often as Schlemiel is. They’re kind of adorable, and I kind of feel bad every time they pay me because I actually really enjoy going to their house and basically hanging out with them for an evening, talking about random things. The wife, in particular, is totally an adorable mom-type despite only being 28 (and clearly not yet having any kids), and she always tries to feed me, and tells me to bundle up when I head out so as to not catch a cold; she complains about working in an international company and having a German boss (his [actual] name is Gangalf, she calls him Frodo) and her husband enjoying video games a tad too much. Even the train ride over and back is quite nice, In short, aye, I rather look forward to the evenings upon which I work for them.
What else?
I saw Matchpoint a few days ago and was kind of pleasantly surprised by just how…suspenseful it was. I mean, I had a stomach ache at the end, and that was no fun, but it was definitely radically different, in terms of what I usually expect from Woody Allen. And even Scarlett Johansson didn’t annoy me as much as she usually does so, um, well done. I also was coerced into seeing a very silly film called Another Gay Movie which was too idiotic to comment on, save for one amusing reference to Mommy Dearest that came within the first two minutes of the movie. Bah.
I’m still having very strange, nightly dreams. Tuesday evening’s involved a dance marathon and making out (shirtless and in the rain) with the class delegate, whom I had never previously found particularly attractive, and whom I know for a fact is not eligible, but whom I now can’t really face without bemusedly blushing rather violently, given our sudden “history” together. The horrid theme of helplessness and being chased has also not diminished; indeed, tho Tuesday’s was uneventful in that sense, I awoke from last night’s dream feeling quite violated, on account of my having been mugged near its conclusion.
In an unrelated note, but similar note, I have never liked Gloria Estefan’s Rhythm is Gonna Get You. It also made me feel unpleasantly pursued, as if the Rhythm actually was going to, you know, “get me”. Mind you, if one replaces the word Rhythm with anything else, the lyrics are decidedly terrifying.
(Try it with Zombies and you’ll see exactly what I mean.)
On that note, I think we’ll go ahead and publish. Night, kids.