RETROACTIVE TOUR DIARY: TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT DAYS 2 AND 3 IN MADRID
1. Monumental architecture. If every city had been the capital of a world-spanning empire at one time or another, we'd all be better off.
2. The opening band, who were called Wild Honey. Their names were Guillermo and Anita and Cristina and they were adorable! All of these top ten things could easily be Wild Honey lyrics, but let me just give you a couple:
"Oh Isabella, don't cut your hair
Let it grow out, see your sister's,
Let it grow out just like hers"
and
"Throw your arms into the sea
Catch the biggest bird (or boat?) you've ever seen"
And everything foreign was "four-inch" to Guillermo and he had a song about soldiers from four-inch countries and they were oh so kind to us (the band, not the soldiers). Their other band is called Mittens. Mittens!
3. Tapas! Heidi, it turns out they're just like izakaya food only there's no sushi! Deep-fried peppers and octopus bits. Fuck youuuuu, the Tapa Bar, with your crapulent cold fish and evil artichokes.
4. The tiny urinals. They were tiny everywhere in Spain, but the ones at the club you wanted to just break off and walk around with them strapped to the front of your pants in search of a Clockwork Orange-style milk bar.
5. The paella. Holy motherfucking piss Christ Madonna, Mother of God, the paella.
6. Watching the old men with their little glasses of wine in the morning, sitting in the old bodega and talking about the times. Thinking about how that's what old men were born to do.
7. Knowing that Madrileños also call themselves gatos, or "cats." This practice is in decline. I say we revive it or move it to Victoria. Maybe we're more "ducks" or "tea cozies" or "a pile of bikes."
8. Visiting the Prado on free day. We saw the fat naked baby, the Virgin squirting breast milk into a priest's mouth (in the process helping us produce the best photo ever ever), the cafeteria. All the highlights.
9. The tiny balconies, where you step outside your window and you're flat against the side of a building five stories up with the glory of the city apread out before you and only a discomfitingly low railing stopping you from leaping out and embracing it with all your being.
10. This is sappy, but the pulse. The excitement on faces. Thinking about how thirty years ago, which is not so long in the great scheme, this was a fascist backwater ruled by a decrepit monster where the big news was when the pig shat a ten-peseta piece, and now it is absolutely aquiver and astir and on the move, and how great and right that is, because Dios mio, this is Spain.
2. The opening band, who were called Wild Honey. Their names were Guillermo and Anita and Cristina and they were adorable! All of these top ten things could easily be Wild Honey lyrics, but let me just give you a couple:
"Oh Isabella, don't cut your hair
Let it grow out, see your sister's,
Let it grow out just like hers"
and
"Throw your arms into the sea
Catch the biggest bird (or boat?) you've ever seen"
And everything foreign was "four-inch" to Guillermo and he had a song about soldiers from four-inch countries and they were oh so kind to us (the band, not the soldiers). Their other band is called Mittens. Mittens!
3. Tapas! Heidi, it turns out they're just like izakaya food only there's no sushi! Deep-fried peppers and octopus bits. Fuck youuuuu, the Tapa Bar, with your crapulent cold fish and evil artichokes.
4. The tiny urinals. They were tiny everywhere in Spain, but the ones at the club you wanted to just break off and walk around with them strapped to the front of your pants in search of a Clockwork Orange-style milk bar.
5. The paella. Holy motherfucking piss Christ Madonna, Mother of God, the paella.
6. Watching the old men with their little glasses of wine in the morning, sitting in the old bodega and talking about the times. Thinking about how that's what old men were born to do.
7. Knowing that Madrileños also call themselves gatos, or "cats." This practice is in decline. I say we revive it or move it to Victoria. Maybe we're more "ducks" or "tea cozies" or "a pile of bikes."
8. Visiting the Prado on free day. We saw the fat naked baby, the Virgin squirting breast milk into a priest's mouth (in the process helping us produce the best photo ever ever), the cafeteria. All the highlights.
9. The tiny balconies, where you step outside your window and you're flat against the side of a building five stories up with the glory of the city apread out before you and only a discomfitingly low railing stopping you from leaping out and embracing it with all your being.
10. This is sappy, but the pulse. The excitement on faces. Thinking about how thirty years ago, which is not so long in the great scheme, this was a fascist backwater ruled by a decrepit monster where the big news was when the pig shat a ten-peseta piece, and now it is absolutely aquiver and astir and on the move, and how great and right that is, because Dios mio, this is Spain.