I Now Officially Have Plans For This Evening...

As one of the YouTube comments says, "You�re wrong, this movie? are too much complex to your limited mind."

Happy watching!

El Regreso

This afternoon Angela and I went to the movies for the first time in... well, in a long time. We saw a movie called El Regreso:

As you can see, it's actually from Costa Rica.* It's the first Costa Rican movie I've ever seen, although it can't really be argued that there's a huge catalog of them to choose from. It's about a young writer who comes back to Costa Rica to visit his ailing father after living in New York for 9 years. For the first 10 minutes or so I had some strong doubts about the movie, since it seemed to highlight all the things I find annoying about the country (an abundance of bars on the windows; overweight, fruit-eating bureaucrats; the general shittiness of San Jos�; and family members completely freaking out and overreacting to everything). Plus, there were some people in the movie theater that wouldn't shut up at the start (another thing I don't care much for here). But after that point it seemed to shift and get better, the people in the back shut the hell up, and Angela and I both ended up enjoying it.

Angela and I were picking apart some of the details, and we think that it was pretty accurate when it came to depicting the capital, the weird shifting of address forms between Usted and vos (but never t�, of course!), and the strange abundance of Dos Pinos products. We joked, though, that the most implausible part was that not only was the protagonist a writer (in Costa Rica!), but that his father was also a writer, and a popular writer, at that! Also, there's one thing that occurred to me about two hours after we left the theater: the movie's got a lot of similarities with Garden State. I'm going to have to investigate this more and watch Garden State again, but I can say that there are also enough differences that it's far from a rip-off.

In any case, if you happen to see this playing at a movie theater or a video store sometime, it's worth checking out. It does shed some light on Costa Rica's positive and negative social aspects, and it's pretty entertaining, to boot.

Thanks for reading!


*Not Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico can ram it.

A Nightmare On... Wait, Streets Here Don't Have Names!

I'll haunt your dreams if you conjugate your verbs incorrectly.

I got this sweater last year in Germany, but for some reason it wasn't until I put it on today that I noticed something: "Whoa, I kinda look like Freddy Krueger!" I brought this sweater back to Costa Rica because I may need it in Argentina, where it's likely to be a bit cooler. I hadn't worn it here, though, since it's always too hot to wear anything more than a T-shirt. But the weather has been awful lately with near-constant rain and wind (which knocked out the internet for a few hours, hence the late posting... but I'm not sure anyone cares anyway).

Anyhow, to prevent colonies of mold from forming on it, I decided to wear the sweater to my evening German class, and the first thing that my friend Lidio said to me was, "You look like Freddy Krueger!" So when I got home I scrounged up some Freddy-like accoutrements for the Picture of the Day. I know with the hat and work glove I sort of look like a fisherman version of the famous movie killer, plus my face and sweater aren't quite as tattered as gnarled his, but oh well.

So, thanks for reading! Wind, rain, sleet, hail... ALL of these can definitely slow down Blogtoberfest and keep it from performing its duties, so keep your fingers crossed for nice blogging weather for the second half of the month! Have a great day!