He vuelto a Madrid

The bus trip wasn´t so bad. Actually, it was kinda bad and I just am not easily bothered I guess. The seats were roomy and comfy, so that made it easy to dismiss the other stuff. Other stuff: smelled like complete ass. I think it was the guy sitting behind me and next to Owen who smelled like ass and not the bus because he kept standing to stretch his legs and I got some good whiffs.

Also they showed bootlegged DVDs without any access to sound. These were terrible terrible terrible films to begin with (Jumper, The Bucket List, John Rambo) and the wavy, grainy versions didn´t improve them. Once in Jumper whoever was filming dropped the f-ing camera. What an idiot. On the other hand, maybe without sound they were better. Although, without sound I still was forced to watch Sly´s pinched and stapled face. I didn´t have to hear his incomprehendable mumbling, though, so that was nice.

Plenty of bodies blowing up also which I didn´t appreciate viewing. I am not completely opposed to the blowing up of bodies in films when there is a point to make, but for a Rambo movie I feel like it´s a waste of violence. It´s movies like these that make violence too common to be affective in more important cases. For example: I think blowing people up in Blood Diamond (whatever your opinion on Leo´s wavering South African accent) is more legit than blowing them up (more ferociously, might I add) in John Rambo. Violent films like these are just yucky whereas others have important messages. Anyway...

Instead of watching these crappy movies I elected instead to just listen to Bob Marley and drift in and out of consciousness. We purchased pastries from this tiny panadería before leaving Sevilla and they were flaky and delicious. Although impractical for staving off starvation as I soon discovered, they were more than enjoyable.


Now I´m back in Madrid. It is so nice to be back home. It´s the same feeling I had at the end of every vball trip. Just walking into your house and throwing your bag down before collapsing on the couch. Traveling hotel to hotel with luggage wears you out, man. I forgot about that.

It was also nice to see Carmen again. She had a quiet week without Vanessa and me running around and eating everything. She also had leftover paella from that afternoon so it was an entirely wonderful homecoming.

Right now I am sitting in the library at school killing time until I head to my art history class. I think I should note here that they have that same saying in Spanish... to kill time, or matar el tiempo. I never really thought about it but it´s a pretty dark idea.

The kid sitting next to me (who is most definitely Spanish as his mohawk/mullet would confirm) is wearing a bright yellow and purple LA Lakers jersey, presumably worn previously by Kobe Bryant as that is the name across the back. They love basketball here and, as my profe made sure to inform us, Spain is the reigning world champion. I didn´t know this and now that I do, I can honestly say I still don´t care.

Also, that Bavarian pothead guy we met in Sevilla who was from a one hundred person town was IN LOVE with baseball. I guess they really love baseball in Germany. He played for some sort of minors team there and is a pretty decent player from what he told me. I didn´t know they cared so much about it. Just little fun facts.

So, Javier Bordem winning an oscar is like the biggest thing to ever happen to Spain. He is on the frontpage of every newspaper in the country hailed as the first Spaniard to ever accomplish this. It´s important to keep in mind the fact that their presidential elections are this month and the winner of the Best Supporting Actor in LA is way more important to them. I saw a headline on the Metro yesterday morning that loosely translates to "Hollywood opening its mind" and referred to the fact that foreigners won some Oscars this year. They also recounted the year recently when Halle Berry and Jamie Foxx won Oscars. I thought this was humorous. Apparently the rest of the world feels that we are closed-minded. Surely this is not true. We are very open-minded, we just don´t like stupid foreigners (or races other than white or genders other than male). Don´t hate us because we have different opinions, world. Perhaps it is you who are closed-minded...