One of the ways in which Buenos Aires is like New York (and Madrid and Rome and Tokyo and a hundred other cities) is that when people are out on the street, in particular crowded streets, they put on what I call their Big City Game Faces. They avoid making eye contact, and if they do, it's fleeting. That's fine, but what's more interesting is that they don't show any other facial expressions. I find this a little funny here, because the sidewalks get very crowded, and there are very frequent obstructions like newstands and construction and people standing around that force you into some complex negotiations for walking space. I sometimes feel like a complete doofus because i tend to telegraph my ambulatory intentions and my reaction to the current situation a lot more than the people here are used to.
In fact, I think it's quite a bit worse here than in New York. There's sometimes a "we're all in this together" kind of attitude in New York which leads people to try to do a little non-verbal communicating if something interesting is going on. This I guess is a restrained version of the actual speaking to each other which strangers is smaller towns might do. But I don't see much of anything like this on the streets in Buenos Aires, people have pretty strict game faces here. This could have something to do with an overall wariness that developed over the years of military dictatorships and "disappeared" people and what-not.
Sometimes the game face bugs me a little -- it can make the people seem a little cold and aloof. But i'ts worth it to see how completely it disappears when people run into people they know in public. People just light up, there's such genuine warmth on display, it's really lovely. I think this may be yet another Italian influence, a real warmth in people's relationships. I think this interpersonal warmth is one of the subtle things that makes people love Buenos Aires, and it's something I had a little trouble putting my finger on until I noticed people running into each other and so completely dropping their game faces.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The news here -- sometimes a bit icky
I remember being in Brazil ten years ago, and seeing the amazing newstands there, with hundreds and hundreds of magazines and newspapers. It seemed like a lot of them were "true crime" type publications, with cover photos of bloody accident and murder scenes.
I've been watching the news on TV here all day every day, trying to get my ear for the weird accent here. And I've decided that the news is a little icky. Of course the news is icky everywhere -- "if it bleeds, it leads" goes the old news maxim. Bad stuff gets people's attention way more than good stuff.
In the states, one reason I can't watch the local news is that for every tragedy, the newscasters hound the family members or friends or whoever of the victim. This seems to me such an affront, forcing these people to 'go public' when they are at their worst, when they're suffering their very private afflictions.
Well, here they seem to be worse. A grocer shot a 16 year old boy last night, I think he was an innocent bystander during a robbery (but I'm not sure -- that accent thing). So they just had this kid's mother on for a full minute at least, maybe ninety seconds, two minutes, sobbing and blabbering through her tears while her more stoic husband held her. It was awful. And I see this several times a day, tearful family members or friends or whoever.
And they're not shy about showing blood here, either. If it bleeds, it leads, right? Yesterday I saw a guy who was totally bloody being loaded into an ambulance. I think it was live, too, it certainly didn't seem edited. Usually it's just the aftermath of the accident that you see, since it takes a while for the news crew to get there. Even then, they look for the blood on the ground or the car and definitely show it. And they've very into showing the crumpled metal from these accidents. The camera lingers, definitely.
In a way, for the accidents, maybe this is a good thing -- I think drivers here are awful, very, very non-defensive, very risk-taking. Maybe all this death-on-the-highway publicity will get to them some day?
Oh, one last thing about the news. What else sells besides violence, after all? Sex, of course. Right now, the news crew is at Mar de Plata, a beach resort here, and they're interviewing a group of women in bikinis. What's really funny is the way the camer is moving slowly up and down each girl (they're girls -- 18-22, I'd say) as she's being interviewed. Oh, now I see it's "La Reina del Mar" -- queen of the sea, maybe some beauty contest. But really, the funny thing is that the camera totally eats these girls up, stops at their boobs and crotch, has them spin around so that you can see their ass in their thongs. It's pretty hilarious, and it seems to be a pretty regular part of summertime "news" on the TV here. Since it's summer vacation time, there are lots of stories about the beach scene. And about three quarters of these stories are "oh, look at this beautiful woman/women here!"
I guess what's good about this is that they don't have the same kind of prudishness that we have in the states. I'm all for the tits and ass, and even the blood isn't so bad. But I really don't want to see mamas crying over their children who were killed. This I don't want to see, it does nothing positive for anyone, I don't think.
I've been watching the news on TV here all day every day, trying to get my ear for the weird accent here. And I've decided that the news is a little icky. Of course the news is icky everywhere -- "if it bleeds, it leads" goes the old news maxim. Bad stuff gets people's attention way more than good stuff.
In the states, one reason I can't watch the local news is that for every tragedy, the newscasters hound the family members or friends or whoever of the victim. This seems to me such an affront, forcing these people to 'go public' when they are at their worst, when they're suffering their very private afflictions.
Well, here they seem to be worse. A grocer shot a 16 year old boy last night, I think he was an innocent bystander during a robbery (but I'm not sure -- that accent thing). So they just had this kid's mother on for a full minute at least, maybe ninety seconds, two minutes, sobbing and blabbering through her tears while her more stoic husband held her. It was awful. And I see this several times a day, tearful family members or friends or whoever.
And they're not shy about showing blood here, either. If it bleeds, it leads, right? Yesterday I saw a guy who was totally bloody being loaded into an ambulance. I think it was live, too, it certainly didn't seem edited. Usually it's just the aftermath of the accident that you see, since it takes a while for the news crew to get there. Even then, they look for the blood on the ground or the car and definitely show it. And they've very into showing the crumpled metal from these accidents. The camera lingers, definitely.
In a way, for the accidents, maybe this is a good thing -- I think drivers here are awful, very, very non-defensive, very risk-taking. Maybe all this death-on-the-highway publicity will get to them some day?
Oh, one last thing about the news. What else sells besides violence, after all? Sex, of course. Right now, the news crew is at Mar de Plata, a beach resort here, and they're interviewing a group of women in bikinis. What's really funny is the way the camer is moving slowly up and down each girl (they're girls -- 18-22, I'd say) as she's being interviewed. Oh, now I see it's "La Reina del Mar" -- queen of the sea, maybe some beauty contest. But really, the funny thing is that the camera totally eats these girls up, stops at their boobs and crotch, has them spin around so that you can see their ass in their thongs. It's pretty hilarious, and it seems to be a pretty regular part of summertime "news" on the TV here. Since it's summer vacation time, there are lots of stories about the beach scene. And about three quarters of these stories are "oh, look at this beautiful woman/women here!"
I guess what's good about this is that they don't have the same kind of prudishness that we have in the states. I'm all for the tits and ass, and even the blood isn't so bad. But I really don't want to see mamas crying over their children who were killed. This I don't want to see, it does nothing positive for anyone, I don't think.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Fuck, man, I did not understand a word you just said
This is my fifth year coming to stay here in Buenos Aires. I've been here for stays of 2 weeks, 2 weeks, 6 weeks, and 16 weeks. I studied spanish for 6 years in junior high and high school. I travelled in mexico and guatemala for 3 months, and in central america, cuba, and mexico for 2 months, in addition to taking about ten shorter trips in those countries.
And still sometimes I can't understand a word people say here.
Of all the countries to study spanish, this is probably one of the hardest, at least for me, since I was raised on Mexican spanish. I guess this is because of the heavy Italian influence on the language. The analogy I came up with last year is this -- the Buenos Aires accent is to Spanish what the Scottish or Deep Souther US accent are to English. These accents really add their own sounds to the language, and I think they do so as well here.
But I know that learning a second language is an exercise in patience and all. But still, fuck, it is still so frustrating sometimes when someone asks me a question and I have no idea what they said. In particular it's frustrating when you ask them to repeat it, they do, and you still have no idea what they said. This happened to me on the subway today, a guy asked me something about the "linea" -- the subway line we were on, or which ones connected at the stop we pulled in. He repeated it, and again the only word I understood was linea. This really discouraged me, made me more hesitant to engage with people for the rest of the afternoon.
Not good. Must be stronger, more fearless. Uh-huh, I'll get right on it. I swear, this is one of the reasons that people drink so much on vacation.
And still sometimes I can't understand a word people say here.
Of all the countries to study spanish, this is probably one of the hardest, at least for me, since I was raised on Mexican spanish. I guess this is because of the heavy Italian influence on the language. The analogy I came up with last year is this -- the Buenos Aires accent is to Spanish what the Scottish or Deep Souther US accent are to English. These accents really add their own sounds to the language, and I think they do so as well here.
But I know that learning a second language is an exercise in patience and all. But still, fuck, it is still so frustrating sometimes when someone asks me a question and I have no idea what they said. In particular it's frustrating when you ask them to repeat it, they do, and you still have no idea what they said. This happened to me on the subway today, a guy asked me something about the "linea" -- the subway line we were on, or which ones connected at the stop we pulled in. He repeated it, and again the only word I understood was linea. This really discouraged me, made me more hesitant to engage with people for the rest of the afternoon.
Not good. Must be stronger, more fearless. Uh-huh, I'll get right on it. I swear, this is one of the reasons that people drink so much on vacation.
Monday, January 7, 2008
The Second-Most Italian Country in the World
I was watching an old Argentinian film yesterday, and I had this funny insight -- this is the 2nd-most Italian country in the world. Next to Italy, of course.
This movie was a riot. It must have been from the very late fifties or more likely early sixties. At first I thought it was Italian, maybe a Fellini movie or one of his imitators. There was all kinds of wackiness going on, lots of interpersonal drama and a bunch of obvious, goofy stuff, like people getting left behind when a car pulls off, and a woman getting stuck at the waist in a porthole on a ship. And there was great music playing all along, very sixties Italian style, the kind of swinging-sixties-meets-circus-music you would expect in Fellini movies from that period.
But what really made me think it was an Italian movie was that it sounded totally Italian, the people sounded like they were speaking Italian. It took a minute or so before I started recognizing spanish words, and it took another minute or two before I was sure they were actually speaking spanish. But the accent was crazy, it was so very, very Italian. Now, generally people notice that Argentinian spanish has an italian influence, a kind of sing-song quality that other spanish accents lack. It's really one of the nice, unique things about the country, a musical quality to the language, much like Italian has. But in this movie, from Argentina forty or fifty years ago, it was even more pronounced.
This got me thinking -- sixty, eighty, a hundred years ago, or whenever the big Italian influx really got going, I'll bet the accent was even more like Italian, and the vocabulary borrowed even more from Italian. And probably since then it evolved closer to 'normal' latin american spanish. Certainly, if this movie was an indication, the spanish spoken here now is closer to the norm than the spanish from forty or fifty years ago.
I asked my spanish teacher about this today, and she totally agreed. Argentinian spanish has a big italian influence, and it was even stronger a few decades back. She said she could hear the difference in old argentinian movies as well.
Of course there are lots of other things that show the country's Italian heritage. They do say, by the way, that roughly 50% of the country has Italian roots, and 40% Spanish, though I haven't really validated that. Lord knows the Italians brought their ice cream. The ice cream here is to die for, as good as Italy it seems to me, and as common as in Italy. It seems that most of it, if not all of it, is the soft gelato style common in Italy too.
The italians brough a lot of other food here as well, though the quality did not seem to travel all that well. There's Italian food everywhere -- they say the three big foods here are the 3 P's: Pasta, Pizza, and Parilla (grilled meats). I'm sure there's good Italian food to be found somewhere, but most of it seems pretty mediocre, if not downright bad. They do not seem to have discovered "al dente" pasta -- everywhere it seems a bit overcooked, much like in the US until ten or fifteen years ago. And the pizza, god, it's terrible, like something you'd get in a bus station in a small town where there are no other options. Some of it is OK, but that's pizza that's known as being great. I think they have cheese problems here, they seem to have very little good cheese. But the pizza has terrible sauce too, and typically not enough of it. This is a big mystery, why a country with so many Italians has such bad pizza.
Earlier yesterday, before I saw the movie on TV, I was riding my new bike around, and I rode by a restaurant called "La Nonna Rosa". Maybe I should try this restaurant, to see what kind of Italian Food Nonna Rosa can whip up.
Update: One of the most obvious Italian accent influences you hear in Buenos Aires comes with the word "bueno", which is pretty damn common. In addition to meaning "good", people use it like "well" or "ok", as a way to introduce a sentence. "Bueno, I wouldn't mind going to a movie." And sometimes, especially in this drawn-out usage, people pronounce it with a really, really strong italian accent -- "boo-eno", almost like the italian "buono". I swear, sometimes they say "buono".
This movie was a riot. It must have been from the very late fifties or more likely early sixties. At first I thought it was Italian, maybe a Fellini movie or one of his imitators. There was all kinds of wackiness going on, lots of interpersonal drama and a bunch of obvious, goofy stuff, like people getting left behind when a car pulls off, and a woman getting stuck at the waist in a porthole on a ship. And there was great music playing all along, very sixties Italian style, the kind of swinging-sixties-meets-circus-music you would expect in Fellini movies from that period.
But what really made me think it was an Italian movie was that it sounded totally Italian, the people sounded like they were speaking Italian. It took a minute or so before I started recognizing spanish words, and it took another minute or two before I was sure they were actually speaking spanish. But the accent was crazy, it was so very, very Italian. Now, generally people notice that Argentinian spanish has an italian influence, a kind of sing-song quality that other spanish accents lack. It's really one of the nice, unique things about the country, a musical quality to the language, much like Italian has. But in this movie, from Argentina forty or fifty years ago, it was even more pronounced.
This got me thinking -- sixty, eighty, a hundred years ago, or whenever the big Italian influx really got going, I'll bet the accent was even more like Italian, and the vocabulary borrowed even more from Italian. And probably since then it evolved closer to 'normal' latin american spanish. Certainly, if this movie was an indication, the spanish spoken here now is closer to the norm than the spanish from forty or fifty years ago.
I asked my spanish teacher about this today, and she totally agreed. Argentinian spanish has a big italian influence, and it was even stronger a few decades back. She said she could hear the difference in old argentinian movies as well.
Of course there are lots of other things that show the country's Italian heritage. They do say, by the way, that roughly 50% of the country has Italian roots, and 40% Spanish, though I haven't really validated that. Lord knows the Italians brought their ice cream. The ice cream here is to die for, as good as Italy it seems to me, and as common as in Italy. It seems that most of it, if not all of it, is the soft gelato style common in Italy too.
The italians brough a lot of other food here as well, though the quality did not seem to travel all that well. There's Italian food everywhere -- they say the three big foods here are the 3 P's: Pasta, Pizza, and Parilla (grilled meats). I'm sure there's good Italian food to be found somewhere, but most of it seems pretty mediocre, if not downright bad. They do not seem to have discovered "al dente" pasta -- everywhere it seems a bit overcooked, much like in the US until ten or fifteen years ago. And the pizza, god, it's terrible, like something you'd get in a bus station in a small town where there are no other options. Some of it is OK, but that's pizza that's known as being great. I think they have cheese problems here, they seem to have very little good cheese. But the pizza has terrible sauce too, and typically not enough of it. This is a big mystery, why a country with so many Italians has such bad pizza.
Earlier yesterday, before I saw the movie on TV, I was riding my new bike around, and I rode by a restaurant called "La Nonna Rosa". Maybe I should try this restaurant, to see what kind of Italian Food Nonna Rosa can whip up.
Update: One of the most obvious Italian accent influences you hear in Buenos Aires comes with the word "bueno", which is pretty damn common. In addition to meaning "good", people use it like "well" or "ok", as a way to introduce a sentence. "Bueno, I wouldn't mind going to a movie." And sometimes, especially in this drawn-out usage, people pronounce it with a really, really strong italian accent -- "boo-eno", almost like the italian "buono". I swear, sometimes they say "buono".
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