Hard Rock Battle of the Bands

Les Fat Jones have joined a battle of the bands at the Hard Rock Cafe. I've been working on my swordsmanship, but it turns out that was unnecessary. (So far!) Instead, they've opted for the much more genteel solution of having people vote for songs on a Facebook page. (Tyler Durden, eat your heart out.) Please go to it here and download our song "Other Cities" to vote for it. Much obliged.

This Guy for President

A boy in the north of Spain, worried about an impending parent-teacher meeting, faked his own kidnapping in an attempt to divert attention from his less than stellar academic record. Seriously.

This kid is already set to be a high-ranking politician in the Spanish government. He's got all the attributes:

1. Family connections (dad's a cop)
2. Mediocre performance (recent grades)
3. Refusal to accept responsibility (parents and teacher to talk? oh no!)
4. Ludicrous diversionary tactics (calls dad "from trunk of car" to communicate his ordeal)
5. Failure of diversionary tactics (dad notices keys to second home missing. finds boy hanging out there)
6. No consequences (see number one)

Sounds about right. One of the parties, and frankly it doesn't matter which one, should snap this kid up and promote him through the ranks. They've got a future leader on their hands.

The Whatever Case Situation

"A lo mejor..." said Joan and stopped, looking at me inquisitively.
"How do you say that?" he asked. (Joan is a man's name, the Catalan version of Juan.)
It translates literally as "at best" but that's not what it means. These instances are called false friends, where two seemingly identical words or expressions mean different things in different languages. My favourite is constipado which means congested, resulting in a ridiculous number of times every winter that my students inform me with bleary eyes about their terrible constipation. A lo mejor simply means maybe.  I figured this out years ago when a roommate once answered a question of mine with "A lo mejor si, a lo mejor no," giving me no clue as to which was actually the preferred outcome.
I gave my students the explanation and the story of my discovery of it. Anna thought it was hilarious, saying it showed cultural differences, with the Spanish unwilling to commit to an actual statement. This echoes something that the language and culture geek in me has been fascinated by since my arrival. What do linguistic choices say about the culture that made them? When like and love are the same word in French, and want and love are the same word in Spanish, does this reflect their view of what love actually is?
Perhaps (a lo mejor) the most extreme example of this is the Spanish use of impersonal verb forms. Se ha roto means it broke itself. You never break anything. If you want to admit your involvement in the events that led to the item in question's current state, you say Se me ha roto, or It broke itself to me, making you the victim of the item's nefarious breakage agenda. Likewise, should gravity snatch it from your noble paws, Se me ha caido. (It fell itself to me.) Never do you drop anything.
Sure, in English, it fell or it broke absolve you of the blame, but Se me ha olvidado? It forgot itself to me. I think when you report this situation as a memory escaping from your brain of its own volition, we can safely say that the Spanish have removed all notions of personal responsibility from the language.
This goes a long way to explaining the politics of this country. They are not necessarily more corrupt than other countries where those in power continually game the system to their own advantage, but consequences here are different. SPOILER ALERT: there are none.
This week's outrage is courtesy of the ruling right wing Popular Party (PP). It was revealed that the former treasurer, forced out due to a previous corruption investigation, had squirrelled away 22 million euros in a Swiss bank account. Maybe (a lo mejor) I'm being idealistic, but I think that in other Western democracies (with the likely exception of Italy) when the guy in charge of the country's money is found to be taking that money for himself, hiding it with the keepers of Nazi gold and using it for illegal payoffs to his own party members and South American politicians for land acquisition deals, that government would be out of power by the end of the week. Here, the government sent threatening messages to the TV station reporting it and promised an internal audit. My math skills are weak, and my accounting knowledge nil, but I'm pretty sure that money circulating under the table won't show up in the ledgers being audited, since the money was UNDER THE TABLE in the first place.  However, the PP seems to feel it has done enough to address the situation and got back to the important business of running the country by introducing a law that says being a convicted felon is not a legal impediment to running a bank.
Spain has a national inferiority complex vis-a-vis the western world (mostly due to the racist shame of having been ruled by Arabs for centuries) and when their institutions act this way, I want to pat them on the head and give them an E for effort.
They might (a lo mejor) want to look into it.

This Is 40

So that happened.
I don't mind being this age, but rather, I'm shocked. I really don't feel like I've been alive that long. Perhaps my terrible maths skills have infected the entire world and we're all just wrong on this one.
Stuff that's happened as I begin my fifth decade:
Les Fat Jones were rated one of the top ten local independent releases of 2012 by local music mag Mondo Sonoro. (Slow clap.) In the coming year, we plan to record again with a different Catalan indie luminary. We've entered a battle of the bands where people will need to vote for us. Once voting begins, expect constant harassment from me.
Questular has landed a new client. Woo hoo! It's a company with fancy properties all over Europe. As Creative Editor in charge of content, I was hoping this meant jet-setting around, exploring them all, but no such luck. Instead, I will spend the next few weeks parsing emails and pouring over Google street view. I like to think there's a certain glamour in that. (I also like to think there's glamour in teaching English so my definition is clearly self serving.) Rather, much work and little money lies in my immediate future, but hopefully, internet millionairedom lies somewhere beyond. (knock on ALL the wood!)
Will 2013 be the year we finally see some new 2 Skinnee J's music? Watch this space.
Finally, I took up dancing. As in, I signed up for dance classes. Man. I figured I'm a musician, I've been dancing for fun my whole life, I'm black for Christ's sake. This will be a piece of cake. Yeah. It's a big piece of terror cake with frustration icing. I spend the entire class staring at my feet and counting while self-consciously sweating on whichever poor woman has been partnered with me. Good times.
And that's middle age so far. Apparently adolescence is not quite over yet.