I just came back from having a lovely taco lunch with fellow geek Yamile and the funniest thing happened: I was telling her about this thing I want to do with Porto Diao (if all goes well you’ll be hearing about it soon enough) when she went off to the bathroom for a minute. I was waiting for my tacos with cheese to come out of the restaurant kitchen the same way I usually wait for things when I’m by myself, which would be to manickly type away at the cell phone. Little did I know that there was activity going on in the table right next to ours; a cute couple of girls, one blonde and one brunette were waiting for their order to come out as well. They seemed to be on the same train we were… at lunch, in a passive hurry and hungry. The only difference between them and us was that they actually looked like they were at an office while we looked like we were taking a break from playing with our crotches all morning. Anywho, Yamile’s in the pee-pee room when the brunette turns around and the following conversation takes place (this is not a word-for-word re-enactment of what happened and I apologize to both you, my esteemed reader, as well as the girl who I had this conversation with. I attribute the sporadic loss of memory to my many years as a demolitions expert in the jungles of Darien back in the 60’s. I also fought tigers for shits and giggles):

TacoGirl: “excuse me…”

Rob (shifts his eyes at her): “yeah…?”

TacoGirl: “You’re Rob Rivera…”

Rob: “Sorry…?”

TacoGirl: “Are you Rob Rivera?”

Rob (feeling like I did something wrong): “Yes, yes I am…!”

TacoGirl: “Ahh, I see! I’ve heard about you”

Rob (curious like an owl): “Really? From where?”

TacoGirl: “Marco…!”

Rob: “Oh! You know Marco…!”

TacoGirl: “No, well… you know, I hear you in the umm… website?”

Rob (shocked): “OH!”

TacoGirl: “Smoth Loves…”

Rob: “Smoth Loves Movies!!! Yes, yes…” I say, as I smile and laugh nervously, trying to put my coat over the chair. “I’m the guy who created the server.”

TacoGirl: “Yes, I know.”

Rob: “Wow, this is crazy.”

TacoGirl: “Well, nice to meet you! Keep up the good work!”

Rob: “Will do! And thanks!”

And it’s stuff like this that I’ve gone through for the past month or so and Smoth still insists on being a whiny bitch. I’ve never really been good with receiving praise and recognition like that; even now I’m thinking about a million other things I would’ve wanted to ask her in regards as to what could we do to make the podcasts and the site better but instead I froze and didn’t know what to do with myself. I think I like it more when things are like that, though… let’s say that this whole “celebrity” I’m managing to amass keeps growing up to the point where I see it as a normal ocurrence. Damn, that’s messed up. I think I’d feel utterly ridiculous, personally. I don’t know how different national celebrities and their place in our society is from, say… Los Angeles. Of course, there are Panamanian celebrities who still live with their parents and their overall quality of life does not compare at all to what celebrities are used to being up in L.A but it always seemed peculiar to me how much of a little village the celebrity circle is, specially in Hollywood and the like. I’ve never lived long enough in L.A to make a solid argument about it, making this nothing but speculation based on what the media feeds me but I can’t help but feel I’m not that far off the mark with this: members of Panama’s Hollywood, nicknamed “Choliwood” since we’re all “cholos” (this is the Panamanian equivalent to “nigga” for black people. Only Panamanians can call each other “cholo,” and whoever that isn’t who tries it will probably be shot to death) are a tight circle of people who somehow always manage to go to the same clubs and restaurants which are, coincidentally, owned by their friends and business partners. They also live “glamurous lifestyles” which are accentuated by the fatch that they like the spotlight, and everyone knows that recognition boosts confidence and confidence boosts your personal image. They’re not rich: the really rich people are the people you never hear about. Any which case, since Panama City is so small (I sometimes like to think of L.A as Panama, but with a lot more celebrities and fanshionista stores), we mere mortals run into these people all the time… this is where the comparisons end, though. Panamanians, unlike some dumb Americans, like to talk trash about their celebrities instead of praising them. I still don’t know why that is: it could be because this place is so small that when their fellow man gets some recognition he’ll feel compelled to bring him right down to where the rest of us are. Jealousy? Pride, perhaps? I’ve experienced it here and I’ve thought about it before so it shouldn’t come to much of a surprise… and then people get offended when I say Panama’s a Third World country. Puh-lease.

If you go to DeAlante.com’s comment sections on any of their posts you’ll see the most despicable, vicious people in the coutry bad-mouthing everything under the sun just for the sake of steering the shit. Think of De Alante’s comment sections as AintItCool.com’s talkbacks, but in Spanish. They’re both cesspools of filth where 80% of the time it’s all trash. The problem is that if you keep looking around other Panamanian online mags you’ll see the same thing: there’s always someone who has to bring a brother down. It’s pathetic to no end; the most recent example I can come up with has got to be the Yasuri Yamileth thing… imagine what it was like for me, someone who knows this girl and thinks is adorable, to sit through the messages in De Alante’s comment section where they called her as many variations of the word “whore” as there are colors. To Panamanians, everyone who’s become “famous” for something they did is either a whore or gay. Those two seem to be the defining terms for girls and dudes, respectively. At least the more recent generations of Panamanians (more than half of them, anyway) were born with a pretty powerful bullshit-o-meter that seems to keep things a lot more honest so that’s always a plus. When you come down to Panama, no matter how proactive you become you’ll always have someone talking trash about you… it’s almost as if they assign a trash talker for you on your way out of the airport. All you can do (and I’m sure you can do it) is let it slide off your back; if they’re talking bad about you then it’s probably because you’ve become popular.

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