I spent most of yesterday with a really great girlfriend of mine who’s down in Panama for a while, visiting her folks and what not. Upon watching “The Da Vinci Code” again I must say that it’s not as laughably bad as I thought it was; mind you, the first time I saw it it was acceptable, but far from perfect. It’s still not the most awesomest picture in the history of the world but it’s fun, and Audrey Tatou is cute as hell. Just brainfarting here, so go with it: If you’ve ever had a Cinnabon cinnamon roll you very well know that they’re bigger than a small monkey… my friend (let’s call her SwissDoll) bought a regular sized roll while I pussied out and bought myself a small one with some cinnamon sticks. a good 15-20 minutes pass as I tell her about my misfortunes and idiocies caused by other people in the past week just so that she gets a good laugh and I finish my roll and sticks… when I come back from my storytelling trance, she’s not even 1/3 into her food. That’s when it hit me: If I was a third party walking by and this couple’s got what we’re having, they could’ve quite easily thought that we sat on the wring sides of the table, because I had the girly girl meal while ChinaDoll had the massive gorilla-grade cinnamon roll. 45 minutes in, and nada. It was quite adorable actually… she even took the Pecan out of the Pecan cinnamon roll to make it a… umm, regular cinnamon roll, I suppose. Those things are deceiving; they’re the baking world’s version of a sick joke. A sick, sweet, delicious joke. 3 bucks for 1 cinnamon roll? Blasphemy! But fucking mierda if it ain’t worth it…

Soccer fever’s all over the place. Us Panamanians love ourselves some soccer… if you’re not in the know, some cooky American who thinks American Football is a better sport then hat’s off to you; I like American Football as much as anyone but where American Footbal is brutal, Soccer is downright beautiful. I guess it turns you off because you can’t use your hands and have to constantly keep running back and forth for 2 sets of 45 minutes of playtime without stopping. Oh, and the kissing and hugging after a goal. Right, as if sweaty men butt slapping each other is suddenly manly. It’s funny though, Panamanian culture is peculiar in that sense; we love soccer, specially European soccer… we also, in vast majority root for Brazil, but I believe that’s because of Panamanians’ inbred tendency to like what the majority likes. Followers, if you will. I’m not trying to be proprietary in regards to liking the sport, but if you went out on the street right now and asked who you’d be rooting for in this World Cup, most of the answers are going to be the same, pointing at the sport’s superpowers: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico… after that come the European countries where people who actually follow the sport actually support, like England, Portugal, Spain, France and the like. Most of the individuals you’ll run into though will say they support Brazil. Ask them “why,” though, and they won’t be able to give you a definitive answer. “Because they’re the best,” they’ll say. Is that a fact? Hell, they do have some of the best players, but I believe that choice is a little misinformed. Also, it’s like Zeccke told me last week, and she’s right in that sense: why in the hell am I going to root for a country I have no association with?

Nationalism. You could spot a Panamanian from miles away. Anyway, my team for this World Cup is the most offbeat choice anyone could ever pick: Japan. Motherfucker’s got game! Nakata owns ass when in front of a soccer ball. Anyway, the point to this is that it’s misinformed choices like those are what makes me watch the news with the same approach I’d watch “Seinfeld.” People here look to their governments to help them in such a selfish way that it’s a little discouraging… gas prices are a hot topic, and in a country where every other Thursday we get new prices it’s always a hoot to watch on the news; whenever the price is slated to go up, the gas stations are already selling by the established price by Thursday at midnight. When it goes down, though, Some gas stations don’t change it until Saturday afternoon! The media doesn’t help, either: I’ve been seeing a slow-but-steady decline in gas prices but the news haven’t said a word about it. Whenever the prices start going up though watch them as they stand up in arms and demand oil tycoon heads on bloody sticks. The media here (and everywhere else, for that matter) love themselves some drama. It’s all a joke to these people, I think, and we, as a socially retarded society don’t have the nerve to take a stand… or better yet, bother to understand the situation. They blame the president for everything, and with only 5 minutes to sit down a read a little on the subject anybody would realize that it’s not a government issue at all… yet when the everyday man is confronted with this truth they use their ignorance as an excuse for their lack of knowledge on the subject; with that, they take to the streets so that Martín Torrijos can solve their problems like he’s fucking, I dunno… Superman. Delightfully ignorant and macho all the way, that’s what a lot of the men in Panama are like. And they like a sport where the players kiss and hug for extended amounts of time as a celebration for a goal in a game. These are also the same men that gay-bash at least once a day. For some reason a lot of the Panamanian population still can’t stand the idea of same-sex couples. Hell, not even lesbians, who are hot as hell by forfeit. There’s a lot of religion involved in that, which trails us back to the Da Vinci Code and how the church was worried people would take it seriously. The arguments posed by the movie are indeed interesting, but for the world’s largest, most powerful institution to flip out over a work of fiction doesn’t really help them when it comes to making its followers discard the material. I wanna know what’s going to happen tomorrow when “The Omen” remake comes out. I’m going with SwissDoll to see what the fuzz regarding Damien’s about. Article coming up later in the day, methinks. In the meantime, enjoy the source of Brett Ratner’s plagiarism on one of the best lines in his latest movie, the last in the mutant opus - “X-Men: The Last Stand.”

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