After checking in on the Naso at the Cathedral plaza a couple of times, my friends and I eventually landed on this crazy little nook located on one of the corners of the adjacent Herrera plaza, the same one where La Casona is. I had never given it a chance for some reason or other, [...]
Happiness joins the Extraordinary League of Emotions, sharing the round table with such greats as Love, Hate, Devotion, Lust, Faith, Destiny, et al. Be that as it may, the notion still doesn’t tell me a pip about what it really means. Since happiness is intangible it is also subjective; since there are as many definitions for subjective things as there are people on Earth, I came to the conclusion that a zeitgeist was in order. My discoveries, I’m happy to report, revealed the closest thing to “meaning” as I’m going to get to, despite my best knuckle-headed efforts.
People love music. It’s one of the first and most important means of expression known to man. People fall in love, find a cause, discover friendships and cure their ills every day thanks to the power of song. As it is with our current societies, though, sometimes being a musician (or an artist, for that matter) must come with a degree of corporate compromise: money. Virtuosos or not, an artist has to eat, and sometimes he/she has to adapt to what’s popular at the moment. In the end, the people rule even though sometimes it would seem otherwise.
I was driving down towards my home one fateful Saturday night when I unexpectedly got into a car crash. Luckily no one got hurt and all damages were cosmetic, but the crash triggered a series of events that ultimately left me without a car for a number of weeks, having to rely on the Panamanian public transport system to take me places. Considering I left cabs and buses when I started driving about half a decade ago, this new status quo had some degree of culture shock packed within it. What follows is a reprise of the trials and tribulations of getting around in Panama City when you’re on nothing more than your own two feet with chump change to get you in the occasional bus or a cab, and the pros/cons of the current system. The funky colors and highly inaccurate likenesses painted on their emergency doors are about all that’s attractive about them, and cabs can come in all shapes, sizes, creeds and levels of danger. To say I will enjoy the catharsis this piece will bring is a gross understatement.
In the past couple of weeks, just for kicks, I talked about this with a couple of friends and loved ones, every conversation degrading into a discussion on what would the rates be for a “happy ending.” I’m not going to talk about the amount of time my mom was able to mine the hell out of this joke (answer: three days) and much less how far she went (hint: Gorilla Mask, anyone?), but it’s safe to say that everyone I talked to had a field day with the name of the company and their imaginations flew so, so far.
This is the set-up: a man that’s known both online and off as Rob Rivera is lying down in bed thinking about the things people like Rob Rivera think about when they’re lying in bed (answer: chocolate) perusing the TV channels of his basic cable service. Mind you, my TV set has been busted for months.
One would think they have entered Prozac Nation upon arrival but that first impression is not something that can be held accountable to the residents of Chitré; on the contrary, the problem is that many of us that are so used to the hectic, smog-dominated city life that visiting such a tranquil place is nothing short of a system shock. You can literally feel the darkness of your soul slowly peel away the further you venture into the city. The air feels cleaner, everyone says “hello” to each other and, unlike Panama City and its traffic, modeled after the southwest ghetto district of the 7th ring of hell, drivers are actually courteous on the road. You can actually tell how many people from the capital are visiting Chitré by the way they’re driving… because they’re so damn rude.
I’m sure that the bond between a fan and his national team, regardless of nationality, is just as strong, but like many things about us at the moment, Panama’s soccer team is in a state of mediocrity that is only so because of sheer sloth, and it makes things even more frustrating for the fan. Ask a Panamanian that follows the team, any of them, what it’s like to see their team play beautifully to the point of making them proud, only to have them succumb at the last minute and ruin all the good will they garner from the fans by playing well. Ask them, and you’ll witness a withered soccer soul stare back at you as if Shang Tsung had made a happy hour out of its carcass.
Ismael, or “The Ish” as he’s commonly known as in Drury University, made the minimum qualifying time of 23.00 seconds in Men’s 50m Freestyle at the Coppa Italia celebrated on mid-July in Chile. The minimum qualifying time requested by the International Swimming Federation FINA (Federación Internacional de Natación) is of 23:13 seconds as B Mark, so he should be well and clear to represent Panama in the 50m Freestyle competition in Beijing. So, what’s the problem? The Panamanian Olympic Comittee is being a silly bitch, that’s what.
I was with my friend Marco one late Thursday afternoon just cruising about when hunger struck, causing me to detour at the McDonald’s drive-thru around the El Dorado Shopping Center. Now, specially nowadays with the emergence of fancy, well-lit and ridiculously safe shopping malls lately, in comparison the El Dorado Shopping Center seems pretty shady, [...]
Their first record in over four years, Panama-based alternative rock band Señor Loop returns with a rock-solid album full of emotion, force and resolution wrapped in an onslaught of sonic resolve: “MCMLXXXII” is the name of said album, and to listen to is is to walk down a landscape of Panamanian history’s past, present and future, woven together with sounds that entice and hypnotize. “MCMLXXXII” is, on almost every level, an evolutionary progression from the band’s previous album, “Madretambor.”
I’m taking a break from my adventures with one Niko Bellic to chime in on this whole Pepsigol Evolution commercial business. I got the link to the youtube clip below this morning (Thanks, Arturo!) and even though it first seemed as a run-of-the-mill commercial with no outstanding merit, if you stick to it towards the [...]
Like a folded chair to the face, sometimes things blindside us and knock us off our shoes when we least expect it. Many of us enjoy the thrill of a pleasant surprise, but in this day and age of the Internet where we can know everything everybody is doing every second of the day, spoil [...]
Due to an oddball series of events that I dare not discuss here, I found myself perusing the nightlife of my fair, beautiful Panama City in search of fun, sexual healing and assaults to my senses that can only be found under the multicolored lights of the many nightclubs that pepper the town. My hard-partying [...]
Porto Diao marches on with his ongoing cult/exploitation film festival at the Theatre guild of Ancon. This time, it’s a celebration of chop-socky, closed-fist destruction as two of the most incredible martial artists in the history of cinema square off in a battle where only the best man (and those most drunk) wins: Bruce Lee [...]