Life in Mexico
Life’s a Beach
We live a few blocks from Santiago beach, a beautiful, 6-km stretch of coffee-colored sand situated in a protected bay.
The beach is deserted most of the week, but come Sunday, several thousand people flock for a day of rest and celebration. Here are some of our observations about the unique way that Mexicans enjoy a day in the sun.
Bring Beer. Anyone who thinks Mexicans are lazy has never seen one carrying three flats of warm cerveza on their head.
Bring the family. When it’s time to take the clan to the beach, they rent a bus. Even Grandma, dressed in black and sitting in a wheel chair, comes along.
Bring a life-vest. There are no lifeguards, rip markers or swimming lessons; if you get carried out to sea, you’re crocodile buffet.
Bring a skin tumor. The favorite sunscreen is coconut oil, with a melanoma-rating of +50. Smells great, though.
Bring a bikini. Not so bad when they’re 17, but when you see a Big Momma toting a few decades of tacos only one phrase comes to mind; Lycra torture test.
Book Review
The Exchange
By John Grisham
Linda and I have been reading John Grisham’s legal thrillers for decades now, and we’ve enjoyed them a tremendous amount. Unfortunately, in The Exchange, the author has taken a couple of detours from his usual winning formula that are, to say the least, distracting.
The Exchange is a follow-up to a tremendously enjoyable book, The Firm, which followed the misadventures of a young lawyer. After graduating with distinction from Harvard, Mitch McDeere joined Bendini, a prominent Memphis firm. At first, he and his wife Abby found themselves enjoying the life and sudden wealth that the position promised. Soon, however, they found themselves embroiled in a nefarious world of money laundering. With the FBI closing in, Mitch and Abby fled the country one step ahead of murder, abandoning their lives.
Now, decades later, Mitch has established a career with Scully, the world’s largest law firm. Settled in New York, they are intent on raising their twin sons and putting the nightmare around Bendini far behind.
Their lives are shattered, however, when a mysterious terrorist gang based in Libya kidnaps one of their associates, the sultry Giovanna Sandroni, while inspecting a client’s engineering work in the middle of the desert. Mitch finds himself scrambling to put together the $100 million ransom before she is executed.
So, what’s my problem? I enjoy Grisham because he doesn’t generally wallow in gore. The Exchange, however, features several grim torture/executions of terrorist captives; I can get all of this I want from reality, thanks.
Secondly, this isn’t a legal thriller, with all the court twists-and-turns that normally propel Grisham’s narrative. It’s essentially a ‘will he get the ransom together before the deadline (and presumably icky death) of the beautiful victim’ thriller.
Finally, when you do a sequel, the core of the conflict is associated with some ‘unfinished business’ (one of the guilty parties gets out of prison and comes looking for revenge, say). Except for the fact that it features the two primary protagonists from The Firm, the two books don’t really have anything to do with one another.
My suggestion; if you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend you get a copy of The Firm!
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TV Review
The Crown
Streaming on Netflix
We were living in London in 1997, about one km south of Kensington Palace. The morning of Sunday, August 31, dawned sunny and warm, and we decided to go for a jog in the park.
As we made our way north along Gloucester Rd, however, we noticed several strange occurrences. A cabbie was parked at the curb, weeping as he listened to his radio. People were solemnly exiting the Gloucester Rd tube, each clutching a bouquet of lilies.
When we reached the park, the normally-cheery warden wore a solemn expression and a black armband. It wasn’t until we reached the gilded south gate of the palace, already strewn with a pile of flowers, that we realized what was going on.
“Diana died last night,” a tearful mourner explained.
The sixth, and final season of The Crown focuses on the death of Diana. Even though half a lifetime has passed, the events remain riveting. Although it is a dramatization that pigeonholes many of the participants (the scheming Mohamed al-Fayed, his weak-willed, acquiescent son Dodi), the episodes nonetheless capture the visceral fascination that the world held for one woman and her tragic death.
Days after her demise, we stood in veneration as her gun carriage was drawn through the park, mourning with the millions watching at home. It is a feeling that I shall remember for the rest of my life. I highly recommend The Crown!
Movie Review
Nyad
Streaming on Netflix
NASA had a goal to reach the moon; it was a massive, coordinated scientific achievement.
Sir Edmund Hillary had a goal to scale Mt. Everest, the tallest peak on earth.
But when does a goal become an obsession?
Diana Nyad, an American marathon swimmer, had achieved notable success early in her career, swimming the circumference of Manhattan, a distance of 28 miles, at the age of 26 in 1975. She went on to achieve a world open-water distance record in 1979, swimming 102 miles from Bimini in the Bahamas to Juno Beach, Florida.
Her ultimate ambition was to complete an open-water swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys, a distance of 110 miles. Although the feat had been previously done by swimmers using shark cages, she wanted to do it unprotected. It took her a total of five attempts, the final one in 2013 at the age of 63.
Each of the attempts were aided by a small army of volunteers, including the captain of the support boat, played by Welsh actor Rhys Ifans (who, as you may recall, did a wonderfully-comic turn as the goofy roommate to Hugh Grant in Notting Hill).
In the end, Nyad succeeds, although her achievement was shrouded in controversy due to a lack of independent verification that ultimately motivated Guinness to revoke her feat from its Book of World Records .
The movie stars Annette Bening, who plays Nyad, and Jodie Foster as her coach Bonnie Stohl; two incredible actresses portraying two strong women working to achieve a near-impossible objective. The movie is both riveting and touching; I highly recommend Nyad!