Our Man in Antigua

and the smoke, smog and traffic of the City slowly fades in my memory….3X in 3 weeks, when I usually go once or twice a year. Yeah, I’ve gotten soft, not driving the usual 100000 miles a year (and blowing the lease agreement)…we call that retirement, ok?

“no repeat customers’ is/was Ponzi Bob’s label for his two staff members here…the latest scam involves cheap/discounted liquor/beer, of which I know of at least two people who have been burnt.

hey…you want to open a jade store? the existing store on the corner of 5th ave/3rd calle and a great location has said ‘adios’ and closed…..if one can’t make it there, then where? great to hear from  mike D and Norm the K….and if you’re going out tonight, check out  Fusion’s new music thing at 8pm…I’d go but i’m only allowed 4 hours a day with the new hearing device….hey, 5 hours tomorrow and it’s great to hear things in stereo again…as Tall Bill said to me earlier, ‘getting old is a bitch, but it beats the alternative.’

the new shafts for the croquet set? a hit…

if youand  

for gringos to make a living in this town…gotta work permit? oops…if you don’t have an independent income, you’re fighting the tide. Witness the recent departure, hopefully temporary, of Sierra…as with Wendy Wever and Peter Hodge, once they take the TEFL course, it’s time to  find a job teaching English (and not here)…my favorite Amazon, Tanya the H seems to be returning…will the  ’thing’ with the motorcycle guy pick up again?

and yes, love is in the air still…Ocelot staff…no names but I’m glad to see that nature still takes its course.  And yes! at last, Antigua has a new Mayor….he’s an attorney but we can’t hold that against him (yet)it might me that permits/licenses and such will now get kind of a green light…maybe even the streets washed down, eh? at present, the park benches are getting new sluts….no, slats….

ah, Iximche? easy in, easy out and different from any Mayan site I’ve seen…maybe because it isn’t that old (500 years)…Tecpan is neat also..

another minor miracle….the newly revised longer thicker shaft? the croquet mallet? ontime, perfect and it’ll get a test run this weekend…and then order the other five replacements, just in time for the rainy season.

Music in a new location tonight….Fusion’s patio, 8pm…’blues/jazz’….and why does Panza Verde charge a 100q to hear Seth play?….he’s great, but…Piano Mike is back from SC and playing Dishaulded (just what the fuck does that mean?) weekend nights…wish them luck, per location/empty spaces…Sobremesa’s new little room is getting a LOT of action.

last/not least…the delightful Marbel has a new concept…doing City tours of this/that…her business cards (I have some) are….hmmm….ask me and I’ll ask  your opinion, ok?

and what is probably the last road trip for Alabama Bob (he’s says June 1st is it)but we’ve found a new rider….Dr. J….HBT will continue to pilot…

so….the 3rd trip into the City? not, for various reasons…maybe Friday, assuming a lot of things, like the audiologist gets over being sick…o well, that’s guatemala…at least, it seems to be a go for Kimchi tomorrow, that Mayan site up by Tecpan…with what might be the last road trip with Alabama Bob….he reverts to the US next month and ‘aint sure’ if he’s coming back. The Barfly Wall of Whatever in Ocelot losses another face.

kn ow any cunning linguists? one of the side benefits of belonging to the American Legion library, next to the Jardin Bavaria on 7th ave norte, besides having over 30000 books, for 100q a year in dues, is the occasional weird bookmark…this week? it looks like a  ticket for something called the ‘T.C. Kultur VE Turizm of Bakanligi, Muze Giris Bileti, Fiyati 250 TL’..there’s a faint outline  of some landmass or maybe its a wine stain…gotta stop/retry later…either wordpress is screwed or my net connection is…

ok, once more..if you see the delightful Miss M, yes, she’s back from Israel, Spain and Italy….looking for work in A-Town. She’s doing an ‘Author’s Night’ with me next month at the Sophos Bookstore in the City, as she’s more bi-lingual than I am (don’t go even go there, ok?)

more smart thinking…another jade shop on 5th calle…the venerable (old) Panchoy Restuarant has moved to outer 3rd calle, by the hotel Santo Domingo, making it even easier for customers not to find them…as to what’s going into their old space on 6th avenida…dunno, but they’ve been ripping the guts out of the inside for a while now. Probably a travel agency, spanish school/jade store, with  t-shirts.

and now that Rich and Raul have some golf clubs, compliments of some paca somewhere, it’ll be hard to  beg off playing next week….flog is golf, spelled backwards, which describes it very well. And yes, there are hordes of visiting christians, matching t-shirts, earnest expressions of good will…if they thought about how much their airfare cost, plus food/lodging….20X$1000 or so? and just found a decent NGO? nope…gotta go Witness for the Lord’ all that pale white flesh, over-fed and over here…they march in groups, night and day….do they? ah, hell..who cares? I don’t, you  don’t.

ah! thru luck, pluck and so on….I found a wood-working shop in San Felipe who is making a proto-type shaft for the croquet mallets…the others are/were just too f%$#@! short….these will be ‘man-sized’…bigger, longer…some kind of wood called ‘bollilo?’…all the better to whack my balls with, my dear…if this process is anything like the hearing aid thing, expect news next month, in time for the rains..and again, thank you f or all the kind words about the latest epic, ’100 miracles a year’….it’s a helluva project, that actually works, Will is a saint and so on…thank you…yeah, not Kimchi…Iximche tomorrow….breaking in a new rider/accomplice, Dr. J…hey, we warned him.

whew….Antigua was chock-ful of tasty babes (moms, I assumed)on Friday but today? a dismal parade of the fat and the ugly. I’ve often said that one of my favorite things about living here is that, every day i see at least 3 beautiful women that I’ve never seen before…that record was broken today….even the usually fabulous Miss 8:30, despite her awe-inspiring/outstanding superstructure wasn’t up to her usual standards….wtf happened over the weekend? and here’s  a ‘feel good’ story about guatemala…

http://www.examiner.com/article/a-hundred-miracles-a-year

either wordpress is slammed or my ‘net connection is hosed….tomorrow…and the story about Coyote Rojo getting pepper-sprayed at 3am…or that’s what I was told…last saturday/early sunday, a judge with cops entered with spray….a very effective way to clear out a joint.

piano mike checking in from San Cristobal de las Casas….getting his visa renewed….i love SC..if it weren’t so cold there, etc….coming this thursday, a ‘run’ to Iximche to see if the folks who’ve said it’s great are right…if so, worthy of an inclusion into the ‘Top Ten’ of Guatemala, into next months’ version of Our Man…and taking on a new rider, Dr. J….breaking him in, as it were, into  traveling with the usual circus.

the ever lovely Evelyn M, in from El Salvador for a weekend with Bob…with him leaving next month, this has gotta be bittersweet parting…both fine people..alas

that Thai kick boxing school on upper 4th? Muay Thai or whatever….how do they stay in business? and if you leave before you finish the course, do they kick you out? just wondering, as i do about a lot of things in this wacky town…like what’s going to happen with the old Riki’s building on 4th, long vacant? when?

yes, this is the Tomster, who doesn’t remember shooting up the Land Rover…

it mighta been just a West Coast ad campaign slogan…but in a way, it fits….my mentor/advisor in things involving the ear, failed to mention the next step…getting a mold…in this case, a silicon putty thing that they injected into my ear-hole…an, no, it didn’t leak out the other side(i looked)….so, i go back, next week, for the final-final..they get the other half of the $$ and I supposedly walk out with ‘enhanced heering’…herring? dam spel chuk…

Nelson’s birthday tomorrow night(friday)at Dishualded..9pm onweird…otgher muscisican dropping in/by..not

Piano Mike..he’s on the way to San Critobal de las casas..i quit…wordp[ress or the net is screwing this up…mananan, in la manana…yes….Wayne the very urban Hooper will be singing/playing the sax…some others mentioned…latest per Nelson is that it starts at 7pm, altho the last 7pm ‘start’ actually didn’t get underway til 8….G.S.T/musician time, y’know

so…a new mayor in town but some problems with the city council…one of the new members was part of the old gang(in more ways than one) so the others are in a bit of snit…seems to me, that if…nah, ‘it’s Chinatown, Jake…’…meaning, in other words, if you  haven’t seen ‘Chinatown’ that its just the same ‘ol stuff, rules don’t apply, etc..’saw that the new ‘Pit Stop’ place on the way up the hill is progressing…external paint in the O’lot signature black/white checkerboard pattern gracing the walls.

and you know that it was too good to last…HBT’s recently buffed out/painted Merc Cougar? yep…some scrapes along the passenger side, the mirror dinged…damn those narrow streets of Ciudad Vieja at night…right..but it’ll be good enough(I hope)to haul the four of us off to Kimchi next week…Kimchi?…nah, Iximche, with what may be Alabama Bob’s last road trip here, and breaking in a new member of the posse, Dr. Jackson…maybe golf the following week…Rich and Carlos Tomas? Rich has a word for it..EPIC…’not sure what that implies but I’m working on the croquet mallets, just in case…typical Gaute woodshop screw-ups..a week later.’no, we don’t work in pine…you need a hardwood shop’….o…and i thought that ‘woodwork’ meant…right…they would have worked but they’re specialists in not working.

a note from my old pal..older than me by two weeks, that is…Jerry of Mill Valley up north…a spike in suicides among white males in their 50′s in the US….guess that the economy didn’t turn around that quickly for them..and still hasn’t. 30 trillion bucks sucked out and stashed offshore, here and there..those good ol home equity lines of credit, the real estate crash that hasn’t bottomed out  yet and so on…’where’s the .38, Babs?’…have you seen San Lucas recently? a boom goin’ on there, with commercial buildings left and right. Pretty soon you won’t have to go to the Big Box stores in the City for the giant economy size frozen waffles…ok, time to get some ‘real work’ done…the whee-kend is here, whether you like it or not.

Ack! I’m referring to FaceHole aka Facebook..why? the time, the effort in reading dumb affirmations, et cetera..I quit, I’m opting out…taking a break, a hiatus from FB..I took a ‘net break’ over the weekend and found that I liked not checking in, reading stuff just to be reading…and not getting anything done that required a train of thought, as if I had one (it left a long time ago, some folks say..

the Facebook/Our Man in Antigua page will continue to offer weekly stuff…a feel good article about something ‘only in Gautemala’ soon, next week a road trip to Iximche and June? major %$#@! changes…for that, you if like, go there and click on the ‘like’ button 

Pat Farrell, gonzo….the only left over is Alabama Bob…here for 20 months plus and coming along next week for the Iximche run…with a new passenger, Dr Jackson…HBT’s driving will soon deliver a ‘yay or a ‘nay’…i think he’ll pass…meaning go along with the deal..

Max Gonzalez of El Muro…in town..at the bank and Claro…says that El Mur0/Lanquin is about to  officially open, four months over schedule…which explains the unanswered emails/phone calls from February…and that El Muro/Antigua has been closed for 3 weeks,with ‘exciting new changes’…nope, can’t talk about it  but they sound great ..

ungood reports from that place on the edge of town that advertises ‘hamburgers/ribs…’….Piano Mike, off to San Cristobal de las Casas on Friday…took notes from Alabama Bob and I…’if it weren’t so cold, I could live there.”

me…” a big tip of the panama to AsGreenAsitgets.org…the latest coffee batch, with the photo of  Don Filiberto? xlnt roast…i remember 5 years ago, visiting his house in San Miguel Escobar..dirt floors..big difference today…yay, Franklin!

dishualded? too far…alas..great scene, too few people…remember Peter Glover and the El Caminante scene? dancing, skits, strip shows, the views, cha cha..? and that was on 1st avenida…antigua, a viscious town for bars..viscous? nasty,ok?

described as ‘an uneven movement from bar to bar…it’s a musical term but might apply to more than a few in this town of many many bars.

So…the Beauty Pageant…town packed, the town band doing their Friday night concert and a ton (metric, of course) of superb senoritas doin’ the stroll…traffic? jammed, packed..why?

the usual patio crowd…or maybe the unusual Friday night gathering at that place…old faces, some not seen for a while, some coming by to say ‘adios’ to Mike D, leaving us on Sunday…almost the Last of the Mohicans, if you include Alabama Bob…damned shame but that’s life in a resort town.

Blake of Pappy’s BBQ….his most xlnt beef jerky is now in 6 places around town and his ribs…no, the stuff  he smokes…even that sounds wierd: the food that comes outa the smoker and his hole in the wall cafe on 6th calle, now in three places in town, with a couple others ‘under the table’…. how refreshing to see/hear of someone with a business plan, considering how many others just throw spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks (a metaphor, ok?)

if you see me in town next week with a device hanging from  my left ear, it’s a hearing aid…after four years later(blew it out in the pool at Dos Mundos, on a weekend with ‘her’ and three docs said it was gone….even the vaunted VA…no chance, no way, a hearing aide won’t do any good….wrong, rum breath…if i should also happen to tune in to the  mother ship, that might be a good thing also…wait…is it the Rapture? who cares..in my case, more likely the Rupture, considering the approach of yet another birthday in the  Sixties Series (and the last)…christ,  how did this happen? I thought that if i abused myself enough…yeah, that didn’t work either but I’m still trying…HIV? hair, involuntary loss…AIDS?  hearing, roll, band and so on…

and now…three juice bars in town! as if one could sustain the crush/pay the rent…yep, on 7th ave, around the corner from Pitaya and El Sitio…and more hole-in-the-wall dress/coffee/tourist stuff shops there/here/whatever…and not a snowballs chance in hell to make it til July, if then. And of course, the usual crop of  blond gringas here for ‘spanish school, you know’ all find latin tutors for those after hour sessions of irregular verbs..its an annual event….do any of them actually take Pedro or Pancho home to meet Mom and Dad?

and it looks like I got/paid the Gringo Tax for treatment at our local dermatologist…after all was said, done and more importantly, paid, I showed him the critters from my tongue that originally brought me to his office…’ah those…from some kind of fruit you ate.’..thanks, doc..thanks $$$ a bunch..’tongue’s fine, pockets are empty and it’ll be a long time before i go back…doctors, like any profession such as mechanics, septic tank pumpers and attorneys, are only as good as their training…some bad, some good and the majority just so so…ah, it’s the weekend, and the rains may fall, the sun will shine and life, as we know it, will go forweird.