Dracula, El Musical

Last night Greg and I saw "Dracula, El Muscial."



Needless to say, I loved it. As most of you know, I'm a sucker for a musical. It didn't really matter that I only understood bits and pieces of what was going on.

The show itself was amazing, and a little reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera. But it was more than just the show, the whole experience was fun. But....theater in Argentina is a little different than at home.

First, the concessions in the lobby area were selling snacks, like potato chips, M&Ms, candy and, of course, bottles of champagne. Hey, I like champagne and sugar snacks just as much as the next girl, it's just that I'm not used to them being served together at a concession stand.

The next surprize was that we were permitted, no encouraged, to take our snack purchases with us into the theater. Upon learning this, we shrugged, said "OK" and took our Dom Perignon and Nerds into the theatre (just kidding, we had water and M&Ms).

The theatre house itself was interesting. I would describe it as moderately-worn art deco with a splash of the 80's. The theater had a lovely style, clearly art deco with some really beautiful touches. However, it looked as if the last facelift was in the 80's, with copious mirrors and paint in colors that we fondly remembered as being very Miami Vice.

But don't get me wrong, it was fantastic, even if it did need some TLC. We found it charming and we loved it.

Once we made our way out of the lobby and into the theater itself, the next thing we noticed was that we were way over dressed. Greg was wearing jeans, a nice button down shirt and a navy jacket. I was wearing a basic black dress and sensible heels. We were by far the most elegantly dressed couple in the house. The majority of the audience was dressed as if they were going to a futbol match. Jeans, t-shirts, shorts, etc.

In fact, speaking of futbol matches, there were a lot of similarities with futbol matches. Back home we are used to being quiet, polite audiences that clap when appropriate and give the occasional whistle at the end of the performance.

This crowd, however, was a tad more exuberant. After each stirring song (of which there were many), the spectators jumped to their feet, cheering and shouting. It was really fun! It was great that the whole crowd was so into the performance. I kept expecting to hear someone shout "Gooooooaaaaaaaal!!!!"

There is one more interesting bit that I must convey. This involves ushers and tipping etiquette. There was an usher to show us to our seats, which was good because there were no numbers on the seats. After showing us to our seats, he asked if we wanted programs. We said yes, and took some. Then he just stood there and stared at us.

Hmmm. Clearly there was something we didn't understand. He said something in spanish that didn't help to clarify things. Then he said, in English "the tips!!!" Oh! OK! Greg fished around in his pocket for some change and we handed a him a couple of pesos.

It was a little strange, but I recall a similar system in Brussels whereby an usher showed us our seats for tips. It caused much confusion among the Americans in Brussels who didn't understand that these ushers worked for tips. But all worked out OK. At least this time around, we didn't have an usher screaming at us for failing to tip at the proper moment (another story for another time).

The show itself was really amazing. It was like Phantom of the Opera goes to Transylvania. The interesting part was that the set was rather minimalist and reminded us a little bit of community theater or a high-school production. There were a few well done pieces on the set, but for the most part, we were left to our imaginations.

However, it didn't matter. The costumes and the lighting were so amazing, that we forgot that we could see the stage markings on the floor in bright white tape. That, and the fact that the music and the singing were so unbelievably moving that we were compelled to jump up and join the fray shouting our approval. Bravo!!! Bravo!!! Bravo!!! And that was just in the first scene. In fact, the show was so compelling, so aesthetically pleasing, so....well done that the audience was re-seated and waiting for the second act well before the intermission was over.

Sometime in the first act I leaned over and wispered to Greg, "we are SO buying this soundtrack." And we did. The double CD with the whole show cost us $AR 40 (about U$ 13). Boy is Greg going to get sick of listening to that!

CD or no CD, Greg and I are already talking about going back for another performance. Apparently, we're not the only ones. The guy sitting next to us, who was singing along throughout, told us he had seen it 12 times.

Construction

A little story about construction here.

There's a ton of construction going on here. Typical construction is concrete frame, brick infil, plaster on brick. Nothing special, easy to overdesign, hard to screw up too bad. So there's this 7-story apartment building going upabout 3 blocks from our place. They poured concreted and they were cleaning out the mixer on the street (of course, no reason to have a prep area), concrete slurry can be seen trailing 3 blocks away. There's two guys at the mixer cleaning it out, and they're dumping the excess concrete out into the street - maybe 3 to 4 yards of concrete lying there in the street. There's another guy shoveling this waste concrete into a wheelbarrow. There's a fourth guy at the wheelbarrow waiting for the shoveler to finish (there's only onewheelbarrow). The guy with the wheelbarrow then wheels the concrete around the corner about 50 feet to where the construction dumpster is located (also on the street). He dumps the concrete on to the street, in a pile. There's another guy waiting there with a shovel where he will shovel that concrete into the dumpster.

That's fives guys, two shovels, dumping the concrete into the street twice. It really took me back to the good old days in Aruba where we figured out how to improve efficiency by 70% by giving the drywall guys nail aprons instead ofhaving one guy hand each drywall screw to the otherguy actually installing the board.

food incidents - updated

We've had a few food incidents here recently.

1. The International Cookie Incident: my Dad and his wife sent us some cookies. Not just cookies. Malomars. Could have broken open the entire South American cookie market here they're so damn good. We love malomars and it would have been great. Unfortunatley, the folks at customs had other ideas. Apparently, these cookies were picked up at customs. Contraband? maybe. The shipping company claims that packaged food goods are nto to be imported without paying a duty. It's 4 boxes of cookies. My family is not in the import-export business. I could go down to the airport (US$30 cab ride each way) and fill out a form and pay the duty and get cookies, or have the shipping company "abandon" the package. If I do nothing the shipping company charges my Dad for "storage" of the contents. As if these cookies would last more than 10 mintues. I think they're scared here for what Malomars could do their cookie business.

2. We decided to make tex-mex food. Actually, I decided. Found a recipe on the net for re-fried beans that was supposed to be easy and involved beer. Looking good. However, the recipe called for canned black beans, which are not available here. I had to work with dry beans. So I bought a few bags and soaked them overnight. They outgrew the first pot I put them in - that should have been the first signal that I bought too much. I needed four 14-ounce cans, which is about 1.4 kilos. I ended up with more than three times that. Adn it seemed to grow with each passing minute. The other problem is that dry beans are not cooked, like canned beans. So the recipe that was supposed to take 2 hours ended up taking 6, as the beans needed to cook. On the plus side, they turned out fantastic and we have enough for a week. And we have beans ready for round two next week. And I threw out a third of the beans. So if you want some home made tex-mex, come on down!

3. Cheedar. We found a mexican restaurant nearby (great guacamole, but everything else was mediocre) and found out more about cheese. Apparently when you ask for a small side of cheddar cheese (which is actually spelled cheedar in two different places on the menu), you don't get a small cup of grated cheese. You get a large pot of melted cheedar like a fondu pot. Large, like you could swim in this bowl of cheedar.

4. More cheese. There's an expression here "Soy un queso" which literally means "I am cheese" but which we gather implies more that you're a spaz.

5. There's another expression from Spain involving milk that our friend Elizabeth taught us but we can't repeat it here because it's not for public consumption.

driving

Our friend Carlos here told us a funny story. (Carlos speaks near-fluent English since he grew up in Houston for a few critical adolscent years.) He was on his honeymoon in Miami with his wife, Gabi, and he was stopped by a cop for driving through a stop sign. The cop, after noting that Carlos was from Argentina, proceeded to lecture Carlos. The cop asked him, "what if I was in your country and just drove right through stop signs?" Carlos is an intelligent guy so he just accepted the lecture and the ticket, but inside he was thinking: "well, in Buenos Aires, nobody stops like that and if you did, you'd be rear ended."

We've decided that we'd like to see a new sport: Formula One Bus racing. Get each of the 5 or 6 drivers from their routes and see which one finishes first on their "course." Then we thought about it and realized that this is what happens pretty much everyday on your average bus route here.

jamon

A few words about the jamon (ham). It is beloved here, like it's own food group. It's on pizza, on burgers, it makes up more than 50% of the items on any given menu. They are devoted to ham here in all it's forms. Sliced ham. Smoked ham. Jamon crudo. Cubed ham on mashed potatoes. Jamon y queso sandwich. Getting a milanesa - I bet you'll find a little surprise under that cheese topping! I'm going to try to explain some of what makes this an interesting subject for us.
I think I would have to say that jamon here is not considered a meat but more of a ...let's say garnish. Chicken sandwich? How about a slice of jamon on that. Genevieve ordered a vegetarian sandwich - no the sandwich did not have ham on it. It was strictly bread, cheese, a little pesto. BUT, there was a lovely little piece of jamon crudo on the side of the plate - like a little sprig of parsely. In the US, you might see a slice of orange. Here, we see a nice slice of smoked ham.

Or maybe not a garnish, maybe a flavoring, like pepper or salt. Prime example: serrano ham flavored potato chips. I'm not kidding. Evidentiary photo attached.



And people don't believe us when we ask for items without ham or understand us when we act befuddled about all the ham-centric eating. We told our spanish teachers about the "vegetarian sandwich garnish" and they just looked at us, blankly, as if to say, "yes, and...is there something strange about that you hamless American?"

We also notice that generally speaking, there can be queso without jamon, but almost never is there jamon without queso. Scan a menu, you'll see the left side of most menus are variants on the jamon-queso family.

Maybe the closest thing I can describe in the US is in LA. In Los Angeles restaurants don't believe you when you say you don't want mayonaisse and they like to put a little bit on there so you won't have to go without.

So ham, it's not just for breakfast.