Wednesday, May 15, 2013
There's a New Battery Store in Town!!
It's hard to decide what we love more - the fact that the opening of a car battery store would get a two-page spread in the local paper, or that an event as cheesy as the opening of a battery story still requires the presence of a priest and two spandex-clad edecanes to make it complete. ¡Viva!
Monday, May 13, 2013
"Wake Up, Sheeple! Redux" A Vast Conspiracy of Internet Crazy, Part II, Continued...
Two-and-a-half months ago we wrote a post called "'Wake Up, Sheeple!' A Video Collection of Internet Crazy," documenting just one tiny corner of the "Sandy Hoaxers" parallel universe: the sliver of commentary directed at our Audio/Visual Division's "Raising Adam Lanza." The preponderance of batshit insane people out there is one of our ongoing interests, and so when when our hometown marathon got blown up last month, and the first question asked at the governor's press conference was, "was this a false flag fake attack designed to take away our civil liberties," we thought we'd revisit our little corner of The Crazy to see how many of our pet Sandy Hoaxers were also Tamerlan Truthers.
The results? One hundred percent. Join us after the fold, won't you?
The results? One hundred percent. Join us after the fold, won't you?
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Present At the Creation
Today's perro photos relate to yesterday's post about the founding of Ye Olde Burro Hall Blogospherical Medicine Showe seven years ago this weekend in a soon-to-be-landmarked motel room in Meridian, Mississippi. The weekend archivist surprised us this morning with two pictures of the perro taken on the day of the founding - coincidentally, the only photographic record of the event known to exist. And, yeah, he's sleeping on top of our executive editor's clothes for some reason.
Bonus Subscribers-Only Update: Proving that old habits die hard, here's the perro in the same suitcase after our return to the Burro Hall offices in February:
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| Meridian, MS, May 11, 2006 AD. |
Bonus Subscribers-Only Update: Proving that old habits die hard, here's the perro in the same suitcase after our return to the Burro Hall offices in February:
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Seven-Year Bitch
It was seven years ago today that The Most Important English-Language Blog in Central Mexico (Excluding the Distro Federal and Parts of Guadalajara) was born. That makes this the second-longest and 27th-most-lucrative job we've ever held.
From its humble beginnings in Room 158 of the La Quinta Motel in Meridian, MS, it's grown into the multinational conglomerate you hold in your hands at this moment. At this point it's customary to pin the success of such an enterprise on its dedicated community of readers but, when you really think about it, you guys don't do all that much, do you?
Actually, we're aware we haven't done all that much, either, as of late, for which we'd like to apologize (and to apologize further for presuming that our reduced output is in any way a concern to anybody). Between time-consuming full-time work for The Man, a torn rotator cuff that sidelined us for a while, and the fact that one can say literally everything there is to say about life in this town with far greater concision than 3,156 posts over 2,557 days, posting has become pretty sporadic, and likely to become more so in the future. It's nothing personal, we swear. Though we brag all the time about our enormous staff and extremely competitive internship program, it's really just one guy farting this stuff out in his free time. Look for us to be filling space with some of the 10,000 photographs we've taken over the last several years, which have been gathering dust inside the massive Burro Hall servers buried deep beneath the statue of Conín at the entrance to the city.
But seriously, we do treasure our readers and most especially (now that we've instituted a strict regime of filtering and moderation) our commenters. Thanks for wading through all this nonsense with us. ¡Salud!
From its humble beginnings in Room 158 of the La Quinta Motel in Meridian, MS, it's grown into the multinational conglomerate you hold in your hands at this moment. At this point it's customary to pin the success of such an enterprise on its dedicated community of readers but, when you really think about it, you guys don't do all that much, do you?
Actually, we're aware we haven't done all that much, either, as of late, for which we'd like to apologize (and to apologize further for presuming that our reduced output is in any way a concern to anybody). Between time-consuming full-time work for The Man, a torn rotator cuff that sidelined us for a while, and the fact that one can say literally everything there is to say about life in this town with far greater concision than 3,156 posts over 2,557 days, posting has become pretty sporadic, and likely to become more so in the future. It's nothing personal, we swear. Though we brag all the time about our enormous staff and extremely competitive internship program, it's really just one guy farting this stuff out in his free time. Look for us to be filling space with some of the 10,000 photographs we've taken over the last several years, which have been gathering dust inside the massive Burro Hall servers buried deep beneath the statue of Conín at the entrance to the city.
But seriously, we do treasure our readers and most especially (now that we've instituted a strict regime of filtering and moderation) our commenters. Thanks for wading through all this nonsense with us. ¡Salud!
Friday, May 10, 2013
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Cheap Eats for Broken Families
With so many unwed mamás in this deeply Catholic state, it's a pretty risky promotion. Especially the way the ad targets the very white, very blonde, upper-middle class women that no doubt make up the vast majority of Querétaro's single moms.
Tuesday, May 07, 2013
Greetings from Querétaro, Mexico's Bullfrog-Exportation Heartland
For all the talk of Querétaro's great future as the center of Mexico's aerospace technology sector - free tip to actual journalists looking for stories: ask some of the foreign manufacturers here how that's all working out - we were delighted to learn that the state has a thriving industry raising bullfrogs for export to the United States. One company in particular, Aquanimals, will send 160,000 to the US this year, as we learn in an article headlined Querétaro Exports 70,000 Frogs to the US.
The frogs are mostly shipped live, in trailers chilled to five degrees Celsius, to a company that kills them, vacuum-packs them, and sells them to high schools and colleges for dissection. The owner of the company is for some reason under the impression that some of his frogs are served as meals in American hospitals, where frogs legs are allegedly popular due to their low-fat, high-digestibility characteristics. We think this is kind of - how you say? - bullshit, but we invite any readers in the hospital services industry to correct us.
Most endearingly, Aquanimals' website has a "Frequently Asked Questions" page, where they imagine that the #3 most frequently-asked question about bullfrogs in the public's mind is: "Can frogs be used as live food for cobras?" (Answer: Yes! "They make excellent food for other pets, including spiders and scorpions...")
We're predicting the bullfrog farms will be here long after the last Learjet factory closes down.
The frogs are mostly shipped live, in trailers chilled to five degrees Celsius, to a company that kills them, vacuum-packs them, and sells them to high schools and colleges for dissection. The owner of the company is for some reason under the impression that some of his frogs are served as meals in American hospitals, where frogs legs are allegedly popular due to their low-fat, high-digestibility characteristics. We think this is kind of - how you say? - bullshit, but we invite any readers in the hospital services industry to correct us.
We're predicting the bullfrog farms will be here long after the last Learjet factory closes down.
Sunday, May 05, 2013
For Boston
Decades ago, when we'd first moved to New York after graduation from Boston College, we had a job where among our many responsibilities was purchasing vast quantities of marijuana for the company's owner. In New York, all things are available for home delivery, and dope is no exception. We still remember the day 20 years ago when we opened the door wearing a BC t-shirt, whereupon the drug courier's eyes lit up. "Hey, man... like, Class of '74! Woo-hoo! Like, did you live in the Mods?"
We thought of this earlier when we saw this indigenous woman selling handicrafts in the street this evening, clad in a Boston College sweatshirt. Either they've lowered the admissions requirements considerably, or this is the most touching "Bostonstrong" gesture we're ever going to see.
Go Eagles!
We thought of this earlier when we saw this indigenous woman selling handicrafts in the street this evening, clad in a Boston College sweatshirt. Either they've lowered the admissions requirements considerably, or this is the most touching "Bostonstrong" gesture we're ever going to see.
Go Eagles!
¡Happy Speedbump Day from Burro Hall!
Our campaign to rename Cinco de Mayo "Día del Tope" has yet to catch on (dont' judge - Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime, you know), but OC Weekly's Gustavo Arellano comes pretty close to joining the cause. Feliz día, everyone.
Saturday, May 04, 2013
WE'RE FAMOUS!!!!
DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS??? The president of the United States - himself, live, in person - used the word "Querétaro" in a non-pejorative sentence! In public!
Okay, okay... we'll slow down... so, like, the president, he comes to Mexico and we're all like, "Man, get a load of that dude's car!" And he drives the car around and he shake's Peña Nieto's hand and we all figure, well, that's about as good as it's gonna get. And then the next day he goes out the the Museum of Anthropology and gives some long bla-bla-bla about how America ♥ Mexico and stuff and we're all like, "Man, I wonder where they keep that guy's car while he's talking," and then - Omigod! Omigod! - he goes, like:
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!
Ahem. Um, hi - it's your regular correspondents again. We were letting Carmen Maria, the weekend intern, type up today's post, and she appears to have fainted on the floor. Anyway, her reaction was not atypical. The president did indeed speak for 26 minutes yesterday. Speeches like this are generally not an opportunity to hand out the tough love, and the man name-checked, among other places, Oaxaca, Tijuana, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Brazil, China, India and Mars. And of course Querétaro, which he not only mentioned, but quoted a queretano as saying there are good opportunities here.
Or somewhere, anyway. To his audience made up predominantly of college students in Mexico City, he continued: "That's what he said, and you are an example of that." So Obama himself may not really have voiced an opinion on the question of whether there are or are not opportunities in QRO.
Nevertheless...
Jesus, guys. We'll have to go back and check the coverage, but we don't think too many American papers clear the front page every time the presidente of Mexico mentions their state.
And it wasn't just the cheerleaders in the working press. Someone - clearly inspired by the groundbreaking work of Burro Hall - 'shopped this image of BHO in the QRO. It's been shared online 40,000 time as of this writing.
Then, like a game of telephone, the Sacred Quote itself began to morph a bit. In adjacent articles in the ongoing piece of performance art currently d/b/a Plaza de Armas, it started out as "Barack Obama said that he has heard that in Querétaro there exist opportunities for progress and that there was no ned to go to the US in search of them, because in the state there are the conditions necessary to get ahead," and then became, "A friend told me that in Querétaro there's no need to go the the US because there are good opportunities there."
Governor Calzada weighed in, claiming that the passing mention of something a [possibly apocryphal] guy from Querétaro said "has put Querétaro on the world map." "The simple fact that the leader of the most powerful economy in the world mentioned Querétaro is without a doubt an honor," said Mayor Loyola. (Also, have you seen the car that dude drives around in? ) The director of the state legislature, a Panista, went on record saying that the leadership of the state "has no colors" - which we at first took to be some completely bizarre attempt to get down with the black guy, but later realized was a reference to political parties - i.e., "don't give the PRI all the credit for the fact that Obama said 'Querétaro.'" (For his part, Calzada said that getting the state to the level of being mentioned publicly by the president didn't happen over night, but is thanks to "generations" of queretanos, presumably going back to Conín, if not earlier.) We expect Jardín Zenea to be renamed Plaza Obama by the end of the month.
We realize it's churlish to point this out, but at any given time there's an estimated 40,000 queretanos working in the United States, which works out to about 2.1% of the state's population. By way of comparison, this would be the equivalent of 53,000 Brooklynites living in Querétaro. (In fact, we're only aware of ourselves and the nice couple who run Erlum.)
And we almost don't have the heart to point out that the speech was not broadcast in the US, so pretty much the only people who heard The Great Utterance were Mexicans. Sure, the speech was covered in the US, but mostly by crazy people who read every mention of the word "guns" as a dictatorial power grab, and who took great offense at the way he hinted that, as the cartels' main customer, financier and arms supplier, the US might possibly bear some responsibility for the whole "drug war" thingy. No one in the US press mentioned he mentioned Querétaro. Sorry.
Plaza de Armas editor Sergio Venegas managed to come up with the most interesting and most dubious infonugget: The last president of the United States to utter the word "Querétaro" was James K. Polk, on May 30, 1848. On the one hand, we find that impossible to believe, any more than the notion that 165 years could pass without, say, "Massachusetts" passing the lips of any Mexican president. On the other hand, we can't imagine the circumstance in which it would come up. (Whereas four of the last six Mexican presidents actually spent their college years in the Bay State.) Venegas notes that while Obama's mention was positive (more or less; see above), Polk was ratifying the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, negotiated in Querétaro, "in which we lost the totality of the states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas, as well as parts of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma." So there's that. Still, until he produces the quote, we remain skeptical.
We didn't see the speech in real time, but having lived here for three months before we pronounced it correctly, we wondered how the Leader of the Free World pulled off The Most Beautiful Word in the Spanish Language. Zip ahead to 6:53.
Spoken like a United Airlines flight crew.
Okay, okay... we'll slow down... so, like, the president, he comes to Mexico and we're all like, "Man, get a load of that dude's car!" And he drives the car around and he shake's Peña Nieto's hand and we all figure, well, that's about as good as it's gonna get. And then the next day he goes out the the Museum of Anthropology and gives some long bla-bla-bla about how America ♥ Mexico and stuff and we're all like, "Man, I wonder where they keep that guy's car while he's talking," and then - Omigod! Omigod! - he goes, like:
One man in Querétaro spoke for an increasing number of Mexicans. “There’s no reason to go abroad in search of a better life, there are good opportunities here.”
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!
Ahem. Um, hi - it's your regular correspondents again. We were letting Carmen Maria, the weekend intern, type up today's post, and she appears to have fainted on the floor. Anyway, her reaction was not atypical. The president did indeed speak for 26 minutes yesterday. Speeches like this are generally not an opportunity to hand out the tough love, and the man name-checked, among other places, Oaxaca, Tijuana, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Brazil, China, India and Mars. And of course Querétaro, which he not only mentioned, but quoted a queretano as saying there are good opportunities here.
Or somewhere, anyway. To his audience made up predominantly of college students in Mexico City, he continued: "That's what he said, and you are an example of that." So Obama himself may not really have voiced an opinion on the question of whether there are or are not opportunities in QRO.
Nevertheless...
Jesus, guys. We'll have to go back and check the coverage, but we don't think too many American papers clear the front page every time the presidente of Mexico mentions their state.
And it wasn't just the cheerleaders in the working press. Someone - clearly inspired by the groundbreaking work of Burro Hall - 'shopped this image of BHO in the QRO. It's been shared online 40,000 time as of this writing.
Then, like a game of telephone, the Sacred Quote itself began to morph a bit. In adjacent articles in the ongoing piece of performance art currently d/b/a Plaza de Armas, it started out as "Barack Obama said that he has heard that in Querétaro there exist opportunities for progress and that there was no ned to go to the US in search of them, because in the state there are the conditions necessary to get ahead," and then became, "A friend told me that in Querétaro there's no need to go the the US because there are good opportunities there."
Governor Calzada weighed in, claiming that the passing mention of something a [possibly apocryphal] guy from Querétaro said "has put Querétaro on the world map." "The simple fact that the leader of the most powerful economy in the world mentioned Querétaro is without a doubt an honor," said Mayor Loyola. (Also, have you seen the car that dude drives around in? ) The director of the state legislature, a Panista, went on record saying that the leadership of the state "has no colors" - which we at first took to be some completely bizarre attempt to get down with the black guy, but later realized was a reference to political parties - i.e., "don't give the PRI all the credit for the fact that Obama said 'Querétaro.'" (For his part, Calzada said that getting the state to the level of being mentioned publicly by the president didn't happen over night, but is thanks to "generations" of queretanos, presumably going back to Conín, if not earlier.) We expect Jardín Zenea to be renamed Plaza Obama by the end of the month.
We realize it's churlish to point this out, but at any given time there's an estimated 40,000 queretanos working in the United States, which works out to about 2.1% of the state's population. By way of comparison, this would be the equivalent of 53,000 Brooklynites living in Querétaro. (In fact, we're only aware of ourselves and the nice couple who run Erlum.)
And we almost don't have the heart to point out that the speech was not broadcast in the US, so pretty much the only people who heard The Great Utterance were Mexicans. Sure, the speech was covered in the US, but mostly by crazy people who read every mention of the word "guns" as a dictatorial power grab, and who took great offense at the way he hinted that, as the cartels' main customer, financier and arms supplier, the US might possibly bear some responsibility for the whole "drug war" thingy. No one in the US press mentioned he mentioned Querétaro. Sorry.
Plaza de Armas editor Sergio Venegas managed to come up with the most interesting and most dubious infonugget: The last president of the United States to utter the word "Querétaro" was James K. Polk, on May 30, 1848. On the one hand, we find that impossible to believe, any more than the notion that 165 years could pass without, say, "Massachusetts" passing the lips of any Mexican president. On the other hand, we can't imagine the circumstance in which it would come up. (Whereas four of the last six Mexican presidents actually spent their college years in the Bay State.) Venegas notes that while Obama's mention was positive (more or less; see above), Polk was ratifying the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, negotiated in Querétaro, "in which we lost the totality of the states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas, as well as parts of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma." So there's that. Still, until he produces the quote, we remain skeptical.
We didn't see the speech in real time, but having lived here for three months before we pronounced it correctly, we wondered how the Leader of the Free World pulled off The Most Beautiful Word in the Spanish Language. Zip ahead to 6:53.
Spoken like a United Airlines flight crew.
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Every Sperm Is Sacred, But the Law Turns Out To Be Secular
It's so very rare that we have anything positive to say about the Mexican justice "system," but we're pleased to report that Querétaro's "Every Sperm Is Sacred" law, extending full citizenship, personhood, and the constitutional protections they imply to fertilized eggs, has been struck down the the Mexican Supreme Court on the basis of "you can't just pass whatever laws you want without following the few basic procedures on how laws get passed, you bunch of god-bothering nitwits." (We're paraphrasing.) The idea that rules exist for a reason and cannot be circumvented by elected officials just because they feel like doing so is something of a step forward, regardless of what you think of the Zygote Protection Act of 2009.
This will of course have no effect whatsoever on reproductive rights in the great state of Quéretaro. Abortion is still 100% illegal at the moment, and for the time being the tiny state will continue to lead Mexico in underage, out-of-wedlock births, so Jesus will still be happy! But it's still nice to see the rule of law enforced from time to time.
(Note - The article we linked to above - from some anti-abortion newsletter, which was the only English coverage we could find - end with: "Currently, seventeen of Mexico's 31 states have passed pro-life constitutional amendments in response to the legalization of the killing of the unborn in the nation's Federal District, Mexico City, in 2007. Since that time, over 90,000 unborn children have died at the hands of abortionists in the nation's capital." For sake of comparison, the US number in the same six-year period would be 7.3 million. Mexico is 1/3 the population of the US.)
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| No longer a full citizen of Querétaro... |
This will of course have no effect whatsoever on reproductive rights in the great state of Quéretaro. Abortion is still 100% illegal at the moment, and for the time being the tiny state will continue to lead Mexico in underage, out-of-wedlock births, so Jesus will still be happy! But it's still nice to see the rule of law enforced from time to time.
(Note - The article we linked to above - from some anti-abortion newsletter, which was the only English coverage we could find - end with: "Currently, seventeen of Mexico's 31 states have passed pro-life constitutional amendments in response to the legalization of the killing of the unborn in the nation's Federal District, Mexico City, in 2007. Since that time, over 90,000 unborn children have died at the hands of abortionists in the nation's capital." For sake of comparison, the US number in the same six-year period would be 7.3 million. Mexico is 1/3 the population of the US.)
Friday, April 26, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Overwhelming Force
Yesterday we were out for our evening ritual of dragging the unwilling perro down the street hoping against hope that he might shit somewhere outside the walls of our offices for a change, when we wandered into what passes for a drug cartel crackdown in this town. Specifically, cops were rummaging - in what we are sure was a completely legal, Constitutionally-sanctioned manner - through the pockets of a pair of hapless teenagers, one of whom was [allegedly] carrying enough weed to get a small teenage boy high for several minutes. Because we like a good cop show that doesn't involve ourselves, and because the perro had at that point lain spread-eagle on the sidewalk and refused to move, we hung out and gawked a bit.
Q: How many Querétaro State Police does it take to bust two teens who are not in any way resisting arrest?
A: Eleven! Nine to handle the arrest...
...and two to interrogate the citizen who was recording the arrest on his cellphone. (And who was wearing a pin from the State Legislature on his jacket, for what it's worth.)
We sleep better at night knowing QRO Five-O are on the case! In other law enforcement news, the state attorney general announced that they really have no idea how many prostitutes have been murdered here this year. Because how could you keep track of something as obscure as that??
Upon returning to the office, the perro crapped so forcefully he knocked himself off balance and had to be helped to his feet.
Q: How many Querétaro State Police does it take to bust two teens who are not in any way resisting arrest?
A: Eleven! Nine to handle the arrest...
...and two to interrogate the citizen who was recording the arrest on his cellphone. (And who was wearing a pin from the State Legislature on his jacket, for what it's worth.)
We sleep better at night knowing QRO Five-O are on the case! In other law enforcement news, the state attorney general announced that they really have no idea how many prostitutes have been murdered here this year. Because how could you keep track of something as obscure as that??
Upon returning to the office, the perro crapped so forcefully he knocked himself off balance and had to be helped to his feet.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
This Week at the Querétaro International Center for Photographic Excellence and Men's Hair Salon
However! In what we assume is an unofficial adjunct to the main photo fest, the Most Important Photography Show You'll See All Year is happening in a makeshift gallery in the entrance to Roma's barbershop (Hidalgo 77B, corner of Ezekiel Montes): The Best of Burro Hall Staff Photographer Franci...Oh!fest.
We're not sure how long it's going to be there, so local residents are encouraged to run, not walk. And if you live too far away to see it in person, you should move. If moving's too complicated - underwater mortgage, say, or too many kids in college - the image below embiggens considerably when you click it. You're welcome.
And now you're probably wondering, what could possibly be better than an entire show of Franci...Oh! photography? How about an entire show of Franci...Oh! photography made up of photographs of Franci...Oh! taken by someone other than Franci...Oh!?
Admit it, you're thinking of moving now, aren't you?
Below are some of our favorite shots - excuse the poor quality but (a) we're no Franci...Oh! [or whoever takes pictures of Franci...Oh! and puts his name on them - hey, Damien Hirst does it, and he's an art world superstar], and (b) they're all behind the thick, dirty glass of the barbershop windows, because if the general public were to encounter directly the undiluted man-musk of Franci...Oh! - even in inkjet-printer form - there's no telling what might happen.
Clearly the ladies have met their match. Are there no men who can stand up to him? [Hint: NO!]
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| Homeboy elbows aside the governor of Qro. to photobomb the President of Mexico! |
Stay sexy, my friends.
Getting It Right, By Accident
We love to mock the ongoing piece of performance art currently d/b/a Plaza de Armas, which today carried two articles about the "ongoing" manhunt for marathon bomber #2 under headlines announcing his capture, but we'll give them credit where it's due (even if it's due to the weirdly incorrect grammar inherent in headline-writing), for The Most Perfect Headline of Any Boston Story This Week:
Indeed.
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| BOSTON KILLS TERRORIST |
Indeed.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Querétaro and Boston: Ties that Bind
We here at Burro Hall are veteran marathoners. "Veteran" in the military sense of the word - it's something we did once, briefly, a long time ago, under duress, which we immediately regretted but have nonetheless bragged about for more than two decades. So this morning as we perusing the horrible news from our hometown, and how the world's greatest road race was never going to be the same, we said to ourselves, "Selves... we're gonna run the Boston Marathon next year!" Then we walked to the kitchen for some more coffee, keenly feeling all 206 bones in our bodies, took a deep breath, shuffled back to the sofa, and put that whole crazy idea out of our heads.
"Run the Boston Marathon!" As if.
We alternately refer to New York and Boston as our hometowns here because we lived in both places for decades. But Boston is where we were born - and our parents, and our grandparents, and most of our great-grandparents. We used to go to Boston College every year to watch the marathon. Lots of friends and family were at least occasional participants. Our high school track coach was an important guy with Nike, and he used to draft us all as unpaid labor to work near the finish line. In 1990, just graduated from BC, we even ran the race ourselves - one in a very long line of poorly-thought out decisions in our lives. Just's just say we made it to the end and leave it at that. That year, as had been the case for many years before and all the years since, including yesterday, the finish area was constructed of scaffolding from the company from which our dad is days away from retiring as CEO.
Is it too soon to note how well those four-foot frame-and-brace combinations held up under pressure?
So it was a bit surreal, and extremely personal, to open up the local papers this morning and see the usual panic, heartbreak, and gore that are the stapels of Mexican news, but this time featuring Boston cops, BAA windbreakers, and dad's scaffolding.
Of course, given the international nature of the marathon, the stories eventually get around to focusing on the 231 Mexicans in Boston for the race, all of whom are safe (and one of whom took seventh place in the women's division). And inevitably, there's a queretano in the mix: 44-year-old Alberto Herrera, who the government has announced is fine and is coming home soon. Mexicans do not for some odd reason tend to look at marathoning as a sporting event, so it apparently never occurred to anyone to report how Herrera did in the race. (Our review of the BAA website doesn't show him finishing.)
With all the world tripping over themselves to see who can make the most maudlin show of support (the current leader is the Yankees playing the cloying "Sweet Caroline" at their next game - just fucking shoot us now), it's actually nice to see the local papers putting local news first. But in pursuit of the "Queretanos en Boston" angle, they seem to have missed the "Bostonians en Querétaro" story. For whatever strange quirk of fate, in addition to us, there are our (now former) neighbors Lenny, from the North End, and David, from Concord. (The Marathon is held on Patriot's Day, commemorating the Battle of Lexington and Concord.) They - Bostonians! - wrote a book, published in Spanish, and set partly in Querétaro - but it got no coverage here because they wouldn't pay the local media to write about it.
Ray, who owns the Querétaro Language School, calls Boston one of his many hometowns. His family still lives there, we think, and he and his wife just got back from vacation there. Frequent commenter DonAlberto is a Boston boy. Another local reader, Jeremy, who's married to a mexicana here, is from Framingham. Even Pierre and Sophie, who appear to be French, are long-time residents of the Bay State. This is a substantial colony of Massholes culled from a not-very-large pool of gringos. (Remind us in comments if there's anyone we're forgetting.)
In other words, amigos, if you're looking for QRO-BOS connections, there's a lot more than just Alberto Herrera and Burro Hall. For a while we were running a half-assed campaign to name the two of them Sister Cities. We may have to revive it. The two have a lot in common. Both are where their respective nations' wars for independence kicked off. Both have inferiority-based rivalries with a much larger city a couple hundred miles to the south. Both are destinations for history-oriented high school field trips. Both have crazy drivers, shitty traffic, and an unconstitutionally influential Catholic Church. Querétaro even has a marathon which, like Boston, was swept by lanky East Africans last year.
Y'know, maybe we'll run that one next year.
"Run the Boston Marathon!" As if.
We alternately refer to New York and Boston as our hometowns here because we lived in both places for decades. But Boston is where we were born - and our parents, and our grandparents, and most of our great-grandparents. We used to go to Boston College every year to watch the marathon. Lots of friends and family were at least occasional participants. Our high school track coach was an important guy with Nike, and he used to draft us all as unpaid labor to work near the finish line. In 1990, just graduated from BC, we even ran the race ourselves - one in a very long line of poorly-thought out decisions in our lives. Just's just say we made it to the end and leave it at that. That year, as had been the case for many years before and all the years since, including yesterday, the finish area was constructed of scaffolding from the company from which our dad is days away from retiring as CEO.
 |
| Photo: Boston Globe |
Is it too soon to note how well those four-foot frame-and-brace combinations held up under pressure?
So it was a bit surreal, and extremely personal, to open up the local papers this morning and see the usual panic, heartbreak, and gore that are the stapels of Mexican news, but this time featuring Boston cops, BAA windbreakers, and dad's scaffolding.
Of course, given the international nature of the marathon, the stories eventually get around to focusing on the 231 Mexicans in Boston for the race, all of whom are safe (and one of whom took seventh place in the women's division). And inevitably, there's a queretano in the mix: 44-year-old Alberto Herrera, who the government has announced is fine and is coming home soon. Mexicans do not for some odd reason tend to look at marathoning as a sporting event, so it apparently never occurred to anyone to report how Herrera did in the race. (Our review of the BAA website doesn't show him finishing.)
With all the world tripping over themselves to see who can make the most maudlin show of support (the current leader is the Yankees playing the cloying "Sweet Caroline" at their next game - just fucking shoot us now), it's actually nice to see the local papers putting local news first. But in pursuit of the "Queretanos en Boston" angle, they seem to have missed the "Bostonians en Querétaro" story. For whatever strange quirk of fate, in addition to us, there are our (now former) neighbors Lenny, from the North End, and David, from Concord. (The Marathon is held on Patriot's Day, commemorating the Battle of Lexington and Concord.) They - Bostonians! - wrote a book, published in Spanish, and set partly in Querétaro - but it got no coverage here because they wouldn't pay the local media to write about it.
Ray, who owns the Querétaro Language School, calls Boston one of his many hometowns. His family still lives there, we think, and he and his wife just got back from vacation there. Frequent commenter DonAlberto is a Boston boy. Another local reader, Jeremy, who's married to a mexicana here, is from Framingham. Even Pierre and Sophie, who appear to be French, are long-time residents of the Bay State. This is a substantial colony of Massholes culled from a not-very-large pool of gringos. (Remind us in comments if there's anyone we're forgetting.)
In other words, amigos, if you're looking for QRO-BOS connections, there's a lot more than just Alberto Herrera and Burro Hall. For a while we were running a half-assed campaign to name the two of them Sister Cities. We may have to revive it. The two have a lot in common. Both are where their respective nations' wars for independence kicked off. Both have inferiority-based rivalries with a much larger city a couple hundred miles to the south. Both are destinations for history-oriented high school field trips. Both have crazy drivers, shitty traffic, and an unconstitutionally influential Catholic Church. Querétaro even has a marathon which, like Boston, was swept by lanky East Africans last year.
Y'know, maybe we'll run that one next year.
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