BRANDON'S TOWN

This is a city of 20 million very small people.

I am really looking forward to the next time a mega-band tours here and I'll finally know what it's like to be the tall bastard who's got a perfect view of everything.

So, on this basis alone you can imagine my ecstasy on discovering The Killers are touring HERE. Add to that, they're my favourite band and it's almost enough to make up for missing U2
(now known as U-2-faced-arseholes-who-postponed-your-concert-to-a-date-that-I-
wouldn't-be-in-the-country)
Jumped straight on the internet to get a ticket, and what do you know - they'd sold out yesterday. I mean, I know they shot a video clip here.. but Mexico is KEEN.

Since then, I've been doing everything in my power to get an interview with Brandon Flowers.. .(and thus a ticket) hindered only slightly by the fact that he appears to only do interviews with The Guardian, The Times and ... well, that's about it.

In an effort to maintain morale, my 'background research' (for the interview) has turned up the following facts:

- he's not gay

- he's married

- his bride's maiden name was 'Munblowsky'.. (hence the rush to get hitched?)

- he's a Mormon (hence the rush to get hitched?)

- interviewers don't seem to like him (maybe it's not sooo bad to miss out on an interview...?)

- he thinks he can tell 'good girls' from 'bad girls' on sight, thanks to his hoards of older sisters and the fact he's lived in Vegas for years... and upbringing.

Sorry Brandon, trying to put girls in 'good' and 'bad' is like trying to put paint colours in black and white.

A man who doesn't realise that bad girls are just good girls wounded is a clueless man indeed. No wonder he married his highschool sweetheart, a retail manager who's studying to be a primary school teacher. If anything screams cliched 'good', it's that. Despite her maiden name.

Miss Munblowsky becomes Mrs Brightside.

And speaking of which, a man who still ascribes to a faith that disowns him for the odd cigarette and beer is a self-tortured man indeed.

Is Mr Brightside actually Mr Darkside?

MACHO MEETS MAN-LOVE

Today, Mexico legalised gay unions.

Interestingly, the Spanish word for law is pronounced 'lay'... so everyone's going around talking about the 'gay lay'.

I hightailed it down to the Legislative Assembly for a little journalistic action, and found lots of people wearing all white (the ones who think that have a patent on purity..)

Interestingly one of them was a 65 year old man who 'helped' me with interview talent by continually grabbing my arm and pulling me in so that my body was touching his. Really, I felt like telling him to take his white shirt, pants and shoes... and bugger off. A bit of consensual man-on-man's not ok, but molesting someone young enough to be your daughter is??

In the gay camp there were lots of people wearing all the colours of the rainbow.
To add a latino festive touch, they had a Latin rock band and everyone was dancing.

All the anti-gay 'no we're not against them having rights, we just don't want them to have... rights' people had placards, and their feet firmly on the ground.

This guy was my favourite. I interviewed him for the gay side (before he put the outfit on), and he said 'I look at some of the people protesting against us and I think, 'You look more gay than me.'

Hmmmm.

DAY OF THE DEAD

Quite fitting really, as I felt like one of them for much of it. I tried all the food at the street stalls and I think it was the deep fried chorizo bread with lettuce and cheese that got me.

Ara and Yvonne kept saying 'mmmm rico'... but I couldn't get past the fact that I was eating a bread roll of solid oil.

The Day of the Dead is amazing. It's like the most enormous carnival you can imagine. Mexicans believe that this is the day that their dead relatives are given permission to come and be with them. They put out offerings for them: their favourite food, drinks (there was a lot of tequila), cigarettes... everything that the spirit's senses couldn't normally appreciate. Music, incense... and tastes.

The cemeteries are a spectacle. Every grave is completely covered in the most equisite flowers and the family just sits there all day communing with the dead person.

Although, I have to say, they got a bit overboard with the incense. It's not sticks, it's big blocks of the stuff and when I say it's like being in the middle of a very aromatic bushfire, I mean it. I am really surprised some people aren't hospitalised with smoke inhalation.

Anyway, by the end of it I had a raging headache what with getting to bed at 6am the night before, eating the dodgy chorizo bread and inhaling all that smoke.

It was a fairly charming gridlock on the way out ... driving past cars full of people wearing full halloween costumes. I'm talking wolf heads and skeletons, entire face masks.

The kids in one town added a whole new meaning to trick or treat when they put a piece of string across a two-lane carriageway and trotted up to all the cars asking for lollies.

My most enduring memory, though, is an old woman sitting in candlelight beside a grave, alone. I guess it was her husband's. I started to wonder what she thinks about all day, does she reminisce about their years, does she talk to him in her head?

It's not a sad time. This is festive, there are people dancing.. eating together, bands playing. Men having competitions of who can electric shock themselves with the highest voltage.. that sort of thing.

That's what sets Mexico apart from us on death. We don't think about death, when people die, most of us don't talk to them, or share food with them. But here, it's like the line between before and after is not nearly so hard.. or so hard to cross. Call is superstition, or call it peace... whatever it is, it's a sight to behold.

HALLO-WEEN

...was fun.

One thing I don't understand is the police here. We must have passed about 40 cars on the way and they have always got their lights on, without actually doing anything. In Australia police put their lights on to pull people over for such offences as talking on the phone, not having current registration stickers, driving too slowly, driving too quickly, and sometimes just for driving.

Here, I have seen police put their lights on to stop for chats, stop for Macdonalds... and simply to cruise the streets.

On the way though, we did drive past about 50 police officers doing a raid on a very large truck. They all had their lights on too.

We ended up at a bar somewhere in this huge city, which was a hole in the corrugated iron wall... that you (I) had to stoop to walk though. It was full of young, hip things and smoke. In fact, someone let off some contraption containing a foul-smelling choking agent which, from what I can gather, was supposed to be a joke. That was when I realised we were in a fire trap... imagine trying to get out when someone's costume caught on fire.

The greatest thing about this bar:

- you could bring your own (dirt cheap) alcohol in

- you could take your shoes off

- none of the men had a problem with dressing up or dancing

- everyone sang along (heartily) to the music

The strangest sight was this caveman in the full-getup - long wig, longer beard, animal skin, animal skin shoes, lance.. .and a paper-machete animal with its head cut off - standing with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, looking at his watch.

So at the end of the night, everyone piles out of the bar rolling drunk and jumps behind the wheel. The poor little fellow in the afro and aviators (not sure what he was dressed as) could hardly keep his head up.

I was getting a lift with Rambo (who I had actually greeted with, 'Oh, what made you want to come as Che Guevara?' woops.. ) who was cruising past police cars with Michael Jackson - Thriller and Billy Jean - at full blast, pointing out all the other drunk drivers. It was magic.

Off in the distance we could see the little afro fellow in his bright yellow VB beatle, running red lights and swerving around.

Still, made it home ok and woke up with the dirtiest feet. Going to Mixque for Day of the Dead celebrations tonight.

DISCO DIVA, CAVEMAN .. AND RAMBO

... see what I mean about 'Che?...

A TRIP TO THE PAPELERIA

Halloween tonight.

I went to go and buy crepe paper for Ara. She's going as an angel, but I suspect that she's going to look more like a meringue with wings, given that she's wrapping her eight months of pregnancy in crepe paper.

They still have proper shops here, not chains. Separate shops for paper, bread, electrical items, meat, fruit.

After buying three rolls from 'Claudia' at the papeleria we got talking and she took me to her brother's garage to show me their Day of the Dead shrine. Probleme is she left me out the front so she could run back to the shop, which she had left unattended. I stumbled in to the office and explained to three stunned men that I was there to see their offerings. They had no problem with that.

There's fruit in baskets and little sugar skulls and the whole wall is covered in pictures of smiling skeletons and Jesus on the Cross with another man photoshopped in beside him, and angels.

I found it kind of comical until I went back to chat to her about it.

The shrine is to their other brother. Three years ago, at 9.30am he was taking cash from the business across the road to buy something, and someone shot him in the chest for it.

They all dream about him on the Day of the Dead.

The thing I like about Mexicans is that they know how to tell their stories, and cry ... and feel. Australians never tell visitors to their shop how their brother died in the street one day.

Then I came home and the neighbours fixed my fuse box, which blew this morning. Looked kind of harrowing to me, none of the cut and dried flicking of switches. There were battery-type things and wires and levers and little things that spin around.

Anyway, I'm going to the fiesta as the witch in Snow White.. whoever the hell she was.

WHEN TIME MARCHES FASTER

Last time I saw Fidel Castro was a couple of years ago in an Oliver Stone documentary. He was marching around his office to show us how fit and virile he kept himself. He did about a hundred laps a day and I couldn't help but notice he was wearing Nikes, the pinup brand for capitalism via exploitation of the weak. Very strange, considering what he stands for (but not, as the case may be, in)

Well, no matter how good the office-marching regime was, time got Fidel. After being sidelined for months with major health problems, he's released pictures to the world to reassure us all that he's just fine thankyou very much.

Why didn't someone tell Fidel that the film of him walking and talking looks more like Weekend At Bernie's III. Right down to his outfit and movements.

The pictures made me sad. They made me wonder what makes someone so desperate to hold onto his job, his place in the world, his life, that he is in complete denial of the fact that he is not okay.

That's the thing about Cuba: time. You can walk down streets frozen in time, the cars, the buildings, the music. The people move through their life cycles on those streets, between those walls, and the scene stays the same.

But no matter how long Fidel Castro has managed to stop the clock in Cuba, it's a battle that not even he can win. Time will always be the victor.

The cars have stopped starting, the buildings have long since started crumbling.

And Fidel is dying.

WOOPS

Day 2, The Dip.

Had a bit of a breakdown cooking dinner last night... when I realised this WAS my new home and that my phone wasn´t going to ring and i needed a beer but didn´t have a car to jump into to go and get it and i didn´t know where anything was anyway .. i know one person within thousands of kilometres and that all the knives were blunt and hang on a second, what was wrong with my old life... and now I can´t just walk back into it cause i tied it up in a neat little bow and chucked it out.

then i started crying. messy. plus, the pasta went soft.. what with leaving it on the stove for half an hour.

think i was just exhausted because everything seems fine today after a 12 hour sleep... just realised I need to learn to spend 2 days alone without tiring of my own company.

1ST IMPRESSIONS MEAN... DIFFERING AMOUNTS

10.30am
I wake after another 12 hours' sleep to the cheesy sounds of Latin pop filtering up from an unidentified location.

The vista from my second~floor window is one of rooftops, not uniform sort you imagine, stretched out as far as the eye can see. It's like a field of metal stakes growing towards the heavens. I've always meant to find out why so many countries are characterised by the metal~sticking~out~of~roof phenomenon. Someone once told me that you don't have to pay the house tax on an unfinished building, but I find it hard to believe that tax law is uniform across Latin America, the Middle East and India.

Having heard MC is the pollution capital of the world, I'd expected dirty air that gives you a choking feeling when you breathe. You know, like in Mumbai where it's packed with moisture and fumes and smells of shit and food and incense... and every breath is like your lungs are eating a meal.

This air is light, bright.. and bears only a faint smell of I'm not sure what.

TOUCHDOWN

I'M IN MEXICO!!!!

Yes, it's a miracle, as I left the small detail of packing and downloading all my music and photos onto laptop until 10 hours before my 7am departure from home. Hence, no sleep. I've left the place looking like a department store where someone had an epileptic fit.

Having not slept in the 3 days preceding departure, then sleeping for the entire 30 hour journey exluding layovers and meals, I feel a little as though I've been hit by a train... or a bus.. even a taxi. Any vehicle bigger than me really.

I stink. That's a long time without brushing teeth or washing body. Grab my bags and load myself up.. large backpack on back, medium backpack on front, shoulder bag over top, camera bag perched on wheeled suitcase with no centre of gravity, and duty free carry bag in other hand.

Somehow I squeeze all of us into the bathroom to clean my teeth.

I clear customs |again| and burst through the gates as quickly as anyone carring 6 bags can burst, eyes tuned for Ara... eyes gradually becoming accustomed to hundreds of unfamiliar faces none of which belong to her.

Hmmm. I have her phone number. I go to the cash machine, build a pyramid of my various bags, take money out, dismantle pyramid, load myself back up again. Refuse offer from kind man to use his mobile phone, go to convenience store for phonecard, put down bags, take out wallet, pick up bags, go to phone etc etc.

Thing is, the card doesn't work. I seek verification from various innocent bystanders and they all agree.

I accept another man's kind offer to use his phone. Still no action.

Go and buy an iced mocha and end up with a cupful of chilled cream. Go back to phone. Spill chilled cream all over bags in attempt to dial number.

Get someone else to dial for me.

She answers. Turns out I'd forgotten to send her the flight number and she was waiting at the other gate.

We exchange rapidfire conversation all the way to the apartment, and finally I'm 'home'.