Top 25 soccer websites – Telegraph – courtesy of kickette
Yeah, it’s a mouthful. But lest I waste your and my time compiling my own list of soccer related sites, thanks to info from the dolls at kickette.com, the Telegraph has already done it. So go to the listing of the Top 25 football (soccer) websites.
A movie you’ll never see in the States
I had the pleasure of seeing the uninhibited film Mentiras y Gordas (Sex, Party and Lies) in Madrid in the spring. It’s a gorgeous raw little film full of smoking hot young Spaniards f*ing, doing drugs, f*ing some more, and in general doing bad s*. There was also note-worthy drama so you do get pulled into these people’s lives as well. I enjoyed every sweaty minute of it. Unfortunately, you’ll likely not be able to see this in the States as it is not so-called artistic enough for general release. Or, you could say, foreign film aficionados in the States would be too high-brow to be so indulgent.
The brooding hottie at the middle top is Maxi Iglesias, who co-stars in a television series Física o Química.
My friend Javier Albarrán was art director for a Spanish GQ photo shoot that featured the angel-faced, naturally porn-bodied Ana de Armas and six other Spanish starlets. A lovely homage to vintage B films with lovely ladies.
Another film I’ve seen but far less controversial is the Chilean En la Cama (In Bed). There’s enough suspense that it doesn’t warrant a second viewing, as the virginal experience is spoiled, but it’s a simple, concentrated emotional look at a one-night-stand. For me, it was riveting and easy to identify with both characters – the only actors in the entire movie. This one you can get from Netflix.
Update October 30, 2009: I just bought this DVD in Madrid a few weeks ago. What luck! Now I can be the American expert on this oeuvre.
I love hostels!
My first hostel experience at age nineteen was my worst only because my friend and I did not know what to expect. It was not until years later that I rediscovered them through sites such as hostels.com and hostelworld.com and fell in love. I have since stayed at fifteen hostels throughout Europe and the States.
I grew up vacationing in tents and an expandable trailer (I miss it). As an adult, I’ve been fortunate to have enjoyed deluxe accommodations like the Intercontinental, a fabulous five-star hotel in Singapore, New York’s four-star le Parker Meridien, and various gawdy hotels in Las Vegas.
WHAT TO EXPECT
- small quarters
- bunk beds
- sometimes no windows
- people who may not clean up after themselves
- few bathrooms
- varying levels of security
- mostly young people
- sometimes a chronically ill person
- sometimes a creepy f*er
- noise, especially if you’re on a popular street
- planned hostel events like pub crawls or dinners
- usually a great location
- a really cheap price
- paying a bit extra for linens or possibly internet
- sometimes a kitchen and use of the frig
- to book, pay only 10% up front, if you don’t show, you’re charged one night’s stay only
I personally tend not to hang with people at the hostel, just because I prefer to party with the locals and not speak English, the prevalent hostel language.
WHAT DO I LOVE?
The fact that it’s cheap allows me to travel much more often than I would if I always stayed in hotels. There are people to hang out with if you’re bored, and you have a kitchen (sometimes) to store your food. There’s usually free wi-fi or PCs and a metro stop is often nearby.
HOW TO FIND A GREAT HOSTEL
Your primary tool is the rating system. On booking sites, each hostel is rated by its guests. I usually stay at hostels in the 75% to 90% satisfied category. Secondly, you look at the written reviews. Through them, you see what quirks you might not enjoy, like being on a major street, rude staff, or cold showers. If I see any reviews of bedbugs, that puts me on edge. Once in a New York budget hotel, I woke up looking like a leper. No thanks. I’ve never been attacked by bedbugs at a hostel. As for noise? Bring earplugs. I usually come back to the hostel at 4 or 6 a.m. I’d hate to wake you up. One more thing, if you’re getting on in years, hostels are probably not for you. Meaning, if you’re an older person, you may fall into the “creepy f*er” category, and I’d hardly want to encourage you to be my roomy.
If you’re staying for a decent period of time in one city, book several locations, for variety’s sake. You’ll discover more parts of the city, and if you happen to have a roommate that hacks up her guts every night and guilts you into buying her dinner, you can say, “Bye, bitch.”
Finally, at the end of a trip, I like to book a a single room to decompress, shop like mad and not worry about where to put all the new stuff, and just enjoy being by myself. I found a crazily-prized, highly-rated single room in Barcelona for a miniscule 25€ a night, including taxes and booking fees, through barcelona30.com.
I personally have had no issues of theft in a hostel. Usually, people who travel in hostels already have so much shit, the last thing they want is yours. Laptops are very common so unless yours is amazing or light like a netbook, there isn’t much of a draw. Plus, you can just put those things in a locker. Also, don’t bring things that would make you cry if you lost them. That’s just standard travel advice.
Enough about hostels. I’m almost done booking mine for my upcoming trip. One more city to go. Happy hosteling!
Travel Advice
24-Hour Cancellation
Booking directly through a major airline, including American Airlines, Delta, and Continental, allows you 24 hours to either cancel your trip at no charge or hold the reservation. In the case of a hold, American claims they reserve the right to change the fare till the ticket has been purchased, but in my experience, they abide by the fare reserved. Once, I totally did a brain fart and booked a trip when the other person would have already been on a business trip. I noticed two hours before the deadline to change and lucked out.
Earning Frequent Flyer Miles
Earn miles for every flight you take. First see if the airline you’re booking with partners with airlines you already have accounts with. I missed out on 10,000 miles once for not noticing that I could have applied my Alitalia trip’s miles to my Delta account. That’s a whole lot of stupid. Next, if the airline is not, apply for a frequent flyer account and enter it when you check in. It may someday merge with another airline and you’ll have combined redemption power.
By the way, you do not earn miles on trips you take using miles. Wouldn’t that be sweet?
With American, you can hold an itinerary for reward miles for five days which is super convenient. They also just recently added a feature where you can book international travel online and clearly see what days carry what mileage requirements, and which flights within those days are eligible.
Note that there is a maximum % or number of passengers on any particular flight that are traveling using their miles. This is why I ended up buying a ticket for my upcoming trip instead of redeeming my precious miles.
American-edged Germany in memorable film
I finally saw Inglourious Basterds today and I came out deeply satisfied. Lately, I’d been watching a series of war and post-war movies set in Germany or German-occupied countries. All were marvelous, including German films Der Tunnel (The Tunnel) and Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) – originally called Sonata for a Good Man, and the Dutch masterpiece Zwartboek (Black Book).
I was pleased to see some similar faces such as Daniel Brühl and Diane Kruger, both who played similar characters in Joyeux Noël, a fantastic multi-country co-production. And unforgettable was the smoking-hot Til Schweiger, who played basterd Hugo Stiglitz. But mostly, it was the flawless acting which allowed me to be surrounded by the scenes and not be put at arm’s length like many flashy Hollywood films prefer to do.
Kudos to you, Herr Director. If I ever see your towering presence again in Austin, I will salute you. Maybe a Heil Tarantino would be in order.
Other foreign actors I’d love to see more of in American films (and in meatier roles) are:
- Marion Cotillard
- Benno Fürmann
- Guillaume Canet (who is also a promising new director)
- Jason Statham
- Jean Reno
- Carice Van Houten
- Sebastian Koch, and others I’ll mention later.
Anyway, if you haven’t already seen it, do. It’s not a blood-fest. It’s a well-thought-out dramatic piece with plenty of bits of comedy to entertain.
A delight!
Roma, you suck, but you coulda been cool
So I neglected to rant about my April trip to Rome. This is probably because I’d returned to Barcelona and successfully washed Rome off of me in the Catalan city I call “where my heart is.” Pardon the euphemism.
After I arrive in the slut I call Rome, I take a loudly-squeaking, graffiti-covered train – think of an old lady in metal form – and then get ripped off by a seemingly warm-hearted taxi driver. “Oh, your first time in Rome, eh?” – which in Italian means “I am going to rape your wallet, but with a huge smile on my face.” He even asked what I was doing so far on the other side of the city, when in actuality the train station and my hostel were on the same side and it was a mere five-minute drive from the station. The meter he was using was very odd – no decimals – and was completely different from any other meter I saw for the rest of my trip.
I pay the damned 20 euros – though it should have been about 8 – because I just want to get to my hotel, dammit. So, bye, a-hole. Hello, f-ing Rome.
My hotel, Hotel Lodi, is an oasis in the grime-ridden, tourist-ridden, old-crap-ridden, noodle-ridden hole I call Rome. The hosts are friendly, it has a lovely courtyard, one of the staff just out of the blue cooks lunch for a few of us, and it is outside of the touristy areas.
The rest of my Roman experience is pretty much crap. The spirit that I thought was the core of the Italian existence is missing. It is as if the tourists have sucked the life out of the city. The city is in ruins, not just its old buildings. Because my guy in Barcelona requested it, I take various pictures of famous sights, but I am unimpressed. I had gone there to live like a Roman, but Romans are no fun anymore. Clubs are small – bars are more the norm – and other than the weekend and a few random clubs on a Monday – namely, an American-filled, hip-hop meat market – I’d say the nightlife, not so great. Roman guys are weird-looking in general – kind of Neanderthal or nondescript, and there’s very little variety in food. And guess what? Carbonara is not good for you. Oh, how it hurts!
I had only booked 4.5 days there, but 3 is enough. I frantically Skype–> fail – -> internet –> fail –> call, to get my flight changed so that I can get back to my beloved Barcelona 1.5 days earlier. I pay 100 euros for the favor – more than my original ticket – and escape!
Of course, my experience could have been a lot better had I remembered to contact people via couchsurfing.org, before my laptop started spazzing. After the fact, I saw that there were an impressive % of good-looking Roman couchsurfers who could have made the trip bearable.
ACTUAL GOOD THINGS ABOUT ROME:
1) A drink called a Spritz, which is Campari, sparkling white wine and sparkling mineral water and twist of orange. My first I had at the Caffe Ducati, which on a late Saturday night was sadly one-tenth full. But the drink was nice. Note: Campari by itself is disgusting!
2) Shopping - not the best I’ve seen but I bought a unique leather purse for 40 euros and a comfy, pretty tiered top. Rome had a Fornarina and Stuary Weitzman shop, plus a lovely billboard of Marion Cotillard, one of my top three fave actresses in the world. She’s a mix of gutsy and vulnerable.
3) Amazing starving artists - do you see this dude doing a masterpiece in chalk? Crazy, eh? Here’s a link to him and his fellow artists: http://madonnaripugliesi.blogspot.com/
New look, first post
So intead of tweaking my new WordPress digs to look super, I’ve decided to start writing again. Shocking. I realize I’d forgotten to rant about Rome, so I’ll do that in the next post. Now that I have this nice, new, easy-to-use way to add entries, I’ll have no excuse not to share my latest findings with you. I have collected so many site URLs and waited for the right moment to package and post them, but I’ve decided I don’t need to. I can post a single site when I like, then add it to my various directories. No excuses! No procrastinating! I am finally free!
Til Schweiger and I versus monogamy
I came across a short article in Die Presse, a German newspaper. I put it through the Babelfish translator and got the gist of what Til Schweiger, the oh-so-hot actor who plays the German officer who has a penchant for killing his superiors and later helps the Basterds in Inglourious Basterds, believes.
The summary: Monogamy is stupid. Why does man strive for freedom in any other realm besides women?
This doesn’t preclude marriage, as he was married for ten years to a woman with whom he had four children, but it does mean “I’m married” need never be an excuse to turn down a passionate fling or even another relationship, if you’ve got the time. I personally came to the conclusion that monogamy didn’t make sense when I was seventeen and had read Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. A quote stuck in my head ‘which read something like, “It was the great deceit of marriage. Leaving the one you really want to fuck sitting there, and going up with the man you married, pretending he’s the one you really want to fuck.” Something my jazz dance teacher told me also molded my beliefs. “If I could combine my husband and my dance partner into one man, they’d make the perfect husband.” Why should one man contain everything you want in a partner? He doesn’t deserve those unrealistic expectations and neither do you.
Marriage can be a great thing, especially when it’s not so restrictive. I’m not advocating fucking everything in sight, and you can certainly voluntarily be monogamous for years without its being wrong. It’s just that forever tends to breed resentment and lethargy. And there are certain things you never learn about a person, connections that are made, only in the bedroom. And I, for one, am a richer person for it.