Watch out for the dragonflies. You never know, do you?
Coca-Cola was the subject of my first stab at writing when I was a fourth or fifth grader at Brentwood Elementary School in West L.A. I based the story on Jack and the Beanstalk. My main character, a boy like Jack, climbed up the beanstalk and found a giant hoarding a wealth of Coca-Cola. Back in those days, soft drinks were a rarity in my house. Us five kids were allowed only one glass when we were out for a family dinner at Denny’s or Andersen’s Pea Soup on road trips to Big Sur or Sequoia National Park. We nursed them. The hero of my story managed to steal magic beans from the giant and took them home to make his own soft drinks, all for free, all for his own guzzling. Soon he had gallons and gallons of the syrupy cola, so much that he became wealthy on the sales around town of what he couldn’t drink himself. But soon his friends turned against him and he got lonely. So he dumped his wealth and returned to a happier life of nursing a cola on special occasions. [continue reading…]
We once used antennas. We once used fat-screen TVs. Well, we still do.
My wife and I are retro and it’s a pain.
We have a fat-screen TV.
Yes, that’s fat as in pudgy.
We’ve never much cared about its age or size. We bought the set for the 1998 World Cup, and only for that really. We were more interested in going out than watching movies and sitcoms. But we didn’t want to miss the premiere football tournament – and the high probability of an Argentina-England showdown. So we splurged and the fat screen (they were all fat back then) became a fixture in a corner of our 20-square-meter apartment (yes, it was small) near Plaza San Martin in Buenos Aires. We’d moved in only a few months earlier and at first slept on my surfboard cover. We weren’t broke, just hard up. Argentina back then was more expensive than Europe and the U.S., and, hey, it’s that way again. Politicians may say everything’s peachy. They said that in the 1990s. Don’t believe them. It’s getting harder to get by. Believe me.
And believe me that our fat-screen is here to stay.
I think.
There has been a rise in the rumblings from my wife. She’s trying to get the fatty to work right now. [continue reading…]
Eggs anybody? Eggs from the spring chicken?
I’m the youngest of five so naturally I think of myself as, well, the youngster.
I still think so even at the age of 43.
For my work as a journalist, I speak to a lot of people, mostly by phone and less often but still frequently in person at press conferences, interviews, on the street and at events. I have been doing this full time for the past 15 years. I know a lot of people. We say hello to each other and swap stories. Sometimes I run into people from years ago. I did the other day at an event for investors in downtown Buenos Aires.
“Whoa,” the said to me, “I haven’t seen you in ages, what it must be 10 years at least.”
The guy introduced me to one of his coworkers, telling him about my visits to his office in the Economy Ministry back in the 1990s and concluding his presentation with the kicker: “He was just a kid back then.”
Wait a second, I wanted to say. I’m still a kid; I’m younger than all of you. I am the youngster. I am the kid. I am, I am, I am. [continue reading…]
