Wading back into travel writing again. And my recent trip with my daughter–Piper–to Mexico provided a perfect opportunity to address the idea of “split vacations” for the Matador…
I’ve always heard that gypsies were a problem, that they were thieves, but I never worried about it. I figured I’d be able to spot a gypsy and everything, since they’re always traveling in bands with covered wagons and scarves on their heads and everything. Anyway, I was walking down the Piazza Madonna Fortuna with this Irish girl I’d met by a public toilet, and these two little girls come up to me like they’re going to ask me something. They were dark haired little things, with skin that looked like it had been dusted in dirt or soot. But they had the eyes of angels…
The recent revelation that U.S. interrogators in Guantanamo Bay used a horrific video of John Wayne beheading a detainee to shock other prisoners into talking has reignited a long-standing debate over using
clips of dead movie stars for roles they never signed off on while living.
Advances in digital filmmaking in the 1990s led to the use of deceased idols, primarily for advertising. Humphrey Bogart graced Pepsi commercials, Gene Kelly danced with Paula Abdul, Groucho Marx shared a Coca-Cola with Cary Grant, and John Wayne helped sell Coors beer.
The older of the two old men next door dumped a can of beans on the lawn. It was just one of many dishes fed to four or five cats that hung around their house and lounged the day away sunning on their fuchsia wooden porch or yellow stone walkway. The men who lived there were strange. One was in his fifties, the son, the other in his seventies, the father. Both were wid¬owed, both clothed eternally in plain white T-shirts that hugged their …
