tuesday... what are they again?

i have, along with the coterie (d, h, i & n) just got back from the caledonian hinterland. it was a reminder of many things about scotland. firstly, it's titting cold. secondly, i love it. thirdly, glasgow is the best gig you can ever do. seriously, well done glasgow. it's our fifth year at your lovely comedy festival and we'll be back.
the title of this post refers to the fact i have failed to update this blog six times a week (!) as i thought i would do. and consequently, i have forgotten what tuesdays are supposed to be.

*quickly checks

ah, yes. language. further to the last post, i thought i'd share a love of mine. many of the people who know me will have been subjected, at some point or another, to some caterwauling in spanish. i have, for some time, been mildly obsessed with ricky martin. now, i've only got three ricky albums (that's a small number isn't it? a small number). my favourite things on these miesterworks are the spanish language versions of songs that were hits in english.

y en un rincón, caímos juntos
en un rito de pasión
y al tocar su pielsenti el calor
yo puse el deseo, ella puso el control,
she bangs, she bangs

she does, it would appear, bang. there's no real accounting for the fact i like this. the rest of my record collection is primarily white guys with white guitars. not that i'm proud of that, but it's true. if they've never done a dylan cover, then they probably don't figure highly in my most played artists...

i have sung these songs in spanish at karaoke, at karaoke circus and on my own while walking down hackney streets at night. they're proper good. but at least half of their appeal for me is the spanish language. they remind me that i have the ability to understand what someone speaking FOREIGN is saying. nuts. plus, the lyrics are often beyond stupid.


a case in point is the spanish version of livin' la vida loca (on other counts an exceptionally good song) where credulity stretches to breaking point.

la reina de la noche
la diosa del vudú
yo no podré salvarme
¿podrás salvarte tú?
la tela de la araña,
la uña del dragón
te lleva a los infiernos
ella es tu adicción...
te besa y te desnudo
con tu baile demencial...

it starts soberly enough with reference to the "queen of the night" (prescient, much?) and a "goddess of voodoo". so far, so silly. "i can't save myself" opines our ricky but wonders whether you could save yourself. then it really gets going... "the web of the spider, the nail of the dragon". we presume this is some sort of voodoo recipe, but it's never really explained. skip a bit about hell and we get to "te besa y te desnudo"... she kisses you and strips you. does she? ok. i don't remember that in the english. and then you're doing a "baile demencial" (an insane dance). just brilliant.

in all seriousness, though, good on him for coming out. it's been an open secret for years. i know a fella who overhead ricky martin bitching that george michael had stolen his boyfriend (this was back in 2001) so i've known since then. but i think we all knew.

but now you know that i love ricky martin.

language ii (and apology)

sorry. that's the apology bit done.

i speak, as the more e-agle eyed amongst you will have noticed, basic english. it is not even that much of an effort for me. it just sort of slips out. i have a thought and in no time at all it is sliding through my brain flume into the world on an english language lilo.

sorry. that's a new apology for the dreadful extended metaphor above.

in addition to this i can speak spanish. i learnt it, as one does, at an american school in bangladesh. my teachers were all native speakers: colombian, peruvian, mexican. and i got quite good - i was technically two years ahead of syllabus. but i was nowhere near being the best in the class. that particular honour went to the spectacularly bemonikered maurice ogaick, canadian, best swimmer in the team and all round good egg. he had initially learnt his español in argentina and we all sought to copy him as much as possible. well. i did.

so much so that when i returned to yorkshire for year eleven (tenth grade US readers (upper fifth posh readers (fourth year scottish readers))) and GCSE spanish, i was told that i had a distinct argentinian accent by the teaching assistant from sevilla. thanks, mo. as a sort of side note, i've always been pretty good at accents, both in a comedic sense and otherwise. to be taken seriously with a silly accent, here's a tip: rip the piss with a serious face. it worked when i was learning japanese.

my point is, i think, that the level of language teaching in this country is devastatingly poor. when i arrived back from teh abroadz, i sat at the back of top set spanish. when i was asked a question in spanish, i replied... in spanish. the entire class turned around to look at me with a mixture of amazement and disgust. i shut up pretty quick, sat at the back for a year getting worse at spanish and ended up with an A*. tut.

when i did a-level, i was so out of practice and my teacher so spectacularly rubbish i sort of lost interest until i got a job on the basis that i could speak spanish. it turned out i still could. no thanks to anyone in this country.

last thing... i've always thought that i'd love to have bilingual kids. but, chuck doesn't speak another language so it'd have to be me barking at the little one in pidgin spanish. not an edifying thought. hey, at least he'd have an argentinian accent.