90s throwback

When I think of late 90s hip hop and rappers like Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., old school Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, my mind inevitably thinks of the so-called Coast Battles and the violent way in which Tupac and Biggie ultimately died. But seeing big-name rappers get involved with fatal shootings seemed to be a thing of the past in my mind.

Thus my shock upon reading about the death of Dolla, a relatively new rapper who was shot today in Los Angeles. Now, I neither know much about hip hop or Dolla himself, but from what I can gather here, it's obvious that homicide and assassination were in play, and the obvious question that arises (besides who committed this crime) is the motive for the crime.

Without knowing anything about the rapper himself, and trying to make as few judgments and assumptions as possible, I still find it very interesting that in 2009, rappers and homicide can still be linked together. It's situations like these that lead people to make the assumption that violence in music leads to violence in America. Whether its violence in hip hop, punk, heavy metal or even country (for example, The Dixie Chicks song "Earl"), terrible situations like these serve as the evidence for those arguments.

Happy President Obama day

I rushed home from school, trying to catch as much of the inauguration as I could. Of course, my pathetically slow internet made it nearly impossible to catch any of the streaming video from CNN. That, however, led me to this fantastic multimedia presentation on the NY Times website about "Obama's People." There are some really fantastic photographs in that slide show, and it gave me the chance to really see the faces of diversity President Obama is hoping to include in his Cabinet. I ended the day with some good old fashioned American burgers and desert at TGIF's. God bless America, indeed.

Socializing in Madrid

In my ever-growing pool of knowledge and self-awareness, I recognized an interesting phenomenon occurring to me here in Madrid: My friends are everything but Spanish.

Outside of our three original Spanish roommates and the people at school, I haven't really made any Spanish friends. I've befriended people from other random parts of the world (Australia, Germany, Columbia, Venezuela, the UK, even Iceland), but no one from Spain. This concerns me slightly because it makes me feel as though it removes me further from my goal of really getting into the nitty-gritty of the culture. Plus, if all of the people I know aren't from here, how am I supposed to find the cool places to hang out and buy stuff? I've been looking for an arts and crafts store for a while now to no avail. Damn the Spanish and their need to have a different store for everything...

In any case, I spent the weekend meeting loads of new people (mostly non-Spanish). Amy has a French friend whom she met in Argentina who has a sister who took us out to dinner in La Latina on Friday. The three of us were nervous as hell to meet this girl because she's what we call a "real person" -- she has a job, a house, a real life in Madrid. Her piso (Spanish for apartment) probably has a living room, too, unlike ours.

The chick was super-nice and not much older than us, and she brought her Spanish boyfriend along (finally! a Spaniard!). We made the usual awkward conversation, I asked loads of questions that made sense, loads of questions that were completely random (Marcy-style), and some innocent questions that were answered rather awkwardly (for example: I asked, "Where did you two meet?" They glanced at each other, did lots of "umming" amd "emmming" before saying "at the gym...").

For dinner, she suggested we order "huevos estrellados" which I've always thought was just scrambled eggs. Pero no. Here in Spain, huevos estrellados is a typical dish consisting of an egg (sunnyside up) served on top of a plate of fried potato chips (which were not totally crispy) and ham. They would have gone super-well with some salsa Valentina, but the Spanish don't believe in "salsa picante." Grr...

After dinner, nice French girl and her Spanish boyfriend took us for a short joyride through the streets of Madrid. The ride was awesome -- I loved seeing the city streets and buildings all lit up at night. Traveling around loads of roundabouts at fast speeds, with multi-colored lights flashing past the windows was a fantastic feeling I hadn't experienced in a while. Man, I miss cars...

We hung out with the French girl and her Spanish boy for a while before heading over to Meagan's friend's roommate's goodbye party (phwew). The party consisted mainly of a bunch of Americans working as Auxilliares (the same program I'm in) who were chatting it up with a bunch of Germans (friends with the departing roommate). Boy, do I love America, but man I hate Americans. Or at least a good chunk of people from this bunch -- they were the exact picture of the type of Americans that make me cringe on the Metro. They talk too loudly, attract too much attention to themselves, and are just generally obnoxious. If everyone on the train is in their own world, minding their own business and doing their thing, why do you think you can make an ass of yourself and people won't look down on you, annoying Americans? Why can't you take a page from the Spanish books and just chill in the Metro? Additionally, making the assumption that people won't understand you if you speak in English is an asinine thing to do -- just ask the obnoxious American dude riding the Metro who thought we had no clue what he was talking about on Friday night (as he made googly eyes at his sister. Or much-older girlfriend. But I digress...)

In any case, if you are to take anything away from this random rant, please let it be this: I have a new goal of making Spanish friends. When and how this will happen, I do not know yet, but rest assured, it will happen.

And I'll work on making my rants more meaningful, or at least more organized.