Estrella Morente sings for her father at his wake, Granada, Spain

Estrella Morente is my favorite singer and I have seen her in concert twice. Here she is today singing to her father who died this week. Incredibly tragic but also extraordinarily beautiful.

Caganers

I am not a huge fan of the holidays. Particularly Catholic ones. In fact, due to my upbringing, the latter bring up a mild version of PTSD. Particularly, as I mentioned here before, those in Florida where you run into elderly but aggressively "friendly" Tea Party zealots who greet you at Target or Wal-Mart with a barrage of "MERRY CHRISTMAS" in response to the liberal ecumenical neutral milquetoast p.c. "happy holidays." (which however, may be of offense to atheists or agnostics such as myself)

My earlier post on Christmas in the Bible Belt here:
http://petitemaoiste.blogspot.com/2008/12/merry-christmas.html

There is one holiday custom that is making me reconsider going back to observing the tradition of displaying figurines depicting the scene at the manger with the Holy Family, Three Kings, animals etc. One of my grandfather's sisters (borderline Opus Dei but that is neither here nor there) is very artistic and used to organize a massive creche in her garage in Florida, with the mountainous Holy Land setting made of some kind of cardboard, spray paint, glitter etc. lights, and ceramic figures made by her. The gringos driving past would stop in astonishment (well except for the Italians I guess). In Catalonia, they populate the traditional scene of Christ after his birth with little figures called caganers or shitters to use the vernacular. The best part is that these crappers are usually just local peasants or whatever but at some point they began to make them in the guise of the rich and famous in a typically Spanish irreverent/politically incorrect/subversive/blasphemous manner. Love!

See a little summary in English here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/8142970/Caganers-figurines-of-defecating-world-leaders-in-Catalan-nativity-scenes.html

Enrique Morente

Here is his last performance, in honor of Picasso (video EL PAIS):

Art, Censorship, and the Market

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Steve Martin Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog March to Keep Fear Alive

Temporary Interruption

I have been distracted by a severe case of #academentia lately. This doesn't mean that I haven't forgotten my 6 readers, it just means that my inability to drag myself away from my "serious" (ie. money-making) writing has prevented me from having fun chatting here. I have however been collecting my usual bizarre selection of pop cultural artifacts to deconstruct here, so I hope you will be patient and I will be back soon. In the meantime, the 140-character Twitter format is about all I can manage. [twitter feed for @petitemaoiste is on the left of the blog page]