Sunday, April 15, 2007

Club Meditations

"Top Ten Things I Learned While On Vacation At Club Med - Cancún Yucatán"

10. White women should never, ever wear their hair in corn rows.

9. Nothing feels better at the end of a hot day than cold, clean sheets.

8. Yoga is best done outside, toward dusk, looking out at the Caribbean, with a cool breeze blowing and a large iguana or two hanging out nearby.



7. Pilates is a very intense workout, and far less fruity than its ridiculous name would suggest.

6. French women have next to no compunction about exposing their breasts to a brutal mid-day sun and their lungs to pack upon pack of cigarettes.

5. My daughter (and this is very recent) enjoys few things as much as sitting by herself absorbed in a book. I find this unbearably adorable. On this trip: Ramona the Pest and Mr. Popper's Penguins.

4. Mexican theme parks will not protect you from your own idiocy. It's up to you not to fall down precipitous stone stairs, tumble into the manatee tank, or curiously cross the small moat to angry spider monkey island. "Guard rails? ... We don't need no stinkin' guard rails!" [P.S. Spider monkeys are my new favorite animal, narrowly edging out the coati and the tapir, which I also got to see up close]

3. After about day five, the Club Med experience begins to lose its capacity to relax, the way that socks, after a while, lose their elasticity and just sort of hang there on your ankles.

2. The Sheltering Sky is a novel best read in an impoverished country while being waited on hand and foot by natives whose language you don't speak.

1. The sight of a ten-foot crocodile gliding slowly in your direction across the surface of a still lagoon at twilight is pretty fucking awesome.

5 comments:

GEO President said...

You missed Hayley get the boot from AI last week. It was awesome. Probably Penis-Head or Faux-Timberlake this week.

sonofdad said...

When I went to Cancun 8-10 years ago, my family went to one of those theme parks. There was an open turtle tank with a sign that read, in large letters, "Please do not touch the turtles." Standing near the tank was a theme park employee beseeching visitors to touch the turtles, assisting people in their turtle-touching. Ah, Mexico.

Linda G said...

Enjoyed reading about your trip and look forward to hearing more. I totally agree with #10--you're not supposed to see scalp. And while I haven't experienced #1, I'm sure your PFA description is PFA--in this case, Pretty Fucking Accurate.

I remember my girls loving the Ramona books. And I remember loving Mr. Popper's Penguins.

Orange said...

My mom's best friend opted for cornrows for a while in the late '70s. I gotta say, it didn't quite work. She appreciated the time she saved on shampooing, though.

I prefer small iguanas. Might be because those are the only ones I've seen in the wild, though.

Have you heard of the Body Worlds museum exhibit? Bodies stripped of their skin (flensed!) and fatty tissue, permeated with plasticine, and molded into position (ski jumper! ballet! yoga! baseball!) before the plasticine firms up. Anyway, the exhibit includes some body parts, too—the tarred smoker's lung was impressive, but the coal miner's lung was even more soot-black. (The male full bodies? Testes dangling from spermatic cords. Gripping!) I can't find a way to end this paragraph with "though."

Ben's not yet gripped by the reading-by-himself bug. Getting closer, though.

I don't like tapirs. Have seen one naked. Too naked.

Rex, why salmongutter?

Rex Parker said...

If you had seen a clothed tapir, that would have been noteworthy.

Reading by oneself at a young age (or anytime in childhood, really) strikes me as far more a girl than a boy thing. I rarely did such a thing, whereas my wife spent most of her childhood that way.

As for "salmon gutter": please listen here as J. Loren Pryor tells the children of Springfield, including Ralph Wiggum, what their scientifically-selected careers will be.

Title of the blog ("Pop Sensation") is also a Ralph quote, from the time he was in a boy band called Party Posse. There's a great great song by The Bloodhound Gang called "Ralph Wiggum," the lyrics of which are made up entirely of Ralph quotes. Lyrics and video here.