I suppose it’s strange that a thirty-eight year old man and his three year old daughter have the same favorite TV show. But that’s the case in my house. And the TV show is…LazyTown!

Spain’s Playhouse Disney channel started broadcasting LazyTown last year, and Inés and I were immediately hooked.

LazyTown’s central premise is encouraging kids to lead healthy lifestyles—with particular emphasis on exercise, eating fruits and vegetables, tooth brushing (“Twenty times up; twenty times down…”) and getting lots of sleep (“8:08…time for bed”). This may not seem revolutionary on its face, but the first time you watch LazyTown…you’ll immediately notice that it’s no ordinary kiddie show.

No other show looks like LazyTown. It uses a seamless mixture of live actors, puppets and computer generated images (CGI). The set design is funkalicious. None of the props have straight lines or right-angles—so things like buildings, furniture and picture frames look like they’re being slowly sucked into a black hole. The color scheme is big, bold and primary. The show has that distinct Yellow Submarine feel to it. Yellow Submarine, that is, with an extra hit of brown acid.

No other show sounds like LazyTown. Some of the actors have odd accents and, at times, use odd sentence structures. This drove me nuts during the first episode. I just couldn’t place the accent. So I carefully read the closing credits, and got my answer—LazyTown is filmed in…are you ready for this?…Iceland (for God’s sake!)!

LazyTown also has amazing song and dance numbers—full of tight choreography and funky, complex camera angles. And the songs are very, very sticky on the brain. The song “You are a Pirate” has been playing in my head for the past six hours. I’m sure that I’ll be labelled a dork for admitting this, but…I actually have several LazyTown songs downloaded into my iPod. Why do you think I run so much?

I don’t know how much it costs to produce an episode of LazyTown, but it must be a fortune. And since you’ll all be programming TiVo to record all LazyTown episodes from this day forward (screw the The Sopranos!), let me give you a quick rundown on the cast of characters:

Anyway…each episode usually involves Robby Rotten undertaking some crafty plot to make LazyTown lazy again and banish Sportacus forever. His plans are usually incredibly elaborate and involve his wearing disguises. Robby inevitably makes some headway (often by tricking one of the kids into doing something naughty or unhealthy), but then Sportacus saves the day, the kids learn an important lesson, and then everyone sings and dances a number.

I never thought I’d say this, but…I like LazyTown even more than Teletubbies. And I loooove Teletubbies. But that’s a post for another day.

[Note: Prolonging my current streak of abject laziness, here is yet another essay that I’ve recently had published in Expatica Spain.]

The conversation is always the same.

Madrileño: Hi! I’m Juan.
Sal: Hi, Juan. I’m Sal.
Madrileño: Where do you live, Sal?
Sal: Guadalajara.
[Perplexed, indignant silence.]
Madrileño: Why?

I have this conversation with non-Madrileños, too. The only difference is that the “Why?” is replaced with “Where?”

Well…I can no longer tolerate such flippancy toward my adopted province. In this week’s essay, I shall unsheath Excalibur and defend the honor of Guadalajara….or fall asleep trying.

Let’s start with the basics. Where is Guadalajara?

The objective answer is that it’s a province within the Automous Community of Castilla-LaMancha—located approximately fifty kilometers (i.e., thirty miles) east of Madrid. The subjective answer, however, varies widely depending on who you ask.

If you ask a Madrileño—a creature that habitually calculates distances in the same manner that he calculates dog years—he’ll burst into hysterics. Guadalajara is “a far-flung outpost—practically a gulag!—precariously plunked-down in the middle of a frozen, desolate tundra.”

If you ask me, I’ll tell you that Guadalajara is “a suburb of Madrid.”

And I’m right, of course. The trek from Guadaljara to Madrid is less than the daily commute to work for many Chicagoans or New Yorkers. Indeed, we enlightened Guadalajara dwellers have the best of both worlds. On the one hand, we have peace, quiet and plenty of free parking. On the other hand, I can walk out my front door and—thirty to forty minutes later—be sitting in a downtown Madrid curry house stuffing my face full of vindaloo.

Oddly, Guadalajara’s office of tourism has done little to promote the area’s curry-friendly attributes. But I digress.

Whenever I offer this proximity argument to skeptics, their response is predicatable. “If Guadalajara is so close to Madrid,” they sputter, “then why not just live in Madrid?”

The answer is simple. Economics! I could live in a sixty square meter condo in Madrid. Or, for the same price, I could live in a house in Guadalajara province that’s three to four times larger. That’s right…a house! With a basement that can accomodate a beer can collection, and a yard that can accomodate a big ol’ smoky barbecue pit.

Beer cans and barbecues may seem trivial to some, but I can assure you that they are sacred cows to an American.

Yet even when faced with these arguments, some naysayers continue to resist. And they’ll invetiable turn to that most squishy of topics…quality of life. “How,” they bluster, “can you live in a place without museums? Or opera houses? Theaters?”

To which I respond, “When was the last time you went to a museum or an opera house or a theater during the workweek?”

But lest you think I’m skirting the issue, let me be clear. We may not have Frank Gehry buildings or Velasquez collections here in Guadalajara, but we *do* have other cultural gems.

We have, for instance, world-class cuisine! In my earlier essay entitled “The Celebrity Roast, I discussed at length the soul-satisfying pleasures of our wood-fired meats—especially Guadalajara’s famed cabrito asado. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We also have Sopa Castellana—a big, heavy bowl of egg-topped, porky goodness that flaunts the convention that soup is light, healthy fare. We have Pisto Manchego—central Spain’s version of ratatouille. We have Queso Manchego—arguably the most famous of Spain’s cheeses. And for dessert, we have Bizcocho Borracho—a syrup-soaked, belly bomb of a pastry that’s tooth-achingly sweet and as dense as depleted uranium. Well…it is if it’s made correctly.

And we have nature! Enough plains, mountains, rivers, valleys and trails to please the most demanding hiker or Hasher.

And we have architecture! Unique architecture! Constructed not from undulating waves of glistening titanium, but from…chalkboards? That’s right! Guadalajara province is famous for its arquitectura negra (i.e., black architecture). The exterior of homes, churches and municipal buildings in some parts of this area are covered with layer-upon-layer of flat, thin, black sheets of slate.

Slate—for those of you born after 1985—is the material from which chalkboards were made in the good ol’ days before the invention of PowerPoint.

And let’s not forget that this region was the stomping ground of the most famous character in Spanish literature—Don Quixote. That’s Don Quixote *de LaMancha*…get it? Jeez!!! That fact alone makes me wonder why this essay is even necessary. Castilla-LaMancha, including Guadalajara province, ought to be Spain’s most popular region simply by riding on the Don’s coattails.

Unless…that same masterpiece is, in fact, the source of the region’s woes. Could it be that most Spaniards—and Madrileños in particular—poo-poo Guadalajara because they suffer an irrational fear of being attacked by windmills?

[Note: This is an essay that I published in Expatica Spain a few weeks ago.]

My great-grandparents were Italian expats. They moved to the US nearly one hundred years before the Internet.

Expats without Internet! Can you imagine?! I don’t know how the hell they did it.

I, on the other hand, have come to rely on the Internet to solve nearly all of my expat-related woes. And I’m not just talking about e-mail. It goes *way* beyond that. Let me give you a few examples:

If there’s a downside to the Internet, however, it’s that overreliance is likely to retard an expat’s learning and mastery of the local language. I’m a prime example of that.

But each expat must look within his heart and ask himself what’s more important? Knowing the correct use of the Spanish present subjunctive? Or knowing that one cup of warm milk mixed with one tablespoon of lemon juice will result in a passable substitute for buttermilk?

[Note: This is an essay that I published in Expatica Spain a few weeks ago. Hope you like it, Lisa.]

How does one reconcile a candy that he loves with a branding campaign that he shouldn’t? Well…that’s my dilemma with the Spanish candy, Conguitos.

Conguitos are nothing more than chocolate-covered peanuts. That may not seem revolutionary. Chocolate-covered peanuts are, after all, well-represented in the candy universe.

But I find Conguitos to be irresistible! Perhaps it’s because the chocolate isn’t too sweet. Perhaps it’s because the peanuts are remarkably crunchy. Or perhaps it’s because the level of my gluttony is disproportionate to that of my body weight. Whatever the reason, I devour Conguitos with the ferocity of a UIUC fratboy on a microwaved burrito-run.

What? You’re still not sure what Conguitos are? Then let me give you a hint. They are those candies featuring the cartoon of a pudgy, full-lipped Pygmy on the bag.

“Ahhhh!” you shout. “THOSE Conguitos!”

Yes, THOSE Conguitos. Now you understand my dilemma. The candy is brilliant, but the packaging is—shall we say—likely to evoke different responses from different consumers.

Amusing throwback to a simpler, more innocent era? Or blatantly racist? Sorry, but I’m not here to pass judgement. Each person must decide for himself.

I will say, however, that my reaction upon seeing a bag of Conguitos for the first time was one of disbelief. Why? Because if these candies were placed on a store shelf in my home country (the US), a tsunami of angry protestors, opportunistic politicians and salivating Fox News cameramen would engulf that store’s parking lot before the day’s first employee coffee break. But that’s the US. Spain is obviously different, and I was intrigued as to why.

So I went to Conguitos’s corporate website to brush-up on the history of this candy that I love so much. And I learned that Conguitos have been around for more than forty years—as has its featured cartoon character, which the website refers to as “our mascot.” [Yikes! I can feel the US-based readers squirming again.]

The website goes on to mention that, “our mascot has also evolved and slightly changed in order to adapt to the present day.” My God! I wonder what he looked like in the original artist’s rendering?

In 2000, a white-chocolate version of Conguitos was launched. I don’t know if this was done in an effort to appear even-handed or because the market demanded the new flavor. I can tell you, however, that the “mascot” for the white-chocolate version looks, quite disturbingly, like the fruit of a coital relationship between the original Conguitos character and 1970’s rock star Edgar Winter.

With this historical context in hand, I began to formulate a theory as to why the brand has endured. But I needed to support it with a bit of primary research. So I sat down to lunch with a colleague in Madrid. She is a thirty-something Spanish woman—well-travelled, highly-educated, politically-active and unafraid to speak her mind. I asked whether she found the Conguitos cartoon…odd? [Confused silence.] Perhaps even a bit…offensive?

She crinkled her brow and shrugged her shoulders. “Of course not.”

But it was more than a mere, “Of course not.” It was the type of incredulous “Of course not” that I’d expect to receive upon asking if it were, perhaps, OK to attend her grandmother’s funeral while dressed as Wonder Woman.

Then she asked why?

“Well,” I continued, “it seems to me that Spain’s growing wave of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa might find that little guy to be a bit insulting.”

She stared-off into the distance for a moment and then said, “Oh! I never really thought about it. I mean…that Conguitos cartoon has been around since before I was born.”

Which is exactly what I suspected. The Conguitos character is the Iberian equivalent of the Aunt Jemima Waffle lady in the US—an image that might immediately strike an outsider as being provactive, but is so thoroughly engrained in the culture that it’s all-but invisible to the natives.

But as I said earlier, I’m not here to pass judgement. And despite my uneasiness with the branding, I’m certainly not going to stop eating Conguitos. To be honest…I’d eat them even if the product were renamed “Ameriquitos” and featured the caricature of a morbidly-obese, sunburned tourist wearing khaki shorts, boat shoes without socks and a baseball cap turned backwards.

In my candy universe, few things transcend the pleasures of a chocolate-covered peanut.

Before I begin, let me make an important statement. The story that I’m about to tell is true. 100% true.

That said…I spent the weekend in the Mediterranean coastal town of Javea (pictured above); located between the Spanish cities of Valencia and Alicante. I was there because the Madrid Hash House Harriers held an “Away Hash” that was attended by nearly one hundred Hashers; some of whom flew in from Germany, Switzerland and England.

Our Saturday run took place near a large orange grove in the middle of nowhere. Before the run began, we gathered ‘round for a briefing and were informed that we would—at one point—be passing through the scenic grounds of the Fontilles Leper Colony.

“Ha ha,” I thought to myself. “Nice try, but I’m not buying it.”

And so…the run began. Forty-five minutes into it, we passed through an old stone gate and into a large, walled complex of columned buildings, intricate ceramic works and wide lawns. We ran down a tiled walkway and around a corner. And as we rounded the corner, who do you think was there to greet us?

A smiling old man in a wheelchair. Waving to us with his right hand. Which, I should mention, was missing all of its fingers.

a.k.a., “The Fairy Princess with Fangs.”

And, no…I am not responsible for this “ensemble.”

It’s true that I dressed her in the fairy princess outfit. But I turned my back for a moment, and then found her like this.

I’m so proud! I’ve no doubt that she will author a fantastic blog of her own when she grows up.

[Note: This is an essay that I published in Expatica Spain a few weeks ago.]

I travelled to Edinburgh, Scotland a few weeks ago, and experienced the unique pleasures of haggis. And as the black, peppery essence of pureed sheep guts cascaded across my tongue, I had a striking thought—Europeans seem to eat all the stuff that Americans throw away.

It’s true in Scotland, and it’s certainly true in Spain. And to prove it, I’ve compiled a list.

Now…some folk may use this list as a roadmap for identifying foods to avoid. Others may use it as a treasure map for foods to seek. I’m fairly certain, however, that everyone will use it as a checklist for tormenting unsuspecting friends and family visiting from abroad.

Let’s go!

The above examples are just a fraction of the list that I compiled. The word limit set by my editor prevents me from elaborating on such vittles as morcilla (the Spanish haggis), callos (the Spanish menudo), huevas (a compressed block of dry, sandy-tasting salmon eggs), angulas (those exquisite baby eels from the Basque Country) and most famous of all (although I’ve yet to find any bar or restaurant that offers them)…bull’s nuts.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not knocking Spain’s fringe cuisine. I am, in fact, quite fond of many of the foods that I’ve listed above.

Besides, every nation has its own examples of food items that are greeted with horror by non-natives—even my home country, the US. If you don’t believe me, then fly to Chicago and buy yourself a sack of White Castle hamburgers. You might soon find yourself yearning for a plate of brain.

Yesterday afternoon, I went Hashing in the mountains north of Madrid with the Hash House Harriers.

We gathered in a circle before the run began, in order to receive instructions from the Hares (i.e., the two guys who laid-out the running trail earlier that morning).

After receiving the obligatory pre-run instructions about where the trail begins, when to expect the water/beer stop, etc., the Hares hit us with an eyebrow raiser:

“Please stick together and make a lot of noise when you enter the valley during the last five kilometers of the run, because it’s crawling with wild boar hunters…and they’re using high-powered rifles.”

:-O

So…as we descended into “the valley of death” an hour later, the runners all bunched together and—with notably increased frequency and fervor—began yelling the standard Hash House Harrier call.

“On on! On on! On on…!”

At which point, I had a troubling thought: “On on!” sounds uncomfortably similar to “Oink oink!”

[Note: This is an essay that I published in Expatica Spain a few weeks ago.]

Eating in Spain’s central plains region is a vegetarian’s nightmare. If there’s an organization here in Castilla-LaMancha that goes by the acronymn PETA, then it probably stands for “People for the Enjoyment of Tasty Animals.”

Sure, we have wonderful, meatless delicacies like Pisto Manchego, Queso Manchego and Alcárria honey.

But the reason why cookbook author Penelope Casas called central Spain the “Region of the Roasts” is clear. Roasts are the gastonomic celebrities in these here parts. Particularly, the “Three C’s”—cordero (lamb), cochinillo (pig) and cabrito (goat).

Each of these roast dishes have similarities. The animals destined for the dinner table are young—weaned only on mother’s milk and slaughtered at a tender (pun intended) age.

Cooking preparations are likewise similar—not to mention, simple. The animals are rubbed with lard, sprinkled with salt and laid to rest in a shallow, earthenware baking dish. They are then roasted in a wood-burning brick oven until medium-well done. Toward the end of the roasting time, the browned drippings are deglazed with water to make a thin “gravy” and the lot is usually served with roasted, sliced potatoes. There are, of course, variations—with some chefs adding garlic, onions, white wine and other subtle ingredients—but the basic preparation is…well…it’s basic.

Quite often, restaurants require you to order an animal by the quarter (i.e., half of a half of the carcass). This is where the real fun begins, because it’s a crap-shoot as to which part of the animal the waiter will bring to the table. Sometimes a leg. Sometimes the ribs. Sometimes the [gulp!] head. My personal preference is the rear leg, because there’s a lot of good eatin’ there. But then again…it’s always fun to get the head, because it allows you to gross-out the ladies at the table by eating a hunk of brain.

And in anticipation of your question, brain tastes…OK. But its texture is absolutely disgusting.

The specific region in which I live (“la Alcárria,” near Guadalajara) is famous for its cabrito. I always insist that my visitors from abroad try roast cabrito—a request that is, more often than not, met with howls of protest…if not downright disgust. This is understandable. Most non-Spaniards who’ve eaten goat did so in a curry house—and then paid the price the next morning.

But I’ve been pretty successful in convincing my guests to taste LaMancha’s preparation of the animal, and the end-result is usually the same. They love it. How could they not? Cabrito’s flavor is milder than lamb’s, yet more interesting than pork’s.

Yes, Castilla-LaMancha loves its roast animal flesh—and the US-style girth of many of my fellow townfolk will attest to this.

But then again, what did you expect from a region that considers a glass of beer to be a vegetable side-dish.