Clubhouse Cocoa 2013

celebración nocturna

How can I forget that time, during an interview in TVE, the writers José Saramago and Eduardo Mendoza were born to an ocean view, because they were from Lisboa and Barcelona respectively. I, in the other hand, was born in Lima, which means four or five thousand meters over the sea level and therefore the ocean… Anyway, is very well known that I hate to bother or to interrupt and that, besides, we Peruvians usually choose the eclectic ways. Which means that I had no other alternative than to depict to the reporter, more or less, the next: since my earliest childhood my parents took me daily, every summer, to very diverse beaches of the city of Lima, although, of course, not without going through snowed crests, mountains and gorges, abysms, ravines, defiles of fog and precipices from the devil, in a crazy attempt to teach me how to swim, while far off, distinguished gentlemen from Lima were sailing away towards Europe in the remarkably elegant Reina del Pacífico, something like a Titanic without tragedy that died of old age. People from Lima, from yesterday, from today and in the future, have endured and will endure, urbi et orbi, summer temperatures that make us die of chill in Seville in August for example. And this owing to the fact that Lima is the capital city of Peru, and this country was the nerve center of the Incan empire, or of the empire of the Sun, ergo we people from Lima are, eclectively speaking, of course and not to bother, the greatest bearers of asphyxia temperatures of this universally world. And so, the Elle magazine, a few years ago, in a beautiful photographic reportage about the Andean Peru (the only country that has an ocean view or not according to what reporter are you using) placed the huanaco, an almost unknown animal, in the surroundings of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, although, they referred to them, needless to say, as “fine cities”… What can we do if Latin-America introduced itself in the universal history of the Europeans (which means, in the same history that have read and studied the Latin-Americans too) in the chapter Renaissance, and among other discoveries or inventions such as the magnifying glass? Be sure, cherished reader, that I will do no eulogies regarding the special goodness of the reporters of my country. There are some as loathsome as possible, as the one who assaulted me in Lima’s airport when I had just disembarked from Spain with the perfect question for a compromised writer: “what do you think about the new measures that the minister of Economy is going to implement”. Neither he nor I would know what those measures were, of course, and in the best of cases not even the sir minister of Economy would know about this still, but I was very much invited to throw my candidature as major of the city or ready to do something equally absurd.
Adapted from a text by Alfredo Bryce

my drawing / mi dibujo

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bocadillos y cocteles

Uno vive estresado en Lima, y la carga negativa se va acumulando a lo largo del año y por eso, creo yo, en verano es obligatorio abandonar nuestra querida y caótica ciudad. Cien kilómetros en dirección al sur puede no parecer mucho pero es, a veces, distancia suficiente para poner las cosas en perspectiva. A mí, al menos, me ayuda muchísimo para relajarme. Me encanta estar con el celular apagado y desconectado de internet aunque sea por un par de días. 

Por supuesto, no hay nada más divertido que pasar el fin de semana con los amigos de toda la vida (somos el mismo grupo, nos conocemos desde los 5 años y ya todos tenemos 28, así que son más de 20 años de amistad). Y regreso a Lima revitalizado.

En esta ocasión, sin embargo, también hubo un evento especial: la tan anunciada inauguración del clubhouse. Además de una amplia variedad de bocaditos gourmet y de las mesas de Otto Kunz con quesitos, jamoncitos y panes de todo tipo, también hubo un sinfín de tragos. Empecé con un clásico pisco sour, luego un camu camu sour, un chilcano, un mojito de menta, un Bloody Mary, un Apple Martini y terminé con un whisky Johnnie Walker Black Label. Siempre es refrescante contar con tantas opciones al mismo tiempo, y aunque seguramente me faltó probar algunas copas, las que tomé estaban deliciosas. Realmente, este ha sido un fin de semana para el recuerdo. Espectacular de verdad. 

Cata de vinos argentinos - Las Palmas, Asia

The Purple Rose of Cairo

I think everyone is familiar with idealization. Idealization is, after all, what we always do. It is how we deal with the real, we adapt it in a way that can provides us with reassurance, with a certain logic. Philosophers like Zizek would affirm that, in fact, fantasy can be stronger than reality. Because, in the end, what is reality but an amount of statements and common sense that we all agree upon?

Las Palmas, Asia

Cecilia, a waitress trying to survive in the middle of the greatest financial depression in America, lives a common life. She barely makes enough money to get by, she’s married to an abusive, alcoholic and jobless man. And she has no real future ahead of her, rather than spend her youth, her whole life washing dishes in the local diner.

Her only cheerful moments take place in the cinema. She goes every day and watches the same movie. For a couple of hours she feels transported into a world of glamour, of beautiful men and women, a world in which everything makes sense, a world where happy endings are possible. In an era of poverty, movies are the ideal escapism. Movies are a window that allows the impoverished people to see life not as it is but as it could or should be.

Woody Allen is not only a great director but also a true connoisseur of cinema. Hollywood’s films in the 20s relied deeply on spectacular images just as they do now, but what today is CGI (and explosions or big action sequences), decades ago was grand sets, hundreds of extras, complex choreographies, exotic scenarios and so on. That’s the kind of films that Cecilia has access to. And as enamored as she is with this world of richness and splendor, she must come to reality and accept the hardships of life.

That is of course, until Tom Baxter, the adventurer, the handsome hero from the film, starts talking to her through the screen. He knows she loves the movie, she’s been there every day. And he knows he loves her. And just like that, Tom Baxter is no longer a black and white, two dimensional character, he is now a person walking out of the screen and reaching out to her.

It happens in the movies, but it can also happen in real life: love at first sight. Cecilia and Tom are in love, but she doesn’t know how to deal with this strange situation. He is a fictional character, he has never been in the real world, and he carries a certain naiveté but also a certain magic, a sense of wonder that reminds her that being alive, and making choices, is all that matters.

my sketch / mi boceto

With a very ironic venue, Woody Allen reminds us that Hollywood is a cruel machinery in which profits and lawyers are more important than directors or actors. And once that these businessmen realize that the impossible has happened in New Jersey, they decide to fix the situation. Giles Shepherd, the actor that plays Tom Baxter, is worried about having a duplicate of him running amok in the streets. He has a career to protect, a reputation to uphold. When he discovers that Cecilia knows where to find Tom Baxter he tries to convince his creation to return to the screen, where he belongs, but to no avail.

Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used to say that desire towards our ‘object a’ depends on the phantasm; which in a way means that the object of our desire is never ours, our thirst is never quenched and we are doomed to unsatisfactory pursuits, always. This happens because the object of desire comes to us mediated through a veil that conceals the real, and thus strengthens what in this case is only an idealized image, a reflection of something that doesn’t necessarily has to be there although that is all our eyes can see. Tom Baxter is the mirrored ideal that originates from Giles Shepherd, but at the same time, both are the ideal partners for Cecilia. One of them is fictitious and because of that he is also perfect; the other one is human, flawed, but authentic.

As the days go by, Cecilia falls in love with Giles, and dreams of leaving behind an awful reality, a mediocre existence. At the same time, she has some of the most amazing experiences of her life with Tom Baxter, as he takes her into the screen and into the very world she has always fantasized about. He takes her to the exclusive clubs and the mansions she had only seen in screen. He makes her know a new world, visually stunning; a black and white universe where things have a way of always working out in the end.

And then comes a moment, a moment in which she has to make a decision. Will she stay with Tom Baxter or Giles Shepherd? The character or the actor? The fiction or the reality? The ideal or the real? Making decisions is what makes us humans, but then again, pain, hunger, poverty and decay inevitably come with humanity. I won’t spoil the ending, but suffice to say that I have never seen a greater, sadder and more significant sacrifice than the one seen here. The Purple Rose of Cairo is truly one of the most magnificent classics ever.  
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Durante el año asisto a eventos de todo tipo, pero hay muy pocos que me entusiasman tanto como la cata de vinos argentinos en el club Las Palmas de Asia. Siempre me he considerado algo así como un enólogo neófito, aunque debo admitir que gracias a algunas charlas con Cristina Vallarino mi aproximación empírica a la vid y a sus frutos ha podido apoyarse en fundamentos teóricos un poco más firmes.

Cata de vinos 2012

El tema del vino es fascinante, y no hace falta invertir demasiado tiempo o dinero para tener un conocimiento mínimo sobre el delicado balance de los taninos o las distintas variedades de uvas. Para los que hayan mirado las fotos de mis almuerzos, habrán podido comprobar que jamás falta una botella de buen vino.

Hace tres semanas, junto con la revista Asia Sur y todas las otras que aterrizan en las casas de Asia los fines de semana, llegó la invitación para la séptima cata de vinos. Así es que durante estas tres semanas estuve esperando con impaciencia a que llegara el sábado 28.

Este fin de semana extrañé a mi gran amiga Pamela Campos, a quien inmortalicé en las páginas de este cómic (lamentablemente tuvo que permanecer en Lima). Además, en la noche, Rodrigo decidió quedarse (y si estás leyendo esto que conste que hice lo posible para convencerte), pero por suerte pude acompañar a Richard Quantrill y a Ximena Castro de Quantrill (a quien pueden escuchar todos los sábados de 8 a 9am en Radio San Borja).

Pasamos una noche divertidísima, y probamos vinos que jamás se ofrecen en eventos como la Expovino de Wong. Y es que la diferencia entre la cata de vinos de Asia y la Expovino de Wong es abismal: En la Expovino participan un gran número de bodegas de diversos países, pero todas ofrecen sus líneas más básicas, vamos, lo más barato que tienen. Las líneas reserva o premium están sólo de ‘exhibición’. En la cata de vinos de Asia, por el contrario, no tienen ningún problema en ofrecerte vinos de 180 soles o más, y además de los mozos que van y te lavan las copas (algo que no sucede en la Expovino de Wong), tienes la mesa de quesos y embutidos de Don Mamino, y la infaltable parrilla argentina (aquí participan diversas marcas de carne y restaurantes de parrilla todos argentinos).

parrilla argentina + vino

Entre los vinos que probé me gustaron el malbec reserva de Rutini, el merlot de la bodega Azul (no la conocía y fue una grata sorpresa), el shiraz de Cicchitti, el pinot noir de Fabre Montmayou, por supuesto el cabernet sauvignon gran reserva de Navarro Correas, también probé un agradable sauvignon blanc de bodegas Alta Vista y el chardonnay de bodegas Escorihuela. Además, como quien hace un buen maridaje, disfruté de un magnífico lechón a la parrilla, asado de tira y lomo fino, además de los habituales chorizos y quesitos gourmet.


Ximena y Richard se encontraron con varios amistades, y yo también me encontré con amigos, algunos que los conozco porque habíamos coincidido antes en esta cata de vinos, y otros que conozco de la PUCP, como Alberto de Belaúnde, con quien conversé brevemente.


Fue una de esas noches maravillosas que no quieres que se terminen nunca. De lejos, esto ha sido lo más divertido que he hecho en los últimos meses. Salud por ello.

Ken Park (2002) / Inti Fest - 2011 (Asia)

Ken Park (2002) 
Directed by Larry Clark


"Ken Park" is firmly inserted in Larry Clark's narrative universe. From the uncouth reality of teenage boys and girls in "Kids" to the more visceral and shocking take on youngsters in "Bully", Clark has never let go of youth, whether as an immanent symbolism of life at its fullest or as the paradoxical demonstration that even life at its most intense peak can be removed at once.

"Ken Park" provides the viewer with a glimpse, only a brief instant, of a handful of characters that interact with each other and their parents. Relationships throughout the film follow very closely the actantial model established by literary critic Greimas. There's always an actant, someone who necessarily carries out an action so that a story, any given story, can actually progress. According to Greimas, characters are neither the embodiment of psychological concepts, nor extensions of the author's mind. Characters are simply entities that act, that carry out an action which makes possible the existence of a story. In his narrative model, an opponent is essential. No action can be performed completely without something that opposes to it.

Most of the opposition in "Ken Park" comes from the dichotomy produced between parents and children. When the teenage characters are alone they coexist in an ideal harmony, but when they face an adult problems ensue. Shawn, for example, transfers his Oedipus complex into another mother's womb, namely the mother of his girlfriend, thus engaging into an illusory Oedipal infraction while at the same time establishing himself as the bridge that will join mother and daughter in a symbolic incest. Peaches obeys what Lacan defined as inter-subjective desire, she reenacts the mother's presence by filling her void through a fantasy that nurtures her father, she is there to fill a void, to replace the dead mother symbolically while maintaining her other identity, that of the modest, sweet and virginal daughter; it's only when she fails in masquerading as an immaculate virgin that balance is disrupted and thus the father retains only the fantasy of the mother and wants, incestuous and literally, to marry her after beating her boyfriend to a pulp. Claude's situation is a bit more complicated: his father is a rampaging homophobic and after getting drunk as usual he steps into Claude's bed and attempts to take pleasure from his own son's body. Tate is an "acting out" case taken to the extreme, he seems incapable of expressing his sexuality through normal channels and he eventually snaps and savagely attacks his grandparents, id est, his parental figures.

The film clearly shows the failure of the preeminent heterosexual model in every instance. As Michele Foucault explains, the heterosexual drive was part of the industrialization movement in 19th century Europe, a healthy sexuality implied the capacity to procreate healthy children and nothing else mattered. The Victorian age specialized in forbidding and punishing masturbation or non-heterosexual practices; these were, after all, a blatant threat to progress. However, in the 21st century the heterosexual couple which has only procreation as a goal is no longer functional. If this kind of couple is only the "means to an end" then it's no surprise to see them falling apart. That, perhaps, explains Ken Park's decision at the beginning of the movie. Is life worth living? And what happens when his girlfriend, his true antagonist, forces him to accept responsibility and take on his newly gained parenthood? She asks him "Aren't you glad your mom didn't abort you?". His eyes express what words cannot say. And then, to renounce to his own life suddenly makes sense.
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Fuimos diez esta vez. Todos reunidos durante el fin de semana. Salimos el viernes en la tarde, rumbo a Asia, y regresaríamos a nuestra querida Lima el domingo. El viernes en la noche estuvo dedicado al Hypnotique y al whisky; mientras que el sábado todo giró en torno al pisco.


En Cocoa, nuestra playa, se organizaba la fiesta temática Moulin Rouge. Todos los veranos estas fiestas temáticas adquieren protagonismo, ha habido un poco de todo (hasta Titanic), pero en esta ocasión la fiesta fue eclipsada por un evento multitudinario que concita la asistencia de un público más joven: el inti fest (www.intifest.com.pe). El año pasado hubo 4500 chicos y chicas, este año, ¿quién sabe?


Aquí algunas fotos que tomé el fin de semana; y también, cómo no, las fotos que mi amiga María Fe tomó durante nuestro último almuerzo en enero. Ella me ha enseñado una muy grave lección: no es de mala educación tomarle fotos a la comida (siempre y cuando todo sea con fines artísticos). Animado por ese tipo de sabiduría, dejo espacio para las fotos. Como siempre, el almuerzo lo hice yo. Preparé una ensalada con aderezo ligeramente agridulce, y de plato de fondo ñoquis (que siempre hago a mano aunque quizá me ahorraría tiempo comprarlos ya hechos), con lomo en costra de hierbas (tomillo y romero, sobre todo); el postre fue cortesía de María Fe y su enamorado David. Maridaje: un malbec mendocino de 2008, no tan agresivo y de taninos moderados. Puntaje final: a mis invitados les encantó todo.
 

Hot Paintings - Antica Trattoria (L’Anfiteatro)

El último fin de semana fue un tanto decepcionante. Dos amigos, dos amigas y yo partimos de Lima rumbo a Cocoa, Asia, el viernes en la tarde. Era la semana del chilcano y yo estaba absolutamente seguro de encontrar todo tipo de ofertas fabulosas y descuentos magnánimos en el Wong de Asia. Grande fue mi decepción al descubrir que esta fecha emblemática era absolutamente ignorada en el Bulevar. Bueno, ya será para el día del pisco sour (ahí sí el Wong de Asia se pone las pilas todos los años). En todo caso, aproveché para tomar una botella de Châsse (un merlot francés que descubrimos ese fin), un par de pisco sours y, lo más importante de todo, pude tomar algunas fotos.


El jueves de la semana pasada asistí a la inauguración de la muestra colectiva Hot Paintings en L’Anfiteatro de Antica Trattoria. 


También incluyo un adelanto de las dos páginas que dibujé para Joe Kalicki. A continuación la primera página:
 

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New Year / Año nuevo

And so the year was over, amidst celebrations and friends. Here summer begins at the end of the year: the big party takes place between December 31st and January the 1st, but this date also represents the beginning of the summer season and the much needed weekends away from the chaotic city, as well as the reunion with old friends. Basically we’ve been the same group of friends since we were 5, almost 21 years ago.



Let’s make a toast for it with a drawing I inked with a nib and few pics I took over this weekend. Enjoy.
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Y el año se acabó entre celebraciones y (re)encuentros. Se ha convertido en una tradición pasar el verano en la casa de mi amigo Rodrigo Castro. Por supuesto, para mí la temporada empieza cuando termina el año, porque las horas de fiesta entre el 31 de diciembre y el primero de enero marcan el inicio de las vacaciones, la inauguración oficial de la temporada estival y el encuentro (y reencuentro) con amigos que conozco desde que tenía 5 años… o hace 21 años para los que quieran llevar las cuentas.


Desde el 2005 hasta ahora he pasado todos los años nuevos y buena parte del verano en Cocoa, Asia (con la excepción del 2006 que estuve fuera del país). Algunos prefieren variar, irse a otros sitios. Yo no. Cada año nuevo en Asia es, desde luego, una experiencia nueva. Incluso pasar varios días con los amigos de siempre implica una nueva dinámica: ya no somos los chiquillos que recorríamos el Perú en los campamentos organizados por el colegio, pero seguimos conservando esa amistad que nos permite convivir, celebrar y reírnos de la vida tan bien como antes o, incluso, mejor (supongamos que hemos ido madurando con el tiempo). Empieza una nueva temporada, y qué mejor manera de brindar por ella que con un dibujo que entinté con plumilla y algunas fotos al azar que tomé este fin de semana.

 
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