Besoin Beso

Photo by Bill Henson.

Had a 2.5 hour conversation with my sister last night. First of all, I love skype. Free unlimited calls to regular phones in any country for 12E a month. Its half that if you're only calling two countries. Also, I love my sister. I feel whole and grounded after we talk.

Tonight I saw La Zona, a Mexican film. Easily the best film I've seen in a couple of years - in spite of the fact that the dialogue was in Spanish and the subtitles in French. Do not miss this film if you get the chance. Interestingly, my Spanish is far better than my French, but it was much easier to follow the subtitles because I could read rather than parse speech.

The film is about a gated community in Mexico, encircled by extreme poverty. The inciting incident is a bungled burglary... I'd really rather not say much about the plot, but the film is absolutely devastating. Its hard to say why I found it so powerful. It felt real - no suspension of disbelief was necessary. At the same time, it felt hyperreal - a distillation of class issues. I shouldn't even say that because the film is in no way heavy-handed; its glides along like a crime drama.

Everyone in the film carried guns. When this came up after the movie, Stephanie said something that blew my mind: that many people at Williams had firearms. She tended to see them in people's glove compartments. Wtf?

After the movie, I finally met Lerato, who gave me a bicycle last week... she has a wonderful presence.

Blog link: Two of the people(Kris' wife and her friend) that I had a drink with on Sunday night had Phd's in Economics. To my intense disappointment, we didn't talk about the Dismal Science. My fantasy is to go to parties where everyone is an economist. Marginal Revolution is a blog written by two economists, and - best of all - they blog about their parties.

Song of the day: Erykah Badu - The Healer.