La Torre Del Oro

On our last night in Madrid (Oct. 24th) we hung out at La Torre Del Oro, a very interesting tapas bar in the Plaza Mayor dedicated to bull fighting.

Neither Cynthia nor myself are fans of this sport and we had no intention of witnessing a bull fight, but this little place was fascinating. Mounted on the wall were the heads of some notable bulls from previous fights as well as photo after photo of various toreadors.

And in the corner was a small television set showing previously recorded bull fights. It was like a bull fighting sports bar!

The bartender and Cynthia had a very animated discussion (in Spanish) wherein the rules and nuances of the sport were explained and discussed. I must confess, it was compelling to watch as the drama played out on the small TV. It was especially odd when they would show a slow motion replay of some particularly noteworthy cape swooshing.

I picked up bits and pieces of what was being said and I recall at one point, as the time was drawing near when the toreador would actually strike the killing blow, the matter of taking an ear as a trophy came up. That was when Cynthia looked at the mounted heads in the room and exclaimed “THEY HAVE NO EARS!”

I enjoyed a few beers while this was going on, all the while just looking around and snapping a few pics like this one of a shrine/alter I can only presume was intended to keep the bull fighters safe from harm.

All in all, a very fun evening.

[tags] Spain, Madrid, Bull Fighting, Tapas [/tags]

Fotomat

I’ve been spending a few hours each day sifting through photos from the trip. It’s an arduous task. I am processing over 3,000 images collected while we were in Spain.

The main goal is to isolate the ones I want to print, edit them if necessary and then make a re sized copy for upload to the gallery.

On the one hand, it’s fun going through the images. On the other hand, it’s making me a little loopy.

While I was processing the pics from Seville I noticed that I had two pictures of the garden of the Alcazar that were pretty cool. They got me to thinking that I really was wishing for a super wide angle on that day to try to capture more of the garden in one shot instead of these two:


Click for full size


Click for full size

Thanks to Photoshop, I now have the shot I couldn’t get in the field….


Click for full size

Back to work to the photo-mines….

Zappa Plays Zappa – Tour De Frank

Dweezil Zappa is returning to Houston for another show. This is VERY exciting as I thought the last show was incredible and that it was also a one time deal.

They’re back at Verizon Wireless Theatre again. Show date is Nov 12 and tickets are on sale at Ticketmaster.

There’s a tour blog at the official site which can be found here and you can see the musician lineup here.

In reading the ZPZ official site I learned that Dweezil has released a new album called Go With What You Know which features a guitar duet with his father where Dweezil actually plays along with Frank’s guitar solo from the original ‘Hot Rats’ master tapes. That sounds like something worth hearing.

The show last year was phenomenal. It seemed odd to be going to hear Frank’s music sans Frank, but there were times in the show where you could really feel his presence. Dweezil does a good job or representing his father’s work and I expect this show to be even better than the last one.

Bad News

1 year before the release of This Is Spinal Tap there was a fake rock documentary created by The Comic Strip for their program The Comic Strip Presents on the BBC called Bad News.

You might recognized the cast from the TV show The Young Ones.

This is part 1

The rest is here:
Part 2
Part 3

The band actually recorded an album and a ridiculously bad version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody“, both of which were produced by none other than Brian May.

I found the version of Bohemian Rhapsody on Youtube and it’s worth checking out:

QR Code Business Card