Ethan G. Salwen

No Ordering Required!

Don’t worry, I didn’t lie. My standard porteño breakfast is still “café con leche y tres medialunas de manteca.” The reason I share the same fact today, at the end the week, having had it four more times since my post on Sunday, is simply to share an aspect my daily dining life that I wasn’t served up in Caballito, at Américas, where they know me, but not like they do in my own hood.

Here in Barracas, when I dine “afuera” for breakfast — which is, um, likely basically every day that I dine for breakfast — I almost inevitably choose Pop. It’s not just because pop is close or that it features Roy Lichtenstein artwork in its façade. And it’s not even that Pop serves up the best medialunas in the neighborhood.

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Café con leche and medialunas in Buenos Aires.

I’ve eaten this classic Buenos Aires breakfast hundreds of times before, and I can imagine stopping anytime soon. This is what they just delivered me here at “Américas” restaurant here in the Caballito neighborhood when I ordered:

“Café con leche con tres medialunas de manteca.” The small glass of “agua con gas” is automatically delivered on the side and, in true porteño form, a pile of sugar is provided to dump into the rich, milky coffee. Talk about “yum!” meets “comfortingly familiar.”

A lumber yard northeast of Encarnación, Paraguay.

Okay, so according to a BBC article Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is actually only the world’s second richest man. And, um, actually he didn’t actually buy a dead tree. But he might as well have.

What Mr. Slim has done is to invest 250 million dollars into the New York Times—rounding out his stake in the financially struggling United States newspaper. What?! Is this guy a total fucking idiot?

I wonder this because from what I’m hearing, newspapers are totally, utterly on the way out, thanks in large part to people like you who are spending your time reading blogs for non-objective reporting instead of “dead tree” newspapers, which according to an article I recently read, nobody believes anymore anyway.

I know, I know. Slim’s beyond rich and he didn’t get that way making foolish investments. So he probably knows shitloads more about media and new media and phrases like the “developing paradigm of media” than I do. And so maybe he’s simply taking the New York Times so he can push it in the right direction.

But then, it’s hard to see how there can be a right direction when media is quickly, quickly being taken over by us regular old people.

I wonder if Slim has tried blogging? Has he felt the power of instant, polished, global-wide publishing with the social media interactivity that was only a science fiction concept a few years ago? If he has, I wonder how it plays into his investment decision? But I won’t go further with that thought, or ask you — Web 2.0, social media-style — to try to answer any of these questions. (more…)

Yesterday, just after 5pm EST, Indira stopped our phone conversation to marvel at the fact that–thank god!–there was still a touch of sunlight in cold, cold New York City. Here in Buenos Aires, just after 8pm local time, there was still plenty of light, not to mention sticky heat and pesky summer bugs. But even when our seasons swap and I have less light and more cold I still won’t get the freezing weather of  my Upstate New York childhood or my New York City adulthood. And I miss it.

Like most people I appreciate the beauty of a landscape–country or city–freshly painted with pristine snow. But it’s so much more than that. Not only is my stocky, pale, hairy Northern European body engineered for dark and cold, but my spirit seems to be as well. I feel enlivened by the biting sting of cold–as if my engine revs up automatically–while the heat knocks me on my physical and emotional ass. Snow and sleet and ice and biting, (more…)

This is the going away party (“despedida”) of Dany Glusman and his girlfriend, Jose*, who have headed off to live in Panama for a couple years. It took place at the great Parilla La Dorita in Palermo, Buenos Aires, on January 4, 2009.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK2985-EKpk]

My little movie aint much, as it’s just me futzing around with my Canon G9 and iMovie to try to learn some basic storytelling skills using motion. I knew it would be hard but damn!

Quality aside, the movie still gives a peak into typical family life of middle-class porteños. The despedida event is common because–besides liking any excuse to come together and celebrate–families in this immigrant-oriented culture move around a lot internationally to find opportunities and simply out of a love of extended travel. The casual, long, festive nature of dinner is just typical porteño, despedida or not. (more…)

Sure, I could tell you that “hijo de puta” means “son of a bitch” or, more literally, “son of a whore.” But that just doesn´t translate how the colorful phrase is used so colorfully and almost non-stop by portenos. It can be shit, damn, fuck and all kinds of other things, but to really get it you need to see it in action. And thanks to YouTube and a cultural tipoff I got today, you can.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwuC5dw2ZOw&feature=related]

You don´t have to know Spanish to appreciate the flexibility of “hijo de puta” in real-life situations. The malleable “mala palabra” helps passionate portenos express anything. Anything.

This awesome documentation comes from a now defunct TV show for the early 2000s  called “Todo Por Dos Pesos.” Clearly the “HP” series is a  spoof but it sure seems real to me.  (You got it. “HP” for “Hijo de Puta.”)

This HP episode is particularly hilarious because it features Graciela Dufau, a famous actress of dramas. Check out her use of HP. Epa!

Last night I was hanging out with this guy named Brendon for more than an hour before we finally realized we had been roommates in boarding school. This was 23 years ago, and 21 since we lost saw each other, so you can imagine our surprise.

"Hey! We used to sleep together 23 years ago!"

It was greet to meet up with Brendon Sharp down here in Buenos Aires, where he has a local wife and three half-local children. It was wild to find out that 20 years will make very different teenagers very like-minded, buena onda-oriented men.

It was also nice that complete randomness and not FaceBook or any other such social media medium brought us back together. It was just Veronica. She and I were hanging and decided to visit her buddy Frankie, who was staying with his friend Brendon, who had some kids she said.

When you have a chance encounter of this magnitude it´s hard to get over the Whoa! Factor. It´s hard to not keep saying, ¨I can´t fucking believe it!” So I actually think it was great that Brandon and I didn´t figure out that we were Brendon and Ethan from Oakwood Friends School for an hour. It gave us a chance to meet each other like regular people, to talk about the lives we´ve been living outside the States, but much longer.

To FaceBook-less encounters!

Watching the boring and artsy-pretentious Western “There Will Be Blood” (or “Petrólico Sangriento” in the Spanish of my local BlockBuster), I started wondering HOW DO those old oil rigs actually work?–sucking oil from the earth and all that.

Super Wiki says this about oil rigs, but what I really want is an image that explains the up and down, up and down part. How does that pump suck up fluids by bobbing its head?

How Stuff Works has a nice image of an oil rig but it’s way out of my league. Too complicated. Don’t get it.

I did some more searching and came up with nothing really satisfying until I bumped into Daniel Engber‘s Slate article, “Do Penis Pumps Work?“

Apparently, they can come in handy:

“Doctors view the penis pump—or ‘vacuum constriction device,’ as it’s called in the business—as a reasonable, low-cost treatment for erectile dysfunction.”

I’ll remember that.

You can find an Microsoft and Viagra-sponsored, family-friendly article on penis pumps (with a great, hairless, creepy illustration) here.

If you can explain the up and down, up and down thing of the historic oil pumps on the Western plains, please do. You’ll win a free penis pump!

In my latest RAW Processing Solutions column for AfterCapture I turned to digital imaging powerhouse Scott Rickenberger of Chase Jarvis Studios to shed some light on Clarity, the nifty and powerful, but confusing and often-misunderstood raw developing control in ACR and Lightroom.

After Scott (and some other friends) clued me in on Clarity I’m see how well I can use (and not use) this gem. It turns out that a +100 Clarity setting might work great on one image while +5 might ruin another. All depends on content.

If your not fully Clarity conscientious read my article, and let me know what you think.

This jaw-dropping performance is truly worth watching. Way more than juggling. Chris Bliss is incredible. And come on, this Beatles song is a winner.

What do you think?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8f8drk5Urw]