One of the seemingly inescapable, if dubious, pleasures of traveling and staying in a decent hotel is the sampling of cable TV offerings in the hotel room during breaks in the sightseeing routine. In our case it was the same country (Mexico) but different channels, a welcome change as our cable package at home is very basic, in fact it’s called Basic Cable.
Anyway three of our favorites were the Tour de France on ESPN (though not particularly germane to our discussion here); Mexico playing in the U17 world soccer championships; and catching a Pedro Infante movie, on Galavision, I think it was. In many ways the Mexican soccer team winning the world U-17 title was the best story. My knowledge of soccer (or fútbol as they call it here and just about everywhere except in the USA) is about a step lower than my knowledge of rugby, which is almost zero, but that didn’t prevent me from rooting for the home team and thrilling to their success, whether it was the film Invictus or in this case the Mexican team playing on the world stage, albeit with the advantage of home field. In particular Mexico’s improbable come from behind victory in the semifinals against Germany, scoring two seemingly impossible goals in the closing minutes, made the finals win over Uruguay mostly anti-climactic as it was more or less inevitable. Anyway the city and country in general went nuts over the wins and there were parades and celebrations.
Way to go, Mexico!
Another very different type of [guilty] pleasure is watching Mexican golden age movies, and I was fortunate to catch a Pedro Infante movie, one of his last, the immensely enjoyable if eminently lightweight Palbo y Carolina. Who cares if the film was quintessential 1950s fluff about mistaken identity and other goings on? There were the usual Infante songs along with a fetching co-star that I’d never heard of named Irasema Dilián to more than make up for plot and sensibility shortcomings.
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