Image: Encyclopedia Brittanica
Whenever I am asked to appear on television, I remember Gore Vidal's remark that he never passed on an opportunity to have sex or to be on TV. If you want to see the 13-minute dialogue between Ricardo Raphael and me about the ascendency of Donald Trump in the race for the Republican nomination on Raphael's show Los Corresponsales, click here. Forewarned is forearmed: you will have to first suffer a 30-second promo for Peña Nieto's State of the Union address.
Image from Bored Panda
A few readers have asked me, in private messages, why I haven't posted in this blog lately. The answer is a complicated mixture of the personal, the professional and the technical -- I am still trying to figure out the mechanics of downloading photos from my smartphone -- but let's just say that lately I have been more engaged with real life than with my computer screen. I hope to be posting more regularly in the near future.
If you are in Mexico City next Tuesday night -- or shall we say early Wednesday morning -- at 12:45 a.m., I will be appearing on a show called Los Corresponsales on TV Azteca, channel 13. It's a 15-minute program hosted by Ricardo Raphael, political analyst and author of Mirreynato, a book that has caused a lot of polemic here, about the class of young Mexicans born with silver spoons up every conceivable orifice.
He invited me to talk about the ascendence of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential race. I think we had a lively conversation, but sadly, I didn't use the opportunity to repeat what one of my best friends, a psychiatrist in New York, told me about Trump. This friend, of course, has not actually treated Trump, but feels that he has elements of narcissism, grandiosity and a touch of sociopathy. He also invented a word, trichodysmorphia, to describe Trump's hair problem.
At the end of the day, I am skeptical about Trump's candidacy. I think it will ultimately sputter out and die like it has on previous occasions. That his despicable racist views are a reflection of the beliefs of a large chunk of the U.S. public -- mostly disgruntled white, working-class males -- is dismaying, but is it a surprise to anyone?
Did you ever notice how in some countries, pharmacies tuck away the condoms and other sex-related products in some corner so discreet as to be entirely invisible? So you have to suck it up and ask the clerk where they are, probably in earshot of several old ladies, mothers with children, and so forth? In Mexico City, they're pretty much in the front window, like here in Farmacia San Pablo. (The provinces are another story. One chain in Guadalajara, known as Farmacias Guadalajara, refuses to sell them at all.)
An article about my work as a mitigation specialist by Vianey Fernández was recently published in the Sunday supplement of the newspaper Milenio. For the Spanish-impaired, lo siento.
I've always wanted to take a picture inside this tunnel, which divides Colonia Condesa, the Zona Rosa, Colonia Roma and Colonia Juárez on Avenida Chapultepec. But there are no walkways along its sides, and given how chilangos like to drive, I would no doubt never make it out of there alive if I tried. But I love the imagination of painting the walls of a tunnel as if they were an aquarium or the ocean. Or a huge fishbowl.