O Meu Diário de Coimbra
Holy Week
First off, apologies for last week’s flamingo/flamenco mash-up, and thanks to the 1,435 of you who wrote in to gently remind me what a rube I am.
From yahama.com
The back and sides of flamenco guitars are made with lower density wood such as cypress-a member of the cedar family-and the neck itself is relatively thin. In fact, the entire body of the guitar is thinner overall. The strings of a flamenco guitar are also positioned lower than a classical guitar to allow the guitarist to press down on the strings quicker to suit the faster tempo of flamenco music. The height of the strings on the flamenco guitar and the acoustic guitar is almost the same. This means that the strings of a classical guitar are higher than other types of guitars.
The flamingo, of course, is a hotel and casino in Las Vegas.
Had my monthly lunch with Marcello, my landlord, on Monday. When I emailed to confirm, I wrote that I’d give him his “mafia payment” (the part of the rent he takes in cash) when I saw him. “Maybe not a good idea,” he said as we were driving to the restaurant, “to say ‘mafia money’ in the email. You never who who’s reading?”
“What if I call it ‘lunch money’?”
“Very good, Mr. Barry.”
He took me once again to his favorite chicken place 15 minutes outside of town. We passed cows and old women and other things in nature like silos and trees and tall grass and tractors. The waiter, a friend of his, had the table all set up and knew exactly what to bring: crispy chicken, French fries, salad, bread, wine, and Coke Zero.
“So, Lucifer,” Marcello said, smiling, biting into an olive, “very funny you call him that. But he’s a little crazy I think.”
Only if you think a drug-addicted, tattoo-covered, Rothschild-family-obsessed, vaccine-denying doting grandson who knows exactly where and the manor in which he hopes to die (stabbed in an alley in lower Manhattan by an unhappy coke dealer while looking at the Brooklyn Bridge) is crazy.
