Playime at Discotheque Bilbao

Last night, I had a few drinks with friends, then we watched a movie, then drank a lot more beer, danced, and finally around 1 AM, my boss kicked us all out of the office. Wait, what?

Tatiana and David co-teach an architecture studio in Dusseldorf and their students have been in Mexico for the past week (see the post about 'eye tacos') and last night, I guess they wanted to show a movie related to the studio and also give the students a chance to mix with the office.

The beer came up to the office in two full shopping carts, and after lunch, there was a white storm of cleaning and sorting and storing models. A little after six, David set up a projector, and started playing Shantel's Disko Partizani, which was a bit of a shock because it's really esoteric (although Shantel is German). Anyway, all the German kids came back and we started passing out the wine and beer. Mexico only has two types of beer- pale lagers or dark lagers. They're both weak, although the best of the sad selection is Victoria, a dark lager which is a clear winner over Tecate, Corona, Sol, DosEquis, Leon, Modelo, etc (and they're almost all brewed by the same massive conglomorate Modelo.)

Anyway, we chatted with the German kids for about an hour while munching on bread and a party tray. I met an interesting student named Stefan, who has also traveled extensively and we compared notes on Mexico, China, and Germany. Most of them spoke good English, although really they'd have to to be able to understand Tatiana's lectures.

The movie we watched was called Playtime, by a French director Tati, filmed in the 1960s in a hypermodern vision of Paris where all the buildings are uniform international style, and you only see the famous monuments reflectedd momentarily in glass doors. It loosely follows a large tour group of American women and a Magoo-like Frenchman. It's a great movie actually, a gentle satire of Modernism both as an architectural style and mode of thinking and working. It's an obvious heavy influence on Terry Gilliam's Brazil, although Tati finds the humor in the humanist-modernist conflict which is only slighly exaggerated here, while Gilliam finds the horror in its bleak full expression.

Tati is also more subtle than Gilliam. There's a great extended scene of some apartments with entire walls of glass shot totally from the exterior since the facades are so transparent. In one of the scenes, a man slowly undresses, distracted by watching the TV in the wall, on the opposite side of which a woman sits, watching attentively the TV in the same wall. From the street, the scene becomes a striptease although neither knows it.

Anyway, after the movie, I figured everyone would leave, but instead, more beers were passed around, and David and his professor friends acted as DJ, and before you could say "uno mas?" the office became a dance floor. Lots of salsa and merengue. And more beer. At one point, for reasons which escape me, everyone in the office was linked arm around each other's waists as we circled a group of desks doing some kind of simple Turkish folk dance.

The German students were amused by their dean and the professors getting loose on the dance floor, and I've been in thier position before- the exhileration and liberation of study abroad. Anyway, we all had a good

time and finally David kicked the stragglers out of the office a little after 1 am.

It's post transit hours, so I ended up walking back the apartment, although Vania and Mariano walked with me part way. I was a little more on guard than usual, since a few days ago apparently 11 young adults were kidnapped in broad daylight (by the police? by the cartels? by the mafia?). They were taken from Zona Rosa, from a club a few blocks from where I work, although they were all Mexicans from a violent and dangerous section of the city, which probably had some bearing on thier kidnapping. The club was closed and the police deny any knowlege, although witnesses say that the SUVS into which the people were taken had police markings (although this too, could be faked).