Juan Bobo Goes to Hear Mass

The following is my translation of “Juan Bobo va a oír misa” by Rosario Ferré. I will confess to a lack of familiarity with Ferré and her writing style, which could not have helped this translation.

Juan Bobo is a character from Puerto Rican legend, and the simpleton his name implies.

Juan Bobo Goes to Hear Mass

“Ma! I wanna go to mass today!” Juan Bobo said to his mother one Sunday.

“Oh, Juan Bobo, mijo,” his mother replied. “How wonderful it is that you want to go to mass! But I can’t take you. I’m very sick.”

“Don’t worry, Ma. Don’t worry,” Juan Bobo said. “Tell me where’s the church, so I know what I half to do!”

Then his mother told him which way to go and that where he saw a lot of people coming in and going out, right there was the church. Before she’d even finished speaking, Juan Bobo put on his new windbreaker and left to look for the church.

After walking a while, he arrived at a house where a baptism was being celebrated. Many people were coming in and going out from the house, and Juan Bobo moved closer, to see what was happening. The table was set, and all sorts of trays sat on the lace tablecloth, illuminated by silver candelabra. The trays were filled with an array of exquisite dishes: sausages of veal and chicken, golden-fried pork, cold baked ham, duck jelly, pickles, pickled meats, soft cookies, deep-fried bananas filled with meat, fried cornmeal, fried strips of codfish, and so on and so on.

Juan Bobo approached the table like someone who passes the gates of delight. But seeing the world on its feet greeting each other and making polite conversation, he kept himself in a corner, watching everything without breaking in to try anything. The child baptized and anointed with oils and salts, the obligatory congratulations between priest and parents fulfilled, the guests came to the table, where with great elegance they ate and drank everything. Finally, they left the church, saying goodbyes as they went. When Juan Bobo found himself alone before that table, with a feast of leftovers and crumbs like he’d never seen in his life, he had his afternoon snack and dinner all at once, scarfing down what they’d left him. As soon as he was full, he ran back to his house.

“Hey, Ma,” he said. “If you only knew what a great mass I heard! I stayed there until the end, and boy, did I eat!”

“Eh, muchacho, but what have you done!” his mother said. “God knows where you’ve been. I was very afraid you wound up where there was no mass.”

The next week, Juan Bobo said, “Listen, Ma. I wanna go back and go to mass this Sunday.”

“Oh, yes, mijo,” his mother said. “How nice that you want to go to mass! But be careful where you stick your nose, and remember, the church is over where all the people are coming in and going out.”

Right away Juan Bobo put on his jacket again and, as misfortunes seek and find the unlucky, he went out in the street to look for the church. He actually came across it this time.

When Juan Bobo cam in through the atrium, the main mass was being held. He greeted the whole world with great ease. At the back of the nave he made out a great table laid with beautiful lace tablecloths and lit by silver candelabra, something that reaffirmed his confidence that he was in the place he’d been looking for. He stopped at the door of the church, and saw how all of the people coming in dipped their hand in the stoup of holy water and made the sign of the cross. Juan Bobo thought that, as they were very refined people, they would only come over and, with their fingertips, try he delicacy at the bottom of the stoup. He kept himself stolen away in a corner, waiting for all of them to go by. When he found himself alone, he grabbed the stoup of holy water with both hands and drank it all in one gulp.

“Avemaría purísima! What a salty stew!” he said. “Why, if they ate all the stew and left me nothing but the water…”

Juan Bobo waited for the ceremony to end. When he saw that the parishioners, at communion time, approached the altar on the tips of their toes, he kept himself put one last time. Then he drew himself closer and closer, with great affectation, to where the priest stood. He opened his mouth wider than a funnel, so that he too might be given something to eat. But when his turn came and the host was placed on his tongue, he shouted out, “Avemaría purísima! What a sick-looking little cookie they’ve given me!” And, sticking his hand in the chalice, he grabbed ten more hosts and swallowed them in a single gulp. With that, the priest rose, indignant, calling to the usher. The two of them threw Juan Bobo out of the church on his ass.

Juan Bobo beat it out of there, and as soon as he arrived back at his house, went to where his mother was and sadly told her of what had happened.

“Oh, Ma, if you knew what a crappy mass I heard! I feel like I haven’t even had breakfast! I got to the church and waited patiently for the ceremony to end. But when mealtime came, they wanted to give me a little pot of salt water and a little cookie, and when I asked them to give me more, they beat the crap out of me. I wound up where I shouldn’t have.”

And Kikirikí, Kikirimoche, this story is over. To anyone who takes a turn, may you shit during the day, not at night.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Hockey

It’s still impossible for me to describe: the feeling of taking a five-dollar bill from the outstretched hand of Gordie Howe. It’s taken more than a decade to sort out in my mind what probably didn’t add up to thirty seconds in the presence of Mr. Hockey.

I was working as a grocery store cashier back then. What remained of my adolescence was being drained by days behind the register and in sleepy undergraduate classes. My nights were spent alone, at my parents’ house, staring at a news magazine or a new video release. Everyone else my age seemed to have found a more joyful, hedonistic way of killing of the rest of youth. But I’d finally been cured of the acne that had turned my boyish skin into a landscape of blemishes that ran the spectrum of purples and reds. Clean skin, as I saw it, was a both an auspicious sign in general, and one that boded particularly well as I entered adulthood more and more fully.

By that time, just over a decade into his second, final retirement from professional hockey, Gordie Howe had reached the usual retirement age of the world’s assembly line workers and engineers – a remarkably short gap, considering that the longest-lived careers in the sport rarely extend into an iron man’s forties. Naturally, he was no longer the specimen he’d been through his playing days. White-haired and bald on his crown, carrying his extra weight in the rear and gut, his body was more like that of a bottom-heavy cartoon penguin than of the sleek bird on the Pittsburgh squad’s jerseys. He set down on the conveyor belt a box of a dozen doughnuts and a bottle of Coca Cola. My sebaceous glands started pumping double time, at the thought of the snack.

Back then, I thought that there was something sad in the sight. I, too, had been a hockey player, and a Gordie Howe fan even though his playing days had ended before mine began. Growing up in a part of the country where hockey wasn’t much more than a footnote in the sports pages, I gorged myself on the kid-friendly player bios the local library did stock. In his day, Howe had been a Greek god on ice, helmet-less and greased-haired, his physique so powerful and efficient that the thin protective equipment of his playing era seemed useless on him. My own hockey equipment was growing mold in my parents’ basement, where I’d consigned it not long after the revelation that my playing days were over, the highlight of my career likely skating, in double-digit losses, against a kid who would go on to be a marginal big-league player for the better part of a decade. My old barbells were rotting down there, too. And I could feel it, in a way, standing behind the register, my back aching like it never would have before I’d given up the barbells.

It was my first college roommate, a fullback on the football team, who had given me my initial firsthand glimpse of the unmanly self-absorption and petty cruelty that are like the birthright of male athletic prowess. Fresh back from their start-of-the-year orientation trip, he and his new friends gathered in our dorm room to down massive quantities of cheap beer and relive, again and again, his bringing to tears some homely girl who had been on the trip with them. Soon, he would befriend a lineman known throughout the college as Mr. Date Rape; and by the end of the semester, he would have cheated so often on his girlfriend, halfway across the country, that even the distance could not keep the rumors out of her ears. Ten years after leaving the grocery store, I would witness a coda, of sorts, to this strain of boorishness. In the early hours of the morning, my housemate and her boyfriend the ex-pro football player would burst into the house, screaming at each other about the abortion she refused to have.

“Hockey is a man’s game,” Howe once said. If the statement now seems retrograde, it would not be unfair to contrast Howe to the prefab celebrity athletes who fill the professional ranks today. It’s hard to imagine nowadays, the young Howe building his legendary strength through work on the family farm in frigid Floral, Saskatchewan, as the Depression gave way to the Second World War. It’s even harder to imagine my old roommate or my former housemate’s ex in the sort of caretaking role Howe has assumed, as his wife struggles with Pick’s Disease.

And so Gordie Howe turns eighty today.

For years after our encounter, I continued to believe that the physical decline of Gordie Howe was somehow sadder than anyone else’s – as if Mr. Hockey had not merely stepped off the ice at the Olympia one last time, but had descended from Olympus to the world of mere mortals. But I’m no longer so sure, now that the flashes of my own inevitable decline are getting a bit too clear and regular. And I don’t regret the dead end that my hockey career turned out to be: Better to know you just don’t have it than to wander through life convinced otherwise.
Not that Gordie Howe has lost much. Just taking that five-spot from him, I could feel that he was the strongest person who had ever graced me with his presence.

Fallen Angel, Rising Pop Star

I am as put off as John and Jane Q. Public by unctuousness on the part of public servants, especially when the self-styled angels reveal themselves to be practicing exactly what they have sermonized against with so much zealotry. But I am not gloating at the fall from grace of ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer. One possible outcome of his trysts with alleged call girl Ashley Alexandra Dupré must represent the most perfect union of word, deed, and supposed intention of the man's career -- unintended though the union certainly was.

Spitzer gained his crusader reputation in large part from the vehemence and tenacity with which he prosecuted prostitution and sex trafficking rings. But prosecution alone of the sex trade comes with no guarantee of a new and better life for the women the trade has exploited. Even less likely is the sex worker's chance of life anew as an entertainment celebrity, that Holy Grail of American popular culture.

It has been well-documented that Dupré is an aspiring pop singer, and that the scandal has spiked the demand for the tunes she is selling through the music site Amie Sweet. ("For Ashley Alexandra Dupré, Selling Music Beats Selling Sex") It's hard not to wish for Dupré to rise to fame, as she was promoting herself rather innocently through My Space and Amie Sweet rather than through her work as a call girl. And if her My Space postings and statements to the media are any indication, Dupré had been humbled by experience well before the scandal broke. (Ex-Governor Spitzer, take note.)

So, the public servant blessed with every opportunity in the world now retreats from public life, disgraced, his kingdom for a pricey romp in the sack. Should Dupré become a bonafide pop star, Spitzer will have (inadvertently) created the sort of opportunity for a sex worker that none of his work in law and goverment ever did -- or ever could have. The sanctimonious arbitrator of human law will have helped enact divine, poetic justice.

Away from my desk

The past week or so has been a bit too chaotic for me to have dedicated the proper time and attention to composing a blog entry. So I am posting a link to an article I wrote about two years ago for Mi Gente magazine, about the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation's annual technology-themed breakfast.

"Leaders in Education Bridging the Digital Divide"

Edith Grossman, Don't Eat Your Heart Out (Just Yet)

The following is my translation into Spanish of the Wikipedia entry for the late filmmaker John Cassavetes. Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, criticism, and/or notice of any translation error on my part. (Note: The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cassavetes has been edited a bit (for the better) since I began this translation -- and there is now in fact a translation into Spanish posted on the site.)


Vida y obras

John Nicholas Cassavetes era actor, director de cine, guionista y dramaturgo estadounidense mejor conocido por sus películas naturales e intensas. Se considera el «padrino del cine independiente», y su obra ha influido a directores de cine de varias generaciones, desde contemporáneos suyos tal como Martin Scorsese hasta Paul Thomas Anderson.

Cassavetes nació el 9 de diciembre de 1929, en ciudad de Nueva York, hijo de Nicholas John Cassavetes y Catherine Demetri, inmigrantes griegos. Crecía en Long Island, Nueva York, y asistió a Blair Academy, colegio en Nueva Yérsey, antes de entrar en la American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Después de graduarse en 1950, seguía trabajando de actor teatral, además de haciendo papeles en películas y empezando a actuar en televisión, en series antológicas incluso el Alcoa Theatre.

Primeras películas y actuación

Durante esta época encontró a la actriz Gena Rowlands y se casó con ella. Para 1956 había empezado a dar clases de la actuación del método en ciudad de Nueva York. Shadows (1959), la primera película que escribió y que dirigió Cassavetes, fue inspirado por un ejercicio de teatro improvisado. Cassavetes podía reunir el dinero para hacer la película gracias a sus amigos y familia, y a los oyentes de un programa de radio nocturno de línea abierta al público.

Ninguna compañía norteamericana estaba dispuesta a distribuir Shadows, así que lo llevó a Europa con el fin de conseguir un convenio de distribución. Se estrenó la película en Europa y ganó el Premio de los Críticos en la Feria de Películas de Venecia. Más tarde las distribuidoras Europeas lo estrenaron de una película importación en los Estados Unidos. Aunque lo miraban pocos norteamericanos, Shadows ganaba atención de los estudios de cine, y a principios de los años sesenta Cassavetes dirigió dos películas por Hollywood, Too late blues y A child is waiting.

También representaba dominantemente en películas como tal The dirty dozen (1967), recibiendo la propuesta por el Premio de la Academia de Mejor Actor Secundario por su papel de un soldado raso ansioso. Otros papeles notables de Cassavetes incluye un actor mentiroso en Rosemary’s baby (1968) de Roman Polanski, la victima en The killers, y el justo castigo vicioso del gobierno a Kirk Douglas en The fury (1978).

La próxima película que dirigió Cassavetes fue Faces, también producida independientemente, de la que Rowlands John Marley, Seymour Cassel y Val Avery fueron las estrellas. Representa un matrimonio contemporáneo desintegrándose. Faces fue propuesto por tres Premios de la Academia, Mejor Guión Original, Mejor Actor Secundario y Mejor Actriz.

Cassavetes él mismo fue una de las estrellas de Husbands (1970), junto con Peter Falk y Ben Gazzara. Representan un trío de hombres casados quienes han ido de farra en Londres.

Obras maestras de los años setenta

Sus tres obras maestras de los años setenta fueron producidas independientemente. Rowlands es la estrella de A woman under the influence (1974), en la que representa una ama de casa que se llega a estar cada vez más preocupada, rodeada por gente que no entiende su preocupación. Recibió la propuesta de la Academia por Mejor Actriz, mientras Cassavetes fue propuesto por Mejor Director.

The killing of a chinese bookie (1976) trata de un dueño de club de striptease, Cosmo Vitelli, representado por Ben Gazzara, a quién la mafia le obliga a matar a un bookmaker chino para pagar su hábito de juego descontrolado.

Opening night (1977) es otra obra seminal de Cassavetes que presenta a Rowlands como protagonista, con un reparto que incluye a Cassavetes, Gazarra y Joan Blondell. El personaje de Rowlands es una actriz que envejece se llama Myrtle Gordon, quién hace papel en una obra de teatro mientras sufre una crisis personal. Debido a su celebridad Myrtle es sola y poco querida por sus colegas, y teme su envejecimiento. Después de haber visto la muerte accidental de una aficionada joven, Myrtle empiece de beber en exceso y sufrir alucinaciones. Pero Myrtle se enfrente a sus demonios internos y por último realiza la mejor interpretación de su vida. Según cabe suponer Cassavetes dedicaba varios años a perfeccionar el guió, mientras acabar la producción de la película duró más que un año al costo de más que $1,5 millón. El primero corte corrió más de cinco horas de duración, y estrenaron en los Estados Unidos solamente una copia de la versión final.

Carrera tarde

En Gloria (1980) Rowlands hace el papel de la amiga de un gángster. Ella huye con un niño quien queda huérfano por la Mafia y entonces llega a ser el blanco suyo. Cassavetes volvió a la pantalla grande en Love streams (1984), en la cual representa a un libertino envejeciendo quien sufre la afección imperiosa de su hermana recientemente divorciada. Cassavetes él mismo pudo completar su última película, Big trouble (1986). Andrew Bergman, quien escribió el guión original, reemplazó la producción de la película durante el rodar.

En 1989 Cassavetes murió a la edad de 59 años de la cirrosis. Fue sobrevivido por Rowlands y sus tres hijos.

Nick Cassavetes, su hijo, siguió las huellas de su padre. Hizo papeles en películas tal como Face/off y Life, y dirigió varias películas, incluso John Q. y The notebook. También hizo la película She’s so lovely del guión original que había escrito su padre.

Cassavetes y la improvisación

Con frecuencia se entiende mal la influencia de la improvisación en las películas de Cassavetes. A excepción de Shadows sus películas dependieron de guiones muy detallados. Sin embargo Cassavetes dio a sus actores mucha libertad para crear sus personajes. También, si Cassavetes vio que la interpretación de un personaje o una escena que tuvo un actor fue diferente a lo que había imaginado él, estaba dispuesto a cambiar el guión para acomodar esa interpretación.

Homenajes

En septiembre de 2004 el Criterion Collection estrenó una colección de sus cinco películas independientes: Shadows, Faces, A woman under the influence, The killing of a Chinese bookie y Opening night. La colección también incluye A constant forge, un documentario que trata de la vida y obras de Cassavetes, y un folleto en que unos críticos ofrecen su juicio sobre las obras del director, además de homenajes a Cassavetes por unos amigos suyos.

Cassavetes también es el sujeto de unos libros biográficos. En el volumen comprehensivo Cassavetes on Cassavetes, una colección de entrevistas recopiladas por el historiador de cine Ray Carney, el director habla de sus experiencias, influencias y punta de vista sobre la industria.

En el 2005 un articulo en la revista Vanity fair rendó homenaje a Cassavetes como parte de su edición sobre los premios Oscar.

La banda Fugazi de Washington, D.C., grabó la canción «In on the killtaker» como homenaje a Cassavetes, mientras el álbum epónimo de Le Tigre incluye una grabación que trata del director.