The picture in the last post

Sorry: that last post deserves further explanation, at least of the picture. And I've been accused of plagiarism by one sluice, so I guess I'd better reference.

Nearly two months ago, Lucy and I hooked up in Mexico, to celebrate all things Central American, and more broadly all things hispanic, and more narrowly all things Carol-and-Lucy. This is not the blog where I write about all the adventures we had in Mexico. Hell, I'll probably never write that blog, let's be honest. No, this is the blog where I reveal the secrets of manga stills photography.

One Monday morning we got up early to pack in all the extraordinary Mexican artwork we could. We were downtown and breakfasted when we twigged that the museums don't open on Mondays. This was a pity: we had scheduled a very tight five days in DF, and one day wandering aimlessly looking at traffic police with elaborate eye make up wasn't on the cards. Since everything that had been on the cards was closed (we did a LOT of things related to the arts/tourist infrastructure, which, you should know if you ever go to Mexico city (and you definitely should) closes down tight on Mondays) - since everything was closed, we decided we'd get a bus to the ruins. Teotihuacán. Birthplace of the gods. Home of the ancient aztecs. Wonder of meso america. And so on.

Lucy's a bit of an expert on wonders of meso america, and not, I got the impression, by choice. It's not that Lucy doesn't love ancient ruins - who doesn't love ancient ruins? - rather that she's seen lots of them. And teotihuacan isn't in a rainforest, it's not beside a flawless powder beach; it doesn't take 3 days to hike through the mountains to stumble upon it, and it doesn't have the best preserved artefacts of the region. It doesn't really have any artefacts. Just pyramids. Great pyramids, but still. It wasn't top of our list of things to do in Mexico.

So as we walked down the avenue, surrounded by pyramids, we got to thinking how this all brought us back to our childhood, in particular to that cartoon with which I was obsessed when I was nine: The mysterious cities of gold. Remember? I loved it so much. You have to click on the link above, to remind yourself, and see the opening credits again.

And that's when the manga stills photography began. Lucy was very good at it, and executed two perfect pictures of me-as-cartoon-character-against-backdrop-of-mysterious-cities-of-
gold:



How completely japanese and hand-drawn do I look?
I wasn't so good at the behind-the-scenes part. It took me a while to get my head around the whole perspective bit. As you see:

First, Lucy is very far away from the mysterious pyramid...

Then she's a little closer...

Getting better.... (hey! what happened to my font?!)


But the sun's glaring in her eyes, and she can't put on her shades because who ever saw an animé character in shades?

She's pretty exasperated with my poor manga still photography skills...
But finally I think I get it! More or less....



And that, my friends, is what we did in teotihacán. I shall try to blog about Honduras soon. Now I have to go cook dinner.