A Cultura: Gafanhotas, Salsichas e Outras Coisas Portugeses

So let me tell you about last night...Well, on Thursday, Mark had mentioned that there was a free film playing at the Freer Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian museums. It was part of their exhibit they have going on that shows Portugal's influence around the world. It was a Portuguese film, which sounded fun enough for me since I like Portuguese (I lived in Brazil for two years), foreign films, and I really like the Brazilian films I have seen. I thought that this would be fairly good; reading about it made it sound like a decent story line and all. So Mark, Annie and I went. I'll tell you this, I thought wrong. The movie was called "Non, ou a Va Gloria de Mandar (No, or the Vain Glory of Leading)."
Something told me that we were in for a long crazy movie when the opening scene was a shot of a tree that lasted for about five minutes. It went downhill from there. The Portuguese was tough to understand too, so I had to read the subtitles to have an idea of what was going on. There were long, poorly-acted battle scenes, and at one point I dozed off for about one minute and woke up to a bunch of sailors on an island with a bunch of Nymphs who happened to be without any articles, but also they had about twenty boys running around like Cupids, their little weiners hanging out and everything. It was then that I said to myself, "this is one of the weirdest movies ever." Shortly after, the queen of the nymphs is brought down by four robotic swans in a giant oyster shell, the soldiers eat oysters and grapes with the nymphs who are clothed by now (which makes me wonder why they were absent of any clothing in the first place) and that's the end of that scene.
So, for weird movies I have seen in the past month, "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" comes in at weirdest, and this follows behind in a close second. Thanks Meg and Mark for these two gems.
After the movie, we went to get something to eat at Oyamel, a Mexican-style restaurant in the District. Mark and I treated ourselves to these tasty critters.
In case you can't tell, those are Grasshopper tacos. Definitely not something that I would order all of the time, they were fairly decent though. The were a little crunchy, but didn't have too weird of a taste, plus there was guacamole under them all, and that made quite the combo of tastes on my ever-so-cultured palate. Like I said Not bad, but not something I would order regularly, but not something I would never order again. Annie did suggest that we never take a girl on a date here and order those. So we had some other things plus some good cake and sorbet things for dessert. Then, we started heading to the Metro to go home.
How could the evening get better you ask? I'll tell you. This is how...
Yes friends, in case you can't tell (the picture is pretty dark), that is the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, and it was driving down the street while we were walking back to the metro. All of these events transpired to make what I wouldn't call the perfect evening, but it my humble opinion, last night was pretty darned cool. At least it will provide stories for a few days.
Oh, and in case you may be wondering what the title says, it's Culture: Grasshoppers, Weiners and Other Portuguese Things.

That is all.