Astro Boy takes on El Tigre Metalico!

It wasn't the best episode of Angel's Season 5. It didn't solve anything or moved the story arc along. It simply featured "Number 5", that mail man we saw slouching through the Wolfram & Hart building almost every single episode. That didn't mean there's nothing to like about episode 6, The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco. I loved the how the Mexican feel was in everything featured in that episode, from the way Numero Cinco honours his dead brothers, over the wrestling, to the music. They used Calexico's Guero Canelo, a moment that made me go "Ooh, I know that song!" I loved the fighting. I digged the masks. It all did fit. Tragedy and comedy roled into one, like those real Mexican wrestlers do, here photographed by Malcolm Venville for his book Lucha Loco.

(Link from Boing Boing)

Bruxelles Midi

On a Saturday morning the crowds are different. Youngsters carrying backpacks, ladies eating croissants, with their trolley by their side. It isn't the rush of the quick-paced officials, trying to reach the time clock five minutes early to get free hours at the end of the week. The crazy people never change, though. Whether they speak English, French, German or Arabic, they are there, commenting on everything they see with their hawk-eyes. They'll spot you staring in the distance and will try to make eye-contact so you can't do anything but give them those 50 cents. The city-life makes them, molds them, spews them out on places where others (the marginaly saner ones) pass through. It makes the other city-dwellers turn into themselves, earphones in, book at the ready, eyes firmly at the floor. Or isn't this the case? The big city surely can't be this hostile to all its inhabitants.