Carbon

It was raining Sunday, so I pscyhed myself out of riding and went to the Reina Sofia art museum, its my favorite in Madrid. It houses several Dalis, Picassos (including Guernica), and you can watch Bunuel on a sort of big screen. I came here last March and spent about 6 hours. I thought I was really having a lucky day becasue the museum turns out to be free on Sunday. And then, there just happens to be a visiting exhibit from the French National Museum on Picasso which occupies 4 floors (!). The bad luck part was that the museum closed at 2:30, I had only seen half of the Picasso (chronologically through his classical training, experiments in expressionism, iconic analytical cubism, and his very unique primitive surrealism; hard to believe this is just one guy) and hadn't made it to my favorite pieces. I can't complain, it was free. When I got there there was a climate change rally in the plaza in front of the museum. Spain, like most of the world, signed the Kyoto protocol but is failing much worse than most of Europe. Their emissions have actually increased (according to very dodgy error ridden estimates) by 3%. At least they signed the thing. Watch, Iceland will be carbon negative in 25 years and profit from it by selling carbon credits. They will make the US, Australia, Spain and the rest of the world look like idiots.

Heres a bit of trivial knowledge: notice the Stop CO2 signs? You might wonder why they would make signs displaying the US style stop sign in English. Well they use the same signs here, in English. Heres another weird thing: they have adopted WC (like in England, it stands for water closet) as the symbol for a public restroom. Nobody knows why. One guy used to but he died.

Afterward, I had time to kill so I walked across old Madrid to the Catedral Almudena. I thought that this was a very old cathedral but it was actually started in the 19th century, completed in the 20th century and made "official" or "sacred" or whatever by good ole JP2. You remember in Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader had John Paul II frozen in carbon and gave him to Boba Fett to deliver to Jabba? Chewie was really sad and said "RRRAAAAWWWWRRRPP!". Well they put the carbon-frozen pope out here in front of the cathedral so Jabba and his muppet friends could admire and taunt him (see pic). I was actually thinking this as people were praying and leaving flowers for John Paul, I couldn't help it, the statue seriously reminds me of Han Solo frozen in carbon. Sometimes my brain has small adventures. Despite not being quite as ancient as I thought the cathedral was really pretty cool. I don't much go for the religion business but I do like large old churches. And nobody does grandeur like Spanish catholics that happen to be next door to a palace (yep. another palace. dime a dozen). Also its free, score!
Finally, I have occasionally seen some cool street art in Madrid, but stencils are rare. Someone actually made a stencil of two people making out on the subway, and sprayed it onto a pedestal at the base of a sculpture outside the art museum. That's the real life and art of Madrid, it belongs on a pedestal in front of the art museum.