Semana Santa: Gypsy Jesus and Runnin' Mary

Over the Holy Week in Spain practically everyone I know took this vacation opportunity to travel to all sorts of fun places (mostly Ireland for St. Patty's Day) and I stayed here in Granada. I attribute this inability to travel to my job that has an insane payment system schedule so I get paid every 3 months. But whatever, I have complained about that way too much.

Anyways, there were a few of us here in Granada like Ashley and Elyse and Rachel who I went to see a Semana Santa procession with. We saw el Gitano Cristo (Gypsy Jesus) which is known as lo mas bonito de todo (the most beautiful of them all). I am no longer surprised by the pointy hats and robes that the people marching in the procession wear, which to all you American's look like KKK outfits; so instead of bewildering it was actually pretty. Now, as I mentioned, gypsy christ made an appearance there. No, it wasn't someone dressed in a crucified Jesus costume (although I would have had a great laugh at that), it was a statue that ~20 people stand under and carry along in the procession route. Its supposed to symbolize their penance and cleansing of sins or what have you. That's pretty typical of the Catholic religion, I'd say. But I digress, I wanted to talk about how special everyone considers the gypsy christ. Now, here in Granada there are gypsies that live in caves up on the hillside above the town so perhaps that unique characteristic of Granada lends some appeal to this statue. If its not that then it is merely the fact that Jesus's feet are not crossed. Yeah, there was a non gypsy Jesus statue the next night that looked identical except that the feet were crossed. Ashley even asked some people about why g. christ is so special and they said the foot crossing thing. Maybe this religious stuff is just a little too profound for me in a deceivingly simple sort of way.

The next statue following Jesus was of his mother, the holy mother that is. There is some sort of appropriate parental symbolism there I think. Anyways, the amusing part about the Mary float was not the ornate decor nor the plethora of candles threatening to burn down the whole float as it swayed back and forth with every statue-carrier's step, rather the way the statue moved. Now, each city does this differently, for example in Cadiz they arch slowly and in Sevilla they do it faster, but here in Granada... Mary had places to go and had no time for interruptions. The cariers would stop for a minute or two and rest up to get ready for their sprint to the next rest stop 500 meters ahead of them. Very amusing. The statue stopped, pictures were taken, marveling was done by the crowd, and then *UP* and *MAD DASH FORWARD*. The Granada gang (Californian's staying in Granada during Semana Santa) nick named her Runnin' Mary.

One last note, I went to see Como La Vida Misma (Dan in Real Life, as its known in the English speaking regions of the world) and it was a cute movie. Enjoyment was had and the soundtrack was very nice. Upon further research I found out that Sondre Lerche provided pretty much all the music for the movie. I guess Steve Carrel is an indie kid at heart. So I decided to download his music to enjoy it in a non romantic-comedy context. Its good stuff and it seemed like something that would score indie points for obscure band/musician name dropping... but I guess Im way behind the times. He was indie-cool back in like 2002 or something. I tried to boost my indie points by talking about him to someone and they basically responded something like "oh is that old music? does he have new stuff?" Oh... they've heard of him... I guess Norwegian indie rock/folk musicians are more well known than I thought. Sigh. Another step down on the wannabe indie ladder. And I know I said this was the last thing but something just happened that caught my attention. The spellcheck on my computer knows the word "wannabe" its like, oh yeah thats cool, but "indie" wtf is that? you made a mistake sir *red underlining squiggles*. Crazy...