Sunday, April 7, 2013

I Actually Went To The Movies

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

I like Mexican cinema especially old movies from the period of Cine Dorado, the 40s and 50s.  Very easy to understand and I learn a lot of new words and phrases (well, maybe not so much now like before).  Yesterday, I saw an ad for a new Mexican film called Nosotros Los Nobles.   We get ticket discounts from our local gas station when we fill up and the movie would cost  us 28 pesos a piece.  We give the tickets away to people who can use them with their kids.  

Today, we got up early (no shit) and decided to go to the movies.  I haven't been to a theater in a couple of years and it was a real shocker.   The theaters are tremendously well-done.  Great screens, spacious seating, reclining seats, no talking, no smoking, no issues.   We bought our tickets but the discounts we had are not good on Sunday.  Bummer.  Regular tickets for the 11:50 matinee were 53 pesos, 4 dollars U.S.  I don't othknow what a movie costs now in the U.S. as I dread to think of how many years ago it was that I was in a U.S. movie theater and now too afraid to be in one (if you get my drift).



The movie was hilarious.  In brief, it is about a rich widowed Mexican business who has three early 20s kids who have never worked a day in their lives and are looking forward to inheriting their trust from their mother.  The father, fed up with all their excesses including private company jet, etc. decided to teach them a lesson.   One day the kids are home and helicopters, police and agents raid the mansion.  The father, now dressed as a worker helps them escape and explains they no longer have a dime to their name.  Disaster for the kids.  They hide out in an old house (grandfather's abandon home now in a bad part of town) and are forced to get low-level jobs such as waitress in a cantina and bus driver.  You take it from there.  A great movie for all teenagers to see and a lesson to learn about life.

Changing times and tenses, I have been reading quite a bit about the checkpoints in the U.S. and whether they are constitutionally legal.   I can say just one thing: in all my years in Mexico I have never been asked to prove my citizenship to anyone other than INM, Mexican Immigration.  That says something about democracy and freedom.  I would never offer my passport to anyone other than an INM agent.  Should I be asked (which I never would be) at a checkpoint or by police or federales I would ask that an INM agent be present.  In fact, I have never been asked for ID at any Mexican checkpoint other than airport security which is an international standard and I use a driver's license.

The same is true of the pedimento (importation permit and invoice) for the travel trailer.  As told to us at the aduana on several occasions, "never carry the original, the only person authorized to ask you for these papers must be an employee of SAT (Servicios de Adminstracion Tributaria), never show it to anyone else and a copy is more than legal".   No one has ever asked to see those papers except SAT and  I would never show them to anyone.   I only show my "tarjeta de circulacion" or the title card that we carry in the glove box.  Again, I would refuse if asked by anyone else.

Makes you wonder what is happening in the U.S.  If you are asking me if I am a U.S. citizen 100 miles north of the Mexico or south of the Canada border, then the job of national security is not being done.

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