¡Ay! ¡Un gusano del oído!

I don't know why this song suddenly popped into my head this week, but it's been consistently there since at least Tuesday. Thus it's become my "gusano del oído" ("earworm" translated into Spanish . . . perhaps) du jour, de la semaine, au what-have-you.

This one takes me back . . . to San Antonio, actually, where I used to see this video on Telehit, the best music video channel there ever was, short of (or on par with) MTV US pre-1984. Yes, that good. Telehit is based in Mexico City, so it had at the time I watched it a real "chilango" vibe, exceedingly cool, trendy, and sophisticated, even though it was cranking out tunes and style for teens and tweens in an economically challenged, developing country.

Contrast that with MTV, except for maybe the first couple of years, which you would never know is broadcast from New York City. Its hipness has always been what the suburban kids think is stylin', which to me has always seemed unforgivably white bread, even when they're going all gangsta. It's almost as if MTV is ashamed to set an alternative tone for a horribly square country.

You certainly don't see that on TV in the UK, which so often seems very London in 'tude, for better or for worse. (I keep thinking of my recent date with Keith Lemon on BBC when I was in Scotland recently. Not likely to be the next Dancing with the Stars export, I am quite sure.) But here in the good ol' US of A, all we get is . . . a corporate California interpretation of sophistication, even when it's being channeled from Manhattan.

So, yeah, I am pissed off about being back home. How did you ever guess? My anguished wanderlust is high in the dark clouds of plaintiveness ready to throw myself over the next exquisite precipice of drama. Bring me Edelweiss! Please! (And major special pretzels if you get that reference. You've been reading liner notes!)

So much so that I'm daydreaming of my old life in "exotic" Texas, where it's no doubt 110 degrees in the shade (if you can find any), and they've just lethal injected another poor miscreant. Pretty pitiful when all that looks much more appealing than my so-called life in Pittsburgh.

"¡Gritar! ¿Quién? o ¿Cuál? Da igual, te juro da igual."