Ahoy, Matey! Arrrrrrrr.

Matagalpa, while it is all that is fine and good in this world, runs a little short on forms of evening entertainment. Now, don't get me wrong, it isn't completely dead. After all, we have a bar, and that bar is actually pretty awesome, but still. No movie theater, limited live music performances, and whatnot. So you want to know what we do for fun? We hang out with pirates. Yes, it's true. Pirates roam these narrow hilly streets, head bandanas, golden earrings, and parrots on their shoulder. There's even one or two with peg legs. Arrrrrr, matey! Where's my ship, ye scurvy landlubbers?

Ok, I'm totally lying. Did you even suspect? Probably not, since I'm a devilishly good liar. So while I know you would love to believe that real live pirates abound in my wee mountain town, sadly, it's not true, unless you count pirated movie salesmen, which there really are a million of, and THAT is what we do for fun.

You can buy these movies on the street for a dollar, and they are an endless source of amusement for me. If they're good, then yay! You get to watch a good movie. But often the copies are often pretty terrible. Have you seen movies like this before? The ones where they sneak a video camera into a movie theater and film it in the dark? It's a pretty hilarious experience, all told, especially when whoever subtitles the damn things doesn't have an able command of the English language.

Like take the movie Australia, for exampe. In honor of my little sister Crasey, who just up and moved to Australia for the next year, the other night I watched this recent Hugh Jackman (drooooools) and Nicole Kidman (I'd like to move my facial muscles, but they're frozen!) movie. How can I describe what this was like? It was sort of the perfect storm of bad pirated movie flaws. First off, it was filmed in the theater, so I could hear people laughing, coughing, and one guy in front of me kept getting up to use the bathroom. The resolution was so bad that even in the brightly lit scenes it was hard to clearly see anything, and the night time scenes were just a heavily pixelated black screen. Oh! I totally forgot about the subtitles! Whoever did the translations might have been a muppet. Or Dan Quayle, to rehash a joke from the early 90s. They were beyond horrible. Here's an example:

Nicole: What do you think?
Hugh: I couldn't really say.

This is the translation:

Nicole: What do you think?
Hugh: Can I really stay?

Or how about this one:

Barman: Oy, she's a lively filly.

Translation:

Barman: Why's alive a feeling?

If I weren't a native English speaker I would've thought the movie was completely existential.