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[ta0]

Pulp (or Jorge, my namesake), was my host in Madrid and he doesn't do things half way, be it taking pictures, eating, "fishing," reviewing tops or spinning. After meeting his lovely wife and having an excellent but very late lunch (my fault) we lugged tripod and professional photography equipment to the park El Retiro to take pictures by the monument to the Fallen Angel. We then changed parks for the first session of top spinning. Even though he hadn't been able to play for several months after the motorcycle accident (that was his last week of "medical" vacations) he played better than I though. He could give Jakub a ran for the European title

That night he took me to his parents house in the mountain resort town of Cercedilla, where I enjoyed the great food of his mother (including delicious Spanish tortilla). The next morning we went to Segovia to film by a very tall and incredibly well preserved Roman aqueduct. We took over the only piece of grass, hoping the police wouldn't kick us out, and shot the required pictures with Figaro. In addition, as the wire walker is called puente = bridge in Spanish, Pulp did some long wire walkers with the aqueduct behind. If you don't recognize the top in this frame capture it is because it is "top secret" (don't ask).

The house in the corner, Don Cándido, is where he invited me for lunch. We ordered the plate for which they are famous, pork. But another table had 8 people and a full pork, so they got the full service: the waiters sang a poem about the pork, then one cut it using a plate to prove that it was soft, and finally he threw the plate over his shoulder for luck. Of course, they had to sweep the pieces off the floor later . . .

[ta0]

Did I say Pulp doesn't do things half way? This picture is of his Tromparium, a permanent recording set of spintop tricks! You may have recognized the octopus drawing from some of his videos. He converted a room in a place he rents together with his parents, brothers and sisters (his mother paints and has an atelier there). Four shop lights with diffusers illuminate the green chroma-key background and the spintop safe floor. Pulp filmed me doing some tricks in this unique set.

We had a quedada (Spanish name for a meeting organized through text messaging  ) in a park with a couple of the spintop players and a collector from the yo-yo club. Unfortunately Rodolfo, who appears in the first collective video, was out of town and could not come. Towards the end, Baldufado appeared with his two young (8 and 10?) sons. The boys are going to be spintop champions the way they are progressing. His father got them a huge lot of Mexican tops from Salvador ("to also give to their friends so they have somebody with whom they can play with"), like this Cobra.

 But it is obvious he is as interested as they are in playing with tops and can already do nice tricks like this Bermuda-Triangle-looking trick . After the meeting we went to Baldufado's place to look at all the models of Mexican tops he has, including the bearing and lighted tops I got from him.

Before leaving Madrid, Pulp showed me some of the exotic fish he maintains in fish tanks in his apartment, including the descendant of one he caught in my native country, Uruguay! He has also been fishing in other exotic places like Equatorial Guinea and he is soon going back to Argentina to look for a supposedly extinct (but perhaps not) fish.