Taping My Shows

 As a teen, every Sunday, my mother would order me to tape the broadcast of Sex and the City on the Spanish HBO channel. This was during the show's original run and I was fortunate enough to have the cable box in my room. She had a VCR but not that cable box so every Sunday I would tape these episodes with Carrie and Big and the gang dubbed over by a mish mosh of Mexican voice actors. 

Mami felt her life was like "Sex and the City." I am just like Carrie!

But, I don't recall her ever watching the tapes. Sitting down in front of the TV in her room in the bright blonde wooden hobby cabinet and commiserating with the girl gang. The only person who ever did watch it was the Chilean neighbor, a macho car salesman guy who adored Samantha. "She is a woman who is like a man and that is funny," he would say as he grabbed the fresh tape each Monday afternoon. I think he watched it for the brief nudity which always felt to me like drinking Coke Zeros for the sake of sugar. That is working very hard for a fantasy. 

Mami had a girl gang. 

Las Cuatro A's or The Four A's

Angela (that's Mami), Amanda, Adel and. honestly I forget the fourth one. She may not have existed. Maybe it was a floating person who swapped in depending on when they are available. "Hey its Thursday and Albertina can't come so its going to be Alicia. She can get us into Egipto!" Egipto being a club right on the business side of the Condado lagoon modeled after pop ancient Egypt right out of Stargate. It was better than Shanahan's, a faux Irish bar closer to our home and much more popular with younger people, including folks form my highschool who would run into Mami. 

This is the time where Mami invented the Madras drink. A Cosmopolitan with a dollop of frozen orange juice concentrate swizzled into the glass. Sex and City meets the Floribama Shore type drink. I say invented because she introduced me to it when she asked me to make her one. It could have been something she overheard or some bartender at Egipto told her but here is the recipe

1 ounce vodka (Mami's favorite brand, actually Puerto Rico's favorite brand is Finlandia)

1 ounce Cointreau (needs to be Cointreau. I had no clue there were other brands of triple sec until an adult and then holy smokes is Cointreau expensive)

2 ounce cranberry juice cocktail

0.5 of lime juice

dollop of frozen orange juice concentrate. Dip a butter nice into the cardboard can and just prick the surface. Maybe size of a red bean.

Mix the first four with ice in a shaker and pour into a glass. Then swirl in the orange juice concentrate