Robert Rodriguez, 45, creator of the Mexico trilogy and Spy Kids films, arguably sired the Mexploitation genre in 1992 with the campy vengeance film El Mariachi.

[…]: the hopelessness of attemps at plant identification for anyone but a botanist resides in the fact that the flora of the Amazon basin is the most complex on earth; the majority of all plant species known to man are to be found in this vast forest, and Louis Agassiz once identified one hundred and seventeen distinct woods, including palms, myrtles, laurels, acacias, bignonias, rosewood, cecropias, bombaceas, Brazil-nuts or castanheiras, rubber, fig, and purplehearts, in an area a half-mile square.

Sometimes I hear people asking “Can you recommend a wine to go with the salmon (or whatever)?” To which the wine waiter’s first response should surely be—though I have never heard a wine waiter ask it—“How much do you want to spend exactly?”

I thanked him and dropped down into an Asian squat alongside the Cortina's left fender.