3578  Pichi-where are you? (part 1 of 2)

Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2005 11:29:02 -0500
From: Rick McGarrey <RICKMCG@FLASH.NET>
Subject: Pichi-where are you? (part 1 of 2)

(This is Part 1 of 2 parts)
The weather down here is strange in winter. It's wet,
it's cold, then warms up, then gets wetter, then
really cold, then gray, and grayer, and rains again.
And I don't have a great history in BsAs in winter.
I'm a desert rat from the southwest. There are those
out there in tangoland who may remember a bad stretch
I had a couple of years ago when I was sick down here
in the winter and stuck in the house. I wrote some
strange stuff. Alej has the flu right now, and I'm
starting to cough, so we're stuck. Cigarette smoke
and milongas are out of the question.

I've got to say this Pichi thing has really pissed me
off. It was so mean, and stupid, at the same time.
Here's the stuff that got to me:

Pichi writes:

"Rick didn't bother to get the complete or
correct names of the men he photographed. Was he too
shy to ask them?...
Rick claims he has 30 hours of footage of the
milongueros. But I doubt
any of them gave permission or even know of its
existence... All he has to do is
wait until they're gone (dead!), and he can sell a
video without paying them a dime."

That's picked up by someone else, and it's morphed
into this:

"If the story that Janis has
relayed is representative of this photographer's
manner of capturing the images of the dancers at the
milonga's then it is fair to say that his website and
stories are a fraud, regardless of the value of the
photographs. If it is true that this photographer has
no respect for his subjects or the policies of the
milongas he attends then I would say he has no respect
for the tango... I believe that was the main thrust of
Janis'
post, that this photographer was exploiting his
subjects without their permission, in violation of
their expressed wishes and that he was benefiting from
his use of the photos that he in essence had pirated.
I do not believe her main concern was for
compensation, but rather to express her disdain for
the photographer who appears to be using the
photographs to promote himself as an authority on the
tango with an insider's perspective... someone who
steals his
images and then lies to the world about how he
obtained them and about his relationship to his
subjects. Perhaps there is more to this particular
story, but at the moment I feel that I have been
deceived right along with those milongueros."


Wow. Thief, liar, fraud. You have to know Pichi was
shivering with glee when she read what this guy
wrote. She did it just like the infamous Sen. Joe
McCarthy in the 1950s. He'd use the words "claim"
and "doubt" the same way. And because she could
certainly see that my wife, Alejandra Todaro, is the
woman dancing with the milongueros in most of the
pictures, Pichi was able to imply that Alej was
involved in the scheme also. Two birds with one
stone. Alej is also a fraud. Also a liar. Finally,
she threw in this gratuitous shot at Tete because he
has a physical disability, and his toes turn in a
little when he walks:

"It's interesting that in the very first photo to
demonstrate a straight walk, the feet of Tete are both
turned in."

I was just disgusted. Alej's daughter is a lawyer,
and she got mad, and started talking about some
strange cause of action down here they call a "Dano
Moral". She said we could get together with Tete and
nail her in court. Well I certainly had the time and
the means to do it, and who deserved it more than
her?

I know everything about Pichi in the milongas, and I
wrote about things she's done to try to hurt people,
and had them ready to post. I was even going to try
to take the video I had of her losing control at
Alito's milonga and try to upload it onto the web
somewhere, and tell people on every tango list I could
find to go look at it. I wanted to punish her.

END OF PART l (part II will follow)