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Musical Mystery Tour

I was going to do my own (non) celebrity playlist like Adriana, but I'm just not as cool as her. Instead, here are some random musings on some songs I have on iTunes.

"Momentum" by Aimee Mann off the "Magnolia" soundtrack. Sometimes I feel like I'm living this damn song. Here are the lyrics if you're curious.

"Brick" by Ben Folds Five. Matt's got Dave Matthews. I've got Ben Folds. Guess who won that coin toss. This song always makes me want to cry. No, I was not aborted, but thanks for asking.

"She"/"Tous les Visages de L'amour" by Elvis Costello/Charles Aznavour. I always feel a little dirty because it was used for "Notting Hill" but it's still beautifully romantic. Bonus nerd points because my favorite version would be made up by the first half of the French version with the second half of the Costello cover.

"El Guerrero" by Enanitos Verdes. A nice song that helped me get through a heart-fracture (didn't quite make it to heartbreak). Also, once while driving with Karla, it came on the radio and I started to sing it. She joined in and then told me I was off key. I never sang in front of her again. Good times... good times.

"Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals. Although it's married in my mind with the Copacabana date sequence in "Goodfellas" (see end of post), the innocence of the lyric and the genuine emotion in the singing always gets me.

"The Jeep Song" by The Dresden Dolls. This song perfectly captures the feeling of running into an ex object of affection. A nice choking feeling (or so I've been told). Every time I hear this song I remember the time I thought I saw a girl I liked at Cielo Vista and almost felt like dying, then, ha-ha, it wasn't even her. I still hated her for making me feel that way by proxy, though.

"I Want You" by Elvis Costello. My favorite Costello song. A couple disintegrating and the obsession that follows.

"Love to Hate You" by Erasure and "Cruel to be Kind" by Nick Lowe. They pretty much epitomize my idea of love during my early teenage years. BIG mistake since I'm not that kind of guy, but of course it would take years to figure that out. I'm still apologizing.

"Evil" by Interpol. Perla introduced me to Interpol. Thinking it was Joy Division only made me realize I'm old.

"Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainwright. I put in on Perla's iPod and we listened to it as we drove to Houston to drop her off at the airport for her trip to Spain. She asked me to sing it and I butchered it because I was doing Jeff Buckley's version. She loved it. I will always sing in front of Perla.

The Internet is for porn

Even before the whole Screech sex tape story broke Wednesday, I was thinking about porn. "How's that different from most days?" you might ask. Well, I'd just read an interesting review of a movie called "Destricted," an anthology film were seven artists were asked to, basically, come up with smut films. They being artistes of course, they came up with "meditations" on smut.
You can read the entire review here but my interest lies in the Larry Clark segment called "Impaled." Clark auditioned young men, 19 to 23, for a role in his porn film, he chose one of them and then they both selected a woman to be the guy’s partner for the scene. Here’s the real interesting bit from the review:

"What was, for generations past, at best a furtive magazine hidden under a mattress, is for (this generation) a nonstop video, utterly explicit and ubiquitous as incandescent light. As a result, they've taken the conventions of the genre as givens: Anal sex is standard fare, for example, and so are threesomes, stark forms of dominance and submission, and ejaculating on a woman's face... All the performers, male and female, shave their genitalia, because porn stars shave. 'Impaled' is like some licentious modern update of 'Don Quixote,' or 'Madame Bovary,' in which ordinary characters indulge in fantastic tales with such abandon that they lose the power to tell the representation from real life, and then act out a tragicomedy that's both harsh and touching."

It's an interesting observation. If I was growing up today, how would I be shaped by all the stuff that's out there? And, if I may be a little presumptuous, how will our children be shaped by growing up in a culture where the expression "show us your tits" can be used ironically?

Porn to run
My first exposure to pornography came when I was 13, my father was about to open a video rental store and we had some of the movies at home. Some of those movies were adult and being a child I naturally wanted to know what the adults were hiding.
Showing that even then I was a pretentious poseur, out of classic hardcore titles like "Lust in Space" and "On Golden Blonde," I chose an artsy-fartsy softcore Swedish romp. Unfortunately, this masterpiece of erotica showed exactly ONE naked pair of breasts, ONE strip club scene and TOO MANY fake copulation scenes to be funny.
Well, now it's funny, but that was beside the point to my 13-year-old self. The good thing was I didn't know any better and was delighted by my discovery.
Although that was my first brush with porn, it was not my first brush with material of a sexual nature. As I said, I wanted to know what the adults were hiding, so any time I was home alone I would search my parents' bedroom to see what I could find. On one of those gross violations of privacy I came upon this book, a tome I would learn to call master.
I assume, as I have never asked my Mom about it, that it was a wedding gift from some well-meaning aunt. It was part of a three-book set, one was on motherhood, one was on health and the other was on doing the nasty, oh, yeah... or so I thought. The book was actually a comprehensive look at sex through the ages, from prehistoric cave bopping to Disco-era screwing. It talked about sex in art, sexual development, Freud, the orgasm curve for
men and women, sexual pathologies (here's the illustration for zoophilia) and pretty much everything I wanted to know about sex except what I wanted to know. It taught me the words but not the music.

Like many of us, my parents never really had any kind of "sex talk" with me -- which was frankly rather irresponsible on their part -- but then again, maybe they knew what kind of kid they had and assumed they could probably hold off until I was 30.

Baby, it's a wild world
My growing up was rather innocent as you can see. I just never hung out with a fast crowd or any clergy, so my sexual education had a relaxed pace to it. Also, I don't know who our porn supplier was at the video store, but he had a sweet tooth for the classics. Even though it was the early '90s I still got to enjoy the more innocent '70s porn. It's hard to see women as objects when they take pity on a guy like Ron Jeremy.
Kids today don’t have it so easy.
I won't get into our adolescently oversexed popular culture, this is a porn post after all, but I can sympathize sometimes with conservatives that take a look at what's on television, music, film and just want to block everything out. Here's an Alan Moore quote I've been dying to use:

Look at Britney Spears and her sexy schoolgirl imitation. What is that actually saying, and how many apparently normal men is it saying it to? We are sexualizing our children at an increasingly young age. Exposure to The Spice Girls seems to have doomed us to a Western world where every 10-year-old wants a belly-button ring and a "Porn Star" T-shirt. And we just think it's cute! "Ah, look at them! They're acting like little whores!

Moore is all for pornography as an outlet for a society's pent up sexual energy, but only if it's out in the open -- if the "connection between arousal and shame" is severed. I agree with that, and as we see pop culture feed off porn you would think that we were on our way. But I feel like we're fucking it up as usual. Having Paris Hilton become more popular because she has a sex tape does not make us more accepting of sex in society, it makes us more accepting of worthless monsters like Hilton.

I don't know. I'm getting off message. It's almost 4 a.m. and I have the sinking sensation that if I keep this up I'll start screaming about the children, and how someone should please think of them. There's just so much ugliness in pornography now. I'm sure this has been with us since the beginning of time, maybe they used to call it a "filthy Plato" instead of a "dirty Sanchez," but now it's just so out there. If you want it you can have it; if you need it you can buy it; if you never even thought about it, there's someone that will show it to you anyway.

Maybe I'm getting old but I just don't understand. Maybe, like most things, it will correct itself eventually. Or maybe I just hate modern porn. Those shinny, gleaming mannequins -- those false creatures -- with their fake joy, their hollow screams, their plastic ecstasy. I'm afraid some of us will think that's normal. I'm afraid some of us already do.

To end on a light note, here's a link to a George W. Bush butt plug for your enjoyment. It's part of the Rick Santorum line, collect them all kids!

Hot wings

Response to my last column was not what I had been told it would be. A couple of people said that I would definitely get letters (and not the good kind) and as Saturday loomed I started to panic. You may not believe this but I am terribly sensitive to criticism and praise. I love praise but can't take too much of it and I hate criticism and can only take so much before I'm pissed off. Not good criticism, which I find hard to take but always appreciate, but the kind that comes either from numb-nut morons that can't quite put a sentence together or from self-righteous dinks that harp on something they misunderstand in the first place and then go at it from there.

As I opened by e-mail on Saturday I was holding my breath, I thought I would immediately put all column-related messages in a separate folder and read them at night, if not, I was sure I would be thinking about them all day. Surprise, surprise, when I saw I only had one... a positive one. Now, I know I tried to write my column in a balanced manner that would offend only a dumb few, but one?
Circulation's not that bad.
Am I that bad?
No, that's not it.
But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was what the e-mail said. It was basically commending me for saying that Spanish speakers who live in El Paso should learn English, something I do believe but only a minor point in the context of the whole thing. A minor conservative point.
A week went by, Matt wrote his column, and as I was walking toward the parking lot Saturday night I saw one of the guards was opening the hood of his car. I considered him one of the less friendly guys in the rotunda but I couldn’t just walk by.

"Need any help?"
"No, it's fine," he said, walking to the trunk of his car to get a gallon of antifreeze. "You didn't have a column today?"
"Next Saturday," I said.
"I really liked your last one."
"Thank you."
"It's true, what you said, we should all know English and Spanish. My ruca, she's from Chihuahua and doesn't want to learn English. I have to get me one of those girls from UTEP -- educated -- so they know both. She's great though. She does the cooking and the cleaning, I guess you have to take the good with the bad, right?"
"Yeah," I said, thinking that if my ruca was hearing this she would have wanted to punch this guy out.
"Yeah, one of those UTEP girls, you know? Because you go to the movies and sometimes you can't translate what they're saying, there's no way to get what they mean. Then you become a teacher, and sometimes, shit, you don't wanna be no teacher. You just wanna see a movie.”
"You can't share things," I said, trying not to sound like the NPR-listening tink I thought I sounded like.
"Yeah, you can't watch the game or listen to talk radio, like Mike Savage, you know?"

Wait, wait, wait -- Michael Savage? That was like sharing a fan with Himmler. Here's a little quote from the guy in case you don't want to click on his name.
"With the [Latino] population that has emerged, since they breed like rabbits, in many cases the whites will become a minority in their own nation... The white people don't breed as often for whatever reason. I guess many homosexuals are involved. That is also part of the grand plan, to push homosexuality to cut down on the white race."

What a card. I mean, that might be our plan for the newsroom (sorry Jay, Matt) but not the entire white race...

My conversation ended shortly after that, we shook hands and I drove home. I couldn't help but think that it was strange that the only two people that seriously commented on my column had been people I would consider "not of my ideology" or "nice right-wing nutters." Was there anything to this? Was I more conservative than I thought?

Maybe…
• Although I've always considered myself a Jewish Democrat, I was recently informed that I am not now, nor have I ever been, Jewish. Perla also told me that in the political spectrum she considers me "right-center."
• I'm not into anal sex. Sorry Hollywood, but that's not the way I roll.
• I do hate at least one French person.
• I don't find Ann Coulter to be a totally disgusting excuse for a human being. Not totally.
• I don't hate the poor; I just don't care.

Maybe not…
• I may not be an Orthodox Jew but a little less bacon and I could easily pass for Reform (or as Jon Stewart called us "Christians with curlier hair"). Also, Perla has Hugo Chávez posters on her wall, so 'nuff said.
• Still not into anal sex, but I do like Barney Frank.
• I do hate at least one Baptist.
• Michael Moore is hot (in case he's not, just click again).
• I don't hate the rich; I just want to eat them.

Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I don't think by column this week will settle the debate. It will probably be about food and I'm pretty sure Democrats and Republicans can agree that Chico's Tacos sucks ass. Am I right or am I right?

Perla insists she can't take down her Chávez posters because they're load-bearing. I say she's just a beautiful communist. I’ll let the authorities decide.

Why Leonard wants to be Jewish

First Debra, now this...

Our eunuch dreams

I was going to post this on Sunday but I was too depressed to do so, but after reading Adriana's post (sorry, friends only) I thought I might as well do it.
On Sunday, after going to see "Little Miss Sunshine," my friends and I ran into a guy called Almitri at a restaurant. I had met him, along with his girlfriend Nadia, when I wanted to tape a short from a 10-minute play I'd written in school. I only wanted Nadia to be in it but they sort of came as a package, so they were both the stars of my little experiment (one of many failed ones).
Anyway, we see him on Sunday and ask what he's doing. Turns out he's in Mexico City, trying out the whole music thing. He's hustling his demo around town, meeting people, getting some good feedback, attempting to find people who are as serious about music as he is -- in short -- he's fighting the good fight.
Then he asks what we're doing...
I'll tell you what we're doing. My friend Valencia, a very talented artist, works in HR; my friend Adrian is middle management in the Juárez equivalent of the Water Utilities; and me? Well, you know me. It was impossible not to feel, that, no matter what we tell ourselves, our dreams are out there and someone else is living them -- or at least doing the legwork to get them.
I must say that I'm closer to what I want to do now than I was while at Diario, which was an all-consuming monster that left little time or energy for anything else, but how much closer? I'm writing more, that's true. But will I ever attain the discipline needed to do something meaningful with what little talent I have?
The other day Adriana was telling me about the football games at her high school, and as she was describing it I got genuinely excited at what I saw in my mind. The first 10 minutes of a high school-set comedy (like "American Graffiti" or "Dazed and Confused" only in Anthony) flashed in my head -- more feeling than thought -- and I knew I just had to do it.
Did I do it?
Well, I'm still working on it. And by working on it I mean turning it over... thinking it over... mulling it over... until it's probably over. Like so many other ideas I've had.
I hope not, though.

In astrology, your 30th birthday (approximately) coincides with the return of Saturn. That is, the planet Saturn returns to the position it had when you were born, and with it comes a time of reckoning. Regardless of whether you believe in that stuff or not, psychologically or astrologically it's a time to either shit or get off the pot, or, more elegantly, it's a time to assess your life and make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
It's a time to right the course of your life or else you'll be in for more trouble down the line, when Saturn comes back in another 30 years and you find yourself at 60 wondering what happened to your dreams of launching the South El Paso Gentleman Caller-Tribune.

Anywho, big bad planet or no, we should all be lucky enough to be able to look inside ourselves, recognize what we truly want to do and go ahead and do it without being afraid. Because like I always say, if Dune has taught us anything (and I don't think it has) it's that fear is the killer. That, and that in shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack, for that is the way of the Muad'Dib.

It would be funnier if I said I wasn't kidding about Dune, but that's just too geeky even for me. Seriously, I don't know about Dune. Seriously.

Why do you hate our troops Keith?

Seriously Matt, don't try this at home