media recommendations

I don't have much to report. I got nothing. What has been going on? The rhythms of quotidia... Grolsch has been on sale lately, so there's been a bit of that. We made some pretty killer omelettes with leeks, scallions, and feta. That is... not news. I've eaten hashbrowns and eggs 3 out of the last 5 days. So that's everything from the diet side of life.

This weekend we got a terrorist threat or something. I don't know if this fear is a postmodern phenomena or just a natural reaction, but it's pretty wild to see the culture of fear in action. What are you gonna do? Someone tells you there's a shooting threat, don't go out on the streets... so you don't go out on the streets. Then they tell you the threat is over and the streets "become" safe again. I think the postmodern aspect is how quickly the information travels and also how true it feels when it hits. How can you question such a thing? In caveman days you would have to see the cougar eat your neighbor before you believed it. But after that it would have been the same thing. If none of this makes sense, just wait for the shooting threat to come to a city near you!

We checked out a small festival in Mesilla. I think it was the Mexican independence day, but I thought that's what 5 de Mayo was. God, I knew that degree in Mexican history was worthless. Damn internet correspondence courses! The festival was fun but also kind of small and lame. We had quesadillas with local cheese and chilis. Simple and tasty. The tortillas down here, even the chips, are noticably better than in the northlands. Here I go with the food again. There's not much else to report from there. No funny characters or strange happening. We saw some Mata Ortiz pottery though--great stuff but not as good as the Mata Ortiz we saw at a gallery in August. Google Mata Ortiz (1st media recommendation). We also saw the old guy that sold us the Saint Elija drawing.

This might all sound kind of lame, but it was actually quite nice. The day was beautiful and we biked out there (4 miles). It was nice to be around a bunch of people in a festive mood. We also had a couple of beers at El Patio when we were there.

Now the media blitz.

That night we saw Little Miss Sunshine. I can recommend this to everyone. It is pretty dark at certain spots, but it's funnier than most movies I've seen recently. I guess I was just surprised by it because I hadn't really heard of it. I just wanted to see a movie that night, and that was the only one that seemed interesting. We were dying during the last 20 minutes.

Next. Blood on the Tracks (Bob Dylan) is blowing my mind. To smithereens. Don't know if ya'll are Dylan fans but this is probably his best album. I haven't really listened to it before this point. I can tell this is going to be one of those albums for me that has strong associations with a time and place. For example, Mason Jennings first album reminds me of the first time we went to folk fest. Sonic Youth's "Sonic Nurse" reminds me of Amsterdam. The Shins' "Chutes Too Narrow" reminds me of living at 119 in the winter, of one weekend in particular. And now I have the distinct feeling that Blood on the Tracks will remind me of my first two months of teaching. Sounds tragic right? Well, I don't really relate to the content of the album. Honestly I hope I never do relate to the content of the album. It's the music of a man with a broken heart--strung out and hung up to dry. I don't know what it is, but this is the album I want to listen to more than any other right now. I think when you need an album like that, you reach for it day after day, that's when you get strong associations between music and time/space.

Anyone feel me on that one? Does that make any sense? What are some of your albums that have the strongest associations?

Last recommend. is Bob Dylan's autobiography (vol. 1), Chronicles. Everyone should read this. I think in the future people will marvel at the time that Dylan walked the earth, like I marvel that my parents could have met Picasso. It was physically possible, however unlikely. Mom and Dad, why didn't you meet Picasso?! He was alive! That's why I ran away. Ok, one more media tip, check out Dylan's new album--that's what got me started on all this. Genius. The man is a mountain.

Like I said, not much to say at this time so I talk up the little things like they are article worthy. I'll leave you with a family scene.

mant-gavaganza

to all you smart alecs (allecks? aliks?) who have given me shit about vegetarianism: the day is yours. The constant and painful meat craving finally took over today. My blood lust got the best of us all, and I indulged.





needless to say there's no going back now.

some truth: apparently the mantis is not uncommon 'round these parts. After molly and I got done freaking out, I walked the mantis over to my neighbor's. She wasn't impressed, but she did feign interest!

The house in the background is not ours. It has a slanted roof like our house, but it's the other neighbor's. We were pulling down the weed jungle (jungle of weeds, not weed) in our driveway when molly came accross this little lady. I think the mantis's name is Charlsetta. The mud on my gloves is from the flooded house.

I'm glad that I've been using that special rubber-fingered tongue brush on the back of my toothbrush, because my tongue looks really clean here. Brush your tongue!

happenings

it's the halfway point of the 3-day weekend. I'm drinking trippel. The cat's drinking milk. It has rained a great deal here.

After work yesterday, my coworker megan and I went to a student's soccer game. The student, a young girl, plays varsity at Mayfield High. Our school (Alma) doesn't have sports because we have art, so if you want to play varsity sports you have to go to another school. Artists don't play sports. ? So there we were amongst the parents in the metal bleachers, the organ mountains towering 10 miles behind the field, storm clouds and a rainbow, and I think to myself, "aren't organized sports cool?" Lately I've been into golf and climbing and more individual type sports. For a while I thought it was because my tastes were evolving, but I think it was also because it's hard to get into team sports if you're not in school. It's really kind of a unique experience to play on a team. I think you only really get a good chance when you're young. I played on a men's hockey team in blaine for a few seasons, and that was really fun. But it's also way more of a hassle to work around a full time schedule. So listen kids--play sports on a team.

Later that night I met up with some more coworkers and we got ice cream at cold stone. what a ridiculous place. Do people really care how they get their ingredients combined into their food? I'm going to open a restaurant called the cyclone, and everything will be put together in a wind tunnel! We'll make a killing. Anyway they put an absurd amount of coconut in my smoothie.

After that we went to a "fancy" place called the Double Eagle--the DE (or "dirty E", or "deviled eggs", or the dingy... well, we had a fun time coming up with different titles). This place is in "old" mesilla, which is my favorite part of town. The houses there are very old, spanish colonial adobes, and the thing I really like is that the buildings are spaced on a pedestrian scale as opposed to the automobile scale of the rest of cruces. So the DE is inside a really old adobe mansion with period furnishings. Nice wood bar, expensive drinks, and strange chile concoctions stored in huge glass jars. While we were there a small film crew came in and started bustling about. Strange how a camera completely changes your (my) reality. People do things for the camera. As it turns out, this was a canadian crew working on a food network show called "Glutton for Pain." The star goes around trying painful foods, and he was here in town because there are no hotels in Hatch--a town 40 minutes up the road where they are having a chile harvest festival. Apparently he's entering the chile eating contest, where the winner is the one who eats the most (incredibly hot) peppers in two minutes.

So we drank our fancy margaritas and chatted with the director. Being canadian, these people were all very nice. I asked if we could meet the star and after he was done filming his bit he came over and shook our hands. We wished him luck and told him he was pronouncing jalepeno wrong (he forgot the "en-yay"). As they left they gave us the remnants of their chile platter apetizer, a dizzying array of variously prepared local chiles. The little red ones really got our goats.

When I got home I drank beer, watched Arrested Development dvd's and let the cat climb on my head, a good bachelor night as Mols is at Eric's wedding in International Falls (from one border to the the other, eh?).

Today I drove coworkers Aaron (A-train), Megan, and myself 20 miles up the road to Radium Springs, where a student's house has been flooded. We would not have cared to help save for the fact that this kid is one of the best students in the school (I have him in AP english). Maybe I shouldn't say that. AmeriCorps will help any student in need! But we won't hesitate if we actually like the person.

So there has been kind of an ongoing saga at this house due to the recent rains, wondering and sandbagging, but never actually flooding. Then, early wednesday morning, during a shower that wasn't even particularly violent compared to other recent rains, the student and the family awoke to a knee-deep spring rushing down their living room out the back door. I'm talking 2am freaky shit, surprised no one drowned or conked their head and drowned after slipping on some concrete freaky shit. But no one did. I heard about it in class the next day, but it didn't really register as "lost everything." Today I saw the deal and it was... horrible. They lost everything that was not above 4 feet. The thing about floods that I didn't know is that they carry silt (mud) with them. After the water is gone, the mud is still there. Stinky, mucky, poopy, gloppy mud was covering every square inch of floor space. These people are bee keepers/honey farmers with many buildings on a big chunk of land. The mud mixed with the honey preparing equipment, producing an earthy, swampy, fetid, but also sweet and sugary smell. Very strange and overwhelming.

I kind of got the impression that the whole works would need to be bulldozed, so what's the point of shoveling. But they don't have insurance on anything so the feeling was more of a 'salvage what we can because we've got nothing else.' The dad kind of clopped around picking things up and naming them, muttering under his breath. The son, the student, seemed to be in better spirits if not just in denial. Seriously I could not imagine something like this on the scale of Katrina. We worked all day digging and wheelbarrowing, sorting through remnants of a family and a home. There was one fun/tragic moment after lunch when we took turns sledghammering the flooded TV, VCR, and receiver. The moment provided a good physical outlet and some relieving laughter, but it was also very strange to think that these objects were functioning last week.

Filthy with mud, we piled into the jeep and followed our student/friend to his neighbor's hotel/hot springs. That's right--hot fucking springs, the perfect antidote to shoveling stinky mud all day. This place was out in the middle of I don't know where. We drove down a dirt road called "Frodo Place," passed a bunch of small houses and trailers, drove under a wooden railroad bridge, down an arroyo, and finally arrived at this beautiful two-story adobe compound. Apparently they don't rely on "signage" for their business. My student told me they operate completely on word of mouth.

We arrived in time for a late lunch of beans, rice, avocados, watermelon, and canteloupe, and green chile chicken chili for the carnivores. I kind of got the impression that all these people were ghosts and if I returned on my own the whole place would be a shell. Maybe it was the combined effect of being filthy and lost that produced this idea, but whatever the case, these ghosts were hospitable. They invited us to take a dip in the springs, which was actually a concrete hot tub built into the side of a small rock pile/cliff. The hot water was piped in somehow from underground--I forget the details of what the owner told me. but the important part is that it's hot and under pressure naturally. There was a goat, a rooster, and some peacocks roaming the grounds. Peacocks!

We got a call from Amy, who is the english teacher that I work with during 4th period. She was offering dinner on account of the student not having a kitchen, so we made our way back to Cruces to wash up and rest before the date. I made a beer run (for the adults!) on the way home, and I chatted with the cashier while I made my selection. Apparently he also lost his home in the flood--only he lost his a couple weeks ago and he was insured. He had just been fired from his other job as a bouncer at a Cruces club called, seriously, Graham Central Station. I've never been there, but I'm trying to imagine a night club with a dessert theme. He was fired for excessive force on a customer. Apparently the customer was putting himself in a situation where he needed to be "bounced," but he was way bigger than my cashier friend. In threat of "getting dropped," the cashier/bouncer decided he had to break a beer bottle over the guy's head.

"I've never been dropped and I was damned if that was going to be the first time. Dude I just smashed that fucking bottle right over his dome. Knocked him out cold. So now I'm working more shifts here at the liquor store," says the cashier, me nodding neutrally.

I ask him what's with the aquarium behind him and he says, "that's my pet scorpion. I've been taking anti-venom injections all week, which are actually just venom injections. It's been making me sick as hell. I think that's why I lost that fight. But if I complete the course of anti-venom, then his bite won't make me die. It'll swell up good and hurt like hell, but it won't be fatal dude." I'm wondering why he needs to be preparing for the scorpion's bite. He opens the cage and grabs this 5 inch-long monster right by the deathly stinger tail and sets him down on his tattooed forearm.

"Check this out dude," he says as he grabs a black light from under the register. The black light ignites the scorpion's entire body in a blazing magenta.

"His poison is UV sensitive," the cashier says, with the poison-covered scorpion perched inches away from my face.

Dinner was a nice creamy pasta and fruity salad, with guac and chips for an appetizer. The people over drinking age drank wine and the students drank red bull. We played records and talked for a long time. It was fun and kind of strange to be hanging out with students while I was getting half crocked and starting to get jokey. I'd been shoveling shit and sweating with these two students all day so I was less concerned with the codes of professional conduct. anyway they don't fire americorps.