Ken Burns Hates Mexicans

The Sun's Not Yellow It's Chicken

Fearing my brain would quickly turn upside down, I had to set aside, momentarily, my copy of Jane Mayer's new book The Dark Side, a sobering account detailing the Bush administration's elevation of torture from abhorrent medieval practice loved by the Inquisition (and certain Nazis) to officially sanctioned U.S. policy. There is only so much trampling of the rule of law I can take in one sitting, thank you very much Alberto "The Geneva Convention is Quaint" Gonzales. I needed to take a walk. To clear my head. To think back on those halcyon days when Torquemada was the bad guy and not, say, some mid level U.S. government lawyer armed with dubiously written memos so Top Secret no one's allowed to read them and thus judge their legality.

Heading out the front door, I grabbed my trusty iPod shuffle. This is the tiny iPod not only with the ability to cram 500 plus songs in its miniscule flash drive but also the iPod with the wonderful inability to then choose said particular song from the 500 plus playlist. There is no screen on this iPod. You can't see song titles. And it has only one button -- Press; you are at the mercy of whatever tune comes next.

Personally, I like this randomness and the ensuing musical juxtapositions. Hank Williams next to Los Tigres del Norte next to Pantera. Sublime. And sometimes, like this time, as I was heading out the door beginning my walk and pressing Play, actual meaning can be divined from what appears to be mere chance, sort of like a Magic 8 Ball, only with songs: Dylan's Tombstone Blues, you see (listen here), comes up right away. I listen to the lyrics. And, as usual, in the context of Bush's "Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals" I was just reading, Mr. Zimmerman proves as prescient as he is poetic:

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry"
And dropping a bar bell he points to the sky
Saying, "The sun's not yellow it's chicken"

There's even a reference, I submit, to my fellow Tejano, Alberto Gonzales. The waterboarding vato is, I suggest, the "faithful slave" named "Pedro" Dylan sings about here:

Gypsy Davey with a blowtorch he burns out their camps
With his faithful slave Pedro behind him he tramps
With a fantastic collection of stamps
To win friends and influence his uncle

Admittedly, I'm not sure who Gypsy Davey could be. Donald Rumsfield perhaps? But my theory is worth exploration. I'll get back to you after closer readings.

And believe me, the words make much better sense when you hear Dylan sing them. So again, go here to listen to the 1965 song off of Highway 61 Revisited, a cut one critic described as "if Salvador Dali or Luis Bunel had picked up a Fender Strat to head a blues band, they might have come up with something like 'Tombstone Blues.'"

I concur. As my man Pirri Thomas would say, "Punto."

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Unlike in my sometimes jumbled real life, my web page bookmarks stay organized in neat and tidy Firefox folders: "Political Blogs," "Latino Blogs," "News and World Events," "Photography Sites," and, of course, "Fans-of-Cheryl-Burke-and-doesn't-it-suck-they-kicked-her-off-Dancing- With-the-Stars Blogs. That way, in theory, I can efficiently click and gather all necessary web knowledge for effective and informed citizenship in one business-like sitting. Emphasis on "in theory. Not surprisingly, I end up spending way too much time on sites like Dlisted.com checking the dating status of Carrie Underwood (who just dumped Dallas Cowboy quarterback and NFL Chicano Tony Romo), or else shaking my head in bemusement at Guanabee.com at their latest oh-so-tiresome swipe at Los Angeles (like, I thought that kind of dull East Coast-West Coast trash-talking ended with Tupac and Biggie? Boring.)

In any case, one folder's contents I never visit enough are the "Lit Blogs," sites devoted to books and writing. A quick tour through a few of them this morning and I'm seeing, for some reason or another, a lot of Gabriel Garcia Marquez on the internets...

Apparently Oprah has chosen the Colombian 1982 Nobel Prize Winner and his novel Love and the Time of Cholera for her Book Club. Some are not pleased with the choice. As one irate gringa writer blogged, "Good God. Could Oprah have tapped a book, or an author, who’s got more going for it, and for him? Is there anyone left in America who hasn’t heard of Garcia Marquez, or who wouldn’t have heard of him once the movie promotion swung into gear?" For the record, said writer's blog is called SnarkSpot and her "literary" fiction consists of titles like Good in Bed. I will let those facts speak for themselves.

Still, homegirl's got a point regarding Oprah's pick, coming as it does mere weeks before the November 16th release date of the movie version of the Marquez novel. Coincidence or crass cross-marketing? Probably the latter, but who cares. I'm just thankful the Latino cast can actually speak Spanish. In theory. Again, emphasis on "in theory." It seems the studio's making everyone actually speak their lines in English. Oh well. Starring Javier Bardem, Ben Bratt, Laura Herring -- among other notable raza actors -- at least with this Brown cast Love in the Time of Cholera won't suffer the legitimacy-sucking fate of that other magical realist fable adapted by Hollywood, Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Meryl Streep, Wynona Ryder and Jeromy Irons as South Americans? Please.

But back to Marquez...and now to Maud Newton's blog. In a post highlighting The Paris Review Interviews: Part II, of which Gabriel is one of the book's featured writers, Newton actually quotes GGM himself as the writer speaks about the difference between inspiration and intuition. "For a novelist," she quotes Marquez, "intuition is essential. Basically it’s contrary to intellectualism, which is probably the thing that I detest most in the world — in the sense that the real world is turned into a kind of immovable theory. Intuition had the advantage that either it is, or it isn’t."

On a personal note, I will always admire Marquez for many things, but chiefly for his inspiration to Gilbert Hernandez and the comic book writer's beautiful and moving Palomar stories. While the influence of One Hundred Years of Solitude is at once obvious its also clear Hernandez's end result is startlingly original. Beto, who along with his brother Jaime, single handedly invented what we know now as indie comics with their Love and Rockets series, issue #1 dated 1982 (oddly enough, the same year Marquez won his Nobel). Not bad for a couple of punk rock, Marvel Comics loving kids from Oxnard, California who liked to draw. And impossible without the guidance of Garcia Marquez. The first sentence of his masterpiece headlining this post. In English. Contradictory behavior regarding translation not restricted to movie studios.

Finally, on New York Times Book editor Dwight Garner's blog he asks novelist Maile Meloy if and how she wastes her designated writing time on the internet visiting sites like Dlisted and Guanabee. It seems she does. All the time. While Meloy gives no tips on how to avoid the practice, It's comforting to realize I am not alone in my unproductive time-management practices.

For Those About to Rock...

In honor of Fresh Air host Terry Gross and her recent obsession with classic Heavy Metal (welcomed, yes, but, go figure) I give you some hard rock recommendations for your weekend enjoyment...

First, here's the cover of Ellen Forney's badass collection of her comics, I Love Led Zepplin. "Several of Forney’s strips fall into the “How To” category, although this is not your standard advice column fare: topics range from the practical (“How to Smoke Pot and Stay Out of Jail”) to the whimsical (“How to Twirl Your Tassles In Opposite Directions”) to the fascinating but hopefully impractical (“How to Sew an Amputated Finger Back On”). Other strips include “The Final Soundtrack,” a death fantasy involving blood, glamour, and Led Zeppelin." Highly recommended.

And now on to Terry Gross. Who knew the NPR host was such a fan of the headbanging genre? In the last two days she's featured excellent extended interviews with "Metal God" Rob Halford on Life with Judas Priest, Looking Back at Metallica in a Moment of Crisis, Robert Plant on the "Stairway to Heaven," and Aerosmith: Hard Rocking and Hard Living. Listen to Halford talk about coming out of the closet via his infamous MTV interview, Robert Plant breaking down Blues as the roots of Heavy Metal, and how hip-hop saved the career of Aerosmith.

Next up is Drive-By Truckers' magnum opus CD, Southern Rock Opera, "a look at modern-day southern mythology, the rise and fall of Arena Rock, growing up in the seventies, and the 'duality of the Southern Thing'" One of the most written about indie releases in the last five years, the neo-rock opera's narrative parallels the story of the band's front man, and his own odyssey of a good ol' Alabama boy raised on Lynyrd Skynyrd, who moves to New York City to be a punk, becomes disillusioned with the poseur scene, returns to the South -- this time skilled in the ways of three-chord anarchy -- only to reconnect with his classic rock roots and create an entirely new sound. Post-modern, self-referential, monster hooks via three lead guitars, very badass.

And finally, Steve Almond's collection of short stories My Life in Heavy Metal: Stories, which despite the name of the title has little to do with Metal but much to say about love and sex and relationships. And did I mention sex? Frank, funny, honest, poignant. Story excerpts here. Title story about a gringo rock critic working at an El Paso paper writing reviews of Bon Jovi shows who falls for a Mexican YMCA lifeguard is one of my fave stories of the past couple of years. I know, I know, shades of white boy fantasies of the exotic other, but the honest self-examination by the narrator is the point, or one of them at least. And the prose?...dazzling.

Rock on.

Hecho en Tejas

Writer Dagoberto Gilb declares: "My mother was Mexican, my father was of German descent. That's the future of this country. This kind of mestizaje is what we have, the culture we're creating." Born in Los Angeles, Gilb bounced back and forth between L.A. and his adopted town of El Paso, Texas, working construction jobs, accumulating the blue collar experiences that would later fuel his fiction. From one of his essays...

I worked this four-story in Newport Beach, California, a building so close to Pacific Ocean salt water that it pushed against a parking structure sheerwall like an aquarium, above which was a view of uncountable masts of million-dollar yachts and catamarans lining the curving bay's piers. All the other carpenters were Anglo. I'd become the Chicano from Texas. From no less than mythical El Paso: the Rio Grande, adobes, Rosa's Cantina, Tony Lama cowboy boots, Juárez whorehouses. I wasn't just me, in other words. I was an embodiment. I was as wild as the West Texas wind because I was living in a motel room and I didn't want to continue to work for the company once this job ended.

His short story "Nancy Flores" from The Magic of Blood, about first love, class issues among Latinos, and kids playing football in the street, remains one of my all time favorite pieces of fiction. Most recently, Gilb has edited Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature an expansive collection of Tejano writings ranging from the diaries of Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca to the revisionist literary theories of Americo Paredes to the fiction of Sandra Cisneros to the lyrics of Chingo Bling. I'm working on a review of the book, and until then will leave you with this excerpt from Gilb's provocative introduction.

After President George W. Bush’s last State of the Union address, the Democratic Party offered its formal reply through one of its Easterners,but also asked Antonio Villaraigosa, the rising star mayor of Los Angeles, to represent the West. His reply was in Spanish. That the DemocraticParty put him in a position to speak Spanish to a national audience perpetuates an irritating misconception that Mexican Americans are still and forever immigrants, that our English language skills, like our relationship to this country, are for most weak and secondary. The truth is that Latino voters are either bilingual, as is the mayor, or are monolingual English speakers, while those who struggle with their inglés see him as a son or brother speaking it as well as they aspire to themselves, and are proud, thrilled, because he is an American, because he is a Mexican American.

Read Gilb's entire essay here.

Viva Jim Lehrer

Crazy weekend. The Spurs beat Denver. (Badass.) The hated and #1 ranked Dallas Mavericks lost to the lowly Golden State Warriors -- again. (Very badass.) Rage Against the Machine reunited. AND, I got to meet Jim Lehrer. Here's the story...

Before Lehrer became the distinguished newsman we see nightly on PBS’ The NewHour with Jim Lehrer, the TV journalist was a reporter for a Dallas newspaper, with ambitions to write novels. In 1966 he published his first, Viva Max, a political satire about a Mexican general who crosses into the U.S. to retake the Alamo. It skewers American history, Texas history, the media, 60s anti-Communist hysteria, and, most significantly, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), a group of “little old ladies in tennis shoes” who’s sole duty is to operate the Alamo, the famous San Antonio tourist destination they call a “sacred shrine.”

If you’ve been to this Cradle of Texas Liberty you can’t miss the large brass sign on the Alamo door which reminds people of the site’s “sacred” designation and for “gentlemen to remove their hats” before entering. As an experiment I once tried testing how long I could wear my Dodgers cap inside. I lasted three steps before a lady with a badge whispered for me to take it off. "Now!" They are very serious these Daughters.

In 1969 Lehrer’s book was made into a movie starring Jonathan Winters, Harry Morgan (Col. Potter from M*A*S*H), John Astin (Gomez from the Addams Family), Peter Ustinov as the Mexican General Max, and directed by Jerry Paris, best known as the wacky dentist from the Dick Van Dyke show. Music by Al Hirt. (Click on the image above to see poster details.) The movie also featured a bunch of Mexican vatos recruited from S.A.’s Westside to stand in as the Mexican soldiers.

Lawrence of Arabia this movie was not.

As you can imagine, the DRT was not happy at the comedic take on their interpretation of history. “Why can’t them make a nice movie like John Wayne,” one of them was quoted. The San Antonio public, on the other hand, was thrilled at the Hollywood movie filming on their midst and the movie stars wandering about their streets. A very public battle soon erupted as the DRT went to court in an attempt to stop the movie crew from filming in front of the Alamo. Among the DRT’s other tactics was a failed attempt by the little old ladies to cover the entire Alamo in black plastic to ruin the film crew’s exterior shots.

Anyway, long story short, I’m working on a project about the making of Viva Max and Mr. Lehrer, visiting here for the L.A. Festival of Books, was most gracious in telling me about his novel and his subsequent movie deal. Viva Max, he told me, changed his life. It allowed him to quit his day job and write full time. Which then allowed him to take a two day a week “fun” job on his local public television station talking about public affairs. Which led to now, anchoring a one hour network news show with his name on it. All because of a nearly forgotten movie directed by the dorky guy from the Dick Van Dyke show.

Like I said, crazy weekend.

And finally, regarding that other big event…the closest I got to Coachella was a wrong turn at that damn 101-110 interchange. I quickly took the nearest exit and safely turned around.

UPDATE: The San Antonio Current picked up this blog's Alberto Gonzales post from a few weeks back. Click here if you're interested in reading the expanded, post-testimony version. And check out this great piece on East L.A. band Ollin in the same issue. Disfrute.

Read This

Daniel Olivas at La Bloga wades through the oodles of panels for this weekend's L.A. Book Fair and highlights some of the invited Latino writers.

Also, news about OC Weekly columnist's Gustavo Arellano's much anticpated book ¡Ask a Mexican!, a compilation of Arellano's very funny and slyly subversive columns in which he answers such burning questions such as "why do Mexicans park their cars in their front lawns?" And check out the cover of the book. Very cool.