questions and observations involving sam cooke, sierra mist, etc.

- honestly, what's the deal with all these girls claiming sam cooke to be one of their favorite musical artists? it almost comes off like a trend.

- who in the world would ever claim sierra mist to be their favorite pop?

- over the recent holiday season, while in an airport, i overhead an older, filipino-american doctor talking to a couple of american businessman about his granddaughter. "she has such an amazing outgoing personality," he said, "so friendly, always smiling, and she can talk to just about anyone about anything, too! oh, what a personality she has! really, it's like that of a hooker!"

new music blog

THE HOP

<--the parliaments feat. george clinton

Hey you! No peeing in the lake!

Originally uploaded by rswells.

up at summer camp. wet hot.

all the photos

i'm in kansas.
i'm about halfway through uploading the fotos from my recent trip to mexico and brasil.
i leave for camp in minnesota on wednesday.

i still don't know how to feel about zidane's vicious headbutt.

excerpts from most recent conversation with bríjido the taco man

(upon my arrival)
b-it´s a miracle! i thought you´d gone away and left us for good!
r-no. i just went to eat elsewhere for a few days.

b-seems to me you´ve travelled to many places.
r-yeah, i guess so.
b-have you been to spain?
r-yes.
b-france?
r-yes.
b-england?
r-yes?
b-germany?
r-yes.
b-austria?
r-no.
b-portugal?
r-no, i´ve never been to portugal.
b-do you know where portugal is?
r-yes, i know where portugal is.
b-it´s just next to spain. a small country.

b-have you ever been to lebanon?
r-no.
b-saudi arabia?
r-no.
b-egypt?
r-no, i´ve never been to the middle east.
b-those are arabic countries...israel?
r-no.
b-now let´s go through the african countries!
r-but i´ve never been to africa.
b-algeria?
r-no.
b-ethiopia?
r-no.
b-the congo, angola, senegal?
r-no, i told you already. i´ve never been to africa.
b-somalia?

r-and if you could travel to one country, which one would it be?
b-all of europe and asia.
r-no, one country.
b-just one?
r-just one.
b-denmark!!!
r-denmark? why denmark?
b-because the most beautiful women in the world come from there.
r-from denmark?
b-of course!
r-and how do you know that?
b-because they´ve come by here, they´ve eaten tacos here before. one with blue eyes, the other green. and hair down their backs. whooo! they were here in 2093.
r-2093? you met them in the future?
b-no, i messed up. i meant to say 1993. they came with their men, too. as tall as the fucking ceiling, i tell you.

(at this point brígido walks away from me and quietly cuts up tortillas for a few minutes. he then groups the small tortilla bits in his old hands, walks outside, and gently drops them on the ground. he´s feeding the pigeons.)

(as i´m getting ready to leave)
b-where are your papers? you´ve got to have your papers on you!
r-i´ve got my little notebook here. just with random thoughts and notes.
b-let me see. ah, it´s in english, huh?
r-yep.
b-hmm...all i see are spiders.
r-well, here´s my driver´s liscense.
b-aha...says here that $50,000 goes to whoever turns in this young man, wanted for stealing women and eating without paying!

b-what was your name again? andres, right?
r-no, it´s robert. like roberto, but without the o. where´s andres come from?
b-oh, that´s the name of my daughter´s boyfriend. she´s in tennessee. she studies dinosaur bones.

nearly a week in

i´ve been doing the cultural rounds during the day: museums, parks, cathedrals, plazas. just between the alameda central and the palacio de bellas artes i found a guy selling some lp´s last thursday. i flip through what he has sitting out and then ask if he´s got any mexican rock from the 60´s and 70´s, like LA REVOLUCION DE EMILIANO ZAPATA. this signifies to him that i must know what the deal is. i don´t really, but i tell him that i´m kind of a dj and i´m mostly into soul and funk 45´s these days. he tells me to come back the following day and he´ll bring some mexican stuff on 45 that i might be into. alright ok.

back the next day, but not before entering the palacio de ba and admiring the murals, though many of them are so big that support columns for the museum´s very structure tend to block a complete view. when i go back to the music man, pablo, i see that he´s brought out his record player and has a small stack of 45´s with him. oh, and he´s got his leopard-skin pantalones on him and a girl that looks to be his daughter with him, but is really his girlfriend...he shows me a few items and i´m definitely interested, but vacillate on what to buy. in the end, i walk away with three: la revolucion de emiliano zapata on polydor, peace and love on raff, and tinta blanca on philips. pablo tells me he´ll have more next week, too. word.

from there i walk to a small taquería. i´m there by myself, save for bríjido, the taco man - a true character. he talks to me of tall germans, california, and the value of an education. i eat my three tacos soaked in lime juice and tell him i´ll be back. when? he asks. soon, i respond.

i see X-MEN 3 later that evening. without a doubt, i was the only gringo in the sold out theater. the movie was nothing more that ehhhh and i ate too much popcorn. taking the long way home, i see a men´s clothing store called ROBERT´S: EL ARTE DE SER (ROBERT´S: THE ART OF BEING). not quite the CREPUSCULARITY, but funny enough. i then pass through the zocalo and come upon a book fair. a pleasant surprise. make a few purchases before getting back to the hotel, playing a few games of tetris on my game boy, and then trying to get to sleep.

as a tourist, it seems that consumption works the quickest to abate the solitude, but the few friends i´ve found in pablo and brígido help too.

the next day, saturday, i start off with some chicken quesadillas - with the green sauce, aka the hot shit. my fire breath quickly went from dragon to dragoon. i spend the afternoon in chapultepec park and check out the huge and impressive anthropology museum nearby, though only make my way through maybe 1/3 of it in two hours.

that night i´m trying to kill the usual down time twixt dinner and bed when i hear this bad, bad music being played. it´s ostensibly a cover band at an outdoor cafe. vh1 gone bad kind of thing. all long hair, tight shirts, and self-styled attitude. making jokes about being wasted and on drugs at 9.45 pm. they went from some contemporary emo to radiohead´s ´creep.´ and the drummer. oh, god. the drummer was way off, doing all these superfluous flourishes and fills, but would not stop fucking twirling his sticks at every opportunity! he´s whirling them around like they were lassos. then, he takes a sip of his bottled water and directly spits it out like an aggressive fountain. some strange noise soon starts to emanate from the crowd. i look over to see one of the male fans standing up on a bench and threatening to take down his pants. he comes close, but eventually refrains and is pulled down from on high. the band ends with a cover of ´are you gonna go my way´ by lenny kravitz, which turns immediately into an extended drum solo. naturally. it´s all i can do to laugh and walk away.

more soon. yesterday turned into a big day itself, including a protest led by masked men and women and another encounter with brígido.

el df

after a few fun-filled weeks with the good people of kansas city and lawrence, i arrived in mexico city two nights ago. the in-flight film was LAST HOLIDAY. a curious movie about christmas and cancer, starring queen latifah, ll cool j, and guest-starring none other than gerard depardieu. an unheralded classic, no doubt. upon arriving at the airport, i breezed through customs and was put into a suburban taxi with another american. his destination: a hotel called FIESTAMERICANA.

i checked in to my spot, HOTEL ISABEL, close to the city´s historic center. the elevator smelled of cinnamon. a few rooms down from me i noticed that 2 american dudes were drinking tequila drinks outside of their room. after dropping off my gear, i walked down to introduce myself and see what they were on about. turns out they had just graduated from occidental college in california two days earlier and were on a graduation trip. one spoke spanish very well, the other knew only a few words and phrases. they invited me to join them for a drink and i accepted. as we walked the empty streets, however, we quickly realized that we weren´t exactly in the social district. nevertheless, this did not stop the one dude from using one of his well-practiced phrases wherever we went: ´¿dónde está la mota?´ (´where is the weed?´) oh, americans - i feel that i feel a strange love for you all!

back at the hotel, i struggled for slumber. the bed felt more like a board, the pillow a styrofoam block. luckily, though, the modest room contained another bed and another pillow for your humble narrator.

yesterday started with a big breakfast: bread, sweet bread, scrambled eggs, beans, tea, orange juice. along with my 2 american counterparts, i then traversed the metropolis´ underbelly via the steamy metro. our main afternoon stop: the universidad nacional autónoma de méxico (unam), the country´s largest university. 260,000 estudiantes, according to the guidebook. it´s main attraction: the central library whose facades present the makings of mexico in mosaic on all sides (as seen above).

i left my compadres later that evening. they had switched hotels, looking for more exciting nighttime activities. i went back to ISABEL. in my room by 9pm. tired through and through, but, once again, finding little sleep. here i am today, though, armed with a few mild tourist trappings, about to make my way to the city´s main plaza, el zócalo.