Category: Uncategorized

Had a lovely weekend, thanks for asking. Friday night I stayed out until 5 a.m. drinking with three friends. Hadn’t done that in a while; it went a long way to undoing the mental aging process launched by spending the last two weeks surrounded by 19-year-olds. I’d forgotten how good a 5 a.m. cheeseburger can taste.
Sunday brought a relaxed trip to Patzcuaro, a lovely small town about an hour’s drive away from Morelia. It was nice to get out of the city and the air pollution for a bit, even if the town’s streets were clogged with vendors selling “local” “crafts” to passing gringos.
In between, on Saturday evening, I went to to Estadio Morelos — home of the local soccer team, Los Monarcas. Team propaganda says the team is named for, well, monarchs — particularly manly kings. But the real reason is that just outside Morelia is Santuario Mariposa Monarca, one of the world’s largest reserves for migratory monarch butterflies. Nearly a billion monarchs flutter down here from the Great Lakes each winter.
It’s a big attraction for the region. But, but it’s not a particularly threatening mascot — which is why the team chooses to be Los Monarcas instead of Las Monarcas and why it sticks to its invented “king” story. Would you be intimidated by a team named The Quite Pretty But Extremely Delicate Butterflies?
(I hear that fans of opposing teams, unfooled, have created some creative anti-Monarcas taunts over the years, many of them turning on the alleged homosexuality of the team’s supporters.)
This year, Los Monarcas are quite good — second in the 18-team Primera Division — and it was quite an exciting game Saturday against Los Tigres of Nuevo Leon, despite bouts of pouring rain.
(May I make an aside for a moment? Someday, when I’m much wiser than today, I will produce a Unified Theory of Life in Underdeveloped Countries. Said theory is still in development, but I believe I am now ready to unveil Benton’s First Corollary:
The amount of economic development in a nation is inversely proportional to the relative prominence of its advertising for building materials.
Theoretical backing: As a nation gains wealth, greater division of labor leads building construction to become an ever more specialized skill. In poorer nations, more people perform their own construction work, which makes the widespread advertising of building materials a potentially fruitful expenditure. In wealthier nations, only a smaller group of architects and crew foremen need to be sold building materials, encouraging their makers to advertise in more directed, specialized forums.
Supporting evidence: I have already commented (fifth photo down) on the strange prominence of roofing materials in the advertising of Zambia, along with the strange prominence of Christian imagery in said advertising. And the biggest advertiser at the Monarcas game, by far, was Tolteca, a firm that makes concrete. The halftime entertainment was — and here I shit you not — a group of middle-aged men dressed in costumes meant to evoke sacks of unpoured concrete.
These men were made to run an obstacle course — including a rubber slide whose transit seemed to evoke the birthing process — and then attempt to kick a soccer ball into a goal. Standing between them and success was an enormous goalie, himself dressed in an enormous concrete-sack costume. He was quite cruel, this monster concrete goalie, gleefully slapping aside the halfhearted kicks of the men, whose kicking movements were likely not used to being restrained by concrete leggings.)
The other halftime entertainments were, in order: A dozen very attractive dancing girls, whose appointed tasks included flirting audaciously with the race of concrete-sack people; a man dressed up as a dancing refrigerator; and a creature who, depending on the angle, was either an alien or an under-ripe tomato come to terrifying life.
In the end, the Colorful But Extremely Sensitive To Cold Temperatures Butterflies edged Los Tigres, 2-1.

Saw my first Morelian goth kid yesterday. He wore a black cape and boots with too many buckles. The right side of his head was shaved, but the long top strands drooped foppishly over the stubble. Skinny and pale (for Mexico), he had the paranoid look of someone who fears everyone around him is staring in disapproval. Or, far worse, that no one is.
When I was on Pitcairn Island in 1999, gossip was that one of the islanders was gay. At the time, I thought that might be the most isolated human existence possible — to be the only gay man on an island with only 40 residents, hundreds of miles away from the nearest fellow traveller, without so much as a passel of Queer Eye DVDs to keep you company. Being a goth kid in Morelia isn’t that bad, of course, but I wonder how much of a community that kid can find here. Where will he get his Siouxsie & the Banshees bootlegs?
Then again, I may be underestimating Morelia’s musical diversity. Sunday night brought to town what, judging by the number of posters on local walls, is the most anticipated concert of the year: a death metal act named Leprosy. Their posters feature pictures of the group looking scary and hairy and a slogan that is so deliciously wonderful it may end up on my tombstone:
Leprosy: El Grupo Death Mas Brutal En Mexico.
(“The most brutal death group in Mexico.”)
I can’t tell you how much I love the sounds of those words. For more than a week, I have been muttering to myself, in a scratchy voice half-Ricardo Montalban and half-Rob Zombie: El grupo death mas brutal en Mexico.
I can report that the phrase’s mention livens up any conversation — as do the obligatory follow-up jokes about the opening act. (Depending on the day, they include Cholera, Dengue Fever, and the Yaws).
I realize that, contrary to the impressions of suburban parents, the goth and death-metal demographics do not often overlap. But I imagine that, in Morelia, black-clad teens with unusual hair are forced to find commonalities.

From Pitchfork’s generally worthwhile list of the top 100 albums of the last five years comes this week’s nominee for Worst Simile of the Millennium:
“Even more far-reaching was 2003’s Kish Kash [by U.K. dance artists Basement Jaxx], which at its best, sounded like the aural equivalent of Shiva’s rainbow cumshot.”
Um, ewwwww.
For the record, I am the proud owner of Records Nos. 99, 96*, 94*, 91-, 89, 86-, 78*, 77*, 72, 71*, 70-, 62*, 61, 60*, 58, 57*, 56, 54, 53, 51*, 50, 48-, 47*, 46-, 45-, 44*, 43-, 42-, 41-, 40, 39-, 38, 36-, 35, 34*, 31, 27*, 25-, 23-, 21*, 20, 16, 15, 14*, 13*, 11-, 10, 9-, 8-, 7-, 6-, 5-, 4, 3, 2-, and 1-.
(Since these lists exist solely for the purpose of promoting discussion: Asterisks designate albums I would bump up to a higher slot; minuses tackle the [in this web site’s considered opinion] overrated. Please note that a minus doesn’t by any means indicate the album in question is bad. The Avalanches’ Since I Left You is frickin’ awesome, for instance. But the fifth-best album of the last half-decade? ‘Tis far too slight for that.)
Some artists whose work would have made my own 2000-2005 list, despite falling short of official Pitchfork deification: Belle & Sebastian, Beulah, Calexico, Neko Case, Clem Snide, Consonant, DJ Shadow, Enon, the Exploding Hearts, Luna, Malkmus, Mojave 3, the Mountain Goats, My Morning Jacket, Pernice Brothers, Rjd2, Tahiti 80, the Thermals, and the Weakerthans.
Also, including only Iron & Wine’s first album is an insult to its amazing second.
I like these regular Pitchfork lists because it gives them a chance to reevaluate their past critical pronouncements — or, to put it less generously, to clean up after their horrible errors.
F’rinstance: Just a few weeks ago, the ‘Fork proclaimed the Arcade Fire’s debut album to be The Best Album of 2004 and King of the Holy Roman Empire. Now, it’s just the 45th-best album of the last five years. Either 2004 was a spectacularly bad year for music or (more likely) the ‘Fork has recognized the error of its ways. (Me, I like the album, but it most certainly ain’t all that.)
F’r anuth’r instance: The Rapture’s debut album was allegedly The Best Album of 2003 and Czar of All the Russias. But now it only ranks No. 38 — a much more fitting placement.
Special Top 10 pronouncements: No matter how many times I try, I simply cannot get into the Animal Collective (No. 9). The love of Modest Mouse (No. 7) is, like an all-consuming foot fetish, a love I shall never understand. And I think we as a nation are still giving Radiohead (No. 1) too much credit for being difficult.
(Quoth the review: “Consequently, in the months following its release, Kid A transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts, a surprisingly ubiquitous signifier of self. Owning it became ‘getting it’; getting it became ‘anointing it.’ The record’s significance as a litmus test was stupid and instant and undeniable: In certain circles, you were only as credible as your relationship to this album.” These three sentences manage to summarize my problems with the indie-rock world quite neatly.)

A musical suggestion: If you’re even remotely interested in Mexican music, track down a copy of Mexico 100: Una Verdadera Maquina del Tiempo. It’s an awesome two-disc compilation of the last century of Mexican music: fluid ballads like Aguistin Lara’s “Farolito,” archival classics like Carlos Gardel’s “Volver,” and violin waltzes like Jorge Negrete’s “Mexico Lindo Y Querido.” Spliced between songs are bits of old Mexican radio — jingles for old products and big moments in Mex radio history, like the announcement of Frida Kahlo’s death or part of a speech by Madero. Disc 2 is a bit weaker, since it focuses on more recent times (and the horrible production values Mexico imported from America in the 1980s), but even it has its great moments, like Mayte Gaos’ cover of “Chapel of Love” and a live Los Fabulosos Cadillacs track.
I don’t think “Mexico 100” is available in the U.S.; it was assembled by Sanborns, a Mexican retail chain (and one of the foundations of the fortune of Carlos Slim, the richest man in Latin America). But you can buy it online for the low low price of 80 pesos — about $7.50. Don’t know about shipping to the States, though.

Kristin emails me to point out I’m not the first person to notice the similarity between ferreterias and ferrets.
To which I say: Are you, ma’am, implying that my sense of humor is anything other than completely and utterly original, that it was not sprung fully formed from the skull of Zeus untainted by the “senses” of “humor” held by other Texas-based Internet “personalities”? Are you meaning to say that a joke birthed by me, the proprietor of crabwalk.com, could possibly have a separate point of origin and have been earlier midwifed by another individual?
What utter hogwash!

Ayn Rand’s thoughts on cooking. “Ayn Rand did not accept that a recipe is an end in itself. It is a means to an end: the food. But not any old means will suffice. Has to be rational. Has to be objective. Has to be good. ‘Good’ in relation to a specific, pro-man purpose.”

I wonder if they’re still taking new memberships over at Citizens Against Nude Juicebars and Pornography.

A few random notes picked up in recent days:
– A terrific interview with David Cay Johnston, the NYT’s great tax reporter. Interesting insight into the mind of a certain kind of journalist. He’s awesome, but I think he kids himself a bit when he says he’s not ideological — he clearly is. His dodges (“I mean, I can show you reviews of my book that say that I am a populist, that I am a classic conservative, that I am a progressive, that I am a liberal Democrat. I’m glad to see that, that’s good. I’m not an ideologue. If anything I am a professional skeptic”) read like, well, dodges.
It’s an interesting question whether there’s room for a guy like that at a newspaper. His tone clearly belongs at a place like The New Republic or another font of muscular opinion journalism, but his talent is such that he doesn’t deserve to be marginalized at a place like, well, The New Republic, where he’ll only be read by a few tens of thousands. He certainly makes the NYT a better paper, but he also certainly plays into the NYT’s ideological weakness.
– Been reading a lot on Bruce Chatwin, the travel auteur mentioned a few posts back. Such an interesting fellow, although he (not unlike Johnston) offers some warning signs of what not to do.
Johnston certainly doesn’t make things up, but he writes from a clear ideological perspective — which makes his work wonderful but perhaps (?) out of place in the daily newspaper of record.
Chatwin, in contrast, occasionally made things up. Parts of his books were fabricated. At times he tried the old dodge that a certain amount of fabrication was, well, expected by readers. Some of his books he labeled fiction in hidden places, but the fact they were all about this fellow named Bruce who was talking to real people in real places made it clear he had no intention of tearing down the fourth wall.
Now, Chatwin was writing books, not works of journalism. For better or worse, people have grown more used to fibbing in books than in newspapers and magazines. (Does anyone really think David Sedaris’ stories are all literally true? Come on.) But the basic lie of it all remains — people like Chatwin and Ryszard Kapuscinski told falsehoods much larger than anything Jayson Blair did. And they’re globally acclaimed.
(It also helps that they had roughly 1,000 times the talent Blair did.)
I don’t have any wise summary points here — just that people have different expectations of objectivity from different sources, and that some people manage to work outside those expectations. A lot of the time, they produce brilliant work — Johnston and Chatwin and Kapuscinski alike. But it’s unfortunate that every time a journalist writes something of great value, it seems to be tainted, either with perspective or with fabrication. Maybe our expectations are off. Or maybe the writers’ expectations are. Johnston wants the imprimatur of The New York Times on his stories, but isn’t willing to play by the down-the-middle rules most newspapers enforce. Chatwin wants the bracing power of non-fiction but doesn’t want to play by the rules of Always Telling The Truth.
(About Chatwin’s most famous book, The Songlines, about nomadic Aboriginal Australians: “In Songlines, Chatwin takes leave of the facts about the people he met and the places he went. Had Songlines been fiction this would have been forgivable; but Chatwin refused to have his theory regarding the nomadic nature of man reduced to fiction. [Biographer Nicholas] Shakespeare took the time to interview the many people Chatwin spoke with while researching The Songlines. It is very clear they felt completely betrayed by Chatwin. More damningly, they point out Chatwin did not, in fact, spend much time with actual Aboriginals.”)
Another Chatwin link here, touching on his brilliant “The Coup,” one of my favorite bits of travel/foreign reportage, and which may have also been partially fabricated. I just hate being disappointed by the people who I want to be my writing heroes.
– For those of you, like me, too interested in the Pitcairn Island sex trials for your own good, here are the hearing docs from the pre-trial appeal. And Wikipedia has great day-by-day summaries of last fall’s trial testimony. That second link makes for crazy reading for me, since I know most of them. (Well, in that reporter-reportee sense.)

Calexico and Iron & Wine record an EP together, plan tour. I do believe I just wet my pants in excitement.

For the Decemberists and/or Morrissey fans out there: Ahem.