Blog On

Admittedly a clichéd headline, but one of the more interesting things about doing this is discovering how many people don't know anything about blogs. It's unfortunately quite a techie nerdy thing. But so is film direction. So I'm trying to explain to people how liberating it can be. Still we're living in a market-driven world. Lesson #1, it seems, is that successful blogs must be obsessive. Of course being an obsessive blogger doesn't necessarily guarantee transcendence as demonstrated in The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > For Some, the Blogging Never Stops

Probably should fill you in on the fabulous NGLC Conference at the Harvard Club. Even though I'd been in Harvard Square many times during my college years, I felt extremely unnerved by walking into the wood-paneled aura of imperialism--it suddenly occurred to me that the Algonquin, and the Royalton, that place I had a martini with Ilan Stavans, were on the same block. It's amazing how one can go through life as a New Yorker and remain blissfully oblivious to the corridors of power that lurk on the Manhattan grid.
But that's way beside the point. My hosts at NGLC, including entities like Latin Force and Latin Factory and that crazy guy we know as Vic Latino, were extremely gracious and we definitely belonged in that chamber, I mean we were making beautiful marketing music together. I've always felt relaxed with Leila Cobo sitting next to me, and when my panel came, I felt all that wood paneling and the little desks and memo paper and pens with the ve ri tas logo. I even experienced fond memories of when I got caught shoplifting at the Harvard Coop.
Anthony Ramirez of Vívelo/Clear Channel Productions said some really intelligent things about his Sergio George-driven path through music biz righteousness. At one point I asked Leila to tell me why she liked La Ley and I perhaps unfairly observed that if Leila likes something, it's pop, because La Ley is obviously pop and doesn't count as a Latin alternative top 100 Billboard Act. But I got a lot of laughs out of that.
I especially enjoyed the remarks of Manny Vidal of The Vidal Partnership, who talked about needing to eat rice and beans several times a week. It was such a profoundly natural statement that really got to the gut. He also coined an interesting philosophical phrase, the "cultural comfort zone" of New Generation Latinos (as opposed to Span-Doms, who sound like spandex condoms but are really Spanish-dominant folk). It was totally resonant with the dynamic heterotopic space of Spanglish, and it was just another testimony to the thing that we feel in ourselves, even if we were South Asians who grew up in southern Texas.
I guess because my book was not academically vetted I've imposed a kind of skepticism on the philosophical points I raised in Living In Spanglish, but I think it might be underestimating myself. Almost all of the conflicts in the world proceed with a monocultural imperative. The fallacy of purity or consistency, that is insisting on black and white when everything about the world is gray (or brown, or red, or yellow, or high yellow) is what gets us into trouble. In mixed-race cultures like Latin America we're confused about what to fight about, and the rules of that game are often imposed on us by outside duality-imperatives.
As much posturing as I can summon for Spanglish revolution the reality is still that depressing monoculturalism we live under and therefore we need to say something that functions within that structure. Obviously an interesting thing that happened this week was the NY Times apologizing for helping to start the war in Iraq The New York Times > International > Middle East > From the Editors: The Times and Iraq. And of course the ever-sharp Amy Goodman immediately posted this, Democracy Now! | Online Exclusive...Fatal Error: Lies of The Times, Their Lies Took Lives
Then there was even this, Salon.com News | Not fit to print
But really how is this a surprise? Haven't we learned anything from Jayson Blair, whose experience at the Gray Lady drove him to...be his cokehead self? But really, the Times offices feel quite a bit more like Thomas Jefferson than the Harvard Club. Still there were some girls at the HC bar when I was leaving that I don't think you'll ever see on West 43rd Street!
I really blew it again by not going to El Barrio tonight, where Mike and Espy would be taking in a Marcos Dimas opening. I gotta hang in that Carlitos Café thing again soon, because Rosario and Eliana are so groovy and do some good programming Art For Change - Calendar

Finally, I sat in the rain for five days en la isla, and it was a wonderful experience. I waited for two hours at Hiram Bithorn Stadium with el Don and Barry Bonds did not as much as peek his head out the dugout. We were like in the 12th row, and Marcos Rigau was there and the Don still harbored some resentment toward something Marcos said about the NPP, and what can you say, our politics is life and death. It was a nice crowd, a friendly crowd, making noise, that real cuchifrito thing happening, but at 3 p.m. they said the game was cancelled. I had to wade through a 3-foot swamp that enveloped the Rancho Morales-Rijos (small) SUV. Another few centimeters and the brown crap would have seeped into the guaguita.
Once again, the deep, deep dreams at home. It is a place with no address, a home that, despite being meters away from a U.S. National Park, is remarkably free territory. We need a Puerto Rican Spielberg to take advantage of the energy on that mountain...