Re-imagining the Way We Image "Brazil" | Mark Dery Inteviews Gunter Axt

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The Latino Comedy Project's Nostradamus-like Ability to Predict Arizonan Nightmares of 2010 Back in 2007!

Thanks to master of delicious prolixity, Mark Dery, for reminding me and Perry Vasquez about this cool parody of 300 by the Latino Comedy Project--their site, hit the image to your left, has loads of hiliarious material, straight to you and the world from their base in Austin, Texas. Here's the 300 parody:

'I Imagine I Would Go Well With a Side of Fries' | More Mark Dery Brilliance... this time? On Man-Munching Animals...

Inveterate Infidel of the Purple Prose, Mark Dery, Writes In With A Link to GringoMask.com

Now I know what to wear when I go next time to Tucson, Mark! Thank you!

Mark Dery, On LADY GAGA

Mark Dery on Pre-historic Email, aka Picture Postcards and Luc Sante's FOLK PHOTOGRAPHY

That prolix wizard of the syntactic baroque, Mark Dery, is at it again with a cool review of Luc Sante's new book on "real" photo postcards. Check it out!

Xicanosmosis Assist: Mark Dery Zaps Me Morrissey's MEXICO

Hit the image opposite for the tune; the lyrics appear here:

Mexico : Morrissey

In Mexico, I went for a walk

To inhale the tranquil, cool, lover's air

But I could taste

A trace of American chemical waste

And the small voice said

"What can we do?"

In Mexico, I went for a walk

To inhale the tranquil, cool, lover's air

But I could sense the hate

From the Lonestar State

And a small voice said

"What can we do?", Oh

It seems if you're rich and you're white

You think you're so right

I just don't see why this should be so

If you're rich and you're white

You think you're so right

I just don't see why this should be so

In Mexico, I lay on the grass

And I cried my heart out

For want of my love, oh

For want of my love, oh

For want of my love, oh

It seems if you're rich and you're white

You think you're so right

I just don't see why this should be so

If you're rich and you're white

You think you're so right

I just don't see why this should be so

In Mexico, I lay on the grass

And I cried my heart out

For want of my love

For want of my love

For want of my love

For want of my love

Lyrics: Mexico, Morrissey

Mark also brought this story from THE BELIEVER to my attention

http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=article_veltman


Here's a taste:

When the crowd chanted "Mexico! Mexico!" at an off-the-beaten-track Morrissey concert in the desert town of Yuma, Arizona a few years ago, trying to get Morrissey to acknowledge that the majority of the audience was Latino, the singer responded by saying: "I'm going to sing a couple more songs then all of you can go back to Mexicali." The convention center auditorium ricocheted with cheers. "Only one white man in the world — and he's not the Pope — can tell a group of Mexicans in the United States to return to Mexico and not only avert death, but be loved for saying so," wrote journalist Gustavo Arellano in an article about Morrissey's Latino fans in the pop culture 'zine LoopdiLoop.

Morrissey's "Latino connection" has been a source of amusement and confusion to journalists who cannot quite see how this skinny, effete Englander with his oblique references to dank Manchester cemeteries could appeal to the traditionally macho, sun-kissed Latino culture. Nevertheless Morrissey dedicated his 1999 ¡Oye Esteban! tour to these fans, once famously told an audience in Orange County "I wish I was born Mexican," and the singer's new hometown is affectionately referred to as "Moz Angeles" by the local Latino contingent. Of the handful I spoke to at the Totally 80s Convention, all had seen Morrissey perform live at least twice, all had visited the annual The Smiths convention held each year in Los Angeles, and two had even met Moz in person. "Everyone we know has been touched by at least one Morrissey song," said Hernandez. "He's been in our lives for many years."

What's behind this Morrissey-Latino love fest? Arellano draws interesting parallels between Morrissey's music and Mexico's ranchera music tradition:

His trembling falsetto brings to mind the rich, sad voice of Pedro Infante, while his effeminate stage presence makes him a UK version of Juan Gabriel. As in ranchera, Morrissey's lyrics rely on ambiguity, powerful imagery and metaphors. Thematically, the idealization of a simpler life and a rejection of all things bourgeois come from a populist impulse common to ranchera.

The most striking similarity, though, is Morrissey's signature beckoning and embrace of the uncertainty of life and love, something that at first glance might seem the opposite of macho Mexican music. But check it out: for all the machismo and virulent existentialism that Mexican music espouses, there is another side — a morbid fascination with getting your heart and dreams broken by others, usually in death. In fact, Morrissey's most famous confession of unrequited love, "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" ("And if a double-decker bus/Crashes into us/To die by your side/Would be a heavenly way to die"), emulates almost sentiment for sentiment Cuco Sanchez's torch song "Cama de Piedra" ("The day that they kill me/May it be with five bullets/And be close to you").

But this is just part of the story. More immediate a reason for the connection between Morrissey and his Latino fan-base is the link between one misfit with a powerful message about transcendence and a nation of people all trying to transcend the difficulties of a life in a foreign culture. "Morrissey sings to the disaffected, and God knows alienation is part of the assimilation tradition— the equal and opposite reaction of the immigrants drive to blend in," said Arellano. "We ache; Morrissey soothes."

Mark Dery on "2012" and Disaster Porn in Hplus Magazine

Mark Dery on Tex[t]-Mex via Amazon.com

Once again, gracias and a big tip of the sombrero to my East Coast-based scribe and sometime co-conspirator in Baudrillardian worship rites, invention, and bibliophilia-laced intrigue, Mark Dery! Hit the image on your right for the review.

African American Art and Xicanosmosis

Something similar to what I ascribed to the work of Izel Vargas in these "pages" is going on with the work of Abdi Farah--they are both post-movimiento style painters whose work honors the past (the history of ethnic American figuration) but that also break through and point to new futures: in a sense they reboot African- and Mexican-American figuration with a deft touch.

My thanks to Mark Dery for tipping my eyes to this post!

Mark Dery Is In the House: New Review of Tex[t]-Mex

A big shout-out and abrazo to Mark Dery, the dapper/prolix inventor of 'culture-jamming,' for his rousing review of Tex[t]-Mex on his Shovelware site!

Mark Dery is on the Textmex Galleryblog with a Disturbing if Unsurprising Posting Regardings Latinos in the Deep South!

and, also from malcontent, prose-shaman Mark Dery:

Mark Dery's Back in La Casa: The Closer/Tijuana Brass

Mark Dery writes in to draw our eyes to a Turner TNT "treat" episode of THE CLOSER! Here's his sage rant

>>“Tijuana Brass” – Premieres Monday, Sept. 8, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) – TV-14-V

The bodies of two Tijuana police officers are found in the back of a stolen pickup truck, and all the evidence points towards an FBI informant as the prime suspect. Complicating matters, a newspaper story by Ricardo Ramos paints an extremely unflattering picture of Priority Homicide, a public relations nightmare that’s going to require some fancy footwork by Pope, Taylor and Brenda to set right.<<

Yes, that would "complicate" matters. Because the narco butchery of a couple of cops isn't nearly complicated enough, from a couch potato's-eye view. What's a little threat to civil society compared to a public-relations nightmare? What's an extremely unflattering spectacle of brute violence and the near-total breakdown of social control compared to an extremely unflattering picture? Where's Baudrillard when you need him?

The theme-parking of social pathologies: a growth industry, in el otro lado.

Ephemera

East Coast correspondent and gifted dandy Mark Dery writes in with a link to a boingboing.net posting:

Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:01:28 -0400
From: Mark Dery
Subject: Sign advertising rabbit meat - Boing Boing
To: William Nericcio


Beyond the Valley of the Ultra-Rasquache.

While it has nothing to do with Speedy Gonzales and stereotypes, it has everything to do with Speedy's stable-mate and Warner's cash cow Bugs Bunny--in a new light, however!