A Brilliant Meditation on the Border: Adam Simpson

My first publication was on Autobiography at la frontera, the border, and I am presently editing a book to be entitled Bordered Sexualities: Bodies on the Verge of a Nation, way overdue--my apologies to the contributors--and so you might guess I am a sucker for, and totally obsessed by, anything that deals with frontiers, borders, etc. You might say I am always already on the verge of falling for or through the verge--forgive the Derridean syntax. In any event, I stumbled across the work of Adam Simpson and his Boundaries project. Go here and here for details. The "play" of his figures across and thru boundaries is mesmerizing.

A Tip of the Sombrero to Izel Vargas

Uncanny, gifted painter, Izel Vargas (of Pocholandia infamy) takes our eyes to this recent dispatch:

"Bill... I thought i'd share this with you. A great friend at UNC, Charlotte, José L.S. Gámez (a fellow Tejano) wrote a piece about the Taco Truck Wars going on in the east-- in this case Charlotte."

This video glosses the incongruities at work as "Mexicans" and other immigrants change the face of the South.

More Lila Downs

Magic stuff for the ears and eyes!

Salma Hayek

Only the Brit tabloids could take a selfless act and spin it as scandalous!

Luchador Fun Via MIT's Image Trough!

Liquifying Mexican Stereotypes

I have written long and hard on the birth and death of stereotypes--"death" here is a dream as the metamorphosis of stereotypes, of narrative in general, is as guaranteed as taxes. In my class on Sex in Literature and Film I chanced to lecture the other day on the dynamics of sadism and masochism. The words are key here today in my archiving of the story of Mexico's pozolero, Santiago Meza López, as they both describe pathological diagnoses of extreme (and common) human behavioral practices that are named after real people: the Marquis de Sade and Sacher von Masoch.

When stories like the one below break, the mind is indelibly fixed with the horror of liquefying human corpses--throw in the lingering hangover of the trope of the Mexican bandit, updated with a post-Tony Montana narco metaphorics and the in-our-lifetime disintegration of the cultural life of the American/Mexican frontera and its hard not to image the next-generation figuration of "Mexicans" including some facet of this horrific, better-than-Poe, tale.

Zócalo Alert

Faithful reader/artist Anabel Weekly, writes in and tips our eyes to a cool clearing house for film, lit, politics etc... Hit the image to be transported!

Jorge Luis Borges and Jacques Derrida

I would not be whatever it is I am on paper, etc. had I not passed through the labyrinths, the paper facsimile bourne scribblings of these two seers, these sage departed metaphrastic gurus.

More Classic Tex[t]-Mextian Stereotypes from 1982: The A-Team Pilot, Mr. T, and "Mexican" Bandits!

Mexican Pulp Art Posting from 2007

Classic Tex[t]-Mextian Archetypes from a 1962 Pulp Fiction Paperback

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Xicanosmosis!

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an update from the photographer:

"Hey Bill, you asked me to tell you the story behind the super woman shot. While I lived in Palo Alto, my girlfriend had a research project about transsexual sex workers in Mexico and the border region. I spend a lot of time there and I became obsessed with Mexican religious art and chicano art. A year later I went to a conference in Paris and I found a small gallery with painted sculptures. And there she was - Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Of course, I took a picture. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the artist or the gallery. I'm not even sure if the sculpture has anything to do with the Mexican version of Mary. It might be just an interpretation of French religious art. I uploaded the picture on flickr anyway ... you can read the rest of the story in the comment section of the picture. Greetings from Berlin, David."

Rat Pack Cool, DC Style

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Gay Homies!

Anderson Coopers' Enlightened Ex's Views on English