The Private Zoo of President Hank of Tijuana

From @Astro_Ron International Space Station: Caught this marsh fire near New Orleans #FromSpace on 8/27/11 @ 7:31pm GMT NOFD allowed it to burn out (inaccessible); via Sandsteps

Four words for you: DRIVE, BY, TRUCKERS, Y’ALL + Patti Smith + Stephen Malkmus in the Record Crate for 225 Magazine  http://ow.ly/6hUMD

XTC, Oranges and Lemons
The Velvet Underground, Loaded
Television, Marquee Moon
The Only Ones, Special View
Small Faces, 78 in the Shade
Traffic, Welcome to the Canteen
Todd Rundgren, A Wizard, A True Star
Drive-By Truckers, Gangstabilly

• Last night the air was thick and smoky like my neighborhood was on fire. I was walking up the street to walk Maya home from a friend's house, thinking, their house is the house on fire, I'm gonna have to walk through fire, I'll get everybody out and then one of them will go, 'the cat!' and I'll be all 'first goddamn time that cat didn't run out the door when I showed up! OK, cough, cough, wade through fire, here, kitty kitty...', then I checked Twitter and was all, whew, just a massive marsh fire! That is pretty much what parenthood is like all the time.
  
  
• The kids informed me they are all doing the Spotify and I do all I do for the kids. I thought I didn't like their search thing, but I was all wrong about it. It's fine, plus I like that I can get my local stuff through the player. The links changes with the times. I can't testify to the mobile Spotification experience since you have to pay for that, and I already pay for Rhapsody. I can live with the ads. The play queue is a little counter-intuitive.
  
  
• My protests against Loaded as a quality listening experience are as foolish as my ones against Spotify as a means to listen to it. When Maya was extolling her new love for XTC yesterday, she said, "That nerd at the record store was right, the one talking about Velvet Underground or whatever; he said, 'You are gonna like bands other than the Beatles and he was right.'" Mark this day, nerd; a female person said you were right about music.
  
  
• Offbeat editor and birthday boy Alex Rawls has a great review of the new 33 1/3 books about Marquee Moon and Some Girls. Oxford American editor Marc Smirnoff has an insightful head-to-head with a former intern on the subject of internships. Any other of my editors - current, past, and prospective - out there with new articles needing a kind breeze blown up their sundress? Where y'at, Hails and Horns?
  
  
• After that Drug Kingpin Hippos show, I'm into the idea of plutocrats and their private zoos, and particularly how the animals invariably get loose when the plutocrat falls. Do they go around and open the cages on their last Humvee ride around the compound? I might. Prince Rainier used a tour of his zoo to woo Grace Kelly. Gaddafi's son had one, and now there is nothing but peacocks roaming the grounds. Incidentally, Time.com seems to be the go to source about private zoo exposés. What do they have?
  
  From Wikipedia's "List of Zoos", I found out that their a shit-ton of zoos in the Philippines and that Jorge Hank Rhon, president of the municipality of Tijuana from 2004-7, had a private zoo and was
  
  also known as an animal lover and trader. However, his purported love for animals has been fouled by reports that many of his animals are the result of smuggling. Jorge Hank says his favorite animal is women. In 1991, he was directly linked to a failed illicit deal for an endangered gorilla, but was never formally charged.
  
  and
  
  Hank was first arrested in 1995 at the Mexico City airport when he was caught carrying a suitcase full of articles made of ivory tusks, pearl vests and coats made from the skins of endangered ocelots, but Hank claimed that no law had been broken and the merchandise was legal. He was released on bail and was later acquitted.^[21][22]
  
  as always with Wiki, I cannot vouch for the veracity of this story nor can I really condone their  editorializing (bold: mine) without offering a quote or something in support. I'm just saying, roll the phrase "The Private Zoo of President Hank of Tijuana" around on your tongue and see how it tastes. Like a marsh fire but better and worse at once.
  

My post

This was awesome!

Ed. To add, in retrospect, was not so awesome.

Ed. to add:

• OK, today was pretty awesome. this post was originally a demonstration for #digitalbrands on the strike tag, and how to augment/correct a published post, so I will.
  


• I was invited to be on WNYC's Smackdown to take on the notion that Steve Jobs was the most important person in music in the last 25 years, and while I will contend he nets the crown for finalizing, monetizing, stylizing, de-brick-and-mortaring the contemporary digital music industry, I offered Prince as my choice. I'm not the world's biggest Prince fan, but His Purple Mountain Majesty was the first to really subvert was it meant to be a big star since Elvis, how to conduct business in a digital age in his own tms, even crack the notion of a indelible branding by becoming his own anti-brand.
  
  Prince has managed to remain indelibly relevant, revolutionary even despite not releasing an album really worth a second listen in 23 of those 25 years. My argument can be tempered by this thought: were I to for some reason buy one of those dozen or so albums released after Graffiti Bridge, the first place I'd go is iTunes. Advantage, Jobs.
  


• I also did a lecture on Baton Rouge blues for a friend's class. My ego was on the verge of imploding.
  


• I didn't listen to one note of music today and I had a crappy, hastily maw-crammed lunch from Wendy's. Without music and food, I'm left with nothing to blog but my own vanity.
  


• Maya took a liking to XTC's Oranges and Lemons when I payed it for her the other day and today said XTC might be her new favorite band. She said she likes how their name means "happiness". Somewhere in the time-tunnel quanta of influence, my teenage XYC-obsessed self swells with strange, distant pride.

Celebrate that

Feufollet at Lakeview Beach & Park, Eunice, LA. August 2010

Tarwater, Silur
Earth, Hibernaculum
Ogurusu Norihide, Humor
John Zorn, Femina
Olivia Tremor Control, Black Foliage: Animation Music Vol. 1
The Residents, Meet the Residents

• I dunno, should I switch to Spotify for this? I really like the way Rhapsody does its thing but I suppose there is a public alienation that comes with the sign-in wall when/if you click on one of those links.  That's what was so nice about our fallen companion lala.com. It lent itself to linkage at its core. This question really hinges on: why post these links anyway. Does anybody follow them? Am I throwing linkage at a content problem? (taps) Is this thing on?
  
  
• I'm getting an unexpectedly nice reaction off a story about Bayou Goula's Stray Record studio featured in the latest Country Roads. I mean, it's a good piece; it's just its getting more notice than a lot of stories like it. It happens that way. Also, I have a review of Au Ras Au Ras' eponymous debut and a profile on Wye Oak in this month's OffBeat, two acts deserving every micron of attention they can muster.
  
  
• First rule about blogging is don't talk about blogging. Second rule about blogging is don't reference Fight Club. Third, is be funny.  This #digitalbrands class has put these three rules to the test, proving their ultimate flimsiness, which is a good thing. If you can't teach yourself out of having a rule, why do it? Otherwise, you could just lay out the rules and walk away.
  
  
• David "Honeyboy" Edwards has passed after 95 blues-heavy years. Chicago Tribune obit. I never did get to see Honeyboy play, but his records are the bomb and I understand he was a motherfucker live up through his last ramble.
  
  
  David "Honeyboy" Edwards, "Gamblin' Man" from the 2004 film Lightning in a Bottle
  
  
• Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations in Cajun Country: It was a beautiful episode and it made me happy to see him hanging out in my favorite location covered in my book, Lakeview Park and Beach in Eunice. Here's the story that I did about it for Country Roads about a year ago. It really is one of those place that, when you visit, you feel like you made some weird, fortunate turn in your life to get you there.
  
  The other key is something Lolis Eric Elie said in that episode while tromping around Treme, paraphrased: I know they ate something in Ohio before McDonald's showed up. Celebrate that. Right there is the point of culture writing; not to revel in sepia of history but in the vibrant prism refraction of the present. That's the message...
  
  
  ...and the going there is the medium.
  
  

up that parabola

The Napa burger from Fat Cow. I'd offer a shot of the Dearman's burger for comparison, but I ate it before I thought to take a photo.

Friday night:
Foster the People, Torches
Fitz & the Tantrums, Pickin' Up the Pieces
Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein

Saturday:
Tarwater, Rabbit Moon Revisited (twice)

Sunday:
XTC, Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons

• I'm only 24 out of 636 electropages into Moonwalking with Einstein and I'm already annoyed with it. I'd throw it across the room if it wasn't in my iPad. No fault of Foer's; he's funny enough and is engaged in the standard non-fiction trope of lemme see if I can do this, that this being competitive memorizing, with the unexpected result that he becomes world champ at it. My rage is projection: my memory is a sieve and it irks me. I would be a better writer if I had a wide-swipe, annotated understanding of history or politics or anything. Even the micro subjects of which I am supposed to have some expertise, I'm shockingly ignorant about. I read somewhere that you write not to pass on what you know but to transmit what you can find out, which is either a great credo or a great cop-out, or both. I'd rather write lines through the dots I have and see what picture emerges. I am of the sort when asked Is Google Making Us Stupid?, responds: do libraries make us stupid? Do grocery lists make us stupid? and then in converse: Is it bad that clothes make us warmer? That cars make us faster and extend our physical circles? That medicine keeps us from dying the ignominious deaths of our forebearers?
  
  I don't believe the important part is the medium; it's the message. We need to understand the medium, to be proficient at it so that it becomes transparent. It is our job as talking monkeys to bend the technology of understanding to our will, to use it as a means to facilitate the goofy purpose of our humanity; to understand things. So if Google can put a lifetime of remembering at my fingertips, great! Thanks! I understand they have an ulterior motive in doing so. Everything has an ulterior motive. I have one. Everyone does. So, to those in Foer's book, memorizing the order of shuffled decks of cards, have fun with that. And when, through your memorizing skills, fulfill world domination plans hatched out of bitterness stemming form countless afternoons spent at shuffled deck memorization contests, have fun with that too.
  
  
• Irony: I Googled the word prolix after seeing it in someone's FaceBook post. Dig deep enough at the X on your map and you will strike a cache of mirrors, cracked by your shovel.
  
  
• I Googled ulterior (I always think it is "alterior", master of mediums that I am) for fun and though it is usually used in conjunction with "motive" to mean "duplicitous" or "sneaky" but really it is "further; future" (which seems like the kind of motives we should have) twisted in context to the negative - how dare there be a motive that I don't immediately understand?
  
  
• Enough with the rabbit-hole of understanding, plus, I am unnecessarily throwing Joshua Foer under the bus. I read every post of the Atlas Obscrua site he founded, in fact squealed "I've been there!" at the recent entry on the Blythe Intaglios, thrilled that I was finally worldly enough to register on his particular map of reality.
  
  
  Joshua Foer: Step Outside Your Comfort Zone and Study Yourself Failing
  
  This 99% talk explains what he was getting at. You push past the wall to achieve greatness or you land on the OK plateau and engage autopilot. I am a wuss like everyone; I want to emerge on the scene great and since that never happens, reach my "upper bounds of innate ability" and stay there and that is loser-talk. Experts circumvent these boundaries, climb through the balcony hanging over a locked door. They parkour the road to the palace of wisdom while the rest of us marvel at the paving stones, going "Lookit all that purty excess!" Something like that.
  
  
• So, I don't know if this ties into it all, but I hit up Fat Cow Burgers to try a tricked out burger with arugula, pears, goat cheese with a side of duck fat fries. The place is cool; it looks like a Food Network set. You feel smart and hip for having come here, at least until the hour-wait for your hamburger takes its psychic toll and then you get it and the toppings are weird, smart, a little ingenious, but the burger itself is only OK. Then, today, I went to tried and true Dearman's, a decades old drugstore lunch counter that has outlived its drugstore, and have the same genius burger I always get there. Foer says experts collect data about what they are doing which is maybe what I do here on this blog. I don't know if I'm an expert on my data, on the media and food I take in, on what my kid is doing, but that honing is what communication is about. Its graph is an arc reaching to heaven, the limit as y approaches understanding, over an x-axis of experience, and your expertise at communication manifests as how far you can pull someone up that parabola with you.

Seriously, Tarwater

Through the tint of John Devner's glasses, the soft, gentle parts of your spirit can be seen.

Foster the People, Torches
Barbara Morgenstern, BM
Tarwater, Spider Smile
Juana Molia, Un Dia
Rene Hell, The Terminal Symphony

• Tarwater! No one ever told me they were my favorite band! Did anyone even know? They make the sound the pipe between the heart and the brain makes when you put your mouth to it and go woooooooo...
  
  
  Tarwater, "A Marriage in Belmont"
  
  
• Great class yesterday, #digitalbrands people. Today is my teaching cohort Dr. Porter's birthday, so be sure to give him shit about being old when you see him. To be fair, he holds up well for a man of his vintage.
  
  
• The above (John Denver's Spirit) and below (Gil Scott-Heron's Reflections) were among the covers perused at Vintage Vinyl on the way home from class. I do like having a record store right there. If they  installed a cappuccino machine and had free wi-fi, I'd be in trouble.
  
  
• Newby maritime state hurricaners: do all your laundry beforehand because you will sweat through everything, fill up the tank of your car, get some water and charcoal for the grill and alcohol (it will be useful when trading with the teenage marauder bands) and be prepared to get the f outta dodge should the power go out for a week. There is little dignity in riding out a storm.
  
  
• Seriously, Tarwater, y'all.
  
  
  Tarwater, "When Love Was the Law in Los Angeles"
  
  

While in the mirror of Gil Scot-Heron's shades, your fire-hardened crust is on full display.

It's the two plates of greens talking.

Greens 1: spinach, speckled white beans, and andouille over rice

Richard Youngs, Lotus Edition
Marion Brown/Anthonly Braxton/Chick Corea/Andrew Cyrille/Jeanne Lee/Bennie Maupin, Afternoon of  Georgia Faun
Ornette Coleman, The Complete Science Fiction Sessions

• Today, two different co-workers have brought in plates of homemade greens for me to try. Do I come off as vitamin-deficient? Could the cappuccino fairy be queued up behind them? Am I actually dead and this is how its playing out in the circle of virtuous pagans? Regardless: sweet!
   
• I'm not one for cluttering the Internet with inspirational musings the are not my own but this is a good one:
  
  
  
  

  @JasonIsbellJason Isbell
  I am living vicariously through myself. 
   
• This seems as good a way as any to put it. I've been thinking a lot of "what we are doing when we blog" kind of thoughts in relation to the #DigitalBrands class (We should see if we can get it listed in the catalog that way!) and that is part of it: that we are creating a self out of our self, exalting what we had for lunch with a couple quick Photoshop touch-ups, detailing the mundane to lend it importance, all with the hopes that this new self can do something that our previous self couldn't.
   
• I like the virtuous pagans angle in relation to one's digital life. On the Internet, you can reach an off-channel enlightenment. Or cut your own channel. Skip church to be a preacher, and because the pulpit is still being built, the rules of salvation have not been fully laid out, you can save yourself without the sanction of the divine. Your church is right next to theirs on the highway.
   
• I dunno, this is getting away from me. It's the two plates of greens talking. Can you have a vitamin overdose? Can the world be too good for you and you should limit your intake of it? Is heaven knowing your limit while limbo is taking what's there? Is hell rooted in excess? If I keel over from greens O.D. and there is blogging in whichever Hereafter, I'll let you know.

Greens 2: Mustard greens with salt pork over rice

digital pink

Big Audio Dynamite, This is Big Audio Dynamite and No. 10 Upping Street
The Soup Dragons, Hang-Ten!
Meat Beat Manifest, Storm the Studio

• The first day of class yesterday was awesome. Follow the #digitalbrands hashtag if you wanna see what we are up to in the specific or the #lsudmi one for the general, world-domination activities of LSU's Digital Media Initiative, in which I am tickled digital pink to be involved. There is more than a little irony in the fact that we don't have a centralized digital presence for the Initiative. I'd like to give the Visionary reason:  centralization is so old media, but really, it's the engineer reason: we are working on it.
  
  
• Then I get back to the day gig to find out I'm moving offices. Like right now. Nothing is less new media than moving boxes of paper around.
  
  
• My take on Watch the Throne, summarized:
  
  To me, Kanye West is like watching a Swarovski-encrusted Hindenberg slowly circle the mooring tower; Jay-Z is like listening to an accountant explain why rich people get tax breaks.
  
  can be found in this week's Record Crate for 225 as well as a groovy boogaloo take on a Tom Waits song by zydecio scion C.J. Chenier.
  
  
• Maya and I were playing around with the clip-on LED bike lights we attach to the dog when we walk her at night.
  
  
  
  We clip them onto our bikes too, and wear them on little lanyards around our necks while night biking, but really, they are so cool I want to put them on everything.
    
• Mid-80's rave rock turned out to be a perfect soundtrack to the greebo kinda day I'm havin'. I'm not sure any of the three are technically greebo, though any of them could interface with greebo practice. And if we'd had clip-on LED bike lights to weave into our greasy dreads or have our girlfriend's mom sew onto out baggy shorts, we'd've don it. It'd been greebo as shit.
  
  
  It may not sound like much now, but "C'mon Every Beatbox" was a virus in our ears in 1985. All our suburban misunderstandings of rap, punk, techno, England, the Bronx coalesced in Big Audio Dynamite. It was a brand new musical biscuit!