The Ecologies of Wikipedia Mark Pesce Writes About Little Old Me!

Okay, not really about *me*, but about how I wrote his Wikipedia entry - so I guess you could say he's just returning the favor. In the past week, I actually *landed a contract* to do some other person's Wiki entry. I'm not at liberty to name them, but I will say they are not living. Both Pesce and uberOpenSource pundit Raven Zachary seem to feel that this development is great - both for me and for Wikipedia in general. I have a feeling other people will have other ideas, and may run us all out of cyberspace - ha. Good luck. I just paid up on the registration of My Other Website.


Technorati Tags: Wikipedia, Open Source, Mark Pesce, Raven Zachary, Gregory Pleshaw

YOU ARE NOT THE DANCE FLOORYOU ARE NOT THE DJ An Open Letter to Walker Barnard

In order for society to have any kind of rebellion, you have to have free time and you have to have a meeting place. Today, young people meet in places where you can't even talk, the music is so loud you can't possibly have any kind of conversation. You can't possibly have any kind of extended arguments or any kind of new social theory being spawned, because nobody talks, because you can't hear yourself talk. In clubs today, it's a paradox - music is playing at a thousand decibels, people are coming together in a group situation and the real purpose they're there is to meet each other. They want to meet and get to know each other, but they're prevented from this overwhelming volume of music which masquarades as the official pretext for the club's existence. So I guess they "communicate" by dancing and they mime MTV chereography or rap music moves or whatever. Not exactly deeping satisfying, in my opinion.

- Vale, ReSearch

Dear Walker:

I promised myself that *today*, I wouldn't spend one bleeding minute on this computer. I also decided the other day when we spoke that I would reserve judgement on the things you were saying and simply hold my tongue - but that wouldn't make me a very good friend now, would it?

I am going to break both promises right now. I had many thoughts when we talked the other day, but the primary one that I didn't utter was very simply this: I take great offense at the idea that your artistic role (as you stated) is "to create ecstatic experience on the dance floor." That is *far* too narrow a definition for someone of your capabilities and depth. If you recall, there was a time when each skill we had - any of us - when the tools we had available to us - and the venues we had to express them, were all playgrounds for pushing forth what for me is still a very valid and real and meaningful cultural agenda. It is nebulous, this thing that we all spoke of and tried to expand upon, but certainly, truth, justice, and reaching into the heart of the value of Living Full Meaningful Lives heavy with Deep Conversation and an attempt to "find the truth" and suck meaning from every experience and think Very Very Deeply about what we doing, with ourselves, with each other, and to each other, as we set out to create a cultural milieu in which we could fell both comfortable *and* as if we had a stake not just in our own careers and accomplishments, but also in our scene at large.

I couldn't agree with you more than the conversation has changed Drastically in the past 10-12 years. The fractured nature of everything from the political landscape to the impact of New Media has rendered incredible changes on the way people think about things, and oftentimes for the worse, I think. The Global Village clearly has its downsides as well as upsides - people love the new so much that the notion of nurturing the communities around them is often a Lost Project, as people project themselves into either Pasts they cannot live in or Futures they simply cannot build. Many forget what is right in front of them, and certainly the Power of a (Local) Community has lost much of its appeal for those who can easily reach out and touch someone elsewhere every day for next to nothing.

My "best friends" now live in Australia, Buffalo, New York, & Petaluma, California, as I race up and down I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Those are the people I talk to *every* day. I find that extraordinary, really - it wasn't like that ten years ago. You might have a friend back east that you talked to once a week, on a Sunday, but certainly not six times a day like a friend you knew down the road. This leads to both a sense that we are everywhere at once - and that we are also *nowhere*, and that what is *right* in front of us is just some obstacle we need to get around to in order to someday get together with those people we *really* care about - this makes it difficult, if not Nigh On Impossible to actually feel like we have any Meaningful Stake in the Communities in which we actually live, and as just My Little Bit of Fame has taught me, there's really nothing more valuable than how we feel and interact in the place where we wake up and go to sleep in.

I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have lived the live(s) I've lived. On the one hand, I wrote a thesis statement at nineteen on the value of community and almost *immediately* was picked up by first the Sun and then the New Mexican to write about My Own Community. I got intrigued by The Big World Out There and all its pleasures and charms and New Media and I went to Wired. I found that world to be empty and devoid of the values I cherished - and yet LOADED with really fucking bright and interesting people from all over the world. Ten years and a couple of breakdowns later, I find myself in the community that I Love So Much and Could Write About for Days and no one will take my stuff - and the Great Big World has moved on too, so I can't pitch to Wired or Wired News or PC Magazine or any of those glittering prizes anymore because I Just Didn't Splash Loudly or Smartly Enough, and to a degree, as an artist whose choice is the Word, I am stuck trying to convince people to pay me to do what I'd gladly do for free - which is write about the people that I know and try to steamroller some change and some cross-fertilization between That Great Big World and the porches of the Aztec and the Baking Company and Winning's Cafe.

But while That Venue of newspapers and magazines is what I know and it's my first choice of Action and Value and Making a Fucking Difference, it's not the Grand Totality of My Being. It really isn't. It's taken me a long time to figure that out and not be sad about all the stupid mistakes I've made (and I've made PLENTY) and see that really, I have the ability to create the kinds of conversations and interactions and access points no matter who the fuck I'm (not) writing for. The most frustrating part about lacking access to the press is that I can't Heap Praises on people whose work I really like in print, whether that be in music or art or technology, but I certainly have the ability to do what I can to slap people on the back and say, "Dude, that's really fucking cool," one way or the other.

Back to this dance music situation. You are so fucking talented and interesting, and that was the case long before you picked up the bass guitar and *certainly* long before you started making tracks for the dance floor. The dance floor is a fairly limited medium, just as the press is a fairly limited medium, and there are far more ways to put forth a desire to see people engulfed in ecstatic life-changing experiences that make them Think Long and Hard about what they're doing and to then put More Intention into the Value of their Actions. I do it All the Time - people don't love me because I can get them press (which is what I used to think) people love me because I Can and Will and DO ask them hard questions about what the fuck they're doing because generally speaking, I'M GENUINELY INTERESTED in teasing their values out of them (and perhaps that's manipulative, because generally speaking, I'm hell-bent on changing them) so that when we walk away from each other, perhaps Each of Us has a Greater Understand of the True Project that we're trrying to tackle.

We want change. And we want it now. But really, it comes in such smaller increments than we ever imagined.

YOU ARE NOT THE DANCE FLOOR.

YOU ARE NOT THE FUCKING DJ.

YOU ARE NOT YOUR TRACKS.

ECSTACY IS CREATED BY THE ACTION OF YOU EXPRESSING YOUR TRUEST SELF - THE MEDIUM IS IRRELEVANT.

Live Alternative Karaoke?An Open Letter to Andy Primm Front Man for Amazing Larry

It was there, on the main drag in Puerto Escondido, that I saw an act that I *completely* fell in love with one night in the basement of this horrible surf club called Wipe Out. I had listened to Too Much Bad House Music in the name of cheap drinks when i stumbled down the stairs in search of fresh air and quiet, when all of a sudden I heard riotous shrieking guitars and felt the flash of strobe lights coming up from below the street. I peered down the streets and saw about six alterna-punk-looking Mexican kids assaulting each other with the evil howl of rock'n'roll gone wrong, and I knew I had to go check that shit out RIGHT AWAY.

Dear Andy:

So the last time I saw you guys play, I came with my good friend Sam Atakra, a guy I used to live with in San Francisco who is completely crazy and likes to make sure I am good and wasted even when I say no. He loves it when I say "No, I have shit to do tomorrow," and he tosses his credit cards on the bar and hands me drinks - generally double-shot rum'n'cokes, served in pint glasses, and I just keep drinking and shooting if I've got my camera until I start to see stars...

I saw stars that night. I saw you and your little band playing covers and I harkened back to a dream I had way back in 1987, that Someday, MAN, Someday, the 80s would've gone and come back again and I'd get to be in a Cure cover band, belting out Robert Smith with my own poofy hairdo and face obscurred by eyeliner.

And as I watched you play, I Had a Fantasy. Here's the band of my dreams, I said to myself. How hard would it be for Andy's little band to work up a Cure set so I could live out my dream, right here in the El Paseo Bar & Grill?

I was far too drunk to ask at the time, of course, and I was sober enough to know I was That Fucking Drunk, thank god. But the memory of a wish unrequited stuck with me, and followed me - all the way to Mexico.

It was there, on the main drag in Puerto Escondido, that I saw an act that I *completely* fell in love with one night in the basement of this horrible surf club called Wipe Out. I had listened to Too Much Bad House Music in the name of cheap drinks when i stumbled down the stairs in search of fresh air and quiet, when all of a sudden I heard riotous shrieking guitars and felt the flash of strobe lights coming up from below the street. I peered down the streets and saw about six alterna-punk-looking Mexican kids assaulting each other with the evil howl of rock'n'roll gone wrong, and I knew I had to go check that shit out RIGHT AWAY.

I tiptoed timidly down the steps - it was a bar alright, but it felt like someone's practice room, which, of course, is *always* the best venue to see rock'n'roll, methinks. I stepped up to the bar and felt the eyes of the band on me, as if they were incredulous that anyone would enter their space while they were flailing this crap out. And as I stood at the bar with my bottle of Sol beer and listened, I realized that what they had to play wasn't really just random noise at all - instead, it was a tricked-out noise cover of Drunken Butterfly by Sonic Youth, with lyrics in some crazy Spanglish street slang. And right then and there, I knew I'd found the house band for my vacation in Mexico, and I bought a round for the whole damn band as soon as the song was over.

I like to make friends wherever I go, and the band was super-appreciative, and asked me if I wanted to sing anything. Now, at first I thought this was a super-honor (and it was) but the band, (called Los Cincos Inguanas) had a kick-ass trick up their sleeves that I would learn a lot about in the many nights I went to see them. Right then, I asked if they knew any Ramones, and "I Wanna Be Sedated" was right there in their set list. And so we went for it, and I got to bounce all over their stage like a madman and scream out the Ramones, and it was easily one of My Top Ten Experiences in Mexico.

But as the night evolved, I realized that I wasn't the only tourist having This Much Fun with the little band that Could Cover Everything even though NONE of the band members spoke ANY English. (they had a translator in the bartender.) Because Los Cincos Iguanas had a Stupid Human Trick that I'd like to see replicated all over the damn world with cover bands everywhere - as far as I can tell, Los Cincos Iguanas is the world's first Live Alternative Karaoke Band.

You got that right. Their play list had everything you could possibly want to sing from '77 onward. The Sex Pistols. The Clash. The Vandals. Blondie. Romero fucking Void. The Bungles. The Police. Laurie fucking Anderson. The Cure. New Order. Depeche Mode. The Smiths. REM. And, of course, Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Sound Garden, Radiohead, Wilco (for chrissakes...WILCO?!?) and a bunch of other shit. They had a singer, who could more or less cover the words of every song (though he probably didn't know what he was saying) AND they had a live mike pointed in the direction of the audience, so if you were drunk enough or inspired enough or if The Song You'd Always Wanted to Sing with a LIVE FUCKING GARAGE BAND suddenly cranked into gear, you could jump up on stage, grab the fricking mike, and just scream scream scream.

By midnight, that shitty little bar was PACKED to the gills with English-speaking tourists, Americans and Canadians and English and Australians, plus a core of French, Germans, and Mexicans who FOUGHT for their turn at the mike. I leaned against the bar giggling at the beautiful irony of it all. The fourth wall that punk wanted to smash with music was being smashed with its greatest hits right here in this dive bar in Mexico, as people leapt to the stage to sing their favorite tunes, and I stood there, chuckling evilly, certain that there was nothing that would get me *fighting* for the mike - I'd already had my turn, and there was nothing I needed to sing that bad...

Until I heard the opening stirrings of "Boys Don't Cry." I pushed the Dutch kid who was coming off the stage, "Dude, this is so my song," and pulled the mike away from him. I leapt to that stage and i sang that motherfucker like I was singing it in the shower, in my car, across a thousand windswept miles of desert back and forth between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, careening up the coast to San Francisco and back again. I sang "Boys Don't Cry" with a Live Fucking Band on Mexico's Pacific Coast, and felt the tingle of twenty years of fandom drench me in sweat and tears and memories, and by the time I got off that fucking stage, I was a fan of that band for life.

Just think...would Amazing Larry ever want to do something like that? Maybe once, as an experiment, or in one set out of three? Would you *like* to give your audience a chance to participate? Do you think it might fill up your room a little more?

I think it might. What do you think?

cheers
gregoryp(tm)

Santa Fe, music, karaoke, alternative, Mexico, punk rock

Kiddie Porn Makes Good Picture: Alberto Gonzales Saves Your Youngsters While Bush Kills Your Teenagers

tagged as: 13-year-old butterfly's first photo shoot

Hart Williams of Skiing Uphill Blog wrote an excellent bit about Operation Swarmer in Iraq and Alberto Gonzales' celebrated capture of Kiddie Pornographers here at home. You can find it here. My reply is below:

Hart:

Of course, I'm more interested in the stuff about Kiddie Porn than anything else. What does that say about me ;-)

I have done a bit of informal trolling about the Internet for "kiddie porn" since about 1996, when I first discovered how to decode UUencoded picture from Usenet. It tends to be a dead of night activity "just to see" if there's really anything out there.

I'm more or less certain that kiddie porn *does* exist - but not in the Kiddie Porn "rings" described by the media. Most of what I've seen points to parents who are molesting their children and filming that activity and then sharing it with other sick-minded fucks. (I qualify the activity as "sick" because when you actually see video of kids with grown-ups...well, it's fucking sick, IMHO.)

Much of the illicit video and photo stuff one finds on file-sharing programs is tagged thusly, "pussy bitch little cunt 13-year-old father daughter incest anal sex blowjob" but when you open these things, it's barely legals rather than actual tiny tots. Enter limewire, type in "child" as search string with ADULT subcategory, and you're going to see about 500 films tagged thusly. Any alarmed self-righteous parent or church group isn't going to actually examine this stuff - what they will see are the tags, which, like any text-based erotica, simply implies a fantasy sex world that people WANT to be seeing, rather than based on the actual content therein.

The deeper issue, as you are well-aware, isn't whether or not Kiddie Porn actually exists, but that there are people who want it to exist. Perhaps I qualify in that category, based on my late-night trollings - I am told that I can also find pictures and video of women having sex with bard-yard animals, and while this is less odious, to a degree, than men having sex with pre-teens, it's not something I've ever searched for.

Similar to the scenario of people wanting to stamp out homosexual activity because they might suspect themselves of having desires they don't understand, I think much of the knee-jerk reaction around suspected or alleged Kiddie Porn might rest in a need to be seen as someone who has Absolutely No Interest in Sex with Children. Given the grave consequences meted out for this type of activity (witness the recent case of Debra LeFavre, the 25-year-old teacher who had sex with a 14-year-old male student, and who is trying to plea bargain (on national television) a really draconian seven-years of probation for this tepid "crime") it's hard to blame anyone for being reactionary about what might actually be both a natural and historical desire to have sex with an "innocent" - or to at least fantasize about it with someone else's "success" in the matter as the backdrop entertainment.

Gonzales, after all, is a part of the Bush White House, and no other administration has been as successful at pandering and inflaming the base fears of the population at large than they. Typical, though, of any Bush-inspired "solution" to any problem is the utter lack of attempting to get at the root of the problem, which, being about sex is invariably intractable and messy - so much easier to bust a "ring" of those who might have received or sent such material via the Internet. Given, however, the generally vast difference between how a sex file is tagged and the true ages of the people having sex, what really bears scrutiny in this particular case is whether or not the content of the material actually warrants the charges.

My bet is that they don't and this case will disappear as soon as the press conference is over.

- gregoryp(tm)

Technorati Tags: sex, kiddie porn, Bush, bush, Gonzales, gangbang, clusterfuck, kids, boobs, butterflies, airstrike, invasion

Dear Kate Pendley:I Know Where You Live

Today I found out that my arch nemesis and former best friend Kate Pendley finally did us all a favor and left the state of New Mexico. Good riddance to ya. And while I'd like to tell you where she's moved to, maybe even point out her little bitch cave on a google map, I also found out that Kate won't tell anyone where she's moved to, for fear that I'll find out and track her down.

What a fucking drama queen. I LEFT Santa Fe to avoid seeing her, and I certainly wouldn't ever want to waste any time looking for her. See, when I confront people about the things that piss me off, it's generally in the hopes that we can come to some kind of understanding with one another. Kate Pendley, knowing only lies, deceit, manipulation and playing the gender card to her advantage, is utterly incapable of that kind of relationship, to the grand detriment of all who come into contact with her.

My truly awful experience with this nasty little con artist is well documented on other blogs, (notably here and here.) She befriended me, I got her a gig, she stabbed me in the back, and then with the help of her brain-dead bald-headed cop pal Gardner Finney, got me in a pile of legal hot water over a few marginally threatening e-mails that I still think were well-deserved. Of course, this is the age of alarmist thinking, on everything from terrorism to teen violence to the constant clash over whether or not a woman is a cunning power broker capable of making it in a man's world - or a hapless victim who needs to be protected from scumbags like me. And in the middle of that schism is where Kate Pendley - and lots of women just like her - get to live in this age of confusion over what gender really means.

Kate Pendley taught me just about everything I needed to know about the state of "gender equality" in the real world, about how my penis makes me a bad guy and her pussy makes her a living-on-a-pedestal victim who can send a 'victim's advocate' to introduce lies about me into a court of law. Go ahead - read the links - and ask yourself - if she were a man, or I were a woman, would the Santa Fe Police Department have surrounded my house at 6am on Christmas morning over a 4th degree misdemeanor? I think not.

Kate Pendley taught me as much about using your gender to manipulate the truth as Mexico taught me about paradise - a cheap holiday in other people's misery if ever there was one. And she gets to ride that edge between power-monger and victim until someone says bullshit on that. I say it, and have said it over and over again. And now, thanks to Kate Pendley, everytime I hear about another crime or incident involving a man and a woman, I now generally spring to defend the man - because too many people are far too willing to assume that he's at fault and the woman simply had no agency. Thank you, Kate Pendley, for permanently debasing me of that knee-jerk reaction of the sensitive new age guy that I had for so long in my life.

Good luck in your new pad, Kate - something tells me, however, that it will stink of the very same shit as your last one.

IT ****IS**** MY DAD!!!

dear greg:

I got your email. Yes that is me in that picture. I believe the picture was taken when I was in high school. The girl's n name is Lynn Flannigan. She lived in Summerville. She and I went out for several years. When I went to Korea we lost touch. She was a great gal. I have the original photograph in my photo album. For the life of me I do not know how this photo got online. Do you know. I am trying to get Patrick who now works for United Airlines to get me a free or reduced flight to New Mexico. When i get more info I will let you know. Love,Dad

Is This My Dad?

I've known my Dad my whole life, and yet just this evening, I may have discovered a new part of him that I always expected was there but which I never had hard evidence of. Every picture I own of my dad has him as a soldier or a lawyer - a man in a uniform of one kind or another. This is as much my fault as anyone else's - all those casual moments when I never had a camera are overshadowed by the "official" pics of anyone's life - graduations, weddings, formal shots of one kind or another. Tonight I found this picture, sent by a total stranger, and sent it off to both my father (who rarely checks his email) and my godfather (who checks his as often as any San Franciscan and has a better memory anyway.)

Is this my dad? I asked my godfather. And he replied:

I would say yes and probably on the way back from Korea.... The more I look and think, it's him. That's the Bob I remember. Ready to fuck, fight or run a foot race.

Here, more or less, is the story of this possible discovery of my father as a young man, after the war, before college, before law school, before marriage and children and responsibility and a Lexus and a beautiful house in the 'burbs of D.C. A fucking role model I could be really proud of - both in this moment, and in what was to come.

03/13/06, 10:45pm

Bogie:

There's a guy on the Internet who is the postmaster general of New Brunswick in Nova Scotia whose life's work is to fill out the Pleshaw family tree. He got in touch with me a few years ago, (I being the only Pleshaw on the Internet at the time) and began feeding me all these documents. The Pleshaws, it seems, first landed in the New World in the 1700s in Nova Scotia, and while a few made their way down to the States (notably, Halifax and Framington, Mass., where my step-grandfather is from) most still remain up north in the Big Cold.

He sent this picture to me a year ago, and for some reason (probably a lot of spam in my inbox) I didn't open the mail. (Subject header: IS THIS YOUR DAD? probably seeming too ludicrous to bother with. ;-) The name of this man is Greg Brown, and at one point I remarked to him the irony that while he was researching a bloodline of his family tree via the Pleshaw name, Pleshaw is not a bloodline relation to me - but Brown is, as it is my mother's maiden name.

In any case - while I was in Mexico, I made a new friend - named Greg Brown - from Canada. I had forgotten about the other Greg Brown (the postmaster) but my new friend wrote a note to my mother looking for my email address, and remarked to my mom, "Hey, maybe we're related, hahaha" and then it all came back to me. I did a search in my inbox and found addresses for the old Greg Brown, the new Greg Brown - and this unopened message with this photograph that looked eerily like my Dad (though I also thought he looked a bit like Frank Sinatra and that this was where I was forming a sense of recognition.)

The old Greg Brown (I wrote to him earlier tonight) said he probably found the image on the Internet, but I can't imagine where. I did a google image search for Robert Pleshaw and found nothing. If this is my Robert Pleshaw, I'd certainly love to find the original, blow it up, and stick it on the wall of my apartment, for it is certainly the most festive picture of Bob Pleshaw I have ever seen.

Just for the fun of it, I have cc'd this message to the following people: the original Greg Brown, Geraldine Lynch-Brown (my mother), Robert Pleshaw (my dad), Patrick Pleshaw (my brother), Brenna McCarthy (my cousin on my stepmother's side) and the new Greg Brown, also of Canada and *maybe* related to some of us. I've enclosed the photo so we can all have a look. The original recipient of this message is Robert Bogiages, my godfather and my dad's best childhood friend.

Enjoy the excitement of possibility...

cheers
gregoryp(tm)

late night koan

composed, accidentally, via google chat:

Kill your idols

teenage riot is a blast

your mother wears combat boots

WAKE THE FUCK UP

Sent at 12:30 am on Monday

go to limewire right the fuck now and download the six minute studio version of teenage riot and just remember....

I'm Back from MexicoSeasonal Affective Disorder's kicking in

Mexico was so weird. I can't explain it. I was on this magical adventure complete with a new language and lots of new people to talk to. Indios. Artists. Travelers who never really go back to where they came from, and keep moving from place to place. I studied Spanish and would chat aimlessly with anyone in a language that wasn't mine, then babbled endlessly with other English-speakers about all the newness.

Round about the 20th of Febuary (my birthday, and generally the height of SAD season for me) I broke down. My mother came to Mexico and we fought, as we often do, and I was on the streets of Oaxaca with nothing. My resolve to learn and discover and see Mexico with veiled eyes fell apart. I tried my best to keep my eyes shut and they just opened, sadly, showing me things I wish I hadn't seen. Suddenly, I saw what a corrupt and almost medieval place Mexico can be. My friend Zane Fischer showed up and handed me a $50 bill so I could keep on keepin' on, and then BanaMex refused to take my bill at fair exchange rates because my bill, representational of the stablest currency in the world, was slightly torn at the top corner. I was stuck. I sold my bill at five pesos on the dollar and sold some of my folk art just to get a bus back to the beach, where my friends were. I was indignant, frankly, and still am - as I shouted at the bank manager, "This is a country where you can't get potable water out of the tap and you won't take a torn bill? Your priorities are FUCKED UP!"

Suddenly, Mexico seemed raw, harsh, untamed, and ludicrous. I had formulated a thesis question before I left about foreign (particularly American) investment in Mexico - did it create opportunity or was it simple exploitation? I quickly came to the conclusion that without foreign investment from American companies, Mexico would simply be a corrupt, unprogressive, impoverished state where there's no living wage, no child labor laws, and an utter lack of meaningful feminist presence - as well as an ignorant mess of machismo that I already find appalling in my own country, much less in a foreign tongue.

For the first time in my life, colonialism made sense. I kid you not. Suddenly, I no longer saw missionaries and Columbus and Cortez and the rest as simply ignorant cultural imperialists - I could actually SEE THEIR SIDE that perhaps someone had to come into all this disorder and give these people a little direction. It no longer seemed like a simple case of hegemony - when you watch a country BURN ITS TRASH (including plastic) in open-air fires everywhere and when you find that many of the eco-environmental projects going on are there mostly as the result of foreign investment and initiative - when you watch, as I did, a six-year-old girl being forced to work the streets selling useless trinkets while her head is hot with fever and she's sporting a pile of chicken pox -

I found her brother and told him he had to take her home. He shrugged. A teenager, fine, fuck him. I FOUND THE PARENTS. The parents said, "She has to work." My friend and translator Hector told me that only the boy goes to school because it's better for them for her to work. He asked me why I even cared. I told him I found it utterly appalling that only me, the imperialist consumer cultural capitalist pig from America, thought a six-year-old girl shouldn't have to work with a fever. "In my country," I said, with something approaching pride, "there are authorities who'd call this child abuse and THEY'D BE FUCKING RIGHT."

I began to hear stories about the election in June, about how PRI was skimming dough off every fund to finance its national and gubernatorial elections. I sat on the Zocolo in Oaxaca City which was recently refurbished to exclude street food vendors, meaning Starbuck's-sized prices for a cup of coffee, a sanitized "plaza" that is presumably more "turistica friendly" and watched policemen with machine guns and nasty attitudes push "undesirable" vendors away. I saw a student protest over the privatization of education bring forth close to a hundred cops in riot gear simply because they were protesting on the Zocolo - which with the new renovation was declared a "protest-free zone" which included the relocation of government offices to another location.

Oaxaca City had a thriving arts scene, but I couldn't stay as long as I wanted to, in part because of the Banamex bank fiasco, and I beat it back to the beach. There, in Puerto Escondido, was Mexico's most redeeming quality - the water, and every moment I spent time in it was another moment where I wasn't thinking about the sad realities of the "paradise" that surrounded me. I was in a place where "working people" worked in stores like MexPipe where the price of a pair of surf shorts was 400 pesos ($40), an amount of money I wouldn't spend in the US of A on a pair of shorts, working full-time for 750 ($75) to 900 ($90) pesos a week. Honestly - people who worked in American-owned shops MADE MORE MONEY than Mexican-owned businesses, according to my informal polling, and in the markets I found prices to be quite comparable to US prices for things - sure, the fruit and the fish was fresher and sweeter, but penny for penny, prices were about the same, and people made SO MUCH LESS.

Teaching English: Too Much Fun

At some point, the kids around my building got sick of me practicing my Spanish on them all the tmie, and asked me to teach them English. Seemed a fair trade, and without question, every last one of them wanted to go to the US. "Why?" I'd say. "You could open a lemonade stand in Puerto Escondido and make more money than most people in the states," (it's damn near true) but the entrepreneurial vibe isn't innate in poor people most of the time - they want a job because it seems secure or something, and yet considering the CRAZY RISKS involved in getting across the border...seems like a lemonade stand makes a lot more sense. If people were *really* concerned about the future of Mexico, they'd quit harping on the suckiness of the Maquiladora District and they'd fight for programs that teach tourist workers in Mexico how to speak basic English (and maybe a little German and French, too) and teach people the ins and outs of starting their own businesses, IMHO.

I am not a human being - I am a walking dollar sign

One day, towards the end of my stay, my mother decided she wanted to rent a car and drive to Chachaua, a lagoon inside the largest national park in Mexico, only an hour away. Since she needed me to do the driving, I was to meet her at 8:30 in the morning at the Budget Rent-A-Car, which the Internet said was located at the Posada Real, the most expensive hotel in the city and waaaaay the hell over on the other side of town from where I was, which was La Punta, the Point, aka "the beginner's surf beach." I was living in a hammock on the beach for $3.50 a night in utter bliss, asleep by midnight, up by 7am to the sounds of brewing Nescafe and dreadlocked hippies waxing their boards.

I was up by 7am, had a coffee, took a quick swim, then made my way over to my favorite beach cafe. I had made friends with the owner-senora there one day when two gringos walked on their pina colada bill, and I played diplomat to avoid an international incident. She got her dough, the police weren't called, and then she asked for English lessons, which I happily gave. She said she felt like if she knew English, people wouldn't try to take advantage of her, and I agreed.

Her husband drove a taxi, so I went there first to see if he was available - it was a 45 peso drive to that part of town, and I'd rather give it to him than some stranger. Yes, he was there. Why was I going to Posada Real? To rent a car, I said, with no idea of the sad strange can of worms my words would open up.

She had a car to rent. I explained we already had a car, rented over the Internet. She kept insisting I should rent her car. Her Spanish became more rapid and intense. After awhile, I pretended I didn't understand, and craned my neck around looking for her husband and his taxi. I told her I needed to go. She walked off - and returned with her entire family in tow, including the brother-in-law who used to live in LA and had good English.

He was there to explain to me that I needed to rent their car. We were to negotiate a price. They offered at 700 pesos a day - I explained to him that our car was 350 pesos a day, from the Internet, that it was mother's deal anyway, and I was simply going to meet her. By the time it was all said and done, she was very upset and wouldn't speak to me - a scenario that continued for the rest of my stay.

I was now running late. I arrived at the Posada Real. At this point, my Spanish was more or less good enough to be able to say, "I am to meet my mother here, an older woman, who was to rent a car from this place." My mother was nowhere in sight. Had she been there already and rented a car? No one could say - however, they had a car for me to rent, right there. I tried to explain that a car had already been rented - had an older woman been here to rent a car? No one could say - but they had a car right here I could rent. I was in no position to rent a car, I was there to sign some paperwork. I asked the manager to call me a cab.

"Where are you from?" he said, in what sounded like perfect English. At last, I thought, and asked him if he could ask the others if my mom had been there. He nodded, then asked me if I wanted to rent a car. Christ. And where was I staying? At Buena Onda, at La Punta, I replied, and he said,

"I have lots for sale at La Punta. Very nice place to live. Here is my card."

The cab arrived and I took it to a friend's who spoke Spanish.

"I am not a human being," I said. "I am a walking dollar sign."

He laughed at my story, and we got into his car and drove around looking for my mother, at my hotel, at her hotel, and finally, he suggested that we go back to the Posada Real and see if his Spanish could unroot whether or not my mother had been there and if she'd already rented a car.

We arrived - and there she was. "They told me you had been here and were coming back." Had you been here before, I asked. "Yes - and the car rental place is right up the street. I told them to ask you to meet me there."

I retell this story because there were just so many times when I felt like I was deliberately given misinformation in the blind hope that I would rent or buy something that I didn't actually need. In the case of the Posada Real (the most expensive hotel in PE, owned by Best Western, and presumably not instructed to fleece tourists at every opportunity) I could've cared less - I didn't know these people. But in the case of my friends at the beach cafe - the steadfast refusal to hear the reality of the situation, to continue to try and rent me a car even when they had a proper translation, and then the utter refusal of the senora to talk to me again because I had offended her by not renting her car...

If it didn't have a beach - I'm certain no one would bother. I wouldn't.

Perhaps Not the Perfect Wave...

My friend Gentry, the surfer-musician-traveler-scoundrel, told me that I wasn´t allowed to leave the beach until I caught the perfect wave. This is a letter to him written on March 1, 2006:

Dear Gentry:

Perhaps Not the Perfect Wave...

But as damn close to the perfectest day I´ll probably get.

When I first arrived here, I went to this place that was the beach youth hostel equivalent of Jim Morrison´s grave in Paris - a half dozen kids sitting around in a palapa listening to Hail to the Thief while doing bong hits, backdropped by the Pacific Ocean and the roaring surf of Zicatela Beach. I thought, "The setting is great - but I think I´m too old and not quite sullen enough." Nevertheless, I kept longing to stay there, and a couple nights ago, I gave in to my desires.

The clientele is precisely what I expected - but the location is really quite stellar, about three hundred yards from the beach at La Punta. It´s taken me weeks of being here to put all the pieces together, but by now I know a) where beginners surf, b) what times of day is best to be there, (before the local high school kids get out of school), c) exactly what it costs to take a cab there ($2.50), d) who to rent long boards from (a guy who lives in a neighborhood nearby who charges close to nothing and is billed to me by the surf school), e) who to rent leashes from, f) what kind of wax to use (Mexican Surf, tropical viscosity, 100 gram puck) g) which ankle gets the leash, (the back one, which in my case is the left and NOT the right) h) how to sit on the board and not fall over i) how to turtle roll, j) and how to actually catch fucking waves.

What I don´t know, the part that still eludes me, is standing, but after today, catching pretty much every wave I wanted (and falling down almost as soon as I "got up") with THREE two-hour sessions yesterday and today, I am fan-fucking-exhausted and on some level, kinda surfed out - for now.

My paddling arms have become really strong, and when I paddle (which is practically my favorite pàrt) I feel as if I am piloting the smallest watercraft across the ocean, and I am both on it and of it - we are together, we have merged, and I skim across the surface of the water both bouyed and rocked by waves. And when I see what I want in the waves that are coming my way, I pop the board up, swing the board quickly in the direction of the shore, and paddle paddle paddle until the wave reaches beneath me and then WE are one, together, one doesn´t catch waves or ride them so much as become part of them, and while I have managed to missed the main objective of the sport (to stand and move as one wishes) I feel a greater affinity with the ocean than ever before.
\n \nToday, my craft lay beneath a breaking wave and I had almost merged with it, and just before that happened, I looked up and in the crest I could a fish swimming very fast in that sliver of water wall and it was just thrilling. On quiet days, one can sit on the board near the rocks of La Punta between sets, and gaze down at the school of fish, numbering in the thousands, I expect, swimming together in the water just beneath the board. It´s not all fun and games, of course - I have heard that the waters here are just teeming with Manta Rays - we are all instructed to "shuffle" our feet in the water lest we should step on one, for while they don´t bite, they will sting whomever manages to step on them, and today when I brough a foot down on what felt like a snake, I screamed instinctively, certain I was to be stung, but nothing happened and I kept on going, visions of Jaws and other horror stories of the deep crowding into my mind, but drowned out by my pursuit of the wave.\n\n \nI am so bloody chafed between my legs. No doubt there really *is* a qualitative difference between a swim suit from Wal-Mart and a $40 pair of surf shorts (which come, I am told, complete with a "surf comb" with which to remove the wax from your board) but I´ve never been one to get special equipment to do anything unless it was cheaper than my DIY stuff. Still, I can see myself preparing for this a bit better before I came again - without a doubt, the experience has changed me, for while I can´t really "do it" yet, I´m certainly not afraid of it anymore, for even Big Big Waves are are kinda small when you´re a part of them.\n\n \nMy surf instructor, Steve, told me back during the land lesson stage of the game that, "It´s fucking crazy to learn to surf in Puerto Escondido - this is one of the top ten breaks in the world and it´s completely out of control here." Frank words from a surf teacher, I thought, and he suggested that if I really wanted to learn that I would do well to go to San Diego when I got back to the states, then come back here for more abuse. And I think I will do that, because if I could get over all the hurdles I´ve done to get to the place of comfort with it that I have now, I am fairly certain that the one that eludes me will come eventually.\n",1]
);
//-->


Today, my craft lay beneath a breaking wave and I had almost merged with it, and just before that happened, I looked up and in the crest I could a fish swimming very fast in that sliver of water wall and it was just thrilling. On quiet days, one can sit on the board near the rocks of La Punta between sets, and gaze down at the school of fish, numbering in the thousands, I expect, swimming together in the water just beneath the board. It´s not all fun and games, of course - I have heard that the waters here are just teeming with Manta Rays - we are all instructed to "shuffle" our feet in the water lest we should step on one, for while they don´t bite, they will sting whomever manages to step on them, and today when I brough a foot down on what felt like a snake, I screamed instinctively, certain I was to be stung, but nothing happened and I kept on going, visions of Jaws and other horror stories of the deep crowding into my mind, but drowned out by my pursuit of the wave.

I am so bloody chafed between my legs. No doubt there really *is* a qualitative difference between a swim suit from Wal-Mart and a $40 pair of surf shorts (which come, I am told, complete with a "surf comb" with which to remove the wax from your board) but I´ve never been one to get special equipment to do anything unless it was cheaper than my DIY stuff. Still, I can see myself preparing for this a bit better before I came again - without a doubt, the experience has changed me, for while I can´t really "do it" yet, I´m certainly not afraid of it anymore, for even Big Big Waves are are kinda small when you´re a part of them.

My surf instructor, Steve, told me back during the land lesson stage of the game that, "It´s fucking crazy to learn to surf in Puerto Escondido - this is one of the top ten breaks in the world and it´s completely out of control here." Frank words from a surf teacher, I thought, and he suggested that if I really wanted to learn that I would do well to go to San Diego when I got back to the states, then come back here for more abuse. And I think I will do that, because if I could get over all the hurdles I´ve done to get to the place of comfort with it that I have now, I am fairly certain that the one that eludes me will come eventually.

About fifteen years ago, I was living in Santa Cruz, California, and one day I overhead a conversation in a restaurant, where staffers where talking about their surf experiences and all the different places they´d been to to catch waves, all the different restaurant jobs they´d had to support their crazy habit, and it occurred to me: "christ, I´m so fucking serious all the time about what I want my life to look like. Maybe if my lofty goals don´t work, by like, say, thirty, maybe I could just drop out and be a surfer and a beach bum, and have silly unimportant jobs like bar tending so I could surf a lot."

At 36, maybe I´m a little late. But I don´t think I´m too late. Not at all.

cheers
gregoryp(tm)

Perhaps Not the Perfect Wave...

My friend Gentry, the surfer-musician-traveler-scoundrel, told me that I wasn´t allowed to leave the beach until I caught the perfect wave. This is a letter to him written on March 1, 2006:

Dear Gentry:

Perhaps Not the Perfect Wave...

But as damn close to the perfectest day I´ll probably get.

When I first arrived here, I went to this place that was the beach youth hostel equivalent of Jim Morrison´s grave in Paris - a half dozen kids sitting around in a palapa listening to Hail to the Thief while doing bong hits, backdropped by the Pacific Ocean and the roaring surf of Zicatela Beach. I thought, "The setting is great - but I think I´m too old and not quite sullen enough." Nevertheless, I kept longing to stay there, and a couple nights ago, I gave in to my desires.

The clientele is precisely what I expected - but the location is really quite stellar, about three hundred yards from the beach at La Punta. It´s taken me weeks of being here to put all the pieces together, but by now I know a) where beginners surf, b) what times of day is best to be there, (before the local high school kids get out of school), c) exactly what it costs to take a cab there ($2.50), d) who to rent long boards from (a guy who lives in a neighborhood nearby who charges close to nothing and is billed to me by the surf school), e) who to rent leashes from, f) what kind of wax to use (Mexican Surf, tropical viscosity, 100 gram puck) g) which ankle gets the leash, (the back one, which in my case is the left and NOT the right) h) how to sit on the board and not fall over i) how to turtle roll, j) and how to actually catch fucking waves.

What I don´t know, the part that still eludes me, is standing, but after today, catching pretty much every wave I wanted (and falling down almost as soon as I "got up") with THREE two-hour sessions yesterday and today, I am fan-fucking-exhausted and on some level, kinda surfed out - for now.

My paddling arms have become really strong, and when I paddle (which is practically my favorite pàrt) I feel as if I am piloting the smallest watercraft across the ocean, and I am both on it and of it - we are together, we have merged, and I skim across the surface of the water both bouyed and rocked by waves. And when I see what I want in the waves that are coming my way, I pop the board up, swing the board quickly in the direction of the shore, and paddle paddle paddle until the wave reaches beneath me and then WE are one, together, one doesn´t catch waves or ride them so much as become part of them, and while I have managed to missed the main objective of the sport (to stand and move as one wishes) I feel a greater affinity with the ocean than ever before.
\n \nToday, my craft lay beneath a breaking wave and I had almost merged with it, and just before that happened, I looked up and in the crest I could a fish swimming very fast in that sliver of water wall and it was just thrilling. On quiet days, one can sit on the board near the rocks of La Punta between sets, and gaze down at the school of fish, numbering in the thousands, I expect, swimming together in the water just beneath the board. It´s not all fun and games, of course - I have heard that the waters here are just teeming with Manta Rays - we are all instructed to "shuffle" our feet in the water lest we should step on one, for while they don´t bite, they will sting whomever manages to step on them, and today when I brough a foot down on what felt like a snake, I screamed instinctively, certain I was to be stung, but nothing happened and I kept on going, visions of Jaws and other horror stories of the deep crowding into my mind, but drowned out by my pursuit of the wave.\n\n \nI am so bloody chafed between my legs. No doubt there really *is* a qualitative difference between a swim suit from Wal-Mart and a $40 pair of surf shorts (which come, I am told, complete with a "surf comb" with which to remove the wax from your board) but I´ve never been one to get special equipment to do anything unless it was cheaper than my DIY stuff. Still, I can see myself preparing for this a bit better before I came again - without a doubt, the experience has changed me, for while I can´t really "do it" yet, I´m certainly not afraid of it anymore, for even Big Big Waves are are kinda small when you´re a part of them.\n\n \nMy surf instructor, Steve, told me back during the land lesson stage of the game that, "It´s fucking crazy to learn to surf in Puerto Escondido - this is one of the top ten breaks in the world and it´s completely out of control here." Frank words from a surf teacher, I thought, and he suggested that if I really wanted to learn that I would do well to go to San Diego when I got back to the states, then come back here for more abuse. And I think I will do that, because if I could get over all the hurdles I´ve done to get to the place of comfort with it that I have now, I am fairly certain that the one that eludes me will come eventually.\n",1]
);
//-->


Today, my craft lay beneath a breaking wave and I had almost merged with it, and just before that happened, I looked up and in the crest I could a fish swimming very fast in that sliver of water wall and it was just thrilling. On quiet days, one can sit on the board near the rocks of La Punta between sets, and gaze down at the school of fish, numbering in the thousands, I expect, swimming together in the water just beneath the board. It´s not all fun and games, of course - I have heard that the waters here are just teeming with Manta Rays - we are all instructed to "shuffle" our feet in the water lest we should step on one, for while they don´t bite, they will sting whomever manages to step on them, and today when I brough a foot down on what felt like a snake, I screamed instinctively, certain I was to be stung, but nothing happened and I kept on going, visions of Jaws and other horror stories of the deep crowding into my mind, but drowned out by my pursuit of the wave.

I am so bloody chafed between my legs. No doubt there really *is* a qualitative difference between a swim suit from Wal-Mart and a $40 pair of surf shorts (which come, I am told, complete with a "surf comb" with which to remove the wax from your board) but I´ve never been one to get special equipment to do anything unless it was cheaper than my DIY stuff. Still, I can see myself preparing for this a bit better before I came again - without a doubt, the experience has changed me, for while I can´t really "do it" yet, I´m certainly not afraid of it anymore, for even Big Big Waves are are kinda small when you´re a part of them.

My surf instructor, Steve, told me back during the land lesson stage of the game that, "It´s fucking crazy to learn to surf in Puerto Escondido - this is one of the top ten breaks in the world and it´s completely out of control here." Frank words from a surf teacher, I thought, and he suggested that if I really wanted to learn that I would do well to go to San Diego when I got back to the states, then come back here for more abuse. And I think I will do that, because if I could get over all the hurdles I´ve done to get to the place of comfort with it that I have now, I am fairly certain that the one that eludes me will come eventually.

About fifteen years ago, I was living in Santa Cruz, California, and one day I overhead a conversation in a restaurant, where staffers where talking about their surf experiences and all the different places they´d been to to catch waves, all the different restaurant jobs they´d had to support their crazy habit, and it occurred to me: "christ, I´m so fucking serious all the time about what I want my life to look like. Maybe if my lofty goals don´t work, by like, say, thirty, maybe I could just drop out and be a surfer and a beach bum, and have silly unimportant jobs like bar tending so I could surf a lot."

At 36, maybe I´m a little late. But I don´t think I´m too late. Not at all.

cheers
gregoryp(tm)