good ole colonial

just a quick one about a movie that had me from the first few minutes. stumbled on it on cable, my favorite way to consume. the man who would be king, with an ole sangwich of ole papis back when i'm sure, michael caine and sean connery. wow, solid from beginning to end. really just gripping. i almost always fall for all that colonial crap and man this was a classic. rudyard kipling getting told a story of these two british "scoundrels" as the description on the info band at the bottom of the screen put it. masons, military men, liars and thieves. light-hearted and devilish. and the land they come to conquer for a short time is very anti-devil as you're quickly shown. they go from india to some made-up stan beyond the khyber pass, where osama's chillin now. whoo, if that's what this nation is up against, we are done. it is a wrap. that shit is probably still that warring and dusty and ancient. so many ideas in this thing, luck vs. fate, king vs. god. blurring these lines not a wise idea. not with dudes on horseback playing polo with men's heads. also a lesson to learn, don't fall for the local ladies, no matter how fine. wow, there was this scene of this one lady who comes in to seduce the white man asleep in his hut. she waves her skirt at the sleepy devil, whipping up the smell of her clearly pungent vagina, wafting it over the dude and he wakes up sniffing so happily, my god. that detail just did me in. and the loveliest of all the dusty ladies was none other than the real life mrs. caine, who goes by the name of shakira, a petite guyanese east indian who probably has a million doppelgangers in queens. another detail i really dug, an old-school shakira working her south american south asianness. overall, i am always pleased with movies such as this where the whiteness is clear, no question that the white man is around for nothing but mischief. he refers to his own whiteness, just that lets you know what you're dealing with. that the whiteness is in jeopardy and must be asserted is always the next reference. love it. lay it out, the true feelings. i was interested in the fact that i enjoyed watching the antics of these devils, was very familiar with how they related, i liked their company, they entertained me. i am trained in such ways considering the education i've gotten so of course there is appeal. but it is always worth scratching the appeal, testing it, digging for substance. man, and there was the middleman too, that malinche person, the translator, an asian trained in british ways, so ready to reveal and submit. i wanted to say the dude who's all, yes kemosabe or sahib or something but i'm mixing all the references. you know the guy. you might be him a little, i am, a little. with a murderous streak though, ready to switch on a dime and play polo with some colonizer heads. dare to step foot into my mountain desert.

grime and beauty

yay j.lo! a decent spic movie! i am pleased. went to see el cantante with two buddies tonight. experts in spic matters themselves. we all enjoyed it. i did feel it was choppy in parts and it was missing that crucial childhood bio footage that music biopics seem to specialize in but mostly it was hot. marc was a really respectable hector. he was natural and inside the tortured singer man. and j.lo managed to make the movie about her and yet prop up her man. it was based on the wife character's interviews and she got to be the most fully puerto rican character she's ever been, a control freak drama queen, fine as fuck. she was cursing and drugging and fucking and laying it on it on thick with the accent and it was good. but i would have appreciated some more nudity. there was some nipple flashing thru a dress but really with all the other dirt goin on, nekkidness would have worked. marc was hot too and there was john ortiz as willie colon, a real papi. more flesh all around would have really made it four stars. it's amazing to think that spics are really coming full circle, that they can be portrayed as grimy and fucked up and heroic as anyone else. perhaps there is an arrival finally. i think no one will know it except spics but whatever, we know. we can move on from here, not be so fuckin prissy and uptight about what is often a grimy existence. a beautiful grimy existence.

afterwards the buddy experts and i had some beers and more. that movie left us all craving, addicts that we are, coming off watching this celebration of the tecato. and with every intoxicated sip, the recollections of the film got better. like i say it was choppy, there were things i felt were missing, like the childhood trauma that leads to the adult addiction, as in ray and the brother's death by washtub and the subsequent heroin addiction, walk the line and the brother's death by spinning saw wheel and the subsequent painkiller addiction. there is an allusion to a brother's death in cantante but no visuals for it. perhaps i shouldn't crave such cheesy formulas but the explaining it all away with the mention that "we don't talk about what hurts us," a line from either hector or puchi (the wife, j.lo), didn't quite satisfy. the buddy experts thought there wasn't enough dancing. it starts with some but not enough. i thought it was shrill a lot especially as it was dominated by the wife character. but it gets quiet in this hypnotizing way near the end and that was amazing. it was a scary quiet that was very necessary. there was the narration by the wife character that is dramatic and quiet in its way, cheesy but effective. she was old, j.lo was old and i was happy to see her comfortable in an old self. finally, beauty stripped, finally, some truth told. a truth very specific and because of that something that might work for everyone.

another expert friend told me some review said it had no sense of humor. i had to say that reviewer was probably white, american something. there was so much funny stuff in it. what i think was the mostly puerto rican crowd in union square was rolling. there were a million nuances that i think only a very latin film crew would have caught, funny nuances, tragic one. we're still such a mystery to everyone but ourselves. there are some white folks but whatever, it's not about them getting it. it's about us getting ourselves. that conversation with this "mainstream" is done. we're too many to not discuss us with us. if others want to eavesdrop, fine, but it's time. i'm amazed the time has actually come. good to see it.

i'm sure i will add more to this in a clearer state. i had to get something down now, fresh and inebriated. it's only right, in the spirit of the film. yay hot dirty j.lo. grimy marc. yay, pr and ny. long live.

mother tongue

feeling real good after a beach day. it is the beginning of another heat wave and i am free from an office. i am free! i am tan and i am free. i was playing with the niece in the water all afternoon. i have a great image of her laying back in my arms in the water, we're spinning and she's smiling and floating, new freckles in the sun. i handled her well today overall. she can make a toy of anyone but you can fight back by laying there lifeless like a toy too. she has infected me with a cheesy pop song from latin america, something she heard with her cousin on vacation, staying with her mom in the motherland. it's enrique iglesias, dimelo, and i usually can't take that dude but because it gets her to sing in spanish i entertain her and cue up the youtube video. but now it's in my head, dimelo, dimelo, dimelo. reminds me of being in honduras with my brother's girl cousins, singing chayanne when we were fifteen. tu pirata soy yo, y mi mar es tu corazon, mi bandera tu libertad, mi tesoro poderte amar. gay. i am your pirate, my sea is your heart, my flag your freedom, my treasure being able to love you. gay.

those cheesy spanish pop songs can getcha when you're over there. the good trick of it is you reclaim the language which this little girl needs to do right now. my theory is the language and her mama are one in the same. the more of it she loses, the more she loses her connection to her mother. she has to deal with being the child of fake divorce, what is it when babymamas and daddys break up? babymama/daddy divorce, that is too long, a better term has to be devised. anyway she deals with that and then on top of that, immigration, the daddy in the us, the mama in honduras. huge separation. and all we can do here is notice when she recalls a memory and help her explore it. she is so little and has dealt with this is such crazy ways. denying spanish and her mother at the same time, not wanting to speak to her on the phone and then not wanting to speak in spanish, saying she can't do it any more. but that's all she spoke when she got here a year ago. and that crazy honduran spanish too. i can't even imitate it. just a lot stuff i need immersion to reacquaint myself with. now that she's seen her mother again, there is a reconnection, so we have to pounce on it, make her remember. we is me, my mother (abuela), my brother (her daddy), my father (abuelo). we talk to her in the language and fake her out, get her to sing in the tongue she claims to have forgotten. she's talking like honduras, as she used to call spanish, and doesn't even know it. if we don't harass about it, the words will return.

when we were in the water i was trying to make her forget her fear by focusing on our beach umbrella in the distance. i told her see we weren't that far, there was our um-ber-rel-la, eh-eh-eh, ella, eh. there is our um-ber-rel-la, ella, ella, eh eh eh. so there the cheesy english pop songs helped out. she was all, you know that song and i was all, yeah, i know things. she said that she was waiting for abuela to come join us at the beach and when she finally did, i told her, there is your ah-bu-eh-la, eh-eh-eh, there is your ah-bu-eh-la, ella, ella, ella, eh-eh-eh. the wordplay, the pop songs, always such an excellent distraction from what's really going on underneath, soothing like that big water that held us today.