swine flu bigotry

I knew it. I fucking knew it. When I saw the swine flu outbreak map last week and the spread of new cases was an obvious result of travel from and within Mexico, I knew that anti-immigration assholes would use it to their benefit. Yes, our borders are porous and that obviously poses a health risk when the “human-swine avian flu” is running rampant in Mexico, but instead of using the unnecessary hysteria to bring another notch to your “we need a 30 foot high wall between us and them” argument (I’m looking at you, Michael Savage), you should probably read up on what microbiologists are discovering about your death virus train to closed borders. When originally discovered, the current hybrid mutation looked like it had the potential to bring another 1918 where 50 million people succumbed to a virus with similar structures, but after a week of research and genetic testing on the swine flu, scientists determined that the crazy strain (lol Ozzy) is even less severe than the average flu. But America always does love a good drama (last episode of Friends) and so the World Health Organization upped its infectious disease alert level and declared that a pandemic is “inevitable,” causing Asian women to don those cloth masks out in public and raising our fear-of-that-which-is-foreign to SARS-worthy proportions. Even though the majority of cases reported in the US are of our own dumb citizens traveling to Mexico without hand sanitizer, conservative patriots are still going to use the one homeland death (of a 2 year-old Mexican child that visited family across the border) and “inevitable pandemic” announcement as more weak proof for the longtime “they bring diseases” belief and we’ll never fucking hear the end of it. Why can’t we just treat these types of momentary scientific scares like the alien landings and make sure stupid people don’t hear about it?

la linea de oro es una guerra de idioma (a freetranslation.com op-ed)

FreeTranslation.com:

Hace pocos días, el Metro aprobó llamando el nuevo Edward R. Roybal Metro Gold Line Eastside Extention la Linea de Oro, Edward R. Roybal en toda literatura impresa en español e inmediatamente ambos de español y los inglés Partidarios pusieron el grito acerca de la decisión, que es el primer de su clase. ¿Comúnmente, los nombres propios no son traducidos a otros idiomas y el existir líneas que Blue, Purple, Red and Green mantienen sus nombres ingleses en la información del todo el otro-idioma impresa por Metro, así que por qué es la línea de oro tan especial? Bien, para principios, los usos de la extensión más son limitados que la mayor parte de la otra baranda de Metro proyecta. En vez de es una opción de transporte para turistas y ocio-buscadores (“Aquarium? Go Metro”.), linea de la de Oro es construido como un transporte de viajero, para conectar la población en gran parte hispana de Los Angeles Oriental con el resto de la ciudad. Esta razón hace sólo la identidad de la baranda dentro de la comunidad de primordial importancia. Si las personas de East Los Angeles utilizarán una nueva línea de Metro, ellos querrán sentirse culturalmente conectado a en más maneras que frescos de mosiac en cada parada. El metro necesitó para mostrarlos que es un gente del párr de linea de Boyle Heights, Marvilla, todo de East Los (personas que opitions transporta en autobús-libre de transporte) y no otra máquina de gran ciudad para gringos estafa dinero que quiere ver las vistas desde el ventana de un coche ligero de baranda.

Todas las preocupaciones con la decisión para un nombre español no tienen ninguna base en la realidad. El caos esparcido del turista es imposible desde entonces “la Linea de Oro” sólo parece en publicaciones de español idioma Metro y a menos que esos turistas sean altavoces españoles (en que embala ellos comprenderían y probablemente apreciarían el nombre traducido), ellos no deben encontrar cualquier títulos que no convenin. La confusión para jinetes normales de Metro no debe ser de preocupación cualquiera desde que la traducción del nombre propio de la nueva línea en español es obviamente un movimiento de abrazar la población Hispanohablante sirvió por el sistema y hace ni es vista por otros jinetes de idioma-hablando. La mentalidad del “terreno resbaladizo” es también ridícula. Simplemente porque denominamos la linea de Oro extensión en español no pone ningún precedente a denominar la Línea Púrpura en coreano ni la Línea Azul en camboyano a causa de un hecho muy sencillo — español Altavoces fundó esta ciudad y su idioma permanentemente son inculcados en nuestra ciudad estética. Los coreanos se mudaron aquí en los años cincuenta y los camboyanos durante los años setenta, pero los mexicanos pararon por lo que es ahora Calle de Olvera atrás en los 1840 y denominó el vasto el sur de pueblo de espacio de California El pueblo de la de Nuestra Señora Reina de del de Los Angeles Río de Porciúncula — un bocado comparado al linea del la linea de oro. La tierra alrededor de centro también fue poseída por mexicanos y lugares como Rancho Dominguez y Los Encinos llegó a ser Dominguez Hills y Encino que sabemos hoy. ¿Los restos españoles corren desenfrenado en nuestras calles de la ciudad (Pico, Figueroa, Santa Monica, Ventura) y cualquiera vida aquí conoce en aspectos menos elementales del idioma (“Quiero dos tacos de carne asada con todo para llevar, por favor.”), así que por qué no abofetea de ese instituto requisito extranjero de idioma en una línea de baranda que corre por un área claramente hispana? No tengamos miedo para dar una espalda traducida de nombre propio a las personas que hicieron todo posible, los mexicanos que fundó este craphole y el 48% de contribuyentes Hispanohablantes viviendo actualmente en ello.

en ingles:

A few days ago, Metro approved calling the new Edward R. Roybal Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension la Linea de Oro, Edward R. Roybal in all literature printed in Spanish and immediately both Spanish and English-supporters were up in arms about the decision, which is the first of its kind. Ordinarily, proper nouns are not translated into other languages and the existing Blue, Purple, Red and Green lines keep their English names on all other-language information printed by Metro, so why is the Gold line so special?

Well, for starters, the extension’s uses are more limited than most of the other Metro rail projects. Instead of being a transportation option for tourists and leisure-seekers (“Aquarium? Go Metro.”), la linea de Oro is being built as a commuter transport, to connect the largely hispanic population of East Los Angeles with the rest of the city. It serves a 95% hispanic ridership and this reason alone makes the rail’s identity within the community of primary importance. If the people of East Los Angeles are going to use a new Metro line, they are going to want to feel culturally connected to it in more ways than mosiac murals at each stop. Metro needed to show them that it is a line for the people of Boyle Heights, Marvilla and all of East Los (people that need bus-free transportation opitions) and not another big-city machine for gringos con dinero that want to see the sights from the window of a light rail car. 

All of the concerns with the decision for a Spanish name don’t have any basis in reality. Widespread tourist chaos is impossible since “la Linea de Oro” appears either by itself in Spanish-language Metro publications or alongside the English name on all other station and poster signage and unless they are truly retarded, the difference in names should be an obvious addition to other citywide bilingual information. Confusion for normal Metro riders should not be of concern either since the translation of the proper name of the new line into Spanish is obviously a move to embrace the Spanish-speaking population served by the system and if seen, will not be distracting to other language-speaking riders. 

The “slippery slope” mentality is also ridiculous. Just because we named the East L.A. extension in Spanish does not set any precedent to naming the Purple Line in Korean or the Blue Line in Cambodian because of one very simple fact–Spanish-speakers founded this city and their language is permanently ingrained in our city’s aesthetic. The Koreans moved out here in the 1950s and the Cambodians during the 1970s, but the Mexicans stopped by what is now Olvera Street back in the 1840s and named the vast Southern California space El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula–a mouthful compared to la linea de oro. The land around downtown was also owned by Mexicans and places like Rancho Dominguez and Los Encinos became the Dominguez Hills and Encino we know today. Spanish remnants run rampant on our city streets (Pico, Figueroa, Santa Monica, Ventura) and anyone living here is familiar with at least elementary aspects of the language (“Quiero dos tacos de carne asada con todo para llevar, por favor.”), so why not slap some of that high school foreign language requirement on a rail line that runs through a distinctly hispanic area?

Let’s not be afraid to give a translated proper noun back to the people that made it all possible, the Mexicans that founded this craphole and the 48% of Spanish-speaking taxpayers currently living in it. 

punny lede

Not only did the opening sentence of this article make me LOL on the blue line, it is also the cheesiest play on words that the L.A. Times may have ever gotten away with. In reference to Hollywood Blvd. closing down for a Depeche Mode show, 

Street closures? It seems Hollywood “Just Can’t Get Enough” of them.

BAHAHQQHQHAHAHAHA! GET IT?! It’s funny because it’s one of their song titles!

record store day!

Now that the digital age is upon us and all our music can be downloaded from our fucking cell phones, the days of Empire Records and High Fidelity are quickly becoming yore. In my conscious adulthood, I have seen the demise of independent record stores like Aron’s, Sea Level, Rhino and more recently, the Bionic in Huntington Beach (which sit depressingly empty with the sign still up).

Well, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-ers, apparently, that phenomenon is leveling out and the survivors are rallying together in a sort of a “griffin rising from the flames after the apocolypse” sort of way except the griffin is actually a network of 2000 locally-owned record stores and the bird brain is a shop owner from Portland, Maine with a cool, Asian-inspired beard. Together, they are Record Store Day, a brilliant idea that takes over the Second Saturday of every April and begs anyone with a soul who listens to independent music to “celebrate” by spending money at their local record store. The stores schedule their own events, give discounts, overstaff to hell and our responsibility is to show up, say “fuck iTunes” for a day and spend money on actual, physical music.  The labels are in on it, too, helping out by releasing tons of limited edition 7″s, LPs and tshirts that you can only buy at a participating independent record store on Record Store Day. Things went so well last year that the the mayors of New York and Bloomington, Indiana declared it an official holiday (even printing out the proclamation in the shape of a vinyl—how cute). The whole thing is an excuse to get all the assholes from the VinylCollective message boards off their computers and into an actual record store and a chance for music-lovers with modest vinyl collections (meeeee!) to stock up on some special, one-off goodies.

So, naturally, I celebrated the shit out of Record Store Day. I just got back from Fingerprints, the only Los Angeles area record store that’s actually having worthwhile shit planned and loaded up on exclusive vinyl from Flight of the Conchords (joke band on a 45?), Sublime (“Superstar Punani” on the B side–what’s up high school!) and Pavement (live in Germany 12″!). Then I watched Crystal Antlers try not to hit eachother with their instruments since the stage is the size of a truck bed as they played to “celebrators” who got up before 1pm. Then, since they’re driving all night to Visalia and coming back for a Carson Daly gig on Monday (Sexual Chocolate on national televion!?), they signed some posters for a few loopy young girls, Victor’s mother and an unclaimed child. Then I continued celebrating independent music by eating breakfast at Potholder, avoiding Grand Prix traffic and going home to listen to my loot since I had no interest in Bob Dylan listening parties or Bird and the Bee performances.

why i am not going to coachella

While all you assholes are donning American Apparel summer shirts and reading new LA Times offshoot Brand X’s guide to all the music worth seeing while baking alive at the Empire Polo Field, I will be doing infinitely better things that don’t include being woken up by the desert sun using my tent as a heat storage compartment at 7am only to realize I’m still drunk from when I fell asleep 3 hours before (oh wait, that was 5 years ago when I went). Here are only a few of the many reasons why I am not going to Coachella this year and why I really have no interest in going in future years, regardless of who is on the schedule:

• Festivals…ugh: The very idea of a sweaty, crowded music festival makes the social anxiety inside my heart go pitter patter and the thought of being one of 160,000 people corralled into an area the size of 20 city blocks (that’s 8000 people per block) makes me think less cultural community and more death and pestilence. Good luck fighting the mob to get within 1000 feet of the stage.
• Civil obedience: To clarify from above, some festivals turn out to be a roaring good time, but those are the ones that defy their festival-ness. Woodstock, Altamont, even Bonaroo (maybe) have come over the hurdle of hosting the hoardes through essential ensuing chaos, but nothing is more unattractive than an under control crowd watching music that’s supposed to make us go ape shit. I’m talking about the difference between drinking water all day and still smelling like whisky a week later. The mood at Coachella is too docile for anything that shatters the framework of the existing system and if you’re not starting fires in trash cans and getting naked in the mud while peaking on acid, being at a festival is basically pointless. 
• Heat: This a big ass “duh” since it’s Springtime in the desert, but, you have no idea what heat is until you’re half-drunk, hoping to be high trapped between the merciless sun and the naked bodies of those around you. “Stifling” is a word that does not come close to the panic created when every breath tastes like sweat and flattened grass.
• Indio: Leave the Coachella Valley alone. Let’s stop trying to have our cake and eat it too because if rich Californians want to cash out their pensions and escape the city by buying condos on a 7th green in Palm Desert, they obviously aren’t interested in having half of the life they tried to avoid coming back to haunt them, invading their quiet zone for three days a year and buying up all the PBR at the grocery store (that’s why they got rid of the ice skating rink at the mall!).
• Prices: Only USC students and trust fund babies that don’t work for Abercrombie and Fitch Headquarters can afford $385 for three days of this stuff. It’s almost as ridiculous as asking $600 for a SXSW badge.
• Facilities: Being at Coachella strips you down to your animalistic needs. Your body goes into survival mode and all it needs is food, water and a place to shit–none of which are an easy task on the Empire Polo Field. The bathroom line takes at least 45 minutes and to get a $10 hamburger, the wait could be twice that. $4 water bottles are a bust and you’re better off just waiting to die.
• Better stuff to do back home: Between the Long Beach Grand Prix (which will inspire another rant all its own), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s performance of The Nightman Cometh at the Troubadour (two-nights sold out!) and Record Store Day (featuring a Crystal Antlers in-store), who needs to drive through Riverside to have fun? And with the heat expected in record numbers come Sunday, I’d rather just relax on the beach. 

tonight

My cousin’s band Hockey is playing Detroit Bar tonight and if I can escape from the essay and foot-stitches coma I’ve been in for a week, I might show up. Googling their band name is always a hilarious effort to weed out Canadian websites about the sport and when you add in the name of tonight’s venue, it’s just a recipe for old-news-story-about-people-stabbed-at-Red-Wings-Defenseman’s-side-project disaster.

GOOD “Hockey + Detroit Bar” search result: Costa Mesa Music: Friendly Fires and Hockey at Detroit Bar

BAD “Hockey + Detroit Bar” search result: Two Killed at Hockey Player’s Detroit Bar

oh what a night

The whole explanation as to why I’m walking with a collapsable wood-stained cane and ditching lectures would be best explained in a timeline breakdown of Sunday night/Monday morning and a revisit to late 90s movies featuring Will Friedle and Jennifer Love Hewitt (or both) about epic night-long misadventures like My Date With the President’s Daughter, Can’t Hardly Wait, and Trojan War. 

3pm: Ride moped to beach house in Belmont Shore that I get paid to clean. Put sheets in washing machine. Relax and watch horrible VJs talk about how much they loved Monsters Vs. Aliens on CurrentTV.

8pm: Eric rides his bike over after work and helps me finish cleaning.

11:30pm: Done cleaning. Hungry. Ride our respective transportation devices to Legends and hope they’re still serving food.

11:45-12:30am: Food service is no more, but John and Simon are at the bar so we stay for some free girly shots and some scotch on the rocks. Plans are to ride home and cook a frozen pizza. mmm.

12:30am: Legends closes, so we leave. I start the moped and realize it’s idling pretty hard and the back wheel is spinning like crazy. I decide to try and stop it, which I have done before, when it wasn’t spinning so fast. I kick the tire a few times and it doesn’t slow down. Instead, it sucks my foot into the spokes and drags it with it into the chain and gear mechanism. With my foot getting ground into the moving parts of my beloved moped, I push it onto the ground and drag my foot out. A gash on my foot starts to pool with blood and I limp back into the bar and black out on the floor.

12:35am: I wake up with only half my hearing and all the barbacks, hosts and leftover drunk tourists trying to bandage up my foot. Some are laughing, thinking I’m being a pussy, but they stop the bleeding and put my shoe back on and send me on my way. I don’t start crying until I get outside. Eric starts the moped and I start riding home with my leg dangling off the side since the vibration hurts my fresh wound. 

12:45am: We’re on 2nd street near Mira Mar (where it starts getting residential and turns into a small hill that you can’t see over) and a guy and his blonde girlfriend are walking in the street. Jokingly, but in a “that’s not really funny” way, he pushes her more into the street, laughing as we get closer. Eric and I both swerve to avoid hitting this poor girl with the asshole boyfriend and when I look back to make sure she’s okay, I run into Eric’s back tire and fly off the moped. 

12:50am: More scratches, tons of bruises and road rash on the palms. I’m crying more now, pissed at our within-10-minutes-of-each-other double misfortune, trying to get the bike and moped out of the middle of the street while Eric jumps into alpha-male mode and goes after the idiot who made us crash. Eric pushes him down, he gets up and calls me a “drunk bitch” as he clocks my guy in the lip and the neighbors start coming out threatening to call the cops, which at this point, would genuinely be awesome. Eric comes back as oblivious-to-the-consequences-of-his-actions man escorts his equally as oblivious girlfriend into his Honda Civic and drives off with no apologies.

12:55am: Trying to regroup on the sidewalk. Realize that when the moped got knocked over after I fell off of it, the gas cap flew off and spilled gas in the street. The fender is also broken and a large chunk is taken out of both my front tire and Eric’s bike’s back one. Decide that we have to ride home. Hands are bloody, foot is swelling like a football, but at least the moped starts, so away we go. 

1:10am: Home. Eric assesses the foot gash and says he sees my tendons. It’s pretty deep and I am hysterical. I get thrown in the car and driven to the emergency room at Long Beach Memorial hospital, which we thought was on Long Beach Blvd., but is apparently on Atlantic.

1:30am: Sign in and get an official bracelet. “Yes I’m up to date on my tetanus shot.” Pain scale: 7. They say I should be seen by 2. Watch Law & Order, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed on the waiting room TVs. Crackheads and sick children trickle in.

4:30am: “Re assessment” of vital signs. Still waiting for a bed to open up. “Yes, I’m up to date on my tetanus shot.” Pain scale: 3 if my foot is not moving. 8 if I try to use it.

5:30am: Finally get escorted back and only two of the beds we pass are taken. I want to call shenanigans but am just  thankful that this is going to get taken care of. 

6:15am: They take off the bandage and when the air hits it, yeeeeouuuuch! I’m all set up and ready to get these damn stitches over with, but apparently there is no one in the hospital that wants to do the procedure. “Yes, I’m up to date on my tetanus shot.” Pain scale: 8.5. The male nurse tells me that the physicians assistants that normally do sutures aren’t on shift from 3am until 9am, so I should just hold tight—it might be a while. 

7:25am: Shift change! A doctor that hasn’t been at the hospital long enough to not give a shit about injured people agrees to sew me up. For the upteenth time: “Yes, I’m up to date on my tetanus shot.”

8:00am: Novacaine for the soul.

8:15am: Prognosis: The wound is deep but the tendons are intact. No foreign objects appear on the x-ray. I get four stitches and a doctor’s note excusing me from work and school for a few days.

9:00am: Receive final paperwork and hobble out into the sunlight. I have class in an hour. Yeah, not going to go to that.

9:15am: McDonald’s breakfast like I don’t care about my arteries. 

10:00am: Send out emails explaining why I can’t do anything today and finally stumble into bed.

strange boys

I made the mistake of going to Fingerprints while my rent check is still in the mail and spent way too much money on 70 electronica and 50 cent “Fuck The Scene” vinyl. Luckily, however, I also picked up the new Strange Boys album, and girls club, and it is fan-fucking-tastic. I’ve seen these guys play on the Rocket Boat, in a record store and now in a carport during a bomb Texas BBQ and their heavy blues rock never gets old. I also mde an ass out of myself by calling Jerry Jeff Walker, Jerry Lee Hooker during a conversation with the bass player and he didn’t find it as funny as I did. w00t! But the point is that this album was meant for vinyl and this vinyl was meant for my record player.

what gives, usc?

Hey conservative university kind of located in South Central filled with spoiled children and institutionalized culture, why all the crazy concerts this week? Seriously, though, how did you know that I spent 4 hours listening to every Brand New song on my itunes last week and just bought Summer in Abaddon on vinyl yesterday? Sucks that I work Saturday night and will miss the only part of this whole Springfest 2009 crap that isn’t some serious insanity of KIIS FM college-blonde hyped up pop-rock (Iglu & Hartly got arrested for being naked and punching a hotel security guard at SXSW), but maybe the Row will get sick gnar afterwards and everyone will puke up on their new Portugal. The Man shirts.

 

UPDATE: The sound was so horrible at the show that the confused students were even more confused since none of the music appeared even remotely likable. “Is it just me or does it sound like shit?” I asked a friend who tours as a stage tech for bands. “Oh, the sound guy should be shot.” Luckily, I had to go to work, so I ditched the butchered Pinback songs and listened to Blue Screen Life the whole way home.