Posted 4 years, 11 months ago mid-morning by oso
My sister has recently discovered David Bowie. Well, musically at least. Little did she know of his acting career. So last night, on our way to do some shopping at Trader Joes, I insisted she watched both Labyrinth – a classic on par with The Princess Bride – and Basquiat where Bowie plays Andy Warhol better than Warhol himself ever did. These were suggestions as in … you know, one day in the future, you need to check these out … but when she said we should watch one the same night, there was no way I could resist. So my Americas podcast sampler for Global Voices got temporarily put off and we decided on Basquiat.
But first, there was some serious microwave cooking to be had. Have you guys seen these things? Revolutionary is the only word to use. Booger and I have it decided … from now on the fridge will be stocked only with microwavable steamed meals from Trader Joes. Of course, it was more than predictable that as soon as Booger tried a bite of mine, she was gonna want my killer green curry with bamboo shoots over her weak-ass red curry with tofu. “Brother, how come yours is always better?”
Poor child … still so much life-experience to traverse.
Once the DVD got started, she had to put up with my older-brother, name-that-tune trivia throughout the movie:
“OK, this one’s easy.”
“Ummm, it sorta sounds familiar, I don’t know, I mean, I like classic rock, but I like don’t really know the names and stuff.”
“What!? ‘Classic rock?’ Who calls Tom Waits classic rock?”
“Oh? This is Tom Waits?”
I sigh in disgust. One of the most discernable voices in all genres of music … we obviously have a ways to go. Then, the first three notes of Flamenco Sketches comes on and I start freaking out and squeal, “OK, this one, I know you can get this one.”
“Ummm, it sounds sorta jazzy …
“Sorta jazzy! Jesus god, this is the biggest name jazz has got, come on child, you’re killing me. Miles Davis, Flamenco Sketches.”
I actually enjoyed the movie a little more this second time around. Going to the Warhol exhibit a couple years ago at MOCA helped me understand a lot of the subtle references. At one point Basquiat walks into Warhol’s studio and there’s some dude pissing on a canvas. Little did I know that it turned out to be a famous piece.
And as luck would have it, a Basquiat exhibit is currently at MOCA. Hopefully Booger and I will be able to check it out on our college-tour-roadtrip up north.
This coming weekend Moreno, Abogado, Cindy Sheehan and I are going to all be in the same city for the first time since god knows when. To celebrate, the idea was to see a band whose latest album is entitled Menos El Oso … how could we not? But now Moreno’s pulling a moreno and spitting out such nonsense as … “well, I dunno, I mean, I wasn’t really that impressed with the last album and that’s what they’re mostly gonna be playing.” My dear long-term readers, has Moreno ever been “that impressed” with anything? Please do me a favor and tell him to stop being a weenie. We’ll also be having a friendly competition to see who can slip Cindy the tongue first. I’ve got $5 on Abogado, but you never know.
Last week, maybe it was two weeks ago, my dad asked me if I had heard about what was going on in New Orleans. “Are you serious? Is there a way to avoid hearing about it?” Like everyone else, I think he was a little come off by my insensitivity. He pointed out that the projected death toll was in the thousands, maybe even 10,000. “Nombre, I bet you one dollar right now that it’ll be under a grand.”
I’ve learned to stop talking about New Orleans with friends and conocidos because they look at me like I’m a child molester when I shrug it off as no big deal. Not that it’s inconsequential so much as similar and even more devastating natural disasters happen across the world all the time. Seriously, what we call a hurricane in the Big Easy is called “monsoon season” in Bangladesh. But we still measure the severity of a disaster not by the number dead nor number displaced, but by the budget. “A disaster without precedent whose tally could reach nearly 100 billion dollars.” But if you were to scale it all out, a home for a home, business for a business, life for a life, what happened in New Orleans happens at least six times a year globally.
What people try to help me understand is that these are Americans, my fellow countrymen and women. We’re a community, we need to look out for each other. But really, let me say this straight up, I’ve never met a single person from New Orleans. I’ve never been there. I don’t know anything about their culture, their music, their traditions, or their daily lives. I relate as little to any given person in New Orleans as I do to your average Bangladeshi. Or, as much. And why should I? Obviously, I’m the abnormal one here, but it just so happens that natural disasters seem equally disastrous to me without regard to citizenship. So when Kanye West, bling bling and from suburbia, says “those are my people down there” I want to know why he’s discontent that the federal government is going to spend nearly a 100 billion dollars on rebuilding New Orleans where 800 people died from a natural disaster when not even a task force or committee has been set up to deal with the many more dead from very unnatural causes in Sudan.
When were 10,000 people killed and 150,000 people displaced in a city just as close to me as New Orleans? Readers of this weblog probably know better than most. It was 20 years ago today in Mexico City; and I can guarantee you it’s already been lost in the international collective conscious while Katrina will live on and on. So all I’m saying, really, the end of my rant, is that if we’re going to focus 99% of international media coverage on one natural disaster, then we should (or shouldn’t) do it for every natural disaster. And if every single online activist is going to help out when disaster strikes the US, then that same level of participation should exist when it strikes anywhere else.
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Your ever so logical assumption that the world should focus equally on any natural disaster no matter where it hits and when is certainly the fair thing to do but it’s wholly unrealistic to think it will ever actually occur that way. The simple fact is that in certain areas, such as Bangladesh, natural disaster are so common place coupled with the sheer lack of major facilities of any sort that might be ruined (I’m talking from an economic stand point here), that it seems the norm when they happen. I mean, you are right, the loss of life in such impoverished lands during such things would seem the most tragic … but the western, industrialized (i.e. — wealthy) world doesn’t see things in terms of loss of life as substantial or necessarily important. It’s the financial districts, the ports of call, the refineries, the pipelines, the flow of commerce, man … that’s where it’s at.
Please know though … that I’m not disagreeing with this. I’m simply stating it as a the way it is .. .from a highly western looking glass.
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I caught the Basquiat exhibit when I was in NYC earlier this year. It was a good body of his work, and a nicely presented. But personally, I’m only a fan of a couple of his pieces. Most are too chicken-scratch-abstract to resonate emotionally or at a visually with me. But that’s just me.
I agree with Myke, it is about money to a certain extent. Another aspect is that people have been clearing the cobwebs from their eyes and ears. We are vulnerable, cronyism is rampant, and you can’t depend on this government. Many people already knew this, but others are just realizing this, and it is freaking them out.
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Strange confluence of Mommy Sheehan and internationalism here, Oso, that I’ve seen very recently. Did you happen to catch the Hitchens v. Galloway debate this past week?
Hitchens attached Galloway for his supposed internationalism (claiming the true internationalists were in the Iraq War party) in the face of joining with Cindy Sheehan who he claimed carried an undertone in regard to Katrina of something like: “if it weren’t for all the billions we’re giving the Arabs our people wouldn’t be dying.”
But hands-down, best quote of the night from Hitchens to the rabble-rousing audience:
Long transcript | Article+Video
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I was in Mexico City 20 years ago, so I feel like I should say something.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, people mobilized and helped each other. There was, as in the case of Katrina, incompetence and ineptitude on the part of the government, but they did not obstruct the people from getting things done.
What irks me about Katrina has been the duality in the government’s paternalism and indifference. In Mexico, people quickly had somewhere to stay, something to eat, and medicines if they needed them. People were not portrayed as criminals for wanting to survive. Was there looting? Probably, but we did not talk about it. There were other things to worry about. It just seems ironic that a society without as many resources (and mired with corruption at that) reacted more humanely and efficiently than one with arguably the most resources.
Now as far as disasters go, I mourn when anyone is displaced, hurt, or killed. That is not the issue for me. As a citizen of a country, it bothers me that the government that claims to be protecting us fails to do it. The people in New Orleans had the right to expect the government to make sure the infrastructure was adequate in the case of an emergency and to be assisted when an emergency arose. Just like you enjoy the benefits of earthquake safety measures in California or like your fellow citizens were housed after the massive fires there a few years ago.
While I agree that we should be doing more for the victims of Sudan and elsewhere where injustices are occurring, it is hard for our government to have any legitimacy when there are injustices occurring in its own country under its own watch.
Last, I disagree that Katrina will live on and on. It will be part of the collective consciousness of those whoe experienced it, just like Mexico ‘85 is part of me,, but for others it will become one of many disasters. Just look at September 11. Just afterward, it seemed to be the cataclysmic event that was to change the world, but this year it took second billing to Katrina.
And Oso, you should try to learn more about New Orleans and Louisiana: the music is fantastic – jazz, zydeco, cajun – the food is marvelous, and the culture is fascinating (vodoo, creole, cajun, etc.).
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I had a blast when I went to New Orleans. It is fucking awesome there.
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Hi David,
It is unfortunate, but true, that many in the US simply do not know enough about other countries and their problems. In your post, you talk so easily about Bangladesh and Sudan, but a majority of the people you ask will be hard-pressed to find these countries on a map. When a person’s world-view is limited thus, their perspective is skewed, the problems in their own backyard seem much larger because they have nothing to compare it to.
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P.S., love Trader Joe’s and right now, missing it a lot!
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I still recall waking up that morning. Happy, cause it was my brothers birthday. It was an unusually cold morning on September 19th, 1985. My mom always had a birthday breakfast for any of us who was celebrating birthdays. But on that day, we found my mother and father crying, sitting in the living room, Televisa showing the destruction that occured in D.F. There was no birthday breakfast for my brother after that. I used to think, damn, that must suck to have a disaster overshadow your birthday. The magnitude of the disaster obviously lost on a six-year-old.
I like this education of Booger you’re doing. I’m glad she likes Mr. Waits and is gettin’ into Mr. Bowie. I’ve been meaning to burn you a copy of a Sparklehorse compilation I made. Do you know Sparklehorse? I have a feeling if you don’t, you will.
I don’t think you’re a dick if you don’t want to bring up N.O….I think we all are exhausted with the coverage. The media sucks like that. Yet, we must move on. La vida no para there.
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EMC-
Your memory is fading a little. Televisa was not broadcasting because the broadcasting facilities were severly damaged. There were random reports on various radio stations and canal 13 (the only non Televisa channel, which does not exist anymore) really did not have an adequate staff to cover the event even though its broadcasting facilities escaped without damage (thanks to its location near El Pedregal – and hence on solid ground).
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Myke,
I agree with what you say. I was just trying to justify my reaction to it all.
Chris,
I’m looking forward to the Basquiat exhibit. I’ve never seen a piece of his in person so I’m not sure if I like his work or not.
Derek,
I just finished watching the Hitchens vs Galloway debate. It was a pure show, nothing more. But there was some funny shit talking from both sides (Englishmen debating is so much better than Americans debating):
Xolo,
Very cool to read your first-hand account of the quake with comparisons to Katrina. There was also an interesting article in yesterday’s LA Times which claimed that the quake enabled much needed land title reform which led to the city’s redevelopment and rise of the PRD in D.F.
Sujatha,
Agreed. Obviously more people should be reading Global Voices.
If Bangalore had Trader Joes (with scaled pricing), I’d move there in a second.
EMC,
The only Sparklehorse song I’ve heard was from your first mix and I dig. Looking very forward to the mix.
Xolo again,
I was sorta critical of the techtopians saying that somehow Wi-Max would’ve made everything better in New Orleans, but seriously, imagine if everyone had internet access (and a computer) in Mexico City when the earthquake hit. Granted, towers would have to be solar powered and earthquake resistant and laptop batteries would need to be charged, but imagine how quickly people would organize to get food and emergency aid where it was needed.
It will be interesting to see what Google WiFi has in store for us.
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Oso,
Did Booger enjoy Labyrinth?. I used to watch that a lot when I was a kid and now my brother has it on DVD. The puppet monsters are amazing.
I completely understand your feelings about Katrina and the coverage. I thought about this after September 11th. Sometime a few months later a Chilean professor showed our class an op-ed piece Ariel Dorfman had written entitled “El Otro 11 de Septiembre.”
The primary reason I’ve been a little more interested in Katrina is because I do have a friend there. I didn’t know for a few days if he had gotten out of NO with his family or if he was stuck on a roof somewhere or in the Superdome. Thankfully, he’s out of the place but the apartment complex where he lived is now submerged in water.
I was supposed to go to NO next year for a conference, but now it’ll be in Chicago.
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Oh yeah, I don’t remember the earthquake in Mexico occurring but did read about it later when I started to get fascinated with earthquakes in 3rd grade or so.
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Dude, you’re becoming a bit elitist/pretentious with your music/movies these days. Need I remind you what we knew of such things at 15? I’m sure you’re being a little sarcastic, but take it easy on your poor sister — you’ve already set the bar pretty high.
Looking forward to the weekend. Thievery is playing on Saturday on the mall.
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Cindylu,
I definitely wanted to see Labyrinth over Basquiat, but when the blockbuster guy told us it was in the “family section,” booger wasn’t so amped. Not even with Bowie. I really wanted to write a post on “the other september 11th” on Global Voices, but didn’t find the time. Lots of stuff happening in Chile these days. They just approved a new constitution and it looks like their next president is going to be a socialist woman.
Abo,
I’m not sure what you were watching, but I was consistently on the cutting edge of high-brow, avante garde, cinematic intellectualism. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure for example. Great news about Thievery … I’ve really been digging their new stuff.
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Oso, so are those lazy-man meals healthy/economical? Ya know since I really need to stop eating out like everyday…damn it always thinking about food!
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They’re everything. I’m never going back to real food again.
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[...] Amava New York e l’eroina, amava Haiti e la pittura. Julian Schnabel, l’artista che gli fu amico, gli ha dedicato un film nel 2000. Ma Basquiat lo si è visto, ventenne e in carne e ossa, interpretare se stesso in New York Beat (1980-81): artista di strada, poeta di immagini in libertà, pittore di versi, ragazzo notturno e nottambulo. Il suo funerale al Green-Wood Cemetery di Brooklyn, il 17 agosto dell’88, è stato raccontato come fosse una diretta televisiva”. [...]