I arrived last night in Austin, TX, one of my favorite places in America, to a delicious Thanksgiving meal with both dead bird and vegetarian delights aplenty.
Going on was a spirited round of Texas Holdem, a variation on poker. I learned how to play and actually won a few hands, before I lost all my money ($5, playing with 5, 10, and 25 cent chips).
Today I went to a pawn shop and bought a nice old ten speed with a rack on the back for $40. In NYC, the same bike would have been three times as much.
We rode all over, to Barton Springs, a natural spring pool which is currently closed because the adjacent creek is flooding over, up to Waterloo Records, and the original Whole Foods. At dusk, we biked over to the Congress St. bridge and watch the nightly exodus of 1.5 million bats flying out from under the bridge into the night sky over the lower Colorado River.
Tomorrow night is the Ocote Soul Sounds/Grupo Fantasma double bill at the Parish.
Que gocen!
can be found in the legacy from our Nuyorican ancestors, warriors in the struggle for justice and dignity in this sick country:
Came across a beautiful poem by the late Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri.
How many of us care enough to live like Richie Perez did?
Good things come in threes...
Who knows the Young Lords? You better. Here is there Thirteen point platform
________________________
And by the way
Some new Guarana poetry happening right here right now in my generation. Pa'lante...
I read in the paper yesterday that the ODB (aka Ol' Dirty Bastard aka Russell Jones) has moved on from our earthly plane. I pray that he is somewhere prettier than Staten Island, and that the police stop chasing him.
Newspapers report that he entered an NYC recording studio complaining of chest pains, collapsed, and died before paramedics could arrive.
ODB made his mark on me way back in 1991 on the song "Protect Ya Neck," which was the first Wu Tang single to hit Philadelphia...on the Power 99 FM Power 9 at 9...or was it the Radioactive show...anyway, Wu Tang came on the station, and the DJs kept mispronouncing the name of the group, like "Wu Tang Clang"...little did they know...
It was freshman year in college when "Enter the 36 Chambers" came out, bought it, and listened to it heavily...it was one of the last hip hop cds i ever bought...along w/ Illmatic, Buhloone Mindstate, and Midnight Marauders...
A few months later I began to get into the saxophone, buy old vinyl, and the rest was history.
So, I digress.
Dirty...rest in peace...say hi to the angels for me.
So...I haven't been blogging too much, lately. The Antibalas Who Is This America? tour finished up with a bang in Northampton, except that George Bush was announce as the winner of the presidential elections. Our next shows are up on the website, and we are just about to make our first trip--a very short one--to Japan in January!
There have been widespread accusations of voter fraud. Here is a little flash animation piece which illustrates some key facts and figures regarding voter fraud in Florida, Ohio, and other key states.
My mom's spirits are lifting quite a bit and I have been cooking her some good healthy meals every day. Today we walked around a wild bird refuge and a state park that used to be a WWII military installation...watched A Day Without a Mexican, a schlocky but amusing and well-done "mockumentary", as well as Supersize Me. Go Morgan Spurlock.
Another hearty congratulations goes to a dear compañero of mine, Ricardo Cortés for his book It's Just a Plant a beautiful and thoughtful story for parents to illustrate their children about marijuana. If this book existed when I was a kid, I wouldn't have freaked out on my mom when I found a dime bag while snooping around in her room. I nearly called the cops, and my world was temporarily turned upside down, thanks to Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" policies.
Nowadays, mom is using marijuana medicinally as per doctor's off-the-record recommendations to help her offset the side effects of cancer chemotherapy. She has used marjiuana the past two times she has had cancer since 1998, and swears is is more effective and pleasant than any of the anti-nausea pharmaceuticals she has been prescribed...and cheaper too. Please get well, mom.
What a disappointment. I was hoping that Kerry would fight tooth and nail for a recount of the "spoiled" votes and provisional ballots in Ohio, where the 2004 elections were just as dirty as the 2000 Florida elections.
But by yesterday morning, he was on TV, conceding to the Thief Commander of the Armed Forces and president of the Disunited States of America.
and the only slightly intelligent TV coverage I have seen is the Jon Stewart show on Comedy Central.
Our show in Portland Maine on election day was a total drag, like a birthday party for someone who had disappeared earlier in the day.
Last night's show, however, in Boston, was a jam. There wasn't a single person in the room who wasn't pissed off and shocked, and it seems like the sensible people in the "blue" areas are ready to move forward and fight for a better America.
But how can we fight for a candidate (Kerry) who is unwilling to fight for himself?
I wrote another essay down in my notebook today (yay, analog) and will be typing it into the blog in the next day or two...
stay strong.
