the dispatch

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:12:27 GMT

I'm going to be a TA.

Hooray for my first job using that damn degree.

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:01:41 GMT

Much of highland Guatemala is dotted with small villages, and occasionally a town. These towns are often pretty quiet and sedate, owing to the fact that most of these are agricultural villages. While occasionally pretty, plots of lovingly cared-for cabbages aren’t big tourism draws. One of those sights on the short list of things to see in the western highlands is the market at Chichicastenango, which is actually a town of some twenty thousand inhabitants—for comparison, Xela has roughly one hundred thousand and Zunil has perhaps six thousand.

Its name is Nahuatl for “the place of the nettles”. -tenango is a Nahuatl locative suffix. The indigenous names for the place are Chugüilá, meaning almost the same thing as the Nahuatl and Tziguan Tinamit, which refers to the fact that the town in surrounded by canyons and some fairly rugged terrain. Being that there’s really no clear winner for the simplest place name, most everyone calls the place Chichi.

Chichi gets a writeup in every travel guide on Guatemala for having the largest market around, and for the continuity of the event, which has been happening every Thursday and Sunday since before anyone can recall. Because of this I should not have been surprised to encounter so many tourists in the village.

Being the intrepid little travelers that we are, Ilene and I got up shortly after dawn—which is not any major feat since even most bars here close down between midnight or one—and hopped on a colectivo microbus to ride out to the Minerva bus station. The ride was more cramped than most, perhaps because fewer buses were running in the chilly morning. It was so cold in fact that the driver was all bundled up, and the person in charge of collecting fares didn’t even get out of the front seat.

I keep saying that there’s a bus station at Minerva, but that’s a bit misleading. It’s a long stretch of pavement on the quieter backside of a covered market where the buses queue up like taxis, and barkers help to find the correct bus by hailing everyone from a distance with an urgent ¿Adónde van? We got on a bus headed for Guatemala City and got off in a little highway interchange called Los Encuentros to run from our bus to another waiting bus. All along the trip up, another American wearing a camo baseball cap talked loudly about everything from his med school applications to how crazy his fraternity was. I noticed people turning around to stare at him from the front of the bus.

While the first bus from Xela was rather uneventful aside from the usual food vendors who assault the bus anytime it stops, the bus to Chichi itself was quite the ride. As we pulled away from Los Encuentros, the bus turned off the fairly nice Carretera Centroamericana and onto a much smaller highway that passed through several small encampments, each denoted by two speedbumps right before it. The driver didn’t slow down for these bumps, causing the riders in the back to bounce up almost to the luggage rack and some even shout at the driver, calling him a pig.

After we passed those speedbumps, the road began to switchback greatly, and the driver kept up the speed, honking the horn before sweeping wide across both lanes in the turns. He only began to calm down after passing a small bridge over a gully where another bus had landed on its side under the bridge. The only way it could have gotten from there would have been by missing one of the curves above on the way down. Ilene grabbed my hand.

As we got nearer to Chichi, we started being passed by small shuttlebuses, new and shiny and “turi” written somewhere on the side of it. Out of these buses came throngs of gringos. Now, I’m not trying to suggest that I’ve gone native or anything like that—one of the workers at this internet café often addresses me in English, assuming that I’m a North American language student here to pick up some Spanish—but these people were quintessential gringos. Polo shirts tucked into shorts and socks up to the knees. Women in sunglasses and floppy hats holding camcorders. Obese people. Guiris were also represented by the group of chavvy Englishmen who opined on all in sight and blatantly took photos and videos of the indigenous vendors.

The vendors at many of the booths had an air of professionalism about them that I didn’t quite expect. A few even issued receipts from carbon-paper notepads printed with their shop’s name. But it was the ambulatory vendors who took the cake. Women peddled blankets and table runners, an old man tried to sell machetes in fancy leather sheathes, girls pushed chunky beaded bracelets and tiny dolls. Ilene and I were taking a break from the press of people on the steps of a small church, talking only in Spanish like we always do when we feel like we’re marks, when a little girl selling these dolls walks in front of us and starts telling us about how she wants to sell this little family of dolls and how it has a lovely story in English on the side of the package. Seeing that she wasn’t leaving after being told no, I tried to play with her by telling her that a story in English was useless to me, since I was French. My mistake. She then started her push again in forceful French.

The vendors weren’t the only pushy ones. I wanted to see how much blankets were going for in the market to compare the prices here to those in the store of the women’s weaving cooperative that Ilene is starting to work with. While I was trying to get the vendor’s attention, a pair of American women were wanting to buy a purse. I decided to help them since they couldn’t understand the prices the vendor was giving them. The purse started out at seventy quetzals but these women wanted to bargain. They wanted the purse for fifty quetzals, but the vendor stayed at sixty. The leader of the two trying to buy the bag told me to ask if that was “best price”. The vendor stayed at sixty because this was a tourist market where the buyer doesn’t have too much leverage and the actual selling prices of most goods are fairly uniform—Ilene found that no matter what the initial quoted price, bracelets sold for fifteen quetzals. Then the woman said “fifty-five”. She was trying to put the screws to this old woman selling blankets and macramé purses for five quetzals. That’s sixty-five cents. There was no sale and these ungrateful creatures didn’t thank me for interpreting for them.

After stopping for a drink in a small café in order to have access to a restroom—shades of New Orleans—and fighting off the little girls trying to sell bracelets and those little dolls. It happened that the waiter brought me my change while these two hyperactive kids were next to the table. One of them immediately changed her routine from energetic and outgoing to an affected ingénue ¿Un quetzal para mí?

While the ride up from Los Encuentros was bumpy, the ride back down was harrowing. We waited at a street corner and heard the grumbling of the bus long before we saw it. Since the market was winding down, everyone it seems wanted to skip town, and everyone was on that one bus. The seats were packed to three or four each, maybe even five if small children were involved, and Ilene and I were some of the latecomers, forced to stand in the aisle hanging on to the luggage rack overhead. As the bus started making the same quick turns that the way up saw, I started acting like a bobsledder, looking ahead and leaning this way and that to keep from falling into the laps of the seated people I was between. The most amazing event of the entire day was watching the fare collector lean out the front door of the bus while it was speeding downhill, climb up onto the roof using the windows as footholds, then walk along the roof, and come in through the back door. While that was remarkable, he then started collecting fares, muscling his way through the crowded aisle. How he got through that whole line, I’ll never know.

So wild ride aside, Chichicastenango was worthwhile, if only to make me remember that not everyone here is here out of a desire to see the country in the same way that I want to, and to get me used to seeing loads of Americans again, before we head on out to Panajachel, a place known to some as Gringotenango.

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:39:03 GMT

I don’t know if you’d know this or not, but Guatemala’s in the middle of a banking crisis. About a month or so before we came, one of the country’s handful of banks had to shut down because of lack of fiduciary restraint and “illegal activities” undertaken with their clients’ savings. Shortly after we arrived, another bank closed after announcing to many of the savings account holders that their documents were not valid. They had no idea where the money they had deposited over years had gone. Added to this is a crunch in paper currency due to a delayed issuance of a new series of bills, and you find ATMs unplugged and banks that can’t dispense money—Ilene was quite frustrated trying to sell a fifty-dollar bill.

The only ATM that we’ve found that was able to let us withdraw enough money to pay the rent has been a Banco Industrial cajero in the sprawling mall out to the northwest of our spot in town, the Pradera Mall. It also houses one of the few grocery stores that will accept plastic, so in the interest of conserving cash, we do our big shopping in a place called Paiz or HiperPaiz—two once national chains which have been bought out by WalMart lately.

It’s strange to find a shopping mall in this place, especially one that’s brightly lit and multi-level. The strangeness continues when you notice the families in indigenous dress queuing up to buy snacks at a frozen yogurt kiosk and the bilingual signs marking off each department—the familiar and unsurprising Castilian above the forbidding K’iche’ full of guttural consonants and apostrophes. I’m only guessing it’s K’iche’ since that group is the predominant Maya people of this region.

The economy brand in all of these stores is Suli, matches, dishwashing detergent, napkins, powdered milk and toothpicks all packaged in simple yellow and blue packages. It makes me wonder if my last name is associated with this brand, since the most consistent pronunciation I’ve gotten back from people has been Súliban. That makes me sound downright Ottoman.

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:10:41 GMT

Since the English school that we’ll be working for was being slow in actually giving us a starting date—it turns out that they had been trying to contact us, but they managed to get both our emails wrong—we decided to make a day trip to more of the smaller towns south of the city. We took the same route that we followed to Almolonga—the same bus with the toy squirrel dangling from the luggage rack in fact—to the end of the line to the agricultural town of Zunil.

The town sits in a valley and most of the flat land through which a small but swift river passes is divided up into small plots where cabbages and the other vegetables that dominate local agriculture are grown. In contrast to Almolonga, Zunil is rather quiet—only a handful of people are out and about, including a pair of backpackers. The people who are the loudest in the town are the pickup drivers who stand by the side of the road and in the plaza next to their trucks and ask if anyone needs a ride to the Fuentes Georginas. More on that in a minute.

Zunil’s plaza is dominated by buses, orange juice vendors and a large white church with a cavernous interior whose nave is flanked by devotional statues of all the usual suspects at whose feet dozens of small white candles burn. One unusual statuette was a Madonna and child draped in an American flag. I couldn’t figure that one out. Outside the church we searched for a weaving cooperative, which was purported to be a block away from the church, but to no avail. Instead we found the headquarters of a marimba orchestra.

The highlands of Guatemala are a very active place geologically speaking, and since the area we were in is rather volcanic, there are a few areas where the geothermal energy is exploited to heat pools of water. One of these areas is called, appropriately enough Los Baños, but as we passed through it on our way to Zunil, it didn’t grab our attention and we opted instead to head out to a collection of volcano-heated pools called the Fuentes Georginas in the hills above the town.

We walked back out to the bridge and met a man offering to take us up the hill and back down again. His name was José María and he drove his aging Toyota up the increasingly narrow and winding road leading up the hillside. I kept looking out the passenger window the entire ride up, since the view out to the other hills was remarkable, and the abrupt edge of the road kept gravity foremost on my mind. José María sang along to his cassette of marimba music as the road kept winding upwards. On either side of the road, wherever space permitted there were farmers watering their crops and collecting bundles of spring onions to haul down the mountain. The smell of onion was almost overpowering but quite welcome in comparison to the sulfuric smell as we neared the Fuentes.

As the sulfur grew stronger, the clouds and mist grew thicker until we found ourselves in the strange situation of being surrounded by tropical plants in very chilly air.

We met our driver again in a couple hours after enjoying the decidedly hot water—showers here don’t exactly steam—and he took us back down the mountain, this time we shared the truck’s cab with his daughter Rosa María, tiny girl in K’iche’ traje who stood on the seat between her father and the door and peeked her head out the window during the whole trip. José was much more talkative on the way down and asked us a series of questions ranging from friendly and conversational to frank and intrusive. He excitedly started singing the songs he would sing in church, in both Spanish and K’iche’ teaching us words as he went along. I only remember a handful of these including utz and anima’, which means “heart” and I’m willing to bet is a loan from Spanish. On the way down the mountain he kept picking up more people who were coming down the mountain, from a young man with a shovel to an old man in a worn coat hauling a bundle of sticks on his back. José María also had the peculiar habit of directing any question about Ilene to me. He’d ask me if I liked to dance, and then follow that question up with ¿y a ella le gusta bailar?

Once back down in Zunil we walked back across the bridge over the small river running alongside the town, then watched as several women carrying baskets of trash on their heads made their way to the bridge and then upend each basket, letting the trash fall down to the river below.

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:57:58 GMT

A few days ago, Ilene and I took a bus out to a village called Almolonga which is only a couple miles to the south of Quetzaltenango for their market day. There is only one bus station in town which the normal inter-city buses originate from, but it’s located out on the western edge of town and would require a short little trip on one of the intracity microbuses to get to. Lucky for us, the bus passes through the southern part of town and the central zona una that we live in, so we stood on an unmarked street corner and waited for the bus to pass while watching a guy lead a small group of goats across a street.

The buses are really something else. The notion of buses as being uniform members of a recognizable fleet is only reflected in the first-class bus lines that run between some of the major cities. Most of the cities, towns and villages in the country that are lucky enough to have a road running through them are serviced only by the colorful rag-tag fleet of retired North American schoolbuses which are often painted in bright colors and decorated in the outlandish idiosyncratic way that restraint forgot. Over the windshields of many of the buses a large window decal proclaims the driver’s faith and beliefs. “El Señor me guía” “Cristo te ama” and “Fe en Dios” seem to be among the more popular.

The English-speaking residents of this place and the backpackers passing through like to call these “chicken buses” out of the practice of locals bringing their livestock on board with them on their trips to market. This practice has not been witnessed yet, but rest assured, I will keep you updated.

We got off the bus at Almolonga, while few others did the same. After a mistaken walk down the dusty main drag, we found the town’s main plaza and market, after getting directions from a man who would say left while pointing to the right. I have been to the Rastro on busy days, Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras, and various sold out concerts, but while this crowd was not the largest I have ever seen, it was easily the densest and the most active. Women in full traje carried bundles of spring onions and chamomile flowers on their heads and men in jeans stained with mud fresh from the fields dragged bushel-bags filled with fat carrots, plump cabbages and various foodstuffs I cannot identify.

The plaza was flanked by two streets, one-way affairs with high, narrow sidewalks, and pickup trucks slowly idled along them, finding the way impassable most of the time. In between these streets was a sea of huipiles, vegetables and noise. Ilene and I stood on the sidewalk opposite this confusion and admired the scene, looking for paths to work our way in edgewise and debating the likelihood of getting trampled. While we were being wallflowers, a little girl came up to us with a big smile on her face and coyly asked, “¿Quieren sacar una foto de mí?” I didn’t see why she thought she was so special and didn’t have anything to give her so I apologized and said no. She looked at Ilene and me in confusion and asked us why. I hope I didn’t damage her self-esteem.

The bus ride back was amusing. The driver had decorated the inside of his bus with stickers—Tweetie Bird and a bald eagle on a field of stars and stripes among them—and toy stuffed animals. The whole ride back into town I had to keep pulling my eyes away from a plush gray squirrel hanging from the luggage rack over the driver by a chain around its neck.

Also, Ilene and I have found an apartment. It's run by a Lutheran church and I can receive mail at

Ryan Sullivant
Casa Concordia 104
6ta Calle D11-29, zona 1
Quetzaltenango
Guatemala

It's a big room with warm blankets, but cold showers. Also, should any of you feel inclined to writeto me, that's fine, but I can't receive packages without taking a four-hour bus ride to the capital to sign it through customs.

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:20:29 GMT

Things are going well.

I'm in Guatemala, I almost assuredly have a place to stay for the next few months, and definitely will be able to get some coin to offset the cost of living. It's strange how I can dismiss an apartment renting for about 200USD as "way too expensive"; though I would have been able to play with their pet chihuahua named Lola. In the afternoons I'll get to volunteer in the community most liekly, though doing what I'm not sure. I can help rural communities build safe stoves. Awesome.

Photos will be forthcoming on the flickr page, which I trust you all know and love.

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:54:01 GMT

Once the engine turned over, the speakers put out a single sharp squeel. I killed the power to the radio with the same swift motion that I use when I hear my phone ring, but the squelch just became intermittent then. I revved the engine to keep water out the muffler and sailed down the block to the cross street which was not inundated. The squelching continued, became a white noise crackle that danced around, and did nothing to keep me calm and collected. I killed the engine and started bailing the water out of the cabin, when I thought to check the trunk. That smell is burning rubber. Burning wiring insulation. The toolkit was in the bottom of the trunk, under all the books and clothes meant for bringing home that afternoon. The battery's connection was bolted on, and I dropped a few wrenches to the gritty wet pavement as I fumbled for the one that fit. All this time, I could still smell that burning rubber in my mind and hear the speakers short out further. With the doors closed, the squelch lost much of its treble and midrange, but the base came through quite clearly. It was as if my car had a stomach, and I could hear it growling. The battery was disconnected, and I was walking home.

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:14:15 GMT

Dear Livejournal,

It has been fifteen weeks since I last wrote to you. Much has happened since. Where when we last spoke, I was full of energy and throwing myself at my last semester of undergraduate work; now I'm emptying my closets, folding clothes to go into a series of plastic bags to take home. Then I wait for my degrees to arrive in the mail in January. No ceremony, no pomp, no circumstance.

Which is just how I wold have wanted it, to be honest. I always get uncomfortable when such attention is thrown on me, though I doubt that this commencement would have focused as heavy and intense a spotlight on me as the last one. No speech, no accolades, just a handshake before I would have flopped over a tassel and sat down back in my chair and realize that it's all over with each passing breath and nervous glace at all the beaming faces around me. Instead, I just get a manila envelope in the mail. I just hope it doesn't feel too much like receiving a late holiday package from a perennially forgetful relative.

And now what? Three weeks of flying above Bourg in a holding pattern, doing ovals over lower Terrebonne. My staggered graduation--the fate of those occupying the distant ends of the bellcurve, though it's not certain which end is mine--has provided me with a vacancy of time. I'm applying to graduate schools, five to be precise, in less of an attempt to delay real life an attempt to keep working on the one thing I've been trained to do. At least that's been my mental mantra.

New Orleans has been good to me, sure, but it's time for a change, time to make a break. Anyway, Ilene doesn't particularly like the environs, and I've started getting bitter, so we looked for a new place to go. But what about those grad school applications? If we go anywhere, we'd just have to move again in a few months. So we decided to go somewhere interesting. Ilene suggested Guatemala, and the more we learned the better it's looked to us.

I now have a one-way ticket to Central America and an appointment at the travel clinic in my future. It's definitely exciting, the kind of exciting that brings disapproving concern from some and well-wishing encouragement from others.

Our destination is Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second-largest city, located in the southwestern portion of that country in a region known as the Western Highlands. Mountains. Volcanoes. Our plan for self-sufficiency is teaching English to the folks in the city. We won't get rich, but we figure we wouldn't get rich at any other job we would hold for only four months, and the living's not as pricey down there. If self-sufficiency and clandestine paychecks aren't possible, then there is absolutely no shortage of NGO work to be done in the region. Besides, as Kijowski once advised me, sometimes you just have to make the choice that has the greater potential for stories at the end of it. And if I happen to pick up a bit of K'iche' along the way, all the better.

Regular communication will be essential, and I will be soliciting all of your emails and mailing addresses at some time in the near future, as mass-mailings and postcards (postcards!) will be in the future.

Bis bald, zai jian, and 'tá logo

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:56:21 GMT

Awkward: having a class with a professor you've already taken a course with, and with whom you have already formed a camraderie.

Much more awkward: having a class taught by someone you've taken classes with as a student.

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 23:12:36 GMT

From Wednesday:

"And it's even better that you're young with longer hair; nobody'll think you're Immigration."

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 02:46:21 GMT

So my plan to get to see Pat this weekend fell through, but I did get a chance to meet up with an uncle of mine and try my hand at amateur aerial photography.

After the flight I bought a cap out of whimsy and the mistaken notion that we were headed for the beach, to be reunited with the Atlantic Ocean after oh so many months, but in addition to a 40nm TFR, Discovery has brought about the gridlock of all cars bound to the eastern shore and the beaches swept of most of their glory by Ophelia.

I instead got to spend the afternoon in a small swimming pool as lightning struck on the horizon, and later I played air hockey and skeeball in an arcade. We gave all our tickets to a little girl that Jess thought was cute. The little girl had ridiculously long pigtails.

Tomorrow Jess has her first job interview of her career, and Joni suggestingly asked me where I was applying to grad school. I told her if nothing came of grad school I could always go to the jungles of Cambodia to live among the Hmong and gain the secret wisdom of their ancient language. The government'd pay me to do it, too.

But instead I now have a cap. I don't think I like it all that much now, as the whimsy has waned and I realize that I still have far to much hair to fit under a cap.

I finished Difficult Loves, a great book of short stories by Italo Calvino--yeah, I went through an Italo Calvino phase in college, too my professor said--the book would make me feel sad, yet hopeful if I felt I was alone. This book would have the single best thing to have happened to me in high school.

It also has caused me to wonder even more intently about the lives and doings of the ordinary people I pass by throughout my day. I've been thinking a lot about what their lives must be like. I put images in my head of how I would shoot these scenes, scenes that belong in one of those films composed of multiples vignettes. People are riding in a car, having a conversation, when one of them looks out the window at a nearby car, then the camera shifts over to that car to watch their story unfold.

Maybe I should have been a cinematographer, but then again, I'm colorblind, and I would probably abuse quick, abrupt cuts to close-up scenes in the action--if that makes any sense or not.

I've now started on this big thick book given to me as a graduate of the Spanish and Portuguese department. I haven't graduated yet. Tres tristes tigres. The book's in Spanish, so take that Lusophones. They're playing by the numbers, I guess.

The man sitting next to me on my way over here didn't say a word to me the entire flight over, until the plane pulled up to the gate. He then asked, "The author of that book, what country is he from?" "He's Cuban. He died last year." The man then lets out an Oh and turns to the window.

I wonder why he asked that question. Could he not figure out what language it was in and he wanted a clue?

Why you gotta make me pensive Orlando?

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:35:18 GMT

Overheard undergrad logic:

"If three different people answer a multiple-choice question with three different answers and they all get it wrong, there's something wrong with the question."

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 03:46:53 GMT

Remember: if the FBI calls, I am a model citizen. Specific briefings to follow.

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 03:36:11 GMT

My weekend

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 15:35:31 GMT

So, is "sea change" the new "paradigm shift", or am I the only one who's noticed a sudden increase in "sea change"'s popularity in the past few months?

Wed, 31 May 2006 03:27:56 GMT

So yesterday morning I was playing a small set of some Phil Ochs covers that ended with Jello Biafra and the Melvins' cover of "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" in which they updated the original lyrics to circa 1992.

Someone called up the station to say, "I don't get it, is this supposed to be a conservative song or a liberal song?" I told him it was a song about hypocrisy. He then said that if it was, he'd have to "find him and kick his ass!". Just what he was talking about, I haven't been able to figure out, but the fact remains that someone called up my show because they didn't understand the song I was playing.

Sat, 20 May 2006 14:56:58 GMT

Dropping by campus yesterday to return a movie to the media library, I stopped in front of McAlister to listen to Casa Samba perform (and eat some empadas and coxinhas) and I was reminded of the peculiar bowed percussion instrument that they used during some of their capoeira pieces. And given that some of you have expressed interest in the digeridoo and other generally unusual musical instruments, I felt I should bring the berimbau to your attention as well.

Fri, 19 May 2006 03:19:49 GMT

In one of my classes today, we watched Quilombo Country, a documentary about the current communities in Brazil that are the continuations of camps formed by escaped slaves back in the 1800's and earlier. In one scene about the residents' practice of Macumba, the narrator read a fantastic line.

"Being a communist didn't keep Beti from being visited by the spirits."

So remember kids, your preferred economic model cannot protect you from the effects of the spirit world.

That is all.

Thu, 04 May 2006 12:42:19 GMT

Red Shadow - Understanding Marx
* * * * *
Phil Ochs - I Ain't Marching Anymore
Woody Guthrie - Buffalo Skinners
Love - A House is not a Motel
The Move - Fire Brigade
Country Joe and the Fish - The "I Feel like I'm fixin' to Die" Rag
The Castanets - Bells Aloud
Ennio Morricone - Il buio
* * * * *
Tom Verlaine - Saucer Crash
Víctor Jara - ¿Quién mató a Carmencita?
Nação Zumbi - Vai buscar
Chico Buarque - Caçada
O Cordel do Fogo Encantado - A chegada de Zé a lagoa de Deus
Ja'afar Hassan - They Taught Me
King Louie - Heartbreak Habitrail
* * * * *
The Space Lady - Major Tom
Stereo Total - Belami
The Capricorns - The New Sound
Moving to France - Boom Boom Sound
I'm from Barcelona - We're from Barcelona
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Love Connection
Refree - Raisa
Os Mutantes - Glória ao rei dos confins do além
* * * * *
Caetano Veloso - Irene
Jason Falkner - Song from under the Floorboards
Michael Yonkers - Sold America
* * * * *
Daniel Johnston - Speeding Motorcycle
The Divine Comedy - Tonight We Fly
The Narrator - Wait, No Actually
Montag - Bonne nuit, Etienne
Roy Orbison - Dream Baby
Now I'm kind aglad that I'm going to be skipping my next show, given that if I had to do all this over again in a couple days, I'd probably be just sick of it. Now I'm off to repair a tire. Tires and I don't get along well in the city.

Wed, 03 May 2006 22:40:12 GMT

Andrew Bird - Candy Shop [a guy calls up and asks, "who's this Brit?"]
Architecture in Helsinki - Do the Whirlwind
The Narrator - Wait, No Actually
* * * * *
The Bottle Rockets - She's a Mover
The Move - The Words of Aaron
Love - Alone Again, Or ["is this a cover?"]
* * * * *
Mercury Rev - A Drop in Time
The Gurus - Silver Rain
Devendra Banhart - Sligo River Blues
The Earlies - I Must Have Been Blind
* * * * *
Shoplifting - Cover to Cover
Moving to France - Boom Boom Sound
Stereo Total - Comme un Garçon
Guided by Voices - My Valuable Hunting Knife
* * * * *
Phil Ochs - Outside of a Small Circle of Friends
Warren Zevon - The French Inhaler
The Pixies - Where's My Mind? [request]
Okkervil River - Another Radio Song
* * * * *
Menomena - The Late Great Libido
Nação Zumbi - A ilha
unknown artist - Yumma al-hilou
* * * * *
Ennio Morriocone - Giorno di notte
Tom Verlaine - Sleepwalking
* * * * *
Ana Moura - Flor de lua
Roy Orbison - It's Over
Johnathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Hey There, Little Insect!
King Louie - Beat up by a Girl
Danielson - Time that Bald Sexton
Montag - Bonne nuit, Etienne

Wed, 03 May 2006 15:48:21 GMT

Andrew Bird - Weather Systems
David Byrne - Glass, Concrete and Stone
Tom Verlaine - Boulevard
* * * * *
Ennio Morricone - Sequenza 10
Quadro Nuevo - Tu vuo' fa' l'americano
Mike Pinter Four - Yearbooks
The Ants - Holiday Hex
* * * * *
Woody Guthrie - The 1913 Massacre
Phil Ochs - Draft Dodger Rag
Kind of Like Spitting - Sheriff Ochs
* * * * *
Shoplifting - M. Sally
The Flaming Lips - Mr. Ambulance Driver
Architecture in Helsinki - Like a Call
The Microphones - I Can't Believe You Actually Died
* * * * *
Maria Teresa - Lusofonia
Antietam - I Swear
The Mendoza Line - Pipe Stories
Okkerville River - No Key, No Plan
* * * * *
Moving to France - Boom Boom Sound
Stereo Total - Nationale 7
Sajada al-Ubaid - Ala Honak
* * * * *
British Sea Power - Apologies to Insect Life
Destroyer - It's Gonna Take an Airplane
The Robot Ate Me - Come Together
Of Montreal - Kid without Claws
* * * * *
Stephin Merrit - Little Hebrew Girl
Danielson - Five Stars and Two Thumbs Up
Hockey Night - Tubin'
Garage a Trois - The Dream

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:46:11 GMT

Brian Eno - Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
Os Mutantes - É proibido proibir
Stereo Total - Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais
* * * * *
The Move - Omnibus
Danielson - Two Sitting Ducks
Acid Mothers Temple - Space Age Ballad
* * * * *
Caetano Veloso - Tropicália [I got an inquiring phone call over this one]
(unknown artist) - Choubi, choubi
Nação Zumbi - Pode acreditar
Moving to France - Action
* * * * *
Johnathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Hospital
The Microphones - I Want the Wind to Blow [someone else wanted to know what this song was]
* * * * *
Refree - El cuarto deseo
The Mendoza Line - Mysterious in Black
Kind of Like Spitting - Sherrif Ochs
Phil Ochs - I Ain't Marching Anymore
Woodie Guthrie - The Dying Miner [during the airbreak I went on a tangent about Centralia]
* * * * *
Warren Zevon - Carmelita
The Handsome Family - In the Air
Morricone Youth - Super Villian
* * * * *
The Robot Ate Me - Regret
Of Montreal - Joseph and Alexander
The Morning 40 Federation - God Help Me [request]
Merlin Coleman - Perfecthood is Going Down
Broken Social Scene - Puff the Magic Dragon
* * * * *
Chico Buarque - Juca
Marbles - Circuit [who stateofbliss and I saw in concert in February]
Maxïmo Park - Graffiti (demo)
Saturday Looks Good to Me - Meet Me by the Water
Devotées will be pleased to hear that there will be an encore performance of your faithful and long-suffering DJ early Thursday morning from 4 to 6 AM CDT. And of course, since I'm following DJ Tanner, you can just catch her show which runs from 2 to 4 AM CDT and just stay on to listen to mine. But only if you think you're a bad enough dude to listen to the radio at those ungodly hours.

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 21:44:49 GMT

Following in the newfound tradition of DJ Tanner or whatever she's calling herself these days over on Myspace:

Ballboy - I Lost You, But I Found Music
Os Mutantes - Baby [a live version from my collection]
The Czars - Little Pink House
* * * * *
The Robot Ate Me - Just One Girl
Daniel Johnston - Girl of My Dreams
Great Lake Swimmers - When It Flows
The Move - (Here We Go around) The Lemon Tree
* * * * *
The Mendoza Line - Name Names
Gentle Giant - The House, the Street, the Room [by request]
Moving to France - Boom Boom Sound
* * * * *
Caetano Veloso - Alegria, alegria [more stuff from my files]
Stereo Total - Avec ma valise
Fred Buscaglione - Juke Box
Warren Zevon - Mohammad's Radio
* * * * *
Phil Ochs - I Ain't Marching Anymore [this piqued a bit of interest]
The Mountain Goats - Dilaudid
The Handsome Family - My Sister's Tiny Hands
Migala - Empty Suburban Movie Theater
Refree - Raisa [again, you won't find this in the station]
* * * * *
Johnathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Astral Plane
His Name is Alive - In My Dream
Menomena - The Late Great Libido [from the album that's got a flipbook on it]
* * * * *
I'm From Barcelona - Treehouse
Herbaliser - Giddim! [by request]
* * * * *
World Leader Pretend - Lovey Dovey [not a Local H cover like I was hoping for]
Hockey Night - Cooperation
P:ano - Enchanted Forest
Architecture in Helsinki - Frenchie, I'm Faking
The Moggs - Cubby Bear

In other matters, My Port203 course is cancelled for tomorrow. Which means that I don't have to report to campus until 2 PM, and it also means that one of my short compositions for the class will be cut. Welcome news considering the Span691 and Span685 papers are still glaring at me from that ever-approaching May 1st deadline. At least the film paper is going to make sense.

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 04:26:55 GMT

So Monday I had to drop stateofbliss off at the airport after she had come down for the weekend to wish me a happy birthday. Thursday I pick up Jessica at some airport sometime tomorrow to bring her down to Bourg for the Easter weekend. Crawfish must be boiled. Pictures will be taken.

There is also a visiting very important Brazilian coming to Tulane on Tuesday, though he'll only speak in Portuguese. The upside is that my Portuguese prof is having a party for as he jokingly put it, the "small lusophone elite" of the university to eat red beans and rice or one of two kinds of gumbo with José Miguel Wisnik.

I'm excited about this, I've had a couple of friends talk about hanging out at their instructors' houses and being friendly with their educators, and now is my chance--and his house is close enough that I can bike there.

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 02:38:37 GMT

why ilene is great
The duck is wearing a party hat.