Page Title

“Welcome to Lucha Libre Night at the Taco Bell Arena in Chihuahua,
Mexico. I’m Edificio Del Huevo, your color commentator, and I’ll be
assisted by six-time Mexican female mud wrestling champion, Rosita
La Chingada.”

“¡Hola amigos!”

“We’ll be reporting on the hugely anticipated grudge match tonight
between Mexican champion Comandante Marco and his American
rival, El Grande Bush. There’s a lot at stake in this battle for North
American supremacy, wouldn’t you say, Rosie?”

“¡Ooooh sííííí! Mexico has been pushing for a rematch since 1846,
when the malditos gringos cabrones put a gun to our heads and
made us sign over Texas and California. Now if we want to go there
for a vacation we have to swim through rat-infested sewer pipes, and
mutherfuckers telling us ‘Speak English! Speak English!’ I like English.
I luv it! But I don’t need no gringo mutherfucker breathin’ down my
neck.

“Anyway, if Comandante Marco wins the match tonight, we gonna get
back all our land and then we be telling you cocksuckers to speak
Spanish.

“I know the first thing I’m gonna do when we take over is to move into
the Presidential Suite at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and go
skinny-dipping in the Grand Canal. Show the mutherfuckers what a
real Mexican chocha looks like!”

“Sounds good to me, Rosie, but as they say ‘Don’t count your huevos
rancheros before they’re hatched.’ Remember, the norteamericanos
are not going to give up all that loot without a fight.

“And as we speak, El Grande Bush is entering the ring. He’s wearing
his trademark pink tu-tu, dunce cap and glitter mask, and they’re
playing his music, ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise.’”

“Hey, Bushie, Bushie! Can we get a word from you for our studio
audience?”

“Waal, I’d like to address my remarks to the brave men and women
fighting in Eye-Rack for the forty-second consecutive year. I honor the
sacrifice you are making in the war on terror, and I want you to know
that I plan to win tonight so that when you come home you’ll have a
home to come home to.

“The threat we are facing in this arena here tonight is whether our
western states will remain The Home of The Free And The Brave, or
are allowed to become an open-air taco stand like the one on
Alvarado Street in downtown LA, where the crackheads and stray
dogs hang out, behind the convention center.”

“How inspiring! What’s your strategy for fighting Comandante Marco?"

“I plan to shock and awe him with my lightning speed, twist his head in
the ropes and bite his knuckles.”

“Excuse me, Ed, cut out that shit. Here comes Mexico’s national hero,
Comandante Marco of the Zapatista Revolutionary Army of Chiapas.
He looks ready for battle with his headdress of quetzal feathers,
jaguar-skin tights and crocodile nose mask. His musical
accompaniment is the Mexico City rock band Molotov singing their
anthem ''Viva México Cabrones.' Every time I hear that song it brings
tears of pride to my eyes, especially the part where they sing ‘No Me
Llames Cerdo.’ When I was a leetle girl in the shantytown overlooking
the security wall separating Nuevo Laredo from Brownsville, Texas,
my mother used to lull me to sleep by singing to me from Molotov’s
romantic love song ‘Chinga Tu Madre’, where they sing:

Nos vemos Acapulco a la fin de semana
Mientras yo cuido à tu hermana
Chinga tú chinga tu madre
[Ed. See you in Acapulco
But first I fuck your sister]

“Hey, big boy! You got something to say to your fans?”

“Hola, Rosie. I dedicate my life to the glory of Mexico. After I win, not
only are we going to reconquer our lost territories, but we are going to
sacrifice El Grande Bush on the ancient Mayan altar at Chichen Itzà
by ripping out his still beating heart and feeding it to the pirhana fish
that swim in the holy cenote. The whole ceremony is going to be
filmed by Mel Gibson for his upcoming movie “Jews of The Jungle.”

“Sounds great, sweetie. Only how do you plan to vanquish such a
great warrior like El Grande Bush?”

“I plan to shoot him with a curare-tipped blow dart and then, when he’s
paralyzed, I’m going to stomp on his balls.”

“And there’s the bell! The two fighters are circling each other warily,
looking for an opening, and they are being watched by the masked
referee, El Misterioso, who is also wearing a mask. Ed, what do we
know about El Misterioso?”

“Only that he gained fame as the fiercest lucha libre fighter in South
America.”

“Wow! Now El Grande Bush leaps forward and head butts
Comandante Marco in the chest, but instead of falling onto the mat El
Comandante does a backflip, kicking Bush in the face. Bush goes
down and Comandante Marco sits on his face, locking him in a French
Butt Hold, squeezing the air out of Bush like an Anaconda python
between the steel vise grip of his powerful glutes.”

“With his last, dying breath Bush reaches between Marco’s legs and
manages to insert his two fingers in the man’s nostrils and flip him
across the ring like a slingshot. Bush jumps to his feet and delivers a
shattering roundkick to the head of El Comandante, who goes flying
into El Misterioso who, enraged, punches him in the face. Hey, he’s
not supposed to do that. He’s the ref!”

“Wait a minute! Now El Misterioso grabs a folding chair and breaks it
over the head of El Grande Bush.”

“The audience is going berserk. The mariachi band Los Tigres Del
Norte has started playing the romantic sentimental love song ‘Volver’,
I suppose expressing their wish for a return of Mexico’s northern
territories. Meantime, on the American side, Ted Nugent is shooting
off machine gun riffs from his guitar. Oh no, that’s not his guitar, it’s a
real machine gun! Now gunfire is breaking out all over the place and
bullets are flying.”

“Comandante Marco and El Grande Bush have recovered from the
surprise attack by El Misterioso, and they’re punching the shit out of
him in the corner of the ring. They rip off his mask.”

“Omigod, it’s Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, and he’s got
an oil gusher shooting out of his butt!”

“Well, let’s get out of here before the whole place explodes. Reporting
to you from Taco Bell Arena, I’m Edificio Del Huevo.”

“And I’m Rosita La Chingada…”

“Wishing you a big cuevo en el culo, cabrones!”

CHUCHA LIBRE

200motels POLITICS

Comedy

Tragedy

Nonsense

Bullshit

Yeah, Brooklyn After Dark! It ain’t no Disneyland. When the sun
goes down the eagle flies and all bets are off.

On our way to Coney Island Beach my girlfriend, Magpie, and I
stopped off at one of the conveniently located liquor stores on
Brighton Beach Avenue for a pint of Cossack Vodka. It being
the height of summer, we determined that a moonlight swim was
in order before the Natalie Cole concert just across the street
from the boardwalk, in Asher Levy Park.

The beach was animated at dusk with beautiful Russian girls in
expensive bikinis, their less beautiful parents showing
unsightly bulges in no less expensive bathing suits,
bodybuilders with shoulder-length bleached-blonde hair, plus
assorted psychos and freaks who looked as though they were
on a day pass from Bellevue.

The sun shone brightly as it descended in a scarlet ball of fire
to the west, resembling the opening credits for a Charles
Bronson cowboy movie. A sprightly breeze animated choppy
waves as Magpie and I frolicked in the surf. Big waves crashed
into the shore, and Magpie and I bounced around happily like
little waterlogged tennis balls, diving into the surf, doing the
breast stroke, the back stroke, floating on our backs. I had
brought along a mask and snorkel, and that was fun for a while,
but I could barely see beyond my arms in the brown, murky
mulch, a far cry from the crystal waters of the Caribbean, to be
sure!

Coney Island Beach/Brighton Beach may not be Cheeseburger
in Paradise, but you won’t hear any complaints from the
immigrants who migrated there from the former Soviet Union.
For somebody who traces his origins back to Kazakhstan or
some little shit industrial city situated in the Ural Mountains,
Brooklyn is paradise. The beaches may not be as pristine as
those that line Israel’s seafront, but the money is American, and
there’s no way you can beat that.

The lifeguards had ended their shift at 6:00, and the beach
patrols in little green dune buggies blew little party horns and
tried half-heartedly to coax swimmers out of the water. This the
city is obliged to do to protect itself from giant lawsuits in case
a swimmer drowns. Naturally the swimmers ignore the
warnings, but that is not the point. The point is, if somebody
drowns, city lawyers can claim, “We took every reasonable
measure to warn him.”

Magpie and I left the beach as night fell, just in time for the
Natalie Cole concert. You could see and hear perfectly from the
boardwalk, which is much more agreeable than sitting in folding
chairs across the street at the band shell. Natalie Cole was in
excellent voice, and she sang a variety of genres from Nat King
Cole material to disco to blues and rock. We found ourselves
next to a lively group of black people who called themselves
“The Jazz Family.” With their beach chairs, their voluminous
picnic food, their dancing feet and their enthusiasm for soul
music, The Jazz Family were the stars of the boardwalk.

The first pint of vodka having long previously bit the dust at the
beach, I ran over to Brighton Beach Avenue for another pint of
rotgut, which we cut with pomegranate juice. Magpie lost her
mind and I had to lead her back onto the darkened beach so
that she could take a leak. Magpie can’t hold her liquor,
particularly when she’s happy. She has almost gotten us
arrested any number of times for trying to sweet talk police
officers who don’t have any sense of humor. Also, she loses
control of her motor functions and I have to lead her around
like the guy in the Times Square subway station with the
dancing dummy that he ties to his legs. The only difference is,
Magpie ain’t no lightweight. At 5’9”, she’s larger than most
men. She’s strong as an ox. She can bring home fantastic
loads of groceries and, one time, when we got snowed in at JFK
Airport, instead of quietly acquiescing and sleeping in the
airport waiting area, she marched across a field of waist-deep
snow in her Miami shoes lugging two huge suitcases to catch a
bus that would take us to the subway so that we could sleep in
our own beds in the city.

Magpie is the kind of girl every peasant farmer dreams of
marrying. She’s intelligent, she keeps an immaculate home like
a European. And, she’s so strong you can hook her up to a plow
and she’ll furrow 40 acres. But when she gets loaded she’s all
dead weight, and I was already carrying a big backpack filled
with our beach supplies.

The full moon in the eastern sky shined portentously red, while
to the west the lights of Coney Island beckoned like a Greek
fable. Out to sea the huge cruise liners leaving New York
Harbor glistened like miraculous jewels of the universe like the
Fellini movie “Amarcord” where the simple people go out to sea
in boats to be dazzled and amazed by the ocean liner, but what
we have in modern New York is so much grander, more like
science fiction.

After Magpie finished her feminine business on the beach, we
went back to the boardwalk to see the remainder of the Natalie
Cole show. In the summer the people of Brighton Beach are the
luckiest in the world, and I’m a die-hard Manhattanite who’s
testifying to that. Even late into the night the boardwalk is
hopping. Kids playing ball in the sand under the protective
glare of streetlights, overfed Russian couples having their
promenade, rollerbladers holding hands, wild kids on bicycles
with boom boxes attached. One joker even had a tiny television
attached between his handlebars, I kid you not!

On the avenue cops’ sirens blared an incessant howl,
reminding you that you might be at the beach, but you were still
in Brooklyn. Groups of motorcyclists roared by, rich Harleys
dressed up with fantastic light shows like Christmas trees,
super jazzed-up “Too Fast Too Furious” Japanese Ninja bikes
painted iridescent green and orange, the female passengers
holding on for dear life in the back, their butts stuck up in the
air like a fertility ceremony.

The show finally ended and The Jazz Family turned on their own
boom box, alternating John Coltrane saxophone pieces with
Sam and Dave soul music. I went over to speak to them. The
men shook my hand and presented me to their charming
women. Eugene from Far Rockaway told me, “New York is
brutal, man, but we shall persevere.”

BROOKLYN AFTER DARK

200motels NEW YORK AREA

Comedy

Tragedy

Nonsense

Bullshit

CHUCHA LIBRE

200motels POLITICS

Comedy

Tragedy

Nonsense

Bullshit

Every time I take out my harmonica, my girlfriend, Magpie, shrinks
away in utter revulsion. She never passes up the opportunity to
remind me that I stink as a musician. OK, I stink. Never mind that I
was trained by Robert Sherwin, a great New York studio musician,
whose estimation of my musical ability was rather more flattering
than hers, or that I have had my share of petty triumphs before
live audiences.

Nevertheless, I can appreciate good musicianship when I hear it,
and the miracle of recorded music technology that has evolved
over the last century has enabled me to feast on a cornucopia of
sonority that kings and queens never had.

People might well ask, why waste your attentions on a five dollar
piece of junk like the harmonica when you can listen to the
Moscow Symphony Orchestra play Swan Lake, or a magnificent
pop group like The Gypsy Kings? Because sometimes the
greatest pleasures come from the simplest things. I get off more
blowing a five dollar harmonica than any dork with a $500 iPhone.
The immortal blues composer and musician Robert Johnson
developed his slide guitar technique by pounding nails into the
wall of his sharecropper cabin and stringing wires between them,
which he then twanged away at.

Any reflective person understands that things are never as
deceptively simple as they might seem. Art consists of the
triumph of technique over content, as Flaubert and Proust
demonstrated when they created great literary masterpieces
writing about essentially nothing, or when Picasso filled a whole
museum with works of art he had nailed together from pieces of
junk he scrounged from the scrap yard.

The harmonica looks deceptively simple but it is actually one of
the hardest instruments to master. Unlike the saxophone or
trumpet, notes are created by the rush of air in both directions.
Bending notes, creating chords by blocking out the middle holes
with the tongue while giving play only to the holes at either end of
the scale, creating an echo chamber in the mouth to make a larger
sound, these are some to the tricks of the trade which are only
learned by dedicated application.

Whosoever scorns the harmonica does so out of ignorance and
stupidity. It is an orchestra that fits in your pocket. Attach it to an
electric pickup and it creates a thundering sound that stimulates
a vivid range of emotions every bit as cataclysmic as a symphonic
assault by Wagner or Grieg.

World culture is full of great harmonica masters, each of whom
developed his individual technique for conveying a message of
towering power. Most people are familiar with the American
greats like James Cotton, or Stanley Clarke, who transformed
their feelings of desperation and longing into triumphant
messages of survival and resurgence.

One such artist was Larry Adler of Baltimore, who got his start in
the burlesque houses during the early part of the twentieth
century. But as Adler’s art developed he came to realize that he
could jam more into a harmonica than just the popular tunes of
the day, and he reached for classical and symphonic music,
eventually arriving at Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall in
London. After hearing Larry Adler’s performance of “Rhapsody in
Blue,” the composer of the symphony, George Gershwin told
Adler that his was the greatest performance of the piece that
Gershwin had ever heard. The Queen of England, flush with
meeting Adler backstage at Royal Albert Hall after a command
performance, joked to an acquaintance, “He let me hold his
organ!”

So why was this historic musician forced to end his days as an
exile, living in London? Because once he removed the
harmonica from his mouth, he would speak his mind about the
issues of the day, notably left-wing politics. In this he was joined
by innumerable other artists, writers and film directors who were
forced into exile by a venomous domestic political climate
orchestrated by ambitious heartland Republicans eager to make a
name for themselves by destroying the lives of artists in the
course of congressional witch hunts. Of course, if you ran afoul
of these pricks by not supplicating and betraying your friends you
could stay in the states and have your reputation and livelihood
destroyed, or serve time in federal prison for contempt of
congress or if they caught you in a lie.

But the smart people just left for Europe and never came back.
Names like Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, Larry Adler…

But there’s another Larry, who blows a different kind of mouth
organ, Larry Craig. Only this Larry doesn’t play beautiful music, he
blows a symphony of right-wing repression and adherence to the
same kind of cornpone totalitarianism that drove another
generation into exile. Because Larry Craig was playing a double
game of repressing homosexuals during the day and blowing
guys at night, the same as former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
used to harass gay guys and then wear party dresses.

Some idealistic people believe that Larry Craig should get let off
the hook out of a spirit of generosity and idealism. To them I say:
what if the situation had been reversed and instead of the world
sitting in judgment of Larry Craig, Larry Craig sat in judgment of
the world? Do you think he would let you off the hook, or would
he ruin your life and send your ass off to jail in time for him to get
down to the airport men’s room to play a saliva symphony on the
skin flute?

This might sound brutal, but as the eminent political theorist Mr.
Dooley once observed, “Politics ain’t beanbag,” and with all the
loot at stake in this country, the Republicans aren’t averse to
knocking a few heads together.

So don’t cry for Larry Craig. What’s being done to him, he would
gladly do to you. The guy’s a swine. And remember; if you happen
to be in the airport men’s room don’t pick up the soap.

BLOW ME A SONG!

200motels CULTURE

Comedy

Tragedy

Nonsense

Bullshit