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Gun’s and Roses fans… WaHI folks, a little bit of history…

http://uptowncollective.com/2011/02/17/welcome-to-the-jungle-wash-heights-style/

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Highly recommended for those writers who spend way too much time worrying about the rules of grammar.

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Dante’s Inferno here has been a little icey lately. Well the heat is back on since someone sent me a newspaper clipping of DC Comics doing away with Wonder Woman’s costume and history on her 69th birthday (those are paper years, not human ones).

Here is why DC Comics Changing Wonder Woman goes into Dante’s Inferno Ninth Circle of Hell reserved for Betrayal: Honestly, the most revolting gesture is a change in her history. Instead of queen of the Amazons, she’s going to get a Superman-like history of an extinguished planet. What?! Her costume will change from a sexy-American flag to black New York tights. What?!

Sigh… I was preparing a piece about Wonder Woman before this… based on the 1970’s TV shows that I’ve been studying lately (so good).  Even though X-man artist icon Jim Lee (also Spawn) will be taking her on, I still say that the comic book gods need more scientific proof on String Theory and Alternate Universes before altering an iconic character like hers in such a way. The appeal of Wonder Woman is that a girl can feel she’s related to her. She’s our alter ego, she’s who we can’t be in the office, she’s a patriot, she’s a link to some real history (can’t a girl dream that she too, may be of the lost tribe of the Amazons?).   She is, as Major Steve likes to say, “the best of femininity without the vice”. Ok, that’s the original Wonder Woman, and a man’s dream. But still. I guess I ought to try it out (failed to mention this article is like 2 months old and the change is probably already out). And I guess I can keep my own version of Woman alive in my head. One more thing that’s changing.

For now, DC Changing Wonder Woman can go into Dante’s Inferno, along with the Veronica-marrying Archie.

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Manhattan Avenue, NYC September 2010

Believe I found the nesting ground for Street Cookies. Or a major portal for them in NYC. Or perhaps this is the portal for Puerto Rican Street Cookies.

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“I have a dream. It is called love, anarchy, freedom. It is called being idle.”

-Tom Hodgkinson

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This one was found by C-mixto. Highly recommended for the cynical, the nerdy, the intelligent, the social outcast- this book is comical with a healthy dose of chaos. It also has a halo of tragedy.

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• The Syfy (Scifi) channel or some channel was showing back to back movies about alien invasions. I couldn’t help but watch “War of the Worlds” which turned out to be a very, very bad idea. The remake of War of the Worlds plays on pretty much every fear you could have: alien ship attacks, alien robot attacks, air planes going down, drowning in cars, Titanic-like boat going down, aliens that incinerate you indiscriminately, aliens that capture you and put you in a metal farmers’ market basket until they are ready to thrust their tentacle through you and suck out all of your blood, human kind’s extermination, mob hysteria, loosing your child, apocalypse. For those who didn’t see the new War of the Worlds: the aliens arrive in a stream of lightening bolts from the sky. So I couldn’t help but have a lump in my throat while watching the Geminids meteor shower.
• Also, for some reason, the powers that be seem to be testing the “Emergency Alert System” out. A lot. You know, that horrible nuclear bomb alert sound followed by, “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast system. If this had been an actual emergency…”  Those who saw War of the Worlds will know that this same message was being broadcasted during the alien invasion, saying “this is a TEST of the emergency broadcast system”–a test– even though it was sure damn well past an emergency.  This test was playing on my TV upon my return of watching the Geminids meteor shower. These series of events are a great way to become an insomniac, but I don’t know if I was  scared or more annoyed by the fact that the announcement said “this is a test of New Jersey’s emergency broadcast system”. New Jersey? I’m not in New Jersey! Are you telling me that in the event of an emergency Inwoodites are screwed because Manhattan forgets we exist and New Jersey is calling us theirs even though there is a freakin river between us? Inwoodites better start building rafts and canoes because it looks like we will be screwed.
• The Hadron seems to be up and running again.

The broadcast alerts are still going on… Just when War of the Worlds was receding from my mind a day later, as I dozed off with a smile on my face listening to Craig Furgeson, suddenly, in the middle of one of his jokes, the horrible nuclear bomb alert sound blasted like a siren with a “test” message. Success in finding a sound that will jerk anyone out of a soundful sleep.

So take it as fiction and believe what you will. The arts are a great way to send mass messages to people: either to have us buy something, to act a certain way, to serve as a mirror for our fears and desires, or to subtly prepare us for an alien invasion.

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Once again I was not able to get myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, shuffle to the packed train, and join the mass of out-of-towners with their spawn in tow and witness the spectacle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’m not hating on the parade. My childhood memories are filled of being dragged out of bed to go to it (after staying up late having visited the balloon set up the night before). Really I just wanted to go because it meant a container of hot chocolate and perhaps a visit to a Greek diner for some scrambled eggs. And we didn’t go to the musical orgy on 34th street- we kept it real as a parade should be enjoyed: people passing you, you cheer hooray! and then you walk away.

That said I watched some of it on TV this morning, not with child wonder eyes but as an anthropologist. We all know this, but either this year’s new balloon additions drove the message home more or things are getting worse: it is a parade of raw Dinsey packaged consumerism! All I got from watching that parade was what movie is coming out soon (Smurfs, 2011), whose CD is coming out next (Andrea Bociello Christmas albums and a plug for the opening musical, White Christmas), what retro toys are making a comeback (Care Bears?!) and that Planter’s Peanuts (making a cameo in his Monopoly Man tux) is now being made with sea salt. The recipe Macy’s uses is the same witchcraft Disney utilizes to mesmerize our oh-too-innocent young seeds.

That said, I wondered what a Thanksgiving Day Parade might look like in Cuba:

• It would still be called “Thanksgiving” but with bitter sarcasm to drive the point home. “Thanks, white man, for bringing disease and genocide to the New World and strengthening the spirit of the descendants of oppression to make the revolution possible, liberating everyone, including you.”

• Now that the theme has been introduced with a wide, white banner with red letters, speaking of disease, the first line of parade marshals would be the public health servants of disease control, reminding everyone of proper hygiene, the ills of still water and the glory of vaccines. They’d wave their hands with their medical masks covering their mouths, with white and blue coats, tugging the parade’s first balloon, a giant syringe with the letters “P-R-E-V-E-N-T-I-O-N” blazened along its graduation lines, followed by “THE NEW ARMS AGAINST THE LEGACY OF COLUMBUS.”

• Next would come the float with an ode to the campesino. A giant gourd with yucca, greens, beans, eggs and young, strong looking people proudly holding adzes and rakes beside it. The balloon, of course, would be an image of the farmer himself and herself (gender equality emphasized- this aint no Grant Wood portrait) . People would clap in line with the party line, but gaze at the float, hungry.
• There would be floats that honored the Afro-Taino roots of the Cuban people.
• All floats would be pulled by farm tractors.
• The car clubs would show off their pimped out, time-machine crazy mobiles, categorized by turn of the century, 30’s 40’s and 50’s.

• Glory to the solider of the Revolution! High school marching bands would be replaced with various “Committees in Defense of the Revolution” from regions all over the island, singing, chanting (”¡En cada barrio, Revolución!” and dancing, demonstrating how the revolution is as relevant, raw and alive since the Granma ran ashore in Granma Province on December 5th, 1956. The ballon? Why a peasant man wielding a machete and shield draped in the unity star and stripes of the Cuban flag.
• Now of course Cubans also know how to have a good time (a really good time), so expect singing, bands, and dance troupes of all forms, Casino Salsa, reggaeton, Son, Danzon, cha-cha, mambo and the ever so playful RUMBA.
• Clowns would be in full force, except they would be dressed as Fat Cat capitalists with the US flag on their top hats. Their clothes would be sharp, their bow ties knotted in perfection, but they would be blindfolded with a black cloth, their blood-stained hands flayed out in front of them grasping the air, a long ball and chain shackled to their ankles. The crowd would roar with laughter, chanting, “Only revolution can free you, Sam!”
• The cherubic child star of the parade, would be, who else? Elian Gonzalez, who mysteriously is still a child, and would be periodically given the mike to thank Cuba for bringing him back home.
• The NY Thanksgiving parade ends in the mecca of consumerism, 34th street Macy’s. So where would the Cuban parade end for the big party? Why where all of Havana’s parties happen: in front of the American interest section (the former embassy). Replacing Santa Claus on his sleigh to give his saintly blessings for all to shop and trample eachother to death starting immediately after a gluttonous meal, would be ol’ Castro himself, beard and all, waving from a replica of the holy Granma, the boat that made him the Papa of new Cuba. He would chuckle, “Ho, ho, suckers! I’ve outlived all of you and the revolution is still here”.

Thus ends Nova’s Thanksgiving daydream of parallel universes.

Happy Turkey Day!

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Hail the hustle in Cuba! Done with a straight face, intelligence and craft, you got to respect it. Recognize and ascertain whether you should accommodate the hustle. How much is it for you to loose this battle? Can you acquiesce without being cheated and everyone’s dignity maintained? If not say, “I respect the Hustle”, then walk away.  If acquiescing you have a choice of either remaining a passive participant, or leaning close to the Hustler and whispering with a tilted head and squinted eye, “Asere. Don’t try to hustle me. I got you anyways.”

More to come on some specific hustles.

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