This is a party and we have to dance

Y esto dice así: Cumbia!



El Instituto Mexicano del Sonido (IMS), or Mexican Institute of Sound, played small show at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for the opening of their Wallworks exhibition the weekend I was visting. A friend of mine was invited and so there I was. I can't even seem to remember if a lot of people showed up to the museum party. But there was definitely less than 100 people watching the show.

None of the people I was hanging out with seemed very enthused about checking out the band, so after missing the first 10 minutes, I ran off on my own to the front of the stage in usual tils style. The venue, whatever open space of the YBCA I was in, was rather large, and I was surrounded by a few dozen people while the rest hung around at the back. I don't quite feel like writing about the actual performance, but it was rather fun. They were all wearing mariachi pants, which added quite well to the music's comedic element. Camilo Lara, lead singer and IMS mastermind, kept inciting the crowd to dance and joking that the band was from a tiny, unknown town in Mexico. They're from Mexico City.

IMS is one part Pastilina Mosh, one part Nortec Collective and a splash of LCD Soundsystem. I know this might sound totally horrendous, but I love it when I get to hang out with Mexicans, and there was a few watching the show next to me. And that's all I have to say for now.

Oh yeah, and I love San Francisco and it melts my tin heart.

DJ & producer Camilo Lara.

Y otra vez el mismo.

The DJ dude?

The rest of the band sat out while Lara sang "Te Quiero Mucho" on stage. The title gives it away. Lara said it was about his ex-girlfriend. He repeated TQM at least 60 times. Ha. Way creative.

Pants! Fancy Pants!


& of course: my lame video



Also, I found this video on the YouTube. It's pretty cool, and it's where the title of this blog entry comes from.



Sorry about the different sizes. I'm not that good with the Youtube, or the internets or the HTML codes.

Pupusa Heaven

B:

1:38 AM Man, i want some pupusas now

Did you have them in San Fran?

are they plentiful there?

1:39 AM There are a total of two restaurants that serve pupusas in Austin

And only one is truly a Salvadoran restaurant

1:40 AM the other sells them on some blended-cuisine menu or something.

me:

yes

pupusas are plentiful!

Beverly: nice! I thought it was only LA. I should move to California

1:43 AM me:

apparently there are
327,000

in sf.

Beverly:

NO!

really?

me: according to some data from 05

lol

i think so

Beverly: Wait, Salvadorans?

1:44 AM me: yes

lol

i think so

Beverly: or pupuserias?

me: LOL!

no!

human beings
me: from el salvador!Beverly: lol, that's what I thought you meant

lol

Beverly: too funny

me: lol

1:45 AM that would be an intense amount of pupuserias!

lol

me: for god's sake beverly!
Beverly: It'd be Pupusa heaven.

El Paraíso

T: I'm sorry I was jealous.
A: It's not like I noticed or cared.

(Laughter ensues for a minute)

T: Wow, you really are a dick.

(Laughter ensues for 5 minutes)

This guy tried to be all sly...

I always get super excited when my friends do awesome stuff:


AMC:

oh, you want to see something really cool??

me: of course!

10:17 PM AMC: http://www.yahoo.com/

me: ummm. yahoo?

AMC: you'll see four links in the featured section

me: uh huh

and then?

are you THERE?

10:18 PM AMC: click on 13 year old trades ipod for antique walkman

me: awwwwwwwww

AMC: CLICK IT!

Click it indeed!!!

Story: http://tinyurl.com/m4fh2z.
Photo with proof: http://bit.ly/13Xuk7

Fun with comments

I'm obsessed with reading reader comments posted on news stories or blog posts or whatever. I spend hours going through pages and pages of sometimes hateful comments.

Today I read a story on art installations on San Francisco's BART.

Who Said Taking the Train was Boring? Swinging on San Francisco's BART

It's just a few pictures of people on swings that randomly appeared on some BART trains. I found some of the comments of this story so funny they deserved a post.

Strangerisms....

Comment 1: Three cheers for gorilla installations!

Comment 2: Gorilla installations? I think you meant Guerilla. I'm really glad there are no 800 lb. mountain gorillas on the BART trains. I live 2900 miles away, but the last thing I want to see on the news is "California Train riders have their arms torn off by angry ape."

Hashisms: more heartbreak

me: when are we going to have a love child?

Hash: i have seven

i just don't like to talk about it

3:07 PM me: well you need an 8th

with me

Hash: noope

3:08 PM i'm talking to a girl right now

she's cool

3:09 PM me: sweet. congratulations

i'm happy for you.

i was jk about our love child. jajaja. so you don't have to worry. you haven't broken my heart

Hash: i know

it's impossible to break a heart of stone, anyway

(part of my chronicle of ultra silly online conversations)

Got some hearts that I'll be breaking

I'm going to break up with somebody with this song. It's awesome! The video is pretty sweet too.

'Just Ain't Gonna Work Out' by Mayer Hawthorne:

Benisms: influenza porcina

Thalia

i wasn't scared... but then i read this on the cdc: In September 1988, a previously healthy 32-year-old pregnant woman was hospitalized for pneumonia and died 8 days later.

9:48pmBen

what's the difference? why were you scared before?

9:48pmThalia

cos she was previously healthy!

9:48pmBen

not scared

9:48pmThalia

and i was banking on my good immune system

to save me

9:49pmBen

well yeah, duh...one day you're good, the next day you die. that's how death works. hahaha

Bevisms: Souvenirs

me: wheres he from originally?

11:37 PM Beverly: Oaxaca

me: has he been to tex?

how the fuck did he end up all the way in mo?

Beverly: LOL

11:38 PM Good question

He must have passed through it

I mean, how else do you get into the U.S.?

California, I guess

Arizona

Nevermind

there are obviously other options

But, seems like it'd be hard to bypass all of Texas to get to CoMo

11:39 PM me: LOL

omg. you are so funny

Beverly: lol

me: obviously there are other options

Beverly: LOL

11:40 PM You and your status messgaes. They entertain me

I momentarily forgot Mexico bordered other states, lol

11:41 PM New Mexico

That's it though. I pulled up a map on google images

11:42 PM Any person that made the trek from Latin America into the U.S. has got balls, dude

me: for sure

Beverly: You know you've found yourself a good man

me: hardcore balls

For the sake of blogging anything at all

These days I don't have much human interaction, but back in the day when I had a real reporter job I would observe all sorts of fun stuff walking down the hallways at work. People would say the most random, funny things.

Here's one of those convos (Sorry if you don't speak Spanish):


Guy #1: (Scoff) Hmm.
Como eres chistoso

Guy #2: ¡Tu mami, maricón!

Capucine strikes again ...

The cutest child in the world.


Tongue twister from Capucha on Vimeo.

David Simon keeps on doing all sorts of cool things!

On March 1, David Simon wrote this magical (jajaja) op-ed piece for the Washington Post about journalism/the crime beat in Baltimore. I read it a long time ago, but it barely dawned on me to post it here. Journalism is so necessary! I do not have the faintest idea what will happen after the demise of all these newspapers. I was shocked when I heard about the Rocky and the possible closing of the SF Chron.

Anyway!!

I love this man!

In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police

"Delays of even 24 hours? Nope, not acceptable. Requiring written notification from the newspaper? No, the judge would explain. Even ordinary citizens have a right to those reports. And woe to any fool who tried to suggest to His Honor that he would need a 30-day state Public Information Act request for something as basic as a face sheet or an arrest log.

"What do you need the thirty days for?" the judge once asked a police spokesman on speakerphone.

"We may need to redact sensitive information," the spokesman offered.

"You can't redact anything. Do you hear me? Everything in an initial incident report is public. If the report has been filed by the officer, then give it to the reporter tonight or face contempt charges tomorrow."

To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer -- not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet."

Please read!

Marelynnism: The state of the nation

2:00 PM that totally blows

:(

america is ending

me: lol

it might be

2:02 PM marelynn: so what are you thoughts on the 2012 date of the world ending?

2:04 PM me: ben swears it's true

2:05 PM marelynn: hahahahaha