"Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air"

My jam right now. This is the XX doing 2-step garage tinged cover of "You've got the Love". Bloggers are attubuting the "original" to Florence and the Machine, I think they may be unaware the original is by Candi Stanton

Aeroplane on Soundcloud

Aeroplane's Chart mixes on soundcloud lately have been nice, especially this latest installment:
Aeroplane Mix Chart October 09 mp3  by  Aeroplane
01. Simian Mobile Disco : Cruel Intentions (Maurice Fulton Remix)
02. Ali Love : Diminishing Returns
03. Ladyhawke : Magic (Donnie Sloan Dub)
04. Neurotic Drum Band : Robotic Hypnotic Adventure
05. Cloned In Vatican : Nina (Road To Cagliari)
06. Unknown
07. Golden Filter : Thunderbird (Villa Remix)
08. Royksopp : This Must Be In (The Bloody Sisters Remix)
09. Toecutter : Best Party Ever (Jordan Lightyear & Jimmy 2 Sox Remix)
10. Groove Armada : I Wont Kneel

Diner

Having a renovated old Diner that serves upscale comfort food and calling it "Diner" sounds like a joke straight out of Nathan Barley, but the place is actually pretty good. My roommate Lee works in the kitchen there, so when we went, along with some visiting French kids, he sent us out mad free shit. First it was a salad with confit Rabbit, served with baguette slices slathered in rabbit pâté. Then it was this homemade buckwheat tagliatelle with parmesan, walnuts and greens.




When it came time to actually order we all went with different forms of beef: steaks, a burger and a brisket dish. The aged steak was simple and good, served with salty fries, a green salad and real thick house-made mayonnaise, not aoli.

Lilah's Brisket was a little one-note and lacked the sweet/sour element of a real Jewish brisket.













The French were dutifully impressed with the gallic bent of the cuisine, and I was impressed that were playing Thin Lizzy, Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate all through dinner.













And the Tarte tartin was banging.














BTW, Diner puts out an interesting magazine, they must be kind of fanatic.

Verb Cafe, Beford Ave.

The late breakfast staple of toasted-everything-bagel-with-cream-cheese-tomato-and-sprouts is done right at Verb cafe on Bedford ave where Lee and I now dwell. They pile the shit on both halves of the bagel, which is perfectly chewy and crunchy in it's own right. Plus the baristas demonstrate their mastery of the espresso machine by making a little fleur-de-lis in the froth on your latte. Then you can sit there like Lee and read or count things like pencil-thin moustaches, ironic ascots, or identical plaid flannel shirts on the young folks passing by.

Caracas Williamsburg

When Lilah suggested this arepas place in Williamsburg, I had pause. like, "Isn't Aprepas just a way of saying 'ethnic sandwhich'? Like Paninis for sophisticates?". I was ignorant.

There is some other shit going on at Caracas. For example, the soup (above), which was like a classic potato-leek soup but with cilantro and hunks of smoked mozzella which had the texture of scallop in what then became a hypothectical seafood chowder.

BTW, that squeeze bottle is filled with liquid heaven that I hypothesized must contain mango, scotch bonnets, mayonnaise and heavily addictive narcotics.


My drink involved Ron Antigua and Bay Leaves and spices and the lime/cane sugar dichotomy.




The Arepas were amazing. The cornmeal shells magically held both the weight and pooling juices of ingredients like sweet plantain, fried shredded chicken, braised bar-b-que pork, black beans, avocado, jalapenos, and a blackened fried cheese that was much like Mexican queso fundido- an unholy mass of those bits of cheese that fall out of the grilled cheese onto the pan and become something bad and wonderful.

Dos Toros Taqueria

Dos Toros Taqueria is a new place adjacent to Union Square that is getting a lot of press lately. It's a Mission-style Mexican counter service opened by two young San Franciscan brothers who are hoping to approximate their favorite late-night haunts back home. The menu is simple: tacos, burritos or platos of chicken, carne asada or carnitas. While I appreciate their drive and the anachronistic way that RJD2 starts playing when you click on their site, I'm not sure that there's any other way that this equation can work out: White Boys+ Mexican Food+ Earnestness+ The East Coast= A Little Bit Better than Chipotle.

(one glaring exception was Taqueria Pacifica in Providence which stared as a food truck and turned into a reputable and respectable counter at AS220 until it was recently shut down)

Yes, they are introducing Carnitas in a pillowy, appropriately juicy form that will probably make it as common a word as "cupcakes" in NYC soon, but the burrito somehow made me miss the gristly bits of cartilage and weird hazelnut notes of the real Mexican deal. The way that they slap a slice of processed cheese onto things, too, is decidedly Tex-Mex and not for lovers of a sprinkling of Chihuahua or Queso Oaxaca.

Otherwise, they are using quality organic/local ingredients and biodegradable vegetable-derived plasticware and considering that it definitely is a good value. Make sure you ask for "extra-hot" sauce which is tasty and still only marginally hot. They also have beer and good chips and salsa/guac, which cost like 4 dollars, unlike in the Mission where they are usually free.

Minca Ramen Factory

Simone took me to this Ramen place in the L.E.S. (Minca Ramen Factory, 536 E. 5th St) where they make their own Ramen, Udon and Glass noodles and almost everything comes with a glorious fatty hunk of slow roasted pork goodness.

I went for the standard no #1 skinny-noodle Ramen to see what the basics are all about, it had the afformentioned lovely pork, the seasonal earthy mushroomy vegetables that Japanese love, a hardboiled marined egg, and a sheet of nori.

Simone sort of trumped me by going for the spicy version of the same bowl of Japanese soul food. I do want to go back there and try the "experimental" Ramen- the chef's own nightly creations which the menu explains as consisting of "?" and costing "?".

Me ah Mek it Rain Blood

Andy Milonakis/Diplo/Switch/Major Lazer/Autotune/Dancehall/Hollywood/Starbucks=
BADMAN TUNE!!!

Buying Avocados @ Tasquena

This magical little man was selling magical little avocados at Metro Tasquena in the middle of the night when we came home. He probably had come from some little puebla far away where he had grown these special avocados and then brought them into the city because he could get, like, 1 peso more for them there. He may have been standing there all day and night, resolved not to eave until his crate was gone. The avocados were tiny and extra fatty. We ate a whole bag of them straight up like fruit. Some the best avocados ever.

Seriously, how could you afford not to buy an avocado from this man?

Nigga!

In the last post I mentioned Nigga, the Mexican reggaeton/romantic ballad singer, but I thought I should clarify who I'm talking about. In Mexico, this dude is huge!


You probably will not have heard of "Nigga" because he goes under the less offensive (but far more generic) moniker "DJ Flex" in the States. I guess his publicists must have figured out that "Nigga" was not an acceptable name for a latino artist in the US. How they ever figured that Nigga was an acceptable name even in Mexico is beyond me. Anyway I sport my Nigga T-shirt hard and even if I one day get beaten up for wearing it, it will have been worth it.

Al Feria

After the passion in Iztapalapa we went to the feria, ate lots of fried and sweet things, got wasted and went on rides.

















I took this photo just to make it look like I had a Mexican ruca. And I wanted to show off the shirt I had just scored: a blinged out portrait of the Mexican reggaeton artist Nigga! It is signed in gold sequins- "Nigga"! Roflcopters!


















The Iron-Maiden looking decorations on this should have warned me that this ride was gonna be hardcore. It was dirty, brutally violent and marginally unsafe. I was sick and nauseous all night after this one.

Polka Madre on AL-Jazeera

Wow this feature from Al-Jazeera English actually gets a lot right about Polka Madre. And it portrays them as equals of Instituto Mexicano de Sondia and Nortec Collective, which is hilarious because both of those bands are way bigger than Polka Madre and are made up of snobby hipsters that will absolutely cringe at being lumped in with these rank outsiders.
You can even see me in this video- they show me for a second in the van in a scene ripped from the tour documentary. My friend Alain is pissed that Al-Jazeera used footage from the video he directed without giving him credit or money. He is contacting them for compensation. This prompted me to ask, "So... are you gettin' A-rab money?"

Rappity Raps

There's really not much rap coming out that I could give a shit about, but now and then dudes are putting out some good. This Peedi Crakk came out over a year ago, so I guess you can now say that it was officially "slept-on". I know that Dipset-related stuff doesn't get much commercial airplay in general, but why this was not a hit I will never get. I like to speed this one back up to the tempo of "It Takes Two" when I play and run it like a riddim.

I am looking foward to the new Clipse, too, which will be largely produced by Rick Rubin. The first single is a leak, Kanye produced and with a surprsingly decent Kanye verse on it. It's not bad with the very classic dusty-break-chopped-on-MPC sound, but I think the straight Rick Rubin fire is still to come..

Stillness is the Move

Dirty Projectors are on everybody's lips right now. They are poised to become mainstream-indie-world-famous, which is what Beyonce and Jay-Z refer to as "not famous at all". They are touring with TV on the Radio and getting a lot of blog hype (which I am contributing to by writing about them now by .00241 blog hype points).
At this point in my life I'm more of a fan of songs than I am getting jazzed about new bands, but I am fan of this new Dirty Projectors song "Stillness is the Move". I referred to it on the Hollerboard as sounding like "Mariah Carey produced by Four Tet", which someone responded to by asking "Wait, that is a good thing?". To me it is, as well as the way the song seems to condense all the experimental/pseudo-African guitar and off-kilter rhythmic things the band had been doing up till now, but in a palatable, poppy form.
I like the lyrics and delivery, too- they are filled with dewy collegiate metaphysics and self absorption just as they should be ("Isn't life just a crazy dream?"). I love the patent New York-centrism here too, like when she plays with the absurd concept of "working as a waitress in a diner in some remote city". Lol, what is a "remote city"? Someplace you can't get Vegan cookies at 3AM? Do you think she's picturing somewhere as remote as, like, Trenton, or even.. Philly? This band's parents are probably African-American studies professors at NYU and they are probably talking about their offspring's popularity on the Hype Machine at a cocktail party right now. One thing that no one ever seems to admit about bands like this, The Strokes and Vampire Weekend is that a big part of their appeal is similar to that of Gossip Girl- it's fun to see what rich, privileged ivy league preppies are doing these days to be "weird". That and people like to picture them having sex. It's like reading old Brett Easton Ellis without having to read.
That is part of why I like it when this girl is squealing all over the end of this song, like, "This is just coming right out of me! I am Pablo motherfucking Picasso with an urban twist!" It's like going to see a girls photos at her first group show and being like "Holy Shit! Did you just see that dog and just snap a photo like that? It looks so composed!" and then going back to her loft for mindblowing sex after drinking like 18 little cups of free white wine.

PULQUE!

To get back to my Mexican trip where I left off, I had just gotten back from a weekend the state of Hidalgo, filming a video with friends' band Polka Madre. One town that we visited was a dusty working class village called Appan, where we drank a lot of Pulque. Pulque is an alchoholic beverage made from fermented maguey, the same cactus-like plant that they make mescal out of. Although Pulque is available in the city and many parts of Mexico, my chilango friends told me that Hidalgo is the best place to drink it. There, you are closer to the source and the drink goes through a natural, organic fermentation process. The Pulquerias in Mexico city are mostly nasty and there are a host of urban legends about how they get the Pulque to ferment quicker, including using cow and even human shit.

Even when created in the most wholesome, pastoral environment, Pulque is still a thick, slimy, milky substance that many non-Mexicans would be wary of. It has a mild tangy flavor like plain yogurt with a bit of grassiness. The locals drink it mixed with juices like coconut or mango plus yogurt or fruit soda. Pulque has a low alcohol content, so the idea is to get as much inside of you as possible. Once you do this, you begin to get a goofy, blissed-out buzz, more like being stoned than drunk. It was a laid back but giddy feeling that I couldn't quite separate from the natural buzz I had from being drenched in the desert sun of Hidalgo all weekend.

The Pulquerias themselves that we visited in Appan were mostly behind unmarked doors- semi-clandestine spots in the courtyards of peoples homes, or, once, in a barn with chickens and dogs running around. There, the Pulque drinkers, mostly men, sit all day and drink incredible amounts of the stuff. They talk about Pulque with a pious reverence. At one point we were told by a drinker that two days after drinking Pulque a man will have superhuman virility and vigorous sperm. Later, another gestured to our skinny forearms and told us that if we kept drinking pulque we would get thick wrists like him and his buddy. Often in these places there would be old men intermittently laughing and crying, slumping over or getting up to sing along with the ever-present guitarist. The in the Pulqueria you buy it by the pitcher, which is then dipped into an open barrel of the stuff and sometimes mixed with an even thicker, nastier liquid from a smaller barrel which must be some kind of Pulque concentrate or residue from the fermentation. The cost of a pitcher was something like 12 cents U.S., and once we had bought a few of them, people kept coming around and refilling our mugs from their own pitchers, not letting us walk out of there without drinking our own weight.

Im not not sure if it was all the Pulque or a few of the dodgy tacos that I had while in Appan, but when we got back to the city I was sick, along with a few other from the film crew, for days. There defintely is a high bacteria content in homemade Pulque, and drinking it in an open vat in that barn surrounded by livestock probably wasn't a good idea to begin with. I'm not sure if I'll be pushing Pulque as the next big thing, or even ever drinking it again, but it defintely was something I wouldn't want to have missed.

1991!

1991 is the new weekly dance party that Mark Louque, who also throws the wildly popular italo/electro night Fagbash here in P-town, and I are doing every friday night at Vixen. Come out, wear your Z cavaricchi shirts, Skidz, Cross Colors, and Reebok Pumps.
We are playing Hip House, New Jack Swing, Europop, Middle-school Rap, Acid and maybe a left field into the Alternative Nation if you're lucky.

A word to new visitors

This Blog seems to be getting a lot of attention because of a link posted on the NY Times blog by Matt Gross in a article he wrote about me and other travellers, ("bums" as some of the commenters on there would say). I've been getting a lot of positive feedback from people which I truly appreciate, and some negativity, which I completely understand. One commenter on the article accused me of being insensitive and even racist in some of my posts about Mexico and Mexican people. That I would like to respond to.
First of all, new visitors here should know that up until now this blog was pretty much only read by people that know me (my hit count is up 253.33% since yesterday) and know my sense of humor, which is ruthless and sometimes offends. People who know me and read this blog also come with the pre-knowledge that despite my sometimes harsh tone, I am filled with love and deep respect for virtually every culture and people that I have had the honor to be the guest of. If I make flippant offensive remarks they are almost always based in the affection and wonderment I have for people and the strange world they have made.
As for what I said specifically about Mexican people that offended at least one person was about how eating Chicharrons while watching a passion play couldn't "be any more Mexican". If that commenter had read on he would have also read something I wrote earlier about "the quitoxic mix of sentimentality and irony that Mexicans have for their own culture", which is a feeling that I sort of share, as much as you can as an outsider. One thing that impressed me over and over while travelling in Mexico was the Mexican people's self-awareness and sense of humor about themselves and "Mexicaness". While I know that it is sort of inappropriate for a gabacho to make these kind of jokes, while in Mexico I was so entrenched with my Mexican friends that I started to joke around just like them about the culture that they loved/hated and typified.
That being said I don't think there is or should be anything wrong with being stereotypically and proudly Mexican. Now that I'm back in the States I miss those folks and their loud, funny, ancient, sacred and profane culture the way I sometimes miss Americans and their big stupid trucks, big egos, big food and arrogance when I am away for too long. There is something funny and adorable about all peoples and cultures, and I would expect that a Mexican would be one of the first laughing at others and themselves.
There is a way you can joke about a people and place only when you have gotten to know it well and fallen a bit in love. Although these jokes can sometimes sound mean or offensive to some, I would say the truly offensive thing would be to never get to know those cultures at all.

I'm so Especial

This guy was riding shotty on my bus in D.F.. Take a close look at his shirt... they have translated the band name "The Specials" into "Especials". Lulz. This is like when I watched the episode of the Simpsons in Spansish when 50 Cent guest starred and Bart said "Mira! Es Cinquenta Centavos!"

Kumbia Queers!

If you know me, you probably know that there's not many phrases that start with the word "lesbian" that I can appreciate, unless the phrase ends with the word "porn". So, you should be proud that I can give an unqualified thumbs-up to Kumbia Queers, the all-girl lesbian cumbia band that I D.J.ed with a few weeks back in Mexico City. The ladies played at the rooftop bar of the Centre Cultural de Espana and I must say they killed it. They play cumbia classics and 80s covers with a cumbia makeover and a dyke-centric lyrical twist. The band is half Argentines and half Mexicanas and were appearing as part of a world tour that will take them from South America to Europe. The singer is from the veteran D.F. punk Ultrasonicas and she obviously knows how to work a crowd- people were going off.


Andrew was faded, but made it look so good.

Here was the view from the D.J. booth right at the end of the show.
After that the D.J. sets started up, which turned into a bit of a shitshow. It's a long story that involved my friends Johnathan and Yadira from Cafe Central in Oaxaca, who had showed up along with Kumbia Queers, a lot of alchohol, and Ruth Selecta, the local DJ who had ostensably invited me onto the bill and later called me a "Crazy gringo" who had hijacked her gig. Despite her displeasure at me and Johnathan pushing her off the decks with our hyper-masculine auras and entitled hipster attitutes, I don't think she could argue that I smashed it the last hour with Cumbia and Dubstep from South America. I even premiered my new Polka Madre remix, which should be out this summer. It might have been an ego-fueled trainwreck behind the decks, but at least it was great night for the dance floor.

Tiny Fuppets!

Scott Gairdner has done it again! "Ese es la forma!"- Gonzor

"Life" Video Shoot Still

Here's a still image preview of the new Polka Madre video that we filmed a few weeks ago in Appan, Hidalgo. That is your boy Quique, the video's star, in the backround.

Animal Blanco- Deal With it.

What the Fuck?!

Are you guys getting these fucking old navy ads in your ear when you open this page?! These motherfuckers are throwing my whole blog game off! We might be nearing the end of my association with Blogger.com. Please ignore the invitation to buy Old Navy jeans for now.

White Animal- La Boa

Ok, when I said that I was through with Latin musics for a bit, I was a bit hasty. He is Baltimore edit of La Boa, a classic Mexican tune. I made this a few weeks ago on the fly for a party where I knew folks had a taste for old Boleros and such. I thought it was just a throw-away, but I think it deserves a second life
DOWNLOAD

Sonideros!

When I arrived at the Centre Cultural de Espana to the D.J. after the Kumbia Queers, I was genuinelly thrilled to see the photo exhibit that had happened to coincide: an expo of the Sonidero culture.
Here's a semi-incoherent article from wikipedia about Sonidero Cumbia that may give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Otherwise just check these snaps: