(MRR 342) Mykel Relates Mexico to His Colon

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

(Note: It's shorter than usual this month. (TWSS) I have not been censored... just timed. I'll be in Mexico for the column deadline, so I have to get it in early.(TWHS))

"These self-anointed Protectors of the Overprotected endlessly yammer about breaking the "cycle of abuse," oblivious to the concept that imprisoning someone is a particularly vicious perpetuation of that cycle.” --Jim Goad

“Death begins in the colon.” --Sir Jason Winters

 I'm fetally curled into a human comma. My arms are thrust between my legs. Those legs are pulled up toward my chest. A bubbling perks in my intestines. Bullump. Bullump. Bullump. I feel it along my right side... the side pressed against the naked mattress beneath my naked self. The bubbling moves. Up my right side, across my abdomen, down my left side. Bullump... Bullump... Bullump... the gaseous track of my large intestine. It presses rectally downwards... gurgling through the netherworld. Building pressure.

I cup my hands over my struggling sphincter... contract my stomach muscles...push... hard. BLAAAAATTTTT. Just a few milometers north of a liquid explosion... whew! I blow pure hot gas into my hands. Now I raise those hands to my nose... inhaling my own smell. I turn the inside out. How is it that it smells so good? How is it that other people's farts stink to holy hell and mine out-roses any rose ever risen?

The fragrant gas enters my body. From my nose and mouth, down deep into my lungs. It's a physical, spiritual, metaphysical cycle. That beautiful smell... leaving my body... entering my body, traveling through my body.

I drift back to sleep.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! What the fuck?

The alarm clock. As beautiful a smell as my own fart... that's how horrible is the sound of the alarm clock. In the 1400s clocks had no minute hands, just an hour hand that lazily circled a Roman-numeraled face. Then came the minute hand, and 8AM became 8:09AM or 7:59AM. It wasn't long before a someone added a SECOND HAND. In Union Square, you can get the time to five decimal places. Who the fuck needs five decimal places? My boss?

How can I lay in bed and enjoy my farts? There's work to be done. Time to get up.

I try to sit up. Pain shoots through my pelvis, down my leg. Excruciating. Aaaaaaah! My leg, my balls, my prostate. On fire. A burning mass of pain.

“AAAAAAAAH!” I cry out

BAUM! BAUM! BAUM!

My neighbor bangs on her side of the wall. The universal signal for SHUT THE FUCK UP!

I lower my cry to a whimper.

From the waist down, is pain. Everything hurts. Last night's beer bulges in my stomach. The sciatica presses against my back and legs.

Unable to stand, I roll like a log until one arm reaches over the side of the bed. Then, pressing down, I slowly... painfully... drop my body on to the floor... knees first. Using the arm already touching the floor, I push myself up... stagger forward, grabbing a lamp for support... hobbling as fast as biology will let me... I enter the bathroom... fall ass-first onto the toilet.

PLOW! I explode... just missing spurting brown down the back of my legs. But the usual bliss that follows a massive beer shit is lost.... buried in the pain in my back and legs... Is there a reason to keep living if you can't enjoy a beer shit?

NEWS FLASH: A court in Mexico has just found an American teenager, who goes by the nickname "El Ponchis," guilty of torture, murder and kidnappings.

Edgar Jimenez, 14 years old, was convicted of torturing and beheading at least four people and kidnapping three others. The bodies were found hanging from a bridge near Mexico City last year. The judge sentenced El Ponchis to three years in a correctional facility, the maximum permissible for a minor. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 4.5 million pesos, the equivalent of about $400,000.

Flash Ahead: My Mexican pals have invited me back. It's OLD PUNK FEST, in Agua Prieta, one of those border towns where 14 year old Americans cut the heads off who-knows-who. I was there last year. Maybe you read about it. It's one of my favorite towns in the world. Home of Walmarcito and Burger Queen.

My Mexican pals have put together a cover band again. Sin Arte.. I'll be “singing” and hosting an OLD PUNKS night. La Merma, Grito, Pop Gestapo... Except for BEEF, I may be the only non-Mexican in the show. I hope so. That's the way I like it.

When I started this column, I planned to write about circles. My fart leaving and entering my body. My return to Mexico. Old punk rockers rejoining and playing again. This column continuing the theme of the last, and one before.

I've changed my mind.

Going to Mexico will complete a circle. Like sniffing a fart. Last year, this year... but the circle is not round. Just as my beer shit lost its ecstasy in the pain of my sciatica, these circles too become less perfect, more jagged, over time.

My circle metaphor for life may be a spiral. Or something else. When Jim Goad talked about “the cycle of abuse” (check out the opening quotes), jail did something. It knocked that circle a bit. Stretched it. Made it even nastier than it already was.

The circle is such a nice metaphor. But it's wrong. The zen circle is not a circle. Maybe it's shapeless... or shape-shifting like a vampire in a bad TV show... or an amoeba with no shape at all. Maybe it's a spiral... an ever smaller circle that ends in nothing. The neat package of this column has come unraveled.

With my metaphor gone and visions of headless bodies in the street... 14 year old Americans caught and those not caught... I board the plane to Mexico.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]

-->One step forward two steps back department: In October last year, the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian featured it's first exhibition "to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture." Pretty bold for a government gallery, huh?

      Not so fast, the Catholic League attacked one of the images in a video displayed in the collection: 11 seconds of ants crawling on a crucifix. Rep. John A. Boehner led the congressional threat to stop funding if the video was not removed. Within an hour, it was gone. 

-->Sometimes bad news isn't dept: Gay City News reports that a recent court ruling "may place nearly insurmountable obstacles” to porn producers suing illegal downloaders. The lawsuits worked in the past, because they'd embarrass the downloader as much as hurt financially.

      The way the porn companies worked in the past was to collect IP addresses (your unique computer id number) of "violators" and then sue them as a group. Unless another court overturns the ruling, they can no longer do that. 

Awww too bad, right?

Yeah, right.

-->Cause and effect dept: I've often written about how the US has the world's second highest NON-smoking rate, and the world's highest cancer rate... showing that NOT smoking causes cancer.

Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that the number of children killed in car crashes in 2009 was 9.6% less than the previous year. They also report that the number use of professionally fitted child booster seats also went down.

     So what are we to conclude? NOT using a car seat saves kids lives. Seems reasonable to me.

--> If there were more profs like that, I wudda got my Phd dept: A former assistant professor of psychology at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California, has sued the institution for sex discrimination. She says that she was fired for performing in an off-campus burlesque act.

     Sheila  Addison was hired in Sept. 2007 to teach graduate students under a one-year contract as an assistant professor of psychology. The following July she was awarded a two-year contract which stated that she could be fired only for “just cause.”

     At about the same time that she started working at JFK, she started performing under a pseudonym, Professor Shimmy, at the Hubba Hubba Revue, a burlesque show in San Francisco.

She belonged to a group of performers who sought to bring social commentary to their acts. Some of her performances tell stories, including one in which she performs with a classically trained male ballet dancer. He dresses as a snow fairy and she as the abominable snowman. When they remove their clothes, the audience sees that the fairy and the snowman are not the genders they're supposed to be. Yeah!

     The university declines to comment on the case. 

-->Completing the Circle Dept: The mercenary company Xe Services, which pre-scandal was called Blackwater, has brought shamed former Attorney Gneral John Ashcroft on board in a new position. And what exactly is that position? Why, ethics chief of course.

    (I shit you not.)

-->Humane torture dept: Senator James Inhofe, told Fox News that torture victims in Guantanamo have it easy: "These detainees, they have things they've never had before. You know what the biggest problem in Gitmo is right now? It's obesity. They're eating better than they've ever eaten before.”

-->Reality theme park dept: Parque EcoAlberta in the Mexican state of Hidalgo allows tourists to sign up for a three-hour trek that simulates a refugees passage into the U.S. According to THE PROGRESSIVE magazine "Tourists must navigate craggy ravines and rolling rivers with only a flashlight-- no food or water.... The trek ends with gunshots as the would-be migrants are thrown into the back of mock U.S. border patrol trucks." The cost for the trek is $20 a person.

-->Buy a liberal today dept: AT&T is plugging to buy competitor T-Mobile in a bid to out-monopoly Verizon. So how do they get support... especially from liberals who usually oppose corporatocracy? They give money!

      In 2009 alone, the NAACP received a million dollars from AT&T. GLAAD, the pro-Gay-censor-the-opposition group got $50,000 from the Apple-Loving Giant.

     I say (with palm out, facing upwards) Go AT&T! Buy that sucker! I support you! Is the check in the mail?

-->Cut! Print! It's a take dept: The Rumanian Doctors Union has criticized a decision to make a surgeon pay almost $200,000 after he lost his temper and hacked off a patient's penis during surgery.

     Surgeon Naum Ciomu had been operating on the patient to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper. 

      According to the  BNI Newsletter “Grabbing a scalpel he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theater.”

     The doctors union objected to the court decision, saying “Doctors in Rumania earn too little to be able to pay amounts like this.” 

     I say that if the doctor would only support the ATT T-Mobile takeover, he wouldn't have any trouble paying the fine. 

-end-

Mykel Knows It From A Hole In The Ground! (MRR 337, June)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column

Column for MRR 337

May 2011
by Mykel Board

aka  Mykel Knows It From A Hole In The Ground!

[This is the last column of my recent Mexican adventure. There will be probably be more on my travel blog. You can read it at: http://mykelsdiary.blogspot.com/]

"There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.” --W. Somerset Maugham

“The very core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. “ --Christopher McCandliss

I'm not like other people. I love to watch naked-- or near naked-- people gyrate on stage, I love to poke my dollar in a bikini string, I love to stare at the flash of gash, a quiver of quim, or a dollop of dick. I love to watch naked nipples, and the pulsing spiral of an exposed anus. Yes, in that way I'm normal. But, I cannot get off on a lap dance. It's my curse.

No matter what the gender, age, endowment. No matter how hard or light the pressure. No matter if it's frontwards or backwards. No matter nothing. Rubbing my stiffened stub from outside my clothes will not give me an orgasm. It may even unstiff the stiffness.

Now: I'm in Guau Guau, a titty bar in Aqua Prieta, right over the border from Douglas Arizona. In one hand is a beer from my 180 -peso-a-bucket special. In the other hand is a single dollar bill.

AP is one of those cities that the US government issues warnings about. One of those places where headless bodies turn up on Main Street. Where the local drug cartels run the drugs, the restaurants, the shops and the government. One of those places where the U.S. State Department says DON'T GO:

 

Since 2006, the Mexican government has engaged in an extensive effort to combat drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs). DTOs have erected unauthorized checkpoints, and killed motorists who have not stopped at them. According to published reports, 22,700 people have been killed in narcotics-related violence since 2006.

Yow! Here I am!

At the end of the town's main street is a single mountain with an ominously cup-shaped top.

“My family told me it was a volcano,” says Gilberto. “Now, I don't think so... but you never know.”

You've already met some of the characters in this story. There's Gilberto, my best Mexican pal and organizer of this trip. It's for his birthday party that I find myself in this town.

There's Barichu, aka the Mexican GG Allin. He's been arrested by the police more times than I've paid for sex. That's a lot. When he went after the cops waving a plastic gun, they broke his nose. Newspaper headlines were (in translation): Drugs or Satan? What's behind the bizarre attack? Barichu's hobby is mashing up dried dog shit... and snorting it.

Then there's Ingrid, Gilberto's roommate in Boston. She's a pretty perky blonde with skin so pale you can almost see through it. Her visit to Aqua Prieta engenders erection impeded walking from every male between the ages of puberty and final decay. With me, she always talks about her BOYFRIEND back in Boston. For some reason, whenever I meet attractive people, they all immediately talk about their BOYFRIENDS... always in capital letters. Ingrid won't let me use her real name, so she gets Ingrid, for the blond hair and general sexiness.

But the real star of this story is Agua Prieta itself. A wry place with a sense of humor lurking on every corner. The local convenience store is Walmarcito. It's just down the street from the fast food joint, Burger Queen.

 

You won't want to eat there, though. Because Gilberto's uncle has “the biggest non-cartel restaurant in town.” I suggest you go there and try the cow-udder tacos. You won't find them at Taco Bell.

 

Ingrid is in town for the birthday party. It's a wonderful affair hosted by Gilberto's aunt and uncle... with a ton of kids, grand- dads, relatives, friends of every gender, age and description. Igrid, with her blonde hair, thin body, and gringa good looks, stands out like a beard at a lesbian bar.

 

She and Barichu hit it off pretty well. The only two smokers in the place, they have that special camaraderie that pushes social outcasts together in the most unlikely combinations. Like homos in a small town in Alabama.

Then there's Guau Guau, the strip club. Beautiful girls who give you a kiss when they pick up the dollar you leave on the stage.

Yeah, they bug you for lap dances. Walking around after their set, putting their hands on your thigh, asking if you want a private dance. It is a strip club, after all.

 

“I'll buy you one, Mykel,” says Gilberto. “You should do it.”

 

“No thanks,” I tell him, not going into detail about my personal... er... impairment. “I just like to watch.”

 

He goes off with one of the more attractive strippers. I keep feeding dollars to the girls on the stage. Each kisses me on the cheek after I slip a bill under an elastic band, near the good part.

 

In my 71 years, I must've gone to a hundred strip bars... but up til now, I've never been to one where the strippers kiss the patrons for tipping them.

 

The next day, I come back with Gilberto, Barichu, and Ingrid. It's great enough to meet a girl who likes a guy like Barichu. But it's even greater to meet a girl who likes STRIP CLUBS! In the 70s, even girls who WORKED in strip clubs didn't like them. Ah, change is not all negative.

 

One of Gilberto's friends gets us in for free. We huddle around the stage, nose-close to the dancers.

 

Ingrid lays those dollar bills down almost as fast as I do. She gets a flash for each one, and a nice peck on the cheek.

 

Gilberto brings one of the best strippers, tall, curvy in the special way that Latinas do curves. You know, ass-not-hips. Skin, the color of cinnamon. Breasts like twin Mount Fujis. Makes me want to erupt.

 

Gilberto speaks to Ingrid in English. “Hey Ingrid,” he says. “You want a lap dance? This one's the best. I'll buy you one.”

 

I laugh.

 

Ingrid doesn't.

 

“Sure,” she says.

 

By the time I close my gaping jaw, she and the Chicana walk off to the back. Brown and white, like a peanut butter sandwich made in heaven.

 

In twenty minutes Ingrid's back. Her face glows in the soft light of the club.

 

“They were watching me, Mykel,” she says. “All those bodyguards and bouncers. Back there... it's like an office... with cubicles... she sat on my lap and we were surrounded, these guys... those guys with no necks who work here... they came around to watch... you could see them jiggling themselves... their hands in their pockets.”

 

“YOU should have charged THEM,” I tell her.

 

By this time, another Mexican beauty is on stage. This one darker and lither than the first. Like a sexy snake, she slithers full length across the stage... crawling on her arms and legs to the edge. Her petite but proud breasts just touch the wood. She slides right in front of Ingrid and reaches down.

 

She grabs both of Ingrid's arms and pulls her on stage. But our Indrid isn't dancing. At least not in the normal sense of the word. She's lying on her back. The stripper is over her. Rubbing her brown body against the white girl.

 

Then the dancer reaches down. She pulls Ingrid's sweater up, over her head. In the soft light, Ingrid's breasts, as perky as her personality, sparkle bright and white.

 

I reach between my legs to make myself more comfortable.

 

Gently, the dancer takes one, then the other nipple in her mouth. Looking at the men in the audience, I can see sympathetic tongue movements on each of them. We're in this together.

 

Together we lick those nipples. We lick each and then lick down to a place between them. We lick in a line from breast to navel, back to breast. We lick downward again. We press our collective chins against her individual crotch and keep licking. We're collectively disappointed when Ingrid keeps her pants on. We're collectively inspired when she licks back at the woman on top of her. We become Ingrid as she takes those brown mounds into her hands.

 

All too soon, it's over. All too soon, we let go of our breath and applaud our collective appreciation. Ingrid puts her sweater back on and climbs down from the stage.

 

“Wow!” I say.

 

She smiles and we (Ingrid, Barichu, Gilberto and I) walk out to the car.

 

“I'm sorry you had to see my breasts,” she says.

 

“I'm 70 years old,” I tell her, “I've done more than people twice my age would have done if they lived that old. I've eaten Piranha in Peru, had sex under a Mongolian staircase, been in a threesome with one girl in Thailand, been kidnapped in Albania, but never in my life before has someone said to me I'm sorry you had to see my breasts.”

 

She smiles.

 

“Please don't be sorry,” I tell her. “I sure as shit am not.”

 

When we get back to Gilberto's Tio's place where the party is still going on. 

 

“Mykel,” asks Gilberto's Tia, “¿Mykel, porque andas todo pintarrajeado??”

 

Whoops. I forgot about that.

 

I wash my face as best I can. The various shades of lipstick on my cheek meld into one another, but never completey disappear.

We drink some more, eat some more, and somehow Gilberto ends up in bed with Ingrid. I sleep with Barichu.

 

FLASH AHEAD: It's Arizona. Ingrid wants to see the Grand Canyon. That's what you do in Arizona. I don't want to give the state any of my money... and I certainly don't want to do any tourist shit. But I'm out-voted and Gilberto has the car. So it's to Grand Canyon we go.

 

We pay $20 to park, then go to the guest house and souvenir shop. I can buy a Grand Canyon Collector Plate, a Grand Canyon Ceramic Cup, or a Grand Canyon Refrigerator Magnet. I don't.

 

The gift shop is in a rustic-looking shed. Log cabin-ish, though there aren't many logs in this area. One wall is Plexiglas. It overlooks the canyon.

 

A crowd of tourists presses against the glass, oooowing and ahhing. Being 5'3” tall, I decide not to compete with them, and walk outside for a direct look. I look. It's a hole in the ground. A big hole... and that's it.

 

Twenty dollars for a hole? I've paid that in Thailand and the DR, but in those cases I got a hole I really enjoyed!

 

Sometime ago... in the Wild West... some Indian stumbled on this place and said, “let's sucker the gringos. Tell 'em it's special. A really big hole. The rube's be lining up to buy fridge magnets. Those white folks. They can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground.”

 

I don't take one picture. I don't even stay and look. I head for the car and let Ingrid and Gilberto ooooh and aaahhh.

 

For me? Aqua Prieta was more ooooh and aaah than the Grand Canyon will ever be. Walmarcito, Burger Queen, the volcano at the end of the street, That's worth some oooohs and aaaahhs. Ingrid's own twin peaks, the lipstick all over my face, Gilberto's birthday party, that's what I'll remember from this trip. I can tell an ass from a hole in the ground. I'll take the ass any day.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]

 

-->The Tea Party is concerned about the debt dept: Ok, instead of taking the cash from poor folks on welfare or immigrants seeking a better life, how 'bout taking it from the pals of GWB?
    The BBC reports that more than $9 billion given to Bush's buddies in Iraq has gone missing.
     Stuart Bowen is the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. His task is to follow the paper trail-- and after more than 100 investigations-- his work tells a story of waste and mismanagement.
     Bowen says billions of dollars were shrink-wrapped in plastic and flown out of the US to Baghdad.

-->Sometimes you forget that Florida is THE SOUTH dept: The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville Florida has pastor Terry Jones. Jones is the author of the recently released book Islam Is of the Devil. He was also the proud displayer of a sign-- on church property-- against the city's gay mayor. “No homo Mayor” says the sign.
   I say they missed the important question: Is he white?

 

-->Obama's an improvement? dept: From the LA Times: The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor George W Bush, as “the most secretive administration in history,” is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republicans did.

 

-->Time to turn inward dept: Dean Allen, a Republican candidate for Adjutant General (whatever that is) held a “machine gun social” to raise funds. For a $25 donation, supporters got a barbecue and a chance to fire the machine gun of their choice. Too bad they didn't aim in a different direction.

 

-->Dying (or killing) for a job dept: Senior Pentagon official, Curtis Gilroy, said that a 10 percent increase in the national unemployment rate becomes a 4 to 6 percent increase in military recruitment. Last year, the Pentagon announced that it has met all of its annual recruiting goals for the first time in 35 years.

 

-->Sounds like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis dept: A 2006 Kentucky state law created The Kentucky Office of Homeland Security. It requires the state to post a plaque at the entrance to the Emergency Operations Center. The plaque contains a Bible verse and a statement that says: The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.
   I ask: can you please post God's phone number so I can call directly next time a plane flies into a building? I'd rather skip the middleman.

-->God on the ass dept: It now comes out: Rev. Rob Schenck, Rev. Patrick Mahoney, and Grace Nwachukwu, all members of religious-right Christian groups, wanted to influence the hearings on Rightwing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. They were worried that his views on church-state matters... and abortion... would keep him off the Supreme Court. So, what did they do? At 6 AM, they snuck into the confirmation hearing room and “anointed all the chairs with holy oil.” Thus they brought God to the (back) side of Alito. He was accepted to the court.

 

-->Speaking of God, my pal Kyle send me the following with the note “The gospel according to GG Allin?” This may just be my favorite bible quote:

   Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? Isaiah 36:12

 

It's true! Check it out in your own bible!

 

-->Punk Rock dept: Gilberto asked me not to forget to mention a few of the notorious Aqua Prieta punk bands:
   Los Ke Siquen HC (that's the way he spelled it!), Pinakates (Barichu's band), and The Yerlekererem, a heavy metal band turned punk “'cuz it's easier to play.”

 

-->Not a gift, but a load dept: Many liberals, caught in the American ideal of giving is bad, lending is good support so-called charities that make small loans to help poor people start businesses. Somehow this LOAN is supposed to be better than an outright gift.
   Well, the BBC reports "Interest on repayments begin at around 15%, but it is a flat rate and can soon rise to anything between 40% and 100%," Dr Ahmad says.
     Many people lose their businesses-- and their homes-- when they're unable to pay back the loan.

-->I'm so healthy dept: HDL cholesterol is known as the "good" cholesterol because a high level of it seems to protect against heart attack. And the Harvard Health Letter says: "Alcohol increases HDL. The more people drink the higher it goes. Alcoholics tend to have great HDL numbers."

 

-end-

See more than you'd ever want to at Mykel's home website. 

or READ more than you'd ever want to by ordering his book:
I A, Me-ist or The Portable Mykel Board

 

VIVA LA CORRUPCIÓN (MRR 334)

If you want to read more about Mykel's adventures in Albania, Mexico-- or life in General-- checkout Mykel's Diary For a look at the weird, the scary and the funny in real life, check out Mykel's Article's and Propositions.     

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column

Column for MRR 334
by Mykel Board

aka  VIVA LA CORRUPCIÓN!

Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy. -- Peter Ustinov

I was gonna use this column to chronologically follow the last with my further adventures in Mexico. But despite my jock itch and whooping cough, I decided to hold off. I have bigger fish to fry.

 

Sometimes, events change the way you think. An epiphany, the Christians call it. A flash of insight that makes you realize something you've never considered before. Take corruption. I used to think it was bad.

Here are three stories:

Guaymas: (Northern Mexicans don't like to pronounce G's when they start words. So the town is pronounced Why Mas? I say, Why not?) I wasn't exactly in the middle of this adventure, but heard about it from Gilberto, who was.

Here's Story 1.

It's late. Sometime after the big punkrock show. There are weird laws in Mexico, as there are everywhere. Here, you're allowed to drink in the bar, but not in the attached music hall. After 10, you can drink anywhere. But, you can only buy beer retail until 9PM. After that you can only drink in a bar... until 10, when you can also drink in a music hall.

We'd just driven 15 or so hours to get to this town. From Tijuana. By now, beers are needed by all. While the early bands played, those of us not playing run back and forth from the bar to the band area. Sin Arte, the Mexican version of Artless, had to cancel. Ivan, the bass player, was evicted from his Arizona apartment earlier today, and had to move to Tuscon. It was gonna be our first show. Sad.

Some of us went out to stock up on booze before the stores closed. We hear there are a couple illegal places that sell after hours, but only Gilberto has the details.

I drink while Cojoba plays. Despite 38 seconds of sleep the night before, they play a good show. Also playing is one of my favorite bands in the world, VERBAL DESECRATION. I've probably already said it, but I'll say it again. Alan Jr., the singer, is one of the best performers in punk rock today. I could watch him all year.

Gilberto, who had driven the whole way, is enjoying beer number I can't count. I'm still racing back and forth from bar to stage, gulping from a can of Tecate in the bar and then racing back to see the bands. Gilberto disappears to buy some of that illegal late nite booze.

When he returns, here's what he tells me:

He's driving along the streets of Guaymas... no idea where he's going... completely sloshed... with a truck full of illegally bought beer. He's careening that pick-up truck right and left across the streets of the town, which is pretty much shut up for the night.

Sure enough: AAAARRR RAAAAARRRR WOOOOWOOOOWOOOOWOOO.

Flashing red and blue lights in the rear-view mirror. Uh oh. The cop gets out, flashlight in hand. He's not a big guy, slightly chubby, a bit haggard looking. I'll translate the conversation for the gringos.

Cop: You know why I stopped you?

Gilberto: I...uh... I... who? Where am I?

Cop: I think you were maybe having something to drink? And you maybe were buying it after hours?

Gilberto: I... uh... huh?

Cop: You know, I've had a long night. Just give me money for a cup of coffee and then get out of here.

Gilberto hands him 20 pesos (about $1.80). The cop shakes his head, gets back in the cop car and takes off. Somehow Gilberto finds his way back to the club.

Story 2. We've just been to a beach near Guaymas. Only Ray actually went in the water. The rest of us just took our shoes off and played with the scorpions in the sand. We were with Sabo, aka The Buddha of Guaymas. He's a really fat guy whose nicknames for everyone catch on immediately. Ray is Michael Jordon. I'm Pinche Viejo Marihuano, (loosely translated: Fuckin' Old Stoner).

The waitress at a seaside restaurant is Verijas Lilas (Purple Snatch). On our only free day, Sabo takes us on a tour of the area. He has his own pick-up truck. Moe and Ray ride inside, the rest of us in back. 

What a glorious trip! Riding in the back of a pick-up... 6 people, among the cactus and desert... Mountains and sea... Downing can after can of Tecate... Wow! Do I feel Mexican! Here's a toast to Mexico and Mexicans! We all raise our cans to the passing cars. It's a steep road from the beach to the highway. It takes careful maneuvering, quiet, sober, thoughtful. 

Then there's us.  

SLAP! Sabo hits the curb. We back up. BAALOO BAALOO! Some one leans on a horn behind us. We toast him too. We're off. Down hill. Seems like we're going pretty fast. Do the breaks work? SCREEEE!

BLAM! We're all thrown to the back of the truck. I manage to grab a kind of lead pipe that keeps me from being flung over the edge. I guess the breaks DO work. BLAM, we hit the curb on the other side. 

Careening through the street, toasting every cute chiquita and necktied businessman. Salud! Salud! (I try Potato Salud! but nobody gets it.) We all grab more beers. I don't know how they do it, but Mexicans have developed an endless sixpack, similar to the bottomless cup of coffee at IHOP. You take a beer out of the cardboard and there are still six beers left. It's magic! The beer just keeps coming.

Uh oh, we're suddenly in a land of strip malls: McDonalds, Walmart, everything except Taco Bell. Did we cross the border and not know it? We park in a parking lot. Sabo and Moe go into THE GENERIC GIANT SUPERMARKET to do some shopping. The rest of us wait in the lot, sitting in the back of the truck, continuing to exploit the endless sixpack. A car pulls up next to us. It's a black and white car, with lights on top. Uh oh. 

Three cops get out. Two short ones, about my height. One taller with heavy jowls and a bad complexion. 

Although Taina and Javier both speak perfect Spanish, they are Puerto Rican and their accents would stand out like a hard-on in church. Gilberto, our only real Mexican, gets out of the truck to talk to the cops. He speaks to the big one. I translate. 

Gilberto: Hello. Is there a problem?

Cop: You know there is a problem. You were all drinking. Where's the driver?

Gilberto: He went inside with a friend. They're going to buy groceries.

Cop: We can take you all to jail. If anyone is drinking in a car or drinking in public we have the right to take you to jail.

Gilberto: Come on. I'm Mexican. I know you can't do that.

Cop: Okay, you're right. But we can make trouble. We can wait for the driver and take him to jail.

Gilberto: I understand. How's a hundred pesos (about $9)?

The cop nods.

Gilberto hands him the money. The cops go on their way. And the party continues.

 

Story 3: Agua Prieta is a dusty Mexican town just across the border from Douglas Arizona... a dusty American town. It's where Gilberto's aunt and uncle live and it's now one of my favorite places in the world. According to Gilberto, it's controlled by the drug cartels. All the fancy restaurants, bars and clubs in town are owned by them. Gilberto's uncle owns the best “non-drug cartel” restaurant in town. You'll probably read more about this amazing city in future columns. It's filled with colorful characters, a great strip club, and the world's only BURGER QUEEN.

Right now, I need to introduce you to one of the colorful characters: Barichu. He's a tall handsome guy in his mid-20s. He wears a black leather jacket, is talkative, and notorious in this small town. His picture was on the front page of the local newspaper... under the headline: POSSESSED BY DRUGS? OR BY SATAN? The story tells how he started yelling at the police. As they surrounded him, he pulled out a plastic gun and shouted BANG! BANG! at them. In America he'd be dead. In Mexico, he got beat up and thrown in jail for awhile. Every cop in town knows the guy. He often suffers from black eyes and bloody noses.

One of the many other reasons I like him is he said to me “Mykel, tu eres una leyenda aquí.” A third reason is that he's known as “Sonora's GG Allin.” (Sonora is the Mexican state where this column takes place.) One of his more notorious tricks was to pound dried dogshit into a powder... and snort it. 

So it's the middle of the night. We've been at the strip club (boy, THAT'S a story), finished a couple buckets of beer, seen... well you'll hear later. Right now we're piled in Gilberto's rent-a-car. He's driving. There's me and Barichu in the back. Gilberto is in the front with Paige, a girl visiting from Boston, and another local guy whose name I can't remember. 

The town looks deserted. Good thing too, as we're skidding across the street, from side to side, like a stripper's hips against a pole. Up ahead is a red light. 

 “Go! Go!” shouts Barichu in Spanish. “There's no one around. Just go.”

“Er... I don't think that's a good idea,” I say. “Cops don't sleep at night. They may be looking for...”

Gilberto steps on the gas, ending me mid-sentence. FOOOOOOT. Right through the red light. And the next red light. And the next. Although it's physically impossible to drive both on the right and the left sides of the street simultaneously, Gilberto does it. I cover my eyes.

I do not cover my ears, however, and so hear the police sirens coming from behind us. I knew it.

We stop. Pull over. Lights flash in the rear view mirror. Gilberto gets out of the car.

Jeezus: drunk driving, running three lights, speeding. It'll probably cost us $20 to get out of this one. Then Barichu gets out of the car, yelling at the cops.

There's more shouting. Lots of Spanish words I don't know. What sounds like boots stomping in mud. Suddenly a cop gets into the driver's seat of our car, the place vacated by Gilberto. He wears no hat, but he does wear a turtleneck sweater. Pulled up high, the turtle neck covers most of his face. Everything except the eyes. He looks like a giant uncircumcised penis... the glans just peeking through, above the foreskin. With three of us in the car, he starts it and drives... somewhere.

“You're taking us home?” asks Paige.

Wishful thinking.

Without a word to us, the cop pulls over... somewhere. It's even more deserted than the already deserted center of town. He gets out of the car. A few seconds later, Gilberto gets in the car and kneels on the front seat.

“Barichu pissed them off. We got to get a thousand pesos together or we go to jail,” he says.

Barichu gets in the back seat. The rest of us pull out our wallets. I've got 300. The guy whose name I forget kicks in a couple hundred. Gilberto puts in what he has. Paige has no pesos, but throws in about forty U.S. dollars. Barichu yells at all of us. He has no money.

Gilberto counts what we give him. Twice. “I think we got it.” he says. “Let's hope so.”

Barichu yells at him.

Outside, there is more talking. Barichu gets out of the car again. Uh oh, this is gonna do it. I'm gonna spend the night getting buttfucked by the Frito Bandito. But no. They got their money. They let us go.

Barichu and Gilberto get back in the car. Barichu says he wants to move to Boston where Gilberto lives because the cops here always beat him up. I tell him that in Boston, they'd kill him. He doesn't believe me.

On the trip back to Gilberto's uncle's house, I think about corruption. Three times. In the U.S., each would've landed us in the slammer. We'd have to spend days in court, probably get licenses taken away, have a criminal record, spend thousands on fines and lawyers fees, and what do the cops get for their work? Bubkas.

In Mexico, we're stopped by the cops three times. All for legitimate reasons. It costs us a total of around $100 to get off. Every cent of that goes into a hard-working cops' pocket. We have no criminal records (at least not here in Mexico). No time in jail. That is corruption. And contrary to what I've long thought, I now say: VIVA LA CORRUPCIÓN!

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to comment on the column]

-->And they call it welfare dept: Former candidate for NY Governor, Carl Paladino, said he'd transform some NY prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients. "Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check,” he said. “We'll teach them personal hygiene.”

 

-->I wonder if it teaches them personal hygiene dept: Democracy Now! reports that an LA country jail plans to use prisoners as test subjects for a U.S. military high-tech ray gun that cause extreme pain. Seeing as they're only prisoners, it doesn't really matter, does it?

-->Where rights are privileges dept: New Republic editor, Martin Peretz, said he wonders if Muslims "are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have the sense that they will abuse." He also wrote "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims."

     Seems to me that by writing that Peretz is abusing his first amendment rights.

-->But he's not cheap dept: David H. Brooks, the CEO of DHB, a body-armor company contracted to the US government, has, according to the NY Times, used company money to pay for pornographic videos for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, prostitutes for his employees, and a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds.

-->Who's abusing the first amendment? dept: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said that the US should have "no more mosques, period." Why? "Each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government."

-->Today's friend, tomorrow's prisoner(ask Noriega)dept: Jailed Afghan drug lord, Jama Khan, has been a CIA informant for years, The New York Times reports. He was paid large sums of money to provide information about the Taliban, Afghan government corruption and other drug traffickers. In 2008, Khan, described as the most dangerous drug lord and Taliban supporter, was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law.

-->Letter reply dept: Last month(?) Naomi wrote a thoughtful letter about how there seemed to be a conflict between my complaining about child tobacco labor in Kazakhstan and my opposition to kiddie porn laws in the U.S. She said that since most children don't “consent” to be in porn and that they aren't paid for it, kiddie porn is slavery. Since I believe the letters column should be for readers, I didn't answer there. Here is my answer:

The reality of child porn is that most of it was made decades ago and is still being distributed. (By the way, the number one 

distributor of kiddie porn is the U.S. government... for entrapment purposes). There's no way of knowing if the kids consented or not. In the stuff that I've seen in Europe and Asia, the kids look pretty happy... like they're playing.

In any case, most of the images of children (family pictures, street snapshots etc)... in fact most images these days... are distributed without the consent of the person photographed. That's life without privacy in the 21st century.

Of course, I oppose people forced into doing things against their will, but I'd say a fuck of a lot more adults are forced into working jobs they hate than children are forced into doing something sexual for others to take pictures of. Capitalism is slavery. Most of us are slaves.

-end-

Mykel's personal website is here.

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