Sunday: Parte the Seconde (Ye Mall of Chapel Hills)

I hate malls. When I go out I like a certain amount of civility and control over the type of people I'm going to be interacting with. In LA, for example, I only come in contact with Persian teenagers at the Beverly Center or Grove, suffice to say that specific demographic is not in my social circle. That's in LA, where they have Mac stores, and reasons to go to the mall. Chapel Hills mall holds nothing but people I'd never interact with and stores I'd never shop at. Naturally, I took pictures.


What's so interesting about this young lad checking out the wares at the board game store? Well, considering the fact that the wind chill is making it feel like its 5 below outside, I figured i should share. Obviously he has no friends or family because he is carrying no coat and has not been told that once he steps outside he is going to DIE.


Here is a store i would never shop at in the mall where i could go and not buy..

If Jesus were holding a picture of her , holding a picture of Jesus, this painting could show us a shitty eternity. Instead, its just shitty.

In the middle of the mall is this beautifully adorned simulator. For $10 you can climb aboard this machine and feel what it is like to get ripped off. Love the Rape Van Orca motif, though.

If you don't get it, then you don't deserve to enjoy it.

The baby in the stroller couldn't believe that grown people could look like such dipshits. Those antlers stopped being appropriate always.

Get a head start on having your kids resent you.

Hidden Beauty at Sam's club

So after a lengthy trip, we finally made it to CO. Naturally my mom needed to feed us an enormous amount, and where did she take us? To my progressive shock, she took us to buy in bulk from union basher Sam Walton's mega deluxe superstore. All Angelino pretense aside, I found it oddly exhilarating. There is something amazing to see so much of everything. Check it out.


Cheez balls are awful. But great! But truly awful. But then they come in a "Barrel" and become great all over again.



Ferrero Rocher was always my favorite Euro-Trash confection. Then it came to the USA and I was happy, then i saw a WALL of FR at Sam's Club and it blew my mind.


OMG! OMG! OMG! That's what she said!

So I bought a hot dog and a Cherry Coke for $1.50 which was awesome because the hot dog and the Coke were enormous. The Lady who sold it to me was this super sweet elderly lady who should be serving cocoa somewhere with better lighting rather than dishing out weiners to people like me. The hairnet made her look sad, but the dawg was huge and they have an awesome chopped onion dispenser that chops fresh onions for you when you turn the handle.


Nice Lady, bad lighting.


Turn clockwise, get onions.


GIANT Hotdog and Coke.


The whole giant warehouse was being cleaned constantly by teenage girls driving concrete zambonis. This girl waited for me to get out of the way while i was taking my hotdog picture. I smiled, she looked confused and continued to drive her cleaning machine.


The Holidays, in bulk.

Muppets, Christmas and an Observation

Is it me, or are Vice President-elect Joe biden and Sam "The American" Eagle very similar in looks?

Enjoy the Show, Folks!

In 1492 they gave all the natives the clap.

Christopher Columbus, which means “Our Lord’s Anus” in Portuguese, was a famous wingnut racist who didn’t even know where he came from, but he was hired by a shadowy cabal of Spaniards and the Knights Templar to find an easier route to the emerging economies of Communist China, because the Islamo-Fascists had blown up the highway to Afghanistan!

Because “Cristóbal Colón” couldn’t even do basic math, he “computed” that the world was about seven miles around. So if he sailed west across the Atlantic, surely he would end up in Hong Kong in like four days. Everyone thought this was a great idea, in Spain. So the Knights Templar loaded all of Jesus’ mulatto children aboard Miss Maria’s Ford Pinto and off they sailed on the world’s first shitty Royal Caribbean Cruise. They landed in the beautiful Bahamas and gave all the locals syphilis, which is exactly what happens today at those “Sandals” all-inclusive resorts.

In October of 1500, he was arrested for constantly torturing everybody in the Haitian town he founded, Abu Ghraib.

Eventually, six weeks later, Franz Ferdinand let him out of prison and World War I began. Columbus spent his final crazy years writing a blog about how he was going to take Jerusalem back from the Iraqis.

So, no mail delivery today!

Why the Irish, and Why Saint Patrick's Day?

"What are you?" is a retarded and incredibly offensive question that I get asked way too often. What people are really asking, of course is "What's your ethnicity?" or if you want to be crude, "You seem white, but you're too dark. Explain."

Nothing seems to bring out this retarded line of questioning more than my love and celebration of St. Patrick's day. When push comes to shove, i don't see any reason why i should explain my love of a "Drinking Holiday" and yet, i feel strongly enough about my journey into the struggles of the Irish people to give a little explanation.

My general anglophilia was sparked at an early age by a grandfather who embraced his Scotch heritage, no matter how distant. Yes, the name "Lamont" is of scottish ancestry and if you dig far back enough even Irish, but let's face it. I'm as Mexican as a tamale being sold out of a cooler. Being a weird little Mexican kid in Colorado Springs with an "Abuelito" provided collection of Scottish tin soldiers, not to mention endless history books and an early exposure to war movies like ZULU, LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER, THE FOUR FEATHERS, GUNGA DIN, and and endless array of pith-helmeted books and stories, it wasn't very long before you had a fifth grader who cherished his copy of "The Illustrated Charge of The Light Brigade".

"Half a League, half a league, half a league onward!"

Its no wonder I can't remember where my keys are most of the time.

It was around the time of what i consider my political awakening when my shockingly conservative hometown finally started to get aggravating, that I decided to champion liberal causes and piss everybody off. At this time, my family was embroiled in an epic argument regarding religion, and I was forced to attend confirmation classes and "Go through the motions" despite the fact that i had been confirmed when I was 7 by a Cardinal, no less. So my Catholicism and liberalism were bound for a head-on collision, and that collision took place in the newspapers and literature of Irish republicanism and "The Troubles".

I'll spare you the history lesson, and leave that to the brilliant and thorough documentary series I've posted below. Suffice to say that the treatment of the Irish at the hands of the British even up to the mid to late eighties forced me to rethink my romantic views on the Empire, and served as a reminder that even some of my most seemingly benign childhood affections were childish, and the world we live in is far more complex than is dreamt of when reading of Gordon in the Sudan.

So why the Irish? Because they have been a historically mistreated and sidelined people, who have struggled for equal rights and a nation longer than any other people on earth. Why St. Patrick's? It is a chance to celebrate the underdog, the poets, the dreamers and rebels who will hopefully make Ireland a nation once more.

Now, for the history lesson. Below is the entire 8 Part series of THE TROUBLES. It is a history of the epic struggle of the Irish people for a free, complete, and sovereign nation from the Easter Rebellion of 1916 to the Hunger strikes of the 1980's. hopefully it will help you understand why the music at my St. Pat's parties sometimes carry a melancholy or defiant tone, and why some decorations have a Fenian slant.


"They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken." - Bobby Sands MP

<

Blogging in Mexico Day 7

We left for the Zocalo on a beautiful day


On our way to the Zocalo we stopped at the oldest department store in Mexico, where we caught this cop goofing off


The restaurant inside was Pancho Villa's favorite


The nuns on the street were a good indication that we were going the right way


Though Shrek and Fiona were a bit disconcerting


Finally, we arrived


The cathedral of Mexico City served a dual purpose. Not only as a place of worship, but as a model to the native peoples of the glory that is Christianity, and the Spanish did not disappoint.



And like all good creepy vestiges of medieval Catholicism, they even had relics. Hands, skin and bones of various saints.


As always, a reminder of the dual nature of Mexico's culture is never too far off. These indigenous dancers were outside of the cathedral.


We then hoofed it back to the palace of fine arts (Bellas Artes), where we saw a few paintings by Diego Rivera



However, too much culture can be rough on people from L.A, so we ended our day with Anti-Culture


That's it for Mexico! Tomorrow I'll be back in LA, readying for the primaries, bitching about the strike, finding bizarre stuff on the web, and being my annoying old self... Thank god.

Blogging in Mexico Day 5 & 6

So day 5 was a horrible oopsie. I forgot my camera/phone. So all the pictures from the incredible and beautiful museum of Anthropology will have to wait. However, day 6 provided a ton of fun pictures from Chapultepec castle. The seat of government for Colonial viceroys from Spain, Mexican emperors, A military academy, Dictators, and now, a museum to be defiled by yours truly, and his three favorite cousins/rugrats.

Mario, Fernando, and Paula (My Cousins) climbing over the symbol of the grasshopper on a mountian, or in the Aztec language "Chapultepec"



Chapultepec Castle



A beautiful ceiling mural of a "Kid Hero" from the military academy who according to tradition, wrapped himself in the flag, and threw himself off the ramparts to avoid the flag's capture by encroaching American forces during the war with the U.S. (Note the American flag on the bottom right hand)



An incredible Mural Depicting the Spanish conquest where an eagle warrior is pierced by a spanish blade as he plunges his spear into the spaniards throat. In other words, the vile merciless Aztecs were conquered by the Vile merciless Spanish.



Some of the spanish Viceroys that ruled over "Nueva Espana" . Yeah, the first guys is an inbred cross-eyed goon.


Santa Ana's (Of Alamo Fame) Wooden Leg



After the castle , we went to a Oaxan Restaurant where my mom fed us all sweetbreads.


Then it was off once more to the plaza of the three cultures where you can see a colonial church that overlooks aztec ruins. under the shadow of Apartment buildings.



It was here that Fernando made a gruesome discovery
<

By this time, the kids (and I) were getting slap happy, so we headed home as the sun set behind the Angel of Independence.