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09 September 2012

Your Protagonist's Brief Reverie at Winrock

Rudolfo Carrillo


By Rudolfo Carrillo

"From the outset, let us bring you news of your protagonist."

On the way to Winrock Mall to ransack the bargain racks in the men's building because they have two buildings at the Dillard's in Burque, one for the men and one for the women your protagonist cranked up the car stereo and listened to 94 Rock while his wife sang along to the blare of the overly familiar pop-heavy metal songs being offered by a part-time DJ on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

As the non-exiting freeway overpass on Pennsylvania was surmounted and conquered by the ramshackle and mostly reliable Saab 900 Turbo, the ramshackle and mostly abandoned shopping center initially mentioned in this post loomed in the short distance and a song by Ozzy Osborne called Changes drifted with ironical peacefulness (given the singer's oeuvre) through the speakers, briefly causing the driver of the twenty-year-old silvery-gray sports car from northern Europe to lament the death of his dog, whose permanent absence from the earthly realm had coincidentally banished summer from the man's world, because here it was already near the middle of September and he was already shopping for woolen sweaters and hardy shoes and could not remember a goddamn thing that really happened between the beginning of May and the end of August, except for a couple of dreams.

In one of the dreams, your protagonist's dog was happy, living amongst the other grateful doggie dead, while David Foster Wallace oversaw the whole operation and repeatedly enjoined the dreamer to shorten his sentences and to choose his adverbs wisely.

In the other dream, it was already snowing and Burque was still part of Mexico. That was obvious from the shapes of the streets and sidewalks and buildings; the age of the concrete suggested Cortés and Moctezuma mixed up in equal proportions.

But, anyway, at the mall, most of that tragic stuff, those snowy aftermaths was and were sublimated by the totally amazing sale on men's shirts available for consumption by the general public and especially those seeking drastic reductions with just a hint of aging hipster fashion sense thrown in for good measure.

One of the salesmen wore a striped bowtie knotted in the traditional manner, imperfect and just madly droopy on the left side. Everybody with a nametag wanted to help out; can I help you find something in your size or are you ready to check out, they all said with pearly smiles.

On the way outta there, two French pullovers and one worsted wool set of trousers later, our protagonist and his lovely, brilliant, life-saving and totally the only person in the world even remotely capable of dealing with the sky-larking, Swiss cheese-brained, mournfully snarky and heroically underachieving alien-hybird that is, in essence, your protagonist, zipped along the perimeter of the once glorious Winrock Mall. Some construction company or other was tearing parts of the old place into shreds, carting portions of the lonesome asphalt parking lot over to huge rubbish bins. Only three of the ancient, nineteen-sixties Native American-art influenced parking lot signs remained standing: the one for clouds, the second for comets, and the third for rain.

03 September 2012

Dirty Zines at The Tan

Rudolfo Carrillo


By TiL Guest Blogger Korben Dallas

There is a fundraiser this evening for Albuquerque Zine Fest. It happens tonight at The Tan gallery. The fundraiser is being hailed as a Dirty Zine Reading and features readers named Billy Da Bunny and Major Rainy Sneer. DJ Mello will spin throughout the festivities.

Things in Light caught up with organizer Marya Errin Jones, asked about this popular precursor to ABQ Zine Fest, her thoughts on zines and the upcoming festival of self-printed lit.


What are you most excited about experiencing at the second annual ABQ Zine Fest?

I am really looking forward to seeing wall-to-wall zines at The Kosmos. Equally, I can’t wait to get inside the I Fly Away Zine Mobile, coming in from Oakland. The book mobile was one of my all-time favorite things when I was a kid. I think I’m going to turn eight years old when I see that Chevy pull into the parking lot!

Why do you think the dirty zine reading last year was such a popular event?

I think people keep coming to our dirty zine readings because they’re curious.  People enjoy this type of zine reading because it quickens the pulse
dirty zines are exciting! The human imagination is vast and rich, and there are so many ways to tap into it. Almost as a rule in this culture, we’re exposed to sexuality and sensuality primarily through visual images, which is one way in, but sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes it’s too immediate. I think text can be tantalizing. A good, dirty story is like a great strip teaseyou don’t yank off your clothes there’s got to be a story behind the desire or the need to disrobe. I think it’s the same for dirty stories. It takes courage to speak the words that turn you on and it takes courage to listen. People show up to witness the spectacle of vulnerability. Strangely enough, I think it’s also exciting to be a little uncomfortable, to squirm a little, to giggle a little. Adults don’t giggle enough. I think a dirty zine reading is a great place to explore the internal edges of desire and curiosity, in an intellectual context.

Tell us about your love of zines.

My love for zines is new, fresh. We’re new lovers that don’t know a lot about each other, which is cool. I’m new to zines, and maybe they’ll turn out to a boyfriend who kisses and tells. But right now, I love that stapled, folded paper, and the stories and drawings tucked between the covers. I love reading zines as much as I move holding them
the texture of the paper, the shape and size of the zine. I secretly enjoy the quiet struggle I know a person goes through to get the story or the image onto the paper, and then the ease with which most zinesters just give the work away, or trade it for other zinecash is good, but it’s not about making moneyfor me, it’s about giving a part of myself away, and hoping someone else will enjoy what I’ve made. I love it when writers are rock starsit’s a great feeling to finally meet your favorite zinester, in the flesh, and know they’re just as awkward and weird as you! In a year, I’ve written nine zines of my own so far, and contributed to a few. Zines gave me my writing voice back when the sight of the blank page used to paralyze me. Seriously. It’s not that I don’t feel sick every time the idea for a zine comes up and I know I must chase it down. The difference is now I do it, and there’s no right way or wrong way to pursue the story. Zines gave me permission to be the scholar, the teacher, the lover I want to be, in print.

What's your favorite "dirty" zine?

It’s strange
I don’t really have a favorite dirty zine yet. But of the ones I have read, I would say I am partial to tales that get creative. I like sexy humor. I like smart smut.  I’m inspired by Anais Nin’s short stories, I like the writing of Johnny Murdoc, published by Queer Young Cowboys.

***

So yeah, that's happening tonight, folks, at The Tan, starting at about 8 p.m. The Tan is located at 1415 Fourth St. SW, in beautiful Barelas. If you go, maybe you can get a picture taken with Billy Da Bunny, or something dirty like that. In any case there will be heaps of great stuff to read and listen to and it probably beats the hell out of Zorg's Labor Day barbecue.


02 September 2012

September Sojourn Shattered

Rudolfo Carrillo


By Rudolfo Carrillo

What happened yesterday was I drove my car over to Fair Plaza to take advantage of the plethora of acquisitive possibilities contained therein. They've got a place on the corner that is stocked to the brim with a wide variety of recordings made by other human beings, mostly for the sake of entertaining others, but sometimes for informational purposes or to elicit emotional responses, too. Somewhere in there is a movie which is about a book that is about a movie, I am sure of it. You gotta give the clerks silver clad tokens to take any of the collection with you though, even if you are just borrowing it, and there are only two types of workers on duty there. One type is middle aged, frantic, but handy with computational devices; the other is comprised of kids with extra-long fingers who are working there when they aren't busy studying the forces of capitalism.

There is another a big room at the other end of the plaza where food is stored and distributed. In between them there used to be a liquor establishment called the Wine Cellar that was dark and mossy inside, usually filled up with neighborhood drunks and carnival workers. The tavern had a decent happy hour buffet with plenty of greasy red hotdogs and preheated, chemically treated nachos available for the above referenced subcultures to indulge in whilst they rooted for their favorite college football team or Nascar champion.

Now that is all gone. Instead there is a dollar store and rent-to-own joint in the bar's place. I don't know which is worse, but I reckon it is more productive to have the poor and downtrodden buying stuff rather than drinking away the afternoon to the accompaniment of roaring motor cars and million dollar collegiate athletic programs.

The food storage and distribution warehouse I told you about is roomy, with shiny concrete floors, cool-blue fluorescent lighting, heaps of vegetables, and a load of fresh-killed meat from faraway places like Grants and Clayton on display in luxuriously cold refrigerators in the back. There is a kiosk stocked with tobacco. The folks behind the cash registers all got pretty red vests to wear and will load up your haul in plastic sacks that last for a million years, but only after you hand over some cottony-green slips of paper or elsewise type in a series of numbers onto a device that is hanging around nearby and is more intelligent than the ships men sent to the moon.

On the way outta there, I saw a red-haired woman pulling her plunder toward the bus stop. She had a red-haired baby fastened to her chest with a bandolier. A red-haired child with dreadlocks and a tie-dyed t-shirt trailed behind, dragging a sack of diapers and a case of Mountain Dew behind him like the whole lot was made of fissionable material. They all began to trot when they noticed the number eleven waiting on the curb and blowing black smoke out of its end, cigar-like, infinitely gritty against the cloudless sky. As we passed them, rolled out onto Lomas Boulevard in a dependable silver automobile that was powered by the liquified remains of dinosaurs and the broad-leafed ferns they once frolicked amidst, a song by the Rolling Stones began pouring itself out of the speakers. It was something called Shattered.

I pushed the clutch down with my crippled left foot, positioned the shifter properly with my broken right hand. As we accelerated away and that whole scene became part of the past, I told my wife that Some Girls was probably the last good album the Glimmer twins ever made.  It was hot outside, for September, anyway, and the streets were mostly empty on that account.  Home was only a couple of miles away.



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