rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

I’ve become awful about updating this thing.
I went to the third day of the Coachella Festival yesterday. jesus H. christ, there were a lot of people there. almost more trouble than it’s worth.
key word is “almost.”
Coachella doesn’t actually take place in Coachella – it takes place in the Coachella Valley, but the venue is in Indio. Indio, and Coachella, are places that I normally don’t stop in when I pass on the highway. dirty and dusty desert towns. just like El Centro, only more like a truck stop. at least this burg has a sense of community.
but the festival, man. I don’t normally go for these kinds of things. like, for the three day pass, I think it cost 300 bucks. plus food and drinks. alltogether, that’s like a 500 dollar investment, at least. that I wouldn’t do. also, I wouldn’t spend eight hours in the car to go and see something like this; maybe to some people it is, but spending 16 hours in a car, and losing a couple hundred dollars to see a huge-name act perform on a stage I can barely see isn’t my idea of a good time.
but I got in free off of Greg’s working of the press angle, and it’s like an hour and a half from here. so, fuck it. I went.
these are the performances I saw, in order: about five minutes of the Kaiser Chiefs, Willie Nelson, a band called the Claxons (sp?), Air, Manu Chao, and Rage Against the Machine.
and all I had to do was get in my truck and drive up here after I watched the Bulls stomp Miami on national television.

Greg was hanging out with some people that his boss put him in touch with from the Valley. every year, they rent a condo and live out of it for the weekend. I only met one of them, but he was an alright guy.the condo was trashed. empty beer cans everywhere, drunk guy in a Mavs jersey passed out on the couch the whole time. didn’t spend much time there.
at the festival, where we adjourned to shortly after meeting up at the condo, he was hanging out pretty extensively with the girls from the campsite next to him, who were in their 30s, he told me. which was odd. because they struck me as much younger. talked like burned-out sorority sisters, which I think they were, but they were cool enough. before we left the campsite for the concerts, they were passing around cocaine and tequila. seriously. to which I say: you’re always young if you’re young at heart, girls!
anyway, Willie Nelson was the shit. he played “Pancho and Lefty.” Manu Chao was chaos, like a cacophony of sound. very festival like music; he was happy, and the crowd really had a good time. and on the next stage over, Air was right where you’d expect them to be, electronic and elegant and very French.
and Rage Against the Machine was odd. they haven’t released a new song in seven years, and when they began, it wasn’t that impressive. de la Rocha started off weak, Morello sounded like he was mailing it in, but as they played they got louder. louder. “down Rodeo” and “testify” were pretty money. they had the crowd in a fucking frenzy, man. and you look around, and it’s a bunch of drunk and high festival undergraduates who know the album version of “bulls on parade” by heart. they’re an odd band, and I wonder how they marry extremely political lyrics with people who either a) don’t understand or b) don’t care. fuck, I’m probably a mixture of both.
here’s something in the same vein: some guy gave me a flier for a film screening that was taking place “later in the afternoon, man, in the campground.” it was for a communist magazine called “Revolution,” I think, and they were going to really touch your hearts and minds. they’re about social justice. I didn’t go, as I like my heart to be cold and dead, but after reading the card all I could think was, what the fuck? it costs about $100 for the ticket to get inside alone. and you’re spending money on preaching communism at fucking Coachella?
whatever. the Coachella Festival was just like college; hyper-liberal, “if we impeach Bush the world will be gumdrops and lollipops” kind of crowd. all killer, no filler.
though, de la Rocha did allow himself one political screed, which was pretty slick:
“if we held U.S. presidents to the same standards by which we judged the Nazis, every one of them from Truman on down, every single one, would be tried and shot for being war criminals.”
or something to that effect.

this post is going to take me forever to write.
like, for instance, that first line took me about five minutes to get over. then I started listening very intently to what Rod Stewart and “you wear it well” had to say. and if you aren’t reading between the lines on that statement there, I’m not even going to acknowledge it.

so. the bullfight went down this weekend. and it went down hard.
to illustrate:

this bull actually won the fight. seriously. I’m sure they shotgunned his ass afterward, but the matadors couldn’t kill him. after this, no one else would get in with him, and it was driven out of the ring. word.

when this happened, I was working on getting some Peanut M&Ms. looked up at the last minute. good eye!

this asshole goes by la Pana.

these three are photos professionally shot by the guy at work. he sold them to the AP, and the Mexicali paper had him (the second one) on huge sports front spread, even over their own guy. they are reprinted here without his permission, so I guess this is copyright infringement. sorry. his name is Todd Krainin.

and these next three, these are from me.

our view.

what I look like if you want to see directly into the soulless pits that are my nostrils.

Greg, thinking of something funny to say. he just got hired on at a job in Houston. go Greg, go.

anyway, this one was a lot more chaotic. and expensive. cost me ten bucks to get in. but it was warmer. sat on the sun side. every view is a decent view, even way up where we were. la Pana, the old man, was apparently hot shit in the bullfighting world back in his younger days; now, he’s a name you pay to see. like if Scotty Pippen were going to be signing autographs at a sporting goods store at the mall? I’d go. also: I say Pip just cause it could happen. I could see someone like Jalen Rose pulling that shit.

anyway, the event ended when a drunk asshole fell six or seven rows into my back. well, not really. I saw him coming, and kind of slowed him down/stopped him, but either way, it coincided with the last bull being killed, and it seemed poetic in a very poorly-developed-metaphor sort of way. when I caught him, this guy – rich, charro type, his wife and daughters were wearing cowboy boots and lots of jewelry – was bleeding from his head and had a very shocked look on his face. the stairs are out to get you, and when you factor in the cheap beer he probably drank and a traditionally Mexican lack of safety precautions (no handrails), they’ll burn your ass up if you don’t watch yourself.
so people swarmed, and someone was yelling in Spanish what I would assume was “don’t move him,” cause his head was twisted up something awful, and the paramedics showed up. he kicked over my beer, but I decided to let it slide and slipped away. here’s to hoping it was only a concussion, old man.

so, to recap: saw a bullfight. saw a couple of matadors get lit up. saw a bull win. caught a tumbling man. took some weak pictures. anything else?
no?

so a couple of weeks ago, a border patrol agent shot a 20-year-old Mexican armed with a rock.
the kid had been part of a smuggling group. they basically cut holes in the fence and run people across, into the city. sometimes it’s as simple as that. and when BP shows up and starts grabbing people, the smugglers will often throw rocks from far away, at their cars and at the agents themselves, in order to distract them. so that everyone may be able to get away. it doesn’t really work.
anyway, the agent shot this kid with an M-4 assault rifle, in the chest, and the guy died. his name was Ramiro Gamez Acosta. there was a big stink about it; the agent went on mandatory administrative leave, and all of these things are investigated by the Federal BI, but as of right now he’s back at work. and nothing probably would have come of it. and nothing will, even after this, but now security camera footage of the shooting has been leaked online by someone from within Customs and Border Protection. fuck! so much for Homeland Security!
the camera is pulled way back, and the incident occurs on the edge of the screen. the camera doesn’t even notice for a second and continues panning away, but then it snaps to and pulls right back onto it. then the enhanced, slo-mo version plays out. and it almost looks like Acosta is gonna throw the rock at the agent’s SUV or someone else, but there’s no one else there. so either he has a really big windup, or the agent overreacted. or both. I mean, fuck, man, you could have shot him in the leg.

also: I was reading an advertisement online for a job in Illinois, near Rockford. this is how it begins:
Yes, that’s right. Sauk Valley Newspapers is seeking a daytime news copy editor.

yes, that’s right. it’s finally happenened.

I had penned a lengthy post, and was literally about a second away from putting it up, and the fucking computer took a shit and died.
so, to recap:
I think canoeing all summer would be fun
I had a job interview with the paper in Charlottesville, VA
Mar should call me
whatever happened to Abbey Martin?
the guy who shot up Tech was completely batshit crazy, not just lonely and confused

there you have it. for better or worse, I haven’t really changed personality-wise in the last couple of years, so any further comments I had on any of those subjects, you could probably fill in the blanks yourself and it’d probably sound similar enough. I’ll let this one go.

I’m trying to figure out my insurance information. all I want to do is go get glasses. maybe a dentist checkup. that’s it. that’s all I want to do. but because I don’t know what my policy number is, I can’t. I can’t even get a god damned customer service phone number. everyone I call tells me it’s the wrong number. and they connect me to someone else who tells me the same thing. jesus fuck, someone tell me insurance number so I can go to the god damned doctor. how could I have possibly made this so difficult?
fuck this insurance bullshit. I’ll just pay in cash.

but the more important question is:
should Matt grow a beard? it just so happens I haven’t shaved in a week. so I’m about a week into the three weeks it’ll take me to grow one. is it worth it? or will I look entirely too grubby with facial hair?

I went to a party at my coworker’s house last night. his roommate’s birthday, or something similar. I normally don’t say this about parties, but it was pretty awful. lots of pseudo thugs and really bad club music. the birthday boy was fucking trashed, and when they tried to get everyone to sing ‘happy birthday,’ he got pissed when no one joined in. maybe I should have, but I’d never even met the motherfucker before. whatever. it’s an interesting place to live, but there’s an awful lot of assholes around here.
so today, I went to Yuma to see the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” movie. I was baked, and it didn’t seem like such a horrible idea. looked up directions online, timed it so I’d get there right as it started. it’s like a 40 minute drive, and I felt like being alone.
the directions I got were wrong, and I end up ten miles away from the theater, and when you combine all of that with the fact that I was baked, I missed the showtime by about thirty minutes. fuck.
but at this point, I’m already in Yuma, so I decide that I’m going to stick it out for another hour and then see the movie. I didn’t want to have sat in the car for an hour and a half in vain, so that’s what I do.
and the movie sucked. watching it with a bunch of Marines that had 24 hour leave was a bummer; they were the same assholes you didn’t like in high school, or later in those required courses you took in your freshman year, only now more patriotic and militant and crew-cutted. and I considered that I’d spent my entire day seeing this movie, and I laughed, barely, once or twice. and I thought, why didn’t I know any better? there’s a reason that this cartoon is only on in 15 minute bursts. of course it was awful; and I can’t believe that I ever thought it would be anything else.
so I basically wasted my day off.
tomorrow I work. then Tuesday is my Sunday, so I intend to go see “Pathfinder,” simply because it’s a poorly-made Frank Frazetta movie. but since I know this one’s going to blow and it’s only my morbid curiosity pushing me toward the theater, I’m not driving all the way to fucking Yuma. no. way.

I’ve got a million things to get done in the next couple of days. most involve talking to HR at work and rediscovering my insuracne plan so I can go to the dentist and get new glasses while I’m insured. then, I’ve got to buy the ticket to Europe, which I haven’t done yet. I would very much like to stay over there for more than two weeks, but – and I don’t know this cause communication with her is sketchy – but I think Mar will be ready to come back. also, she has shit to do. like canoe all summer.
when I told Alisha I quit and that I was going to Hungary, she asked if she could come along. which I waffled on, for two reasons, both equally true; I kind of want to do this with Mar, and I don’t know if Mar would want Alisha to come along. when I told Alisha, in a word, “no,” I didn’t tell her that about Mar.
either way, she’s coming out here to help me clear out, and then we’re driving back. which I’m legitimately looking forward to. I feel bad, like it’s some sort of consolation prize to drive across the country rather than going to Europe, but at the same time, I get the feeling she’s more interested in going to Europe, than, say, going to Europe with me. I’m sure Europe will be fucking cool, but half of the coolness will be hanging out with Mar. and while this sounds weird, I’d rather have her attention, to a point, if she were to come. half of the trip is in the company you keep, I feel. I don’t know why, but I don’t think Alisha feels that way at all, and that kind of bums me out.
jesus, I miss her.
this shit is obscene. I’ve been at this for four years now. but I do.

this place is wearing me out, and I’ve got less than a month left.
I mean, listen to me. it’s like a drawn-out yawn. seriously, I wish it would hurry up finish. Mar. you just did the Balkans. but did you do Greece or the Aegean coast? can these be done?

I’m sitting here, checking my e-mail, and I can hear Greg in the bathroom blowdrying his hair.
…
jesus christ.

the wind is gusting outside pretty hard. this sounds like something out of a Robert Frost poem, but it’s something nice to fall asleep to. and it’s supposed to be no hotter than 80 tomorrow, so that’s pretty legit.

shaved my head today. but while brushing my teeth in the mirror, it’s grown apparent I missed a few spots. nice. tomorrow, I’ll work on correcting them.

after work tonight – which sucked, everything was done by 8 p.m. for once and I was forced to make small talk with my boss for about an hour, which was uncomfortable for reasons that I’ll soon explain – I went to the grocery store.
I bought:
loaf of bread, white
30 individually wrapped slices of homgenized American cheese
half gallon of skim milk
half gallon of orange juice
bar soap
toothpaste
12 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon (only five bucks)
six pack of Ramen noodles, chicken flavored
alltogether, 20 bucks. yes.
then, I went home and burned the living shit out of a grilled cheese sandwich and ate it out of spite. and it wasn’t half bad.

Greg scored three passes for all three days of the Coachella Festival later this month. which means I get to go, which is balls-out legit. I don’t think I can handle three straight days of that bullshit, but I’m definitely down for at least one. a reunited Rage Against the Machine plays Sunday night. Bjork Friday, Red Hot Chili Peppers Saturday. plus, a million other bands, like Amy Winehouse, Kings of Leon, the New Pornographers, Interpol, Sonic Youth. working for newspapers does have its perks.
that’s in three weeks.
next weekend – not this weekend, cause this weekend I’m working, just me and Gary, the befuddled senior citizen who has been forced into copy editing by our dickhead of a boss in a vain attempt to make him retire – is another bullfight. hell yes.
I forget who I was talking about with this, but blood sport came up, and I said I’d go to a cockfight. maybe even a dogfight. they were appalled. but I figure if I’m willing to sit through a bullfight and actually enjoy myself, then what the fuck? what kind of false morality kicks in with the other genres? I have a dog at home, yeah, but my boycotting a dogfight in Mexicali does nothing at all to slow its existence. and as far as bullfights go? I know this argument is tired, but it still rings true: at least they get a shot at someone. unless you’re a fully committed vegan or someone who can afford to buy free-range pork and beef and eggs, etc., we’re all living well at the expense of the animal kingdom’s suffering. so cry me a river about the inhumanity of these spectacles. no one’s laying down in front of the doors of the McDonalds I can see from my bedroom window, and they aren’t in your neighborhood, either.
to note: I’m not going to a dogfight. I’ve never even heard of one. but they go down nearby, so this is all hypothetical.

but back to the point.
I’ve got a pretty rowdy April planned. entertained, the entire way through. whcih I find ironic. because I quit my job on Tuesday.
my last day will be May 8th. then I’m packing, driving back, and going to Europe to meet up with Mar and blow through whatever money I’ve saved up out here. I bet I can flush four grand pretty quick. right?
my manager took it pretty well. the editor-in-chief pulled his usual routine; compliment laced heavily with insult. but that’s alright. I’m gone in a month anyway. and I’m getting good results back from the places I’ve sent out to. the paper in Charlottesville, VA is coming on pretty strong. moving right to the heavy petting.

so yeah. Mar and I are going to screw about in Europe for a few weeks.
(also: Mar is in the Balkans. awesome)
I’m sure there are other opinions on this out there, but you only live once. I don’t know why I feel so flippant about this. I don’t necessarily feel liberated, but I think that’s mostly because as of right now, nothing has changed. but I’m happy with the decision.

just watched “A Scanner Darkly” with the Gregster. I think I’m going to go jump off a bridge now. all of Philip Dick’s shit is so dystopian. it makes recreational drug use seem like such a drag.

something’s screaching outside my window, down the street. could be a dog. could be someone peeling out of the trucker motel on the other side of the block. a wonderful little slice of America, El Centro Avenue is. definitely a trip.
for instance: my neighbors like to bump gangsta rap in the parking lot on the most odd evenings. could be Wednesday, could be Saturday. the guy who lives there looks like a thug. tattooed up and down both arms, always wearing a wife-beater and slippers, shaved head; total cholo. the rap is the usual generic scarface-worshipping bullshit, and the best thing about it is he’s got his kids riding around on tricycles while he pumps it out of his dropped Altima. way to ride, jackass.

I celebrated Easter by going to a Padres game on sunday with your boy Greg. bought tickets off a scalper and sat in the upper deck. the beer and hot dogs cost more than the admission, but it was an alright time; home team won in the 10th after Gary’s favorite son, LaTroy Hawkins, gave up a triple and a single to right. you know LaTroy is repping the G.I., baby.
went up to La Jolla to fuck around afterward. I’d never been to La Jolla before, but apparently UCSD is around there somewhere. didn’t see it. the town is right on the water, and though it was overcast, it was very pretty. I’m not sure how true it is, but La Jolla seems like one of those pockets of exuberant wealth among an already wealthy area. a sample of the cars parked on the street would go something like this: Beemer, Benz, European sports car I’ve never heard of, Benz, Benz, the 87 Civic that belongs to the Mexican who washes dishes at one of the waterfront trattorias, Benz, Benz, Beemer, and the grimy pick-up with a rank bathroom mat in its bed. that last one belongs to me.
so happy Easter. San Diego is an interesting place.

Bjork has a new album coming out. don’t shit your pants, everybody, I’ll buy it and let you know how it is.

I got nods back from a paper in Decatur, Il, and Charlottesville, VA. both of which would be tight; Charlottesville is a college town. I don’t think it’s a college town in the way that Bloomington or Champagne or West Lafayette is a college town, but I think it would be a cool place to live for a little while. also, the Michigan City paper is looking for a copy editor. fuck, I didn’t even know anyone in Michigan City knew how to read.

Mar, check your god damned e-mail. god damn.