your point is taken
something about not falling into a rut
and I want you to know
I am totally on board with that baby
It is good to be awake early in the morning, alone with the evaporating mist of dreams.
Are all dreams apocalyptic? Is all classical music bombastic? Yes and yes.
Yesterday, riding the bicycle at dusk, a brief scent of fire ants.
Among other things, “bombastic” means pompous. “Pompous” means self-important.
True or false: Everything is self-important.
By Angie Sánchez
Early College Education
My college education began in a community college. When I found out that the private college that I was planning on attending was too expensive and could not get the scholarship I started to save money but as I mentioned before 32 hours a week at $6.50 was not going to be enough to pay for it. Someone who worked at the same mall I did asked me what I was planning on doing after high school and I told her that I was going to work until I had enough to pay for the school I wanted to attend. She advised that since it was going to take a while to save up all that money that I should take a couple classes at the community college and then transfer once I had the money. I didn’t even know I could do this! She gave me better advice than my high school counselor ever did.
no one reads your stuff
or the few who do
don’t really get it
It’s Week 2 of the No Television Experiment.
So far, I’ve missed The Beach Boys and Glen Campbell on the Grammy Awards and the midseason premiere of The Walking Dead on AMC.
Those are just the things my friends made sure I knew I’d missed. I was talking to the Ol’ Gunslinger last night on the Hillbilly Communications Network, legendary for the dropped call.
Back in the day, the Ol’ Gunslinger and I loaded our amplifiers in and out of many skeevy nightclubs. He is a wise and wily scoundrel, and, like most musicians, usually having serious fun. He was fired up about seeing Glen Campbell on the Grammy show.
“After his song, Glen Campbell didn’t know the mic was still on, and he said something like, ‘Am I supposed to say something, or just get out of the way?’ It was great.”
The reason why I began working was so that I could have money of my own and help my dad with some of the bills. That summer I worked as much as possible and I saved a lot of my money. I knew that I wanted to go to college but I did not realize how expensive it was or how I was going to get the money to pay for it. When the school year started and I made an appointment to visit the college I was interested in. The staff there was very welcoming and most of all informative. The adviser I spoke to informed me that I qualified for a $2,000 scholarship and that upon acceptance that scholarship was going to be mine. Unfortunately, I could not receive that scholarship or any other form financial aid because of status. I was devastated, especially since I had been accepted to the school. When this happened I decided that I was going to work extra hard and save up money. At $6.50 an hour I was going to need way more than 32 hours to save up $12,000 per semester.
Please hit the “like” button on our Friends of St. Roch Tavern Facebook page and write a comment of support. We’d be much obliged. _______ Neighbors. Seems I’ve been writing about neighbors one way or another for a little while now. I’ve always told people…
One day I noticed I was watching Terminator 2: Judgment Day every time it was on.
When you have a couple hundred channels, T2 is on, well, a lot.
So is Spaceballs.
I’d watch two or three movies at the same time. I mixed genres and release dates, mashed up entire schools of cinema. All the stories and visions, mine to control!
This was not scholarly appreciation. This was not DIY film school.
This was a binge, a debauch, a scandal!
By Angie Sánchez
Employment
I began working the summer before my senior year of school. I worked at the mall at a specialty food store. Since I did not have legal documents to work I had to get some. And that meant getting a fake social security number and a fake Green Card. We went to La Villita which is a predominantly Mexican community in Chicago. All you do is walk down the streets and there are guys walking around asking if you need a Mica (green card). They usually make hand gestures, like holding up their hand as if they were holding a card in their hands. A guy walked by us and we told him we did. He asked what name we wanted on there and if we had a social security number we wanted to use otherwise they make one up for you. I made mine up on the way there. The name on the social security card was different than my real name. The only thing I changed was my last name. I did this because if someone that knew me ever came to my place of employment they wouldn’t address me with a different name than the one on my application. I also did this because if I ever applied for residency and if it showed that I had worked with a fake social they would use that against you. He told me to go to a shop where I was going to have my picture taken for the mica. It was a bridal shop, places where people go to take their pictures range or you can come with your own picture. An hour later we met up with the guy again and he had my social security card and my green card. I could now work “legally.” I paid a total of $150; the prices have gone up since then.
The sales girl was generally pleasant, mild-mannered and dainty. Coming from a long line of sales clerks she had a genetic disposition for friendliness, but strange muscles growled at the back of her neck whenever the sea captain entered the store. There was something…
I’ve been a mover lately. I used to be a shaker, which was some kind of fun. Shaker. That brings to mind shaking the earth. Or shaking the dice. Shaking with fear. Fear of shaking.
But now I’m just a mover, and funny how that works out. If you were moving and shaking at the same time, lord knows what would happen.
Mercy! Suddenly there’s lots of stuff to move!
All human possessions fall into three categories, which I am now going to invent: Stuff, Junk, and No Way I’m Tossing That.
Stuff comprises most of what we have. My Stuff is mostly books, papers and clothes. I need my Stuff, but there’s always the danger of having Too Much Stuff. (I’m writing this during a break from packing and moving Stuff, as a matter of fact. Because I have a deadline and I know some of you will be disappointed if I don’t post something today. It is, after all, Friday.)
Mojada, part VIII
By Angie Sánchez
At the end of my junior year I finally realized that I was not being challenged so I asked to be placed in higher level classes for the following year. What bothers me is that if I wouldn’t have asked for that I would’ve stayed in the same mediocre classes. I was getting bad grades. I just think I was one student in the masses. Otherwise I would have been moved up a level by sophomore year. The counselor I was assigned in high school was probably the worst any one could ever have. Whenever I would meet with her to choose my classes for the following semester she would never ask me what I was interested in. She would just placed me in the courses that she thought were the most appropriate for me. I never said anything to her because I felt that she knew what she was doing.
The other night I was watching Blue Velvet for the 26th time. I am helpless against the power of Blue Velvet, especially if it’s an uninterrupted (looking at you, IFC), uncensored showing, which this happened to be.
I’m a big fan of David Lynch. Generally speaking, I think Lynch makes movies about The Movies, and that alone would normally be enough to keep me interested. But he also has a terrific imagination and a painter’s eye for color and detail.
Just about everything Lynch has directed, including the oddly successful Twin Peaks television series, is by turns familiar and eerie. It’s hard to identify a tonal baseline in a Lynch film. Things get weird fast, and they just get weirder as the story unfolds.
The landscapes of films like Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart (1990) are relentlessly gorgeous and, well, Lynchian. You know you’ve accomplished something when your last name becomes an adjective. Hats off, sir!