In Illinois and Kentucky there is a day off from schools and government work for Gen. Kazimierz Pulaski.

Born in Poland and growing into a military rebel rouser who'd eventually stage a failed revolution against the Russian occupying forces, he was exiled from virtually everywhere in Europe in the 1770's. Nowhere to call his home, he moved to America and set about involving himself in the Revolutionary war as a commander in the cavalry. Battle wounds inflicted at Savannah took his life.

Pulaski would be an interesting and mostly overlooked figure of the Revolution, but for the growing recognition of him as a Polish immigrant. Something like a local political saint to be recognized by the American political papacy.

It comes as no surprise that in Chicago, home of the most Poles outside of Warsaw, his name is ingrained into school-kids heads with the same curious gratitude saved for "Institute" days off from class.

Yesterday was Cesar Chavez day. Across the country, he is not a much discussed figure. Chavez is mostly looked over in favor of teaching greatest-hits curriculum on MLK. He is celebrated here as a nod to the "hispanic" community. A gesture of respect towards the contributions of brown people in the state.

But Chavez is associated more as a labor organizer than as a universal spokesman for the civil rights struggle as it affects Latinos.

While Mr. Chavez was a visible face and somewhat audible voice to the dispossessed immigrant laborers (especially Mexicans), he has not truly emerged as a canonized 'race-man' of America. That distinction is generally reserved for Black civil rights figures.

The face of the LA-tino struggle is more likely conveyed through the generic-ized image of Che.

A mysterious and charismatic face that fought for socialist insurrections around the world is our mythological hero.

A Pan-Latino has continued to engage our imaginations, rather than a Latino citizen of the U.S.

This is part of the idealization of an authentic or un-compromised identity we may not see as truly possible here in El Norte.

It is then unsurprising to me that there's no national recognition of Chavez or Pulaski, but instead state-level gestures of respect that are given to acknowledge local ethnic constituencies. These wheels of awareness are notoriously slow to grind, but that is not to say that they are stagnant.

Pulaski, now dead for nearly 230 years is still in the process of being officially recognized as an Honorary Citizen of the United States.

So while the road to American recognition may be long and strange, it can be travelled and that is some kind of "arrival" in and of itself.

If you're looking for the finish line, better not hold your breath.

I don't know if it's my own unreal perception of the situation, or an actual deterioration of the standards of t.v.

Is American t.v. in a reflective mirror-room with Latino t.v.?

The production value of u.s. tee-vee is better (clearly), but the glamorous-to-the-point-of-self-parody attitude people are trying to possess is the same.

Case in point; American Idol.

Though the judges seem to hold themselves with a half-suspended act of mock-disbelief by the show's success, the kids are as phony as their attention grabbing cousins featured on Objectivo Fama.

While the dreamy illusion of the use of the word Idol in the title suggests a Disney-warm feel to the program, the latino counterpart Objectivo Fama spells out the ambition directly.

The folks interviewed and hounded on shows like Cotorreando and Atrevete' (formerly on ch.63 til MTVTres took over the network), show a naked eagerness to be seen and extend their personal lives into Soap Opera parades of the grandoise. To be watched and loved and thought of for saying easy-sugar uplifting messages, while their 'private' scandals of lust, repentance, addiction and re-awakening turn into t.v. studio chatter.

That was what I'd associated with Latino t.v.-- scandal.

But the same bickerous, chatty-talk is all too persistent on U.S. t.v.

For hours a night and every day, there are these celebrity and fake-celebrity rag shows.
E and Access Hollywood playing with the same currency as the spanish-language tabloids.

Was I racist?

Mistaken, somehow?

This could be a case of knowing your culture only well enough to expect less than you ought to.

"Cheepnis," as Zappa put it, is everywhere. It's surrounding us in the waves that travel to our televisions even while we sleep. We have invited it into our homes and thought we could live in management of it's message to us.

But even as we turn the t.v. off, it is still prepared to lurch forward like a cat that's poised.

Base impulses of ambition and the desire to scandalize are the reasons so many push so hard to be on t.v. En Espanol or Ingles,

Cheepnis abounds.

I used to go to Roscoe's more often. For the first three years I lived in Hollywood, I would stop by for lunch probably every 3 months. I've got my usual order and everything--the Sir Michael with Gravy and Grits.

When you go there, it is very much a contest. It's the only landmark Black Hollywood restaurant most people can think of, so it turns into a pilgrimage location. Long line. A lot of checking out the people at other tables. Industry-types and aspiring industry-types.

Everyone there to impress.

While I've never had bad food or a rude waitress at Roscoe's, there has been something that's struck me about their staff. The Hostess.

Actually, their hostess is a host. This confuses me a little, because the guy's working the door list are definitely not Maitre D's, but how often do you see a male hostess?

These dudes really make the restaurant feel more like a fake-club. They're the doorman with the list, you're joe-schmoe who wants to gain entry to the scene inside.
Instead of overpriced drinks and bass-y remixes of pop hits, it's sunrise fruit punch and greasy chicken, but still people going to be seen and understood to be on the inside of something that's cool.

As you can tell from my bile, I'm not a clubber. Just a long-haired fool that can sit comfortably in expensive nouvelle' restaurants and dollar taquerias, but would just as soon be cooking at home with some Yakuza movies on deck.

But after I put my name on the list yesterday at Scoe's, and waited on the sidewalk for ten minutes, the doorman called my name and I approached:
"Yep, Jason."
"You're Jason?" (with some disbelief)
"Yes, I'm Jason."
It was a subtle put-down. More of a shoulder check on the street.

Guys do this sometimes--they get a little in the space of someone else randomly to assert dominance. It's part of the bullshit that makes this planet annoying.

While I've seen the doormen at Roscoe's spit their doorman game to some of the girls who come by, this was now some dull hostility that was being projected at me by the people I was to get food from and give money to.

No respect.

Of course, Roscoe's is not in a bubble and the social piss-marking that happens anywhere is bound to happen there as well. But you know it's a shame when you go out to relax and take a break from your grind and still you manage to get tested by random people unaware of the details of your struggle.

Roscoe's; The place is for the Birds.

There is a problem with this city that everybody knows: it shuts down too damn early.

How can a city truly be a city if it isn't open past 10pm most nights. The bars shut down at 2, which means that after you've arrived fashionably late enough to be cool, you only have about an hour to do your thing before you need to start packing up to leave, lest you look desperate.

Aside from drinking and trying to hook up with someone that you will regret having ever met later, the early/late night problems are most noticable when you are hungry.

Went out recently to Fred62 on Vermont. That place is always full of people because in LA, drunk night owls can't be choosers, I guess. Unlike the 101, the servers at Fred's are really nice and not the usual snobby struggling actors. They are folks that I don't feel bad about tipping.
But...
most of the food sucks. Sorry.

The 101 does have some pretty good food (sometimes, depending on if mars is in retrograde) but it is such a den of iniquity that I can't stomache it.

25 degrees, downstairs from the Roosevelt hotel has some good food--that is, good burgers for 12-15dollars. They also just changed their menu to include fries with their luxurious burgers. This is a good thing because an allnight burger shouldn't cost more than 20$. This is america, not Mexico City.

And then, far away from the glittering velvet rope-humpers of hollywood, there is another alternative to this tangled mess of exploitation and resentment. Chinatown.

In Chinatown, on an unglorified corner just below Broadway lies the Won Kok restaurant (you can laugh now...).

The Won Kok is not the best food in Chinatown. It is, perhaps, the greasiest, and it is also open super late. After you've drank too much Tsing Tao (which is anything over 1), this is a good place to go for a CHEAP unassuming meal of porkfried something and some steamed shrimp-whatever.

These kinds of anyhow restaurants are a dime a dozen back east, and they are even plentiful here in lala-land, but after midnight, when the real beasts are stewing in the city and the racoons take back the streets they are rare.

Because it is rare, that's where you might find me.

If the current rash of sample sales is any indicator of the retail climate in LA, then I would guess that we must be in a recession.

Sales at this time of the year are nothing new, but lately it's no longer 'for those in the know.' It's like the clothing lines around town are desperately grabbing at straws to move whatever they can. Full page ads in the Weekly advertising their sales. This has got to be pissing off the retailers. But what can they do? It's been 7 years of Bush-shit and the economy is sucking like the gas tank on a Hummer.

People who make clothes are hurting. People who sell clothes are complaining.

And people who buy clothes...well, it looks like they aint buying afterall.

Next X-mas, a new president will be decided.

Let's hope we won't be looking so desperate.

Woke up this morning and decided to go to some of the taco spots on Hillhurst.

Los Feliz is a cute little enclave. It's like the beverly hills of the eastside--not that it's that posh, but it does have an air of privilege to it.

So it is a slightly conflicted latino that goes to eat at the taco stands over there (Hispanics, however, shouldn't have any problem with it). Most all of the folks that are lined up next to you are white, and that's cool, but....y'know, it just makes you feel a little like a tourist to your own culture.

Anyway, started off at the much hyped Yucca's. People tend to dis them for using american cheese. To me it's neither here nor there because a burrito or taco with cheese on it is already not that authentic and they only add it upon request anyhow. So, ordered from the famous abuelita that is posted out front of the little shack and she passed the word on to the 2 folks inside the sweat lodge that doubles as a kitchen. 2 burros-1 of Asada and 1 of Puerco Pibil. Also, a tamal (which they only serve on Saturday).

Asada is easily the most inconsistent meat to order from a taqueria. Some places grill really good meat (probably ranchera), then rough chop it up and lay it down on the golden pleasure futon of tortilla. Some places the meat is so grey and smelly, it must come from a dog.

Yucca's is in the first category.

Nice meat. Not as gangsta-excellent as El Parian (on Pico around the 1400 block) but still nice and unoffensive. Must say, though, that it feels a little over-hyped by the locals...

The Pibil, however is boo-yaa delicious. Stewed pork. Juicy. Damned Juicy. Once it's mixed up with their very fine beans in the bottom of the burrito, you've got a sloppy finish on a good dish.

The tamale yucatan was very nice, too. More akin to the puerto rican pasteles and central american tamales than the corn husk tamales most easily recognized as Mexican. Steamed in a banana leaf and doused with tomato sauce. Nice. What the fuck can't they do with a banana leaf???

So we ate in one of the few available seats, along side of some pleasant enough folks that almost definitely subscribe to KCRW and pride themselves on their ability to order in Spanish. Cute. I should have brought a bottle of Night Train.

Then, we split to go to the Best Fish Taco in Ensenada straight south about 5 blocks on the east side of Hillhurst.

This one is really a cultural connundrum. Fish tacos in general have a San Diego smell to them (which smells more like Denver than Mexico, somehow), so to feel like you're getting something authentic is a bit problematic to begin with. Most Mexicans seem to eat their seafood on tostadas or on a more fully realized entree. A taco doesn't seem like the natural home for a piece of fish. But, of course, it can be lovely in spite of the head scratching of folks from Chihuahua.

Also, the place looks to be run by white folks. But, the owners have also clearly lived for a while in Mexico and they exhibit a lot of the d.i.y. aesthetic of most all mexican family businesses (this is loosely translated as being lovingly-ghetto). The outdoor patio is dominated by a mechanic next door and they cook their tortillas straight out of a big bag of Guerrero ones available at any grocery store. This morning all of the napkins were apparently ripped off from a Tacos Mexico.

But they are sweet people and their tacos are very good, with a silly abundance of salsas and cabbage and relish and all kinds of hoo-haa available for customization. They are better than those served at 7 Mares or any other spot I've gone in town (but I already told you that I am generally skeptical about fish tacos...) Their shrimp ones are really good too, but today I didn't have one because of the aforementioned excursion to Yucca's. Pity, I'll have to pace myself better on future taco tours.

I did make the fatal mistake of underestimating the chile gangsta of their salsas (which were so cute and whimsically presented that I didn't take them seriously). Burned my mouth pretty bad.

That's what I get for underestimating Los Feliz.

The Democratic Candidates were supposed to have a debate in LA, but they have decided not to so they won't have to cross the Writers Guild Strikers.

The Political players have opted not to stomp over the WB network writers and 70's tv show-remake jockies. Instead, they will handily avoid the issue by going someplace that has less conspicuous labor tumult.

These goons respect the plight of bullshit bakers. After all, they are both in the same business of selling the big lie.

Why don't they go a step further? Instead of merely avoiding the strike, they can join in.

They should take at least one day off from the rigamaroll of hogwash spinning in solidarity with the authors of Independance Day.

The lines of fiction are tricky: One is tragic and the other is just pathetic.

Politics, your fantasy is the exhausting drama of injustice.

It's too much to seriously think about.

Turn off the tv. I give up.

I'm going to bed.

The Writer's Guild strike is entering it's whatever day (I'm guessing between twentieth and thirtieth), and the hollywood fat cats don't appear substantially closer to giving our beloved scribblers what they need.

So, I ask you, who is going to write the martini-cold dialogue for the next James Bond installment? How about the spicy hot romantic come-ons for the sequel to Maid in Manhattan?
Who is going to give a voice to Bruce Willis in future incarnations of Die Harder?

While I am a writer, and should feel some solidarity with other writers, the fact is that writers are a miserable mercenary bunch that generally feel as much kinship to eachother as New Yorkers feel to Canadians.

So now that these film and tv writers are on strike, all I feel is ambivalence.

What good were they doing, anyway?

The Sopranos is over. Twin Peaks has been done for fifteen years. Hollywood hasn't made a watchable movie since...help me out here.

Its like if the major record labels went on strike and said they wouldn't put out any more albums by American Idol affiliates.

I think that writing in general can be a good way to channel your creativity into a largely ineffectual and hence, non-destructive outlet. There-for it is good to offer people a way to make a living out of it.

But if you've been writing for tv and movies for the last twenty years (except for about 1 percent or less) you're part of the problem, baby.

Writers all know this. They're mostly okay. They know they're whores. Subsidizing their leisure life of intellectual superiority by giving the people the crap that they seem to want.

No excuse.

Now they want to get a bigger piece of the pie for turning the trick against their creative conscience.

That should be their argument: "Pay me more money for having to go through the shame of writing the Transformers movie!"

I have a better idea. Why don't all of these people (movie stars, film execs, network suits and writers)--why don't they all get less? They should all make no more than two million dollars a year, movies can go back to $5 or less if they really suck, and the world will be a saner place.

Ouch! The writer's strike has been attacked by a fellow writer?

Well we're not just whores, we're cannibals too.

Went to the LACMA to see the current rockstar-art exhibition: Dali and Film.

The collection was starting just as another one, “The Arts in Latin America 1492-1820,” was drawing to a close.

Nice double bill, right?

The Spanish feast of imagination running concurrently with the visions of the “New World.”

But what did the shows really illuminate?

Dali, of course, needs no introduction. The precise genius of surrealism, he was one of very few artists that managed to fan the flames of his celebrity through the rigorous self-marketing of his own personality. Like the lucid brain spawn of Hieronymous Bosch and Don King.

He could have done the pass-out-and-get-draped-with-a-cape shtick.

It then is of little surprise that Dali had a rather active friendship with Walt Disney and courted collaborations in Hollywood for quite a while. As Picasso was living the life of the minotaur in the south of France, Dali was sitting around the pool with heads of film studios.

The show features his cinema work: Set designs, his collaborations with Luis Bunuel, and even the unfinished Disney animation he worked on (which would have inspired beautiful nightmares for children the world over).

In addition to these Hollywood daydreams, the show has quite a lot of the “Greatest Hits”
(which I won’t trivialize by listing out here like so many grocery store items).

It also featured some of his early small gauche works, which are among the more exacting and rich 2-tone water-color paintings I’ve ever seen.

As I said before, it was a rockstar show. A great one by an artist so universally known and renowned, that he is often overlooked in favor of artists that exhibit less broad appeal.

Upstairs, on the last weekend of it’s run, we caught the tail end of the Arts in Latin America exhibit.

While Dali references Christianity with the wild pupils of a celebrated heretic, the tough burden of the Christian conquest weighed too heavily on these artists to do anything except recycle the same eucharist clichés of their colonizers.

Room after room of scary court portraiture, bloody saints and powdered faces that exhibited no room for fantasy.

As Velazquez was able to show a potential for weirdness and psychological wanderlust in his Spanish court paintings, his contemporaries in Latin America were wading through too much indigenous blood to be so artistically agile.

With two shows displayed alongside eachother, I could only feel some envy for the Spanish and the span of time that they’ve had to heal from their zealotry. This legacy of stiff catholic judgement and fearful expression, it takes time to shake.

One day in an unknown age, perhaps there will be an exhibit of a Guatemalan artist working in an as yet uninvented medium, showing alongside of our crazy Grandpa Dali. And our visionary great-great-grandson will show the moustache the true currency of dreams and nightmares.

Oh what a day.

So,

there is a restaurant in Hollywood that is on critical lists of local excellence and seems to always have a packed house. I won’t name it here because “if you don’t have anything nice to say…”
One night, craving Spanish food I ventured into the dark dining hall with a few friends. We ordered about seventy dollars worth of food and only got a few crummy plates of “tapas,” that were really closer to scrawny portions of regular food. They lacked the real charm and character of tapas.

Tapas, when done right, are totally in tune with the proud and dramatic character of Spain. They may be small, but they still have their own plate that they they fill up fully. But this kitchen just tosses around food lacking pride and design, and misrepresents it as tapas.

We also tried their paella, but it was just a small bowl of crappy jambalaya. Maybe their evocative name is what everyone is lining up for.

It was the most aggravating eating misadventure I’ve had in Hollywood, and it almost totally soured me on the prospect of eating Spanish food in LA.

Then, after a few years of driving by the Spain restaurant on Glendale blvd. right by the entrance to the 2, I went in with my girl. Humble dining room, small shop selling Spanish grocery obscurities, and a kitchen that anyone can see into.

So we ate; some tapas and a Paella Mixto.

BAM!!!

That’s what I’m talking about. The food is not a religious revelation, but it is very fine and served without all of the self-important bullshit that goes along with some of these hyped up hipsterants.

And they have really good bottles of wine for, like 12 dollars. 12 dollars! In Spain, in plenty of places, you order a glass of beer and it comes with a tapa. This is a great way to get half drunk and full at 1 in the afternoon for about six dollars. While that may be a fantasy in the United States, this place is about as good of a deal as I’ve found.

Ole, motherfucker!

Spain Restaurant.
1866 Glendale Blvd.
LA, CA. 90026
323.667.9045
www.restaurantspain.net