Category: Thoughts

This Ban Is Confort: Bolivia

I had a great time in Bolivia. I have to admit I was nervous before I went– that it would be cold and depressing, that I’d spend the whole time arguing with my brother, that I’d get sick. Well, I caught a cold on the plane, I got a little turista at one point, and the altitude was difficult. But the food was great, and it was really genuinely wonderful to hang out with my brother. I’d forgotten or never realized how much we have in common.

If I wrote a book on Bolivia I’d have to have a chapter about weird imported culture stuff. Things like a minibus with the bumper-sticker “This Ban Is Confort” (meaning, “this van is comfortable.”) Or jamón translated as “jam” instead of “ham.” The discos called “America” and “Hentai,” and the clothing store “Lolita.”

I’d also have to have a chapter about futile and useless political distractions. They exist in every country (e.g. the US focusing on Iraq, flag-burning and gay marriage instead of Afghanistan, AIDS, and poverty), but Bolivia’s are particularly amusing: an angry debate about whether to move the seat of government from La Paz to join the judicial capital in Sucre, the president picking a fight with FIFA over whether official soccer matches can be held above 10,000 feet, and the hundred-odd-years of resenting the loss of its coastline to Chile in 1879. To this day, there is a museum in La Paz dedicated to that shore.

And there’d be something about economics. Labor is cheap in Bolivia. Very cheap. A housekeeper makes $5/day. A 30-minute taxi ride across town costs $2 (although on downhills, the driver may turn off the engine and coast to save gas). A can of Red Bull costs $2.50, just like in the US, but a Red Bull and vodka in a bar costs about $3.50 instead of maybe $8.00.

Things that you’d never imagine doing in the US seem totally logical there. Having a party with more than five or six people? Hire a bartender for $25. Megan and I signed up for a 1-day tour of Lake Titicaca that cost $108 for the two of us. It turned out to be a private tour: our fee got us a car with a driver for the whole day, a boat with a captain for most of the afternoon, a well-trained guide, and lunch for us, the guide, and the driver. You get spoiled. At one point, I thought it might be nice to wash some of our clothes, and my brother and his girlfriend said “well, the maid’s not coming again til Wednesday, so I don’t think we can.” Then we all looked at each other and they began to laugh: they had forgotten it was possible to wash your own clothes.

Tomorrow: pictures, and anecdotes about airport security, bribes, passports, and Andean sushi.

How The Hell Did That Happen?

Seven years ago I moved to Boston to write instruction manuals for a startup that was going to change the world. Overnight, I became a technical writer. “Yeah, it’s a hit at parties,” I’d say at parties. That usually got a polite chuckle.

Several years, a buyout, and a layoff later, I’d been a marketing programs manager, a product marketing manager, an author, an editor, a blogger, a yuppie, a thirtysomething. Then, just this year, I somehow turned into something I’d never expected: a television critic.

When I moved to Boston, my roommate had a TV but I didn’t watch it that much. And when I lived alone, I didn’t get one. Sure, I watched some stuff at the gym or whatever, but not much. I didn’t trust television. I didn’t respect television. Yes, I was a pretentious twit (still am!), but also I just didn’t like what was on, and didn’t have time for it. The peak of that anti-TV sentiment was in college.

Except for junior year, I barely even knew anyone with a TV (possibly because I barely knew anyone at all, but that’s another matter). It simply didn’t occur to me that anyone paying $100,000 for a college education would spend time watching television. TV was for idiots, stoners, children, people in nursing homes. Not for me, not for my peers, not for anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together.

As a senior TA, I was confused when nobody signed up for my Tuesday 8PM study session. “Dawson’s,” the class explained. Dawson’s? Was this some other TA group, or a different class they all took? The Spanish department didn’t have a Professor Dawson. Maybe it was Freshman English? They had to explain to me that “Dawson’s Creek” was a popular teen drama. By that point, there was little point in going on to drill them on the difference between camarones and gambas. They were never going to take anything I said seriously.

These days, I have cable TV and TiVo and Joost and Netflix. Shows like “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” showed me how teen-oriented programming can break out of its genre pigeonhole and really say something about the turmoil of adolescence. The HBO originals lineup for the past few years — The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome, even Sex and the City — slowly convinced me that TV is not a vast wasteland but an art form of astonishing diversity.

It’s got conceptual pieces that were interesting the first time but have lost all their charm through endless repetition (“Big Brother) and self-obsessed auteurs who think their petty struggles and drug problems constitute interesting pieces (Hey Paula). And it’s got… well, all kinds of stuff. Some good, plenty of bad, and a hell of a lot of stunningly mediocre.

And it’s now my job to write about the most popular American art form. How the hell did that happen?

Cabinet of Natural Curiosities

A cabinet of natural curiosities was basically a renaissance man’s collection of weird and unexplained goodies from around the world: taxidermied exotic (or fictional) animals, religious relics, that sort of thing. My friend Jasmine started a band called the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities in the same vein: a collection of strange and interesting sounds turned into songs.

She’s based in Missoula, MT right now but had a gig in San Francisco at the House of Shields last weekend, and because I happened to be out there for work I got to see her play. Good show. Instruments included wind chimes, an alarm clock, guitars with a lot of different effects pedals, a child’s electronic keyboard, and some Christmas lights.

I don’t see her much: we had lunch a few years ago, and before that it had been at least a decade, probably more. She told me I ought to be writing poetry. I laughed.