Dia del Hump Grab Bag: What’s Cuchi in 2010?

by ultramaricon

We lost a lot of notable folks this year, and I’m sure glad Charo wasn’t one of them.

There’s this Letterman-style variety show on Univision called “Esta Noche Tonight” that I won’t link because this post is about things I like.  I’m watching it with my mom in her kitchen in Miami. Charo is a guest, although you wouldn’t know it because in lieu of asking her questions about her new show in Las Vegas, “Charo in Concert: A Musical Sensation” (starting July 10 at the Riviera Hotel and Casino), they have a campesino character with oversized prosthetic ears, crossed eyes and bongo drums sitting beside her inventing stories about a childhood as a fake weirdo. (This kind of shit is so disappointing; Kristen Wiig, I’m talking to you and your back-scratcher hands.)

Charo’s call is to stand up occasionally, pop her hips, and smash her breasts against his head, inducing cuckoo-face and long, flat trumpet sounds from the orchestra, about five times. She obliges so decorously, so practiced at being caliente, and there’s a sleepiness to her eyes while she does it that says, “My bedroom is smoky, full of guitars, and completely absent of sequins, you furry bags-of-dicks.”

Birdsong Dispatches Cuteness Delegation to the U.N.

by ultramaricon

In 2006, the United Nations launched a website where nerds, real estate agents, the press, and U.N. employees can keep track of a long-long-long overdue renovation of their New York City headquarters.

My roommate works there. She tells me: the move is on! The historic Secretariat building, constructed and furnished in 1950-1952 (and apparently still stuck there) and its stouter no-name friend will be gutted! You must, she tells me, come and stage scenes from Mad Men with me in every single lounge! We must pass papers around ineffectually in all the important auditoriums, like the hall of the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Trusteeship Council! Soon I will work in some ugly Madison building (Avenue, not Wisconsin) and we will have lost our chance to role-play Men in Black in the Formica-armored breakrooms!

So I grabbed the nearest Tommy and a camera and we had us a Bring Your Roommate and His Gay Companion to Work Day at the United Nations, y’all. Not since Nicole Kidman starred in The Interpreter has the General Assembly seen this much pouty-face. We were the life of the party, a party of three, roaming an incredibly boring and expansive office complex rotten with asbestos and Empire deco.

But, in fact, it was not boring at all. The coherence of design made it feel more transporting than outdated. It wasn’t too grand nor too somber. It was unbelievably tidy and sunny. You could smoke almost anywhere, even when they asked you not to. It was quiet. It was, to put it plainly, a dentist’s waiting room the size of the World’s Fair.

So below you will find not a sharp-toothed investigative report into the United Nations’ day-to-day nonworkings, nor a reflective or historically-braced account of our nerdy ramble amid some of the most bizarre artwork ever gifted from one world power to a conglomerate of world powers (I found all the ivory, guys!), nor very much political commentary on the U.N.’s internal representation of itself to itself–I was only there a minute and all I could think about were the chili con carne tacos and single-serving bottle of white zinfandel waiting for me in the Cafeteria of the World. What you will find are photos of Tommy and me mugging idiotically in various Very Important Venues before getting chased off by security guards. Oh, sorry: Security Guards.

I have organized them not chronologically, but in movements. These movements will move so fast you’ll think it was only 22 pictures. And indeed it is only 22 pictures, organized as follows: Security Depends on Us Passing Paper to Each Other, We Think and Negotiate on Furniture That Is Very Low to the Ground, Fashion, Lunch, Stop and Let the Roses Smell You–The English Roses of World Peace, Where’s Tommy? and finally, The Saddest Souvenir Mug in of the World.

Dispatches from Theory Camp: Occupational Distractions During Lecture vol. 1

by ultramaricon

I Beat Myself at Tic-Tac-Toe Therefore I Am, by ultramaricon

Why So Brown, Emo Kid?: Miami S’nice

by ultramaricon

My flog this week is a report live from Miami, except not live because it was last weekend. The point is I had a good time in my hometown and that never happens. Here are the highlights in the form of 3-5 plugs for places and peoples who are all together bringing hipster joy to downtown MIA.

I’m a week into one of my twice annual trips to the Cuban family enclave in Miami, during which time I do a lot of whatever this is:

I call it hipster guajiro. Take it home.

This time, though, I had to roll off the beach for a sec to deliver a gift of recycled-object jewelry to my friend Raffa from one of her fans (my roommate, her sister). In seeking her out I landed in the radical thick of a funtimes hipster scene full of nerds, talent and vintage eyewear finally taking root in my hometown.

I was terribly psyched, because I grew up in a Miami whose nightlife was all velvet-rope douchebaggery. Indyqueerbabies like me tried to make the best of chain coffee shops and fleeting goth/punk nights (sofla peeps, let’s get some Old Times going in the comments?!). Inspired by all the blossoming of hipster fauna I seem to have missed while I was away at college, I decided to turn the gift delivery into a weekend-long Miami hipster reconnaissance mission for birdsong.

The following is a bit stranger in a strange land (which speaks more to my coolness cluelessness than the scene itself, cause it’s f’reals), but here is a heads up and some linkage from one weekend in MIA’s indy scene.

Why So Brown, Emo Kid?

by ultramaricon

Hi. I’ll be posting weekly on the topic of sensitive emo hipster balladry and racial identification. It’s a thin premise, as premises premised on race often promise to premise, but I think that’s the point.

For now I want to lay important groundwork by oversharing something I’ve been thinking about most of the day while I’ve been doing immunity-boosting shots of minced garlic and rooftop honey. I think it’s a new era in flogging thanks to birdsong and I firmly believe that disclosure must fly in tandem with critique.

I want to get blasted on poppers and let queerperv rockstar Peaches and Fast & Furious genderbending badgrrl Michelle Rodriguez mercilessly tag team my ass.

Fast & Curious