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Monday, December 26, 2011

the face of Terror.

[Preface: In an unanswered email to “Speed Racer”'s Peter Fernandez, I asked if with the presence of mariachis, Spritle's sombrero and zarape-clad luck charm, the fact that the series was also simultaneously embraced as Meteoro, and Peter's ethnic background, if Speed was actually a Latino. Given that very real possibility is still an open question, I've crafted a Mexicano origin for my favourite SR character Captain Terror.] 



You knew the nature of speed the moment they passed. A swarm of deafening metal hornets tore through your village's ancient street, carrying the first heroes you ever knew. Glorious racers, fearless and formidable. The first done was the first chosen for more. The first wins over the rest, like a last man standing on a field of battle, bloody and renewed. 



Trolling outlying junkyards with your friends, you fought one another for parts to build the better racer, getting not only faster machines but stronger selves in the quarreling. Young vultures vying for the sleeker bones. It was the airplane wings nobody wanted. They could be fins, you thought, gathering them up, but even then there was the fanciful idea that if they could harness downforce, why not give the car an edge of lift at the right moments? If acrobats in their feathered caps could fly, so might cars ... . 



El Jaguar earned his moniker not only because he drove the venerable D-class, but because he'd been born with the spots on his face. He was Mexico, their pride, and he represented us in the WRL like few others. But he got drafted. Then, surprisingly, you got drafted. The rebels were blowing up arterial superhighways as fast as civil workers could make them. “Politics are one thing, but driving's another,” grumbled a corporale who ran the motorpool you had to report to. The jacket read Torres but even without the mask you knew El Jaguar, black oil up to his elbows like an ancient priest searching a chest cavity for the heart. Armoured cavalry wasn't exactly racing, but the dune buggies and jeeps always seemed to have something extra under the hood, and you learned tricks of carcatecture from Torres. All the time tearing up the back stretches growing up paid off, and your skill made you a captain of a special drivers unit. 



It was at the Paseo del Borges that the rebels set up the trap. The labyrinthine switchbacks proved fatal for some of your soldados, the mortars caught others, but you took point and drove right up the embankment at them, headlights showing the startled looks in their eyes. Then the landmine ripped the wheel right out of your hands and tore the buggy apart. "Capitan!" they cried as the concussion knocked you into the black. 



The bandages unfurled like a blinding white highway. 

Reborn. Reborn in terror. From Mictlan back into the world. The obsidian knives of shrapnel had flayed your face away, but it was nothing. You were better. And you could now see the connections: The dotted white lines, the mile markers of the soul, the secret fuel mixed in the air itself around us all, waiting for someone who knew to make it combust and push the hidden engine that turns the sky itself. The horror on the nurse's face was secondary, but in their unspoken discomfort they discharged you sooner. 



The men who were left after the attack joined your team soon after the rebels scurried back into the Yucatan jungle, and the ganga back home who still worshipped the wheel came after receiving word. The ritual fires were lit in the hidden valley. They took the mystic numbers on their chests, and stood on the cars, skeptical at best. The winds began, and they felt it: The pull of the pyramids' vanishing points, the long leveled ruins of Tenochtitlan, the track echoing the rounds of mother Coyolxauhqui Moon, and powerful fusion Tonatiuh Sun, the road on Quetzaquatl's twisting back, the cleverness flowing through chaos in Lord Tezcatlipoca's obsidian rear view mirror, and Huizilipoztli's fight for dominance. The winds stopped. They gasped as the white eagle feather fell out of the dark skies, piercing your hood on the crown as a sign of what was to come. 



The old airplane wingtips had kept well, and were easy to duplicate for the other cars. Like the acrobats, the wind held us weightless, separate, yet one. "Impossible!", they cried, scared, but also proud to have braved the chasm. After that, all the small jumps, formations, and carymids were easy enough. And with the aerial advantage of the wings, no one else could do them, though many would die trying. 



But the ultimate revelation of racing that your death gifted you was that it's not about victory itself. It's the completion of the circle, the connecting of two geomantic points, the closing of a circuit from which energy generated can be harnessed to do magic. To make the Car Acrobatic Team more than exceptional racers. To make them the heroes not only of one old Mexica village, or of a nation, but the whole world over. The magic would make them fast, the fastest ever known, and you would drive them onto glory.








[Sported this Captain Terror Car Acrobatic Team vinyl for five years.

Graphic Design credit to Joel Yohn.]




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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Monday, December 5, 2011

the platforms of speed.





An hour of tapping holes, hot drilling, raw elbows, metal shavings, and sliced fingers. All worth it.




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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

reverse engineering Speed Racer.

Speed Racer's my current monomania. Why? It's compelling with a cross-Pacific imprint that's endured for four decades. Many have tried to pigeonhole it as a kids' property, but if you actually sit down and watch the 52 episode 1967 series it's got high adventure, infused with noir in medias res elements, James Bond SPECTRE-style villains, mid-1960s design sensibilities (especially The Racers' house and the cars), cigar smoking, femme fatales, a flirtatiousness with airline stewardesses motif, the idea of foreign exotica, and some serious body count with submachine guns &, of course, aggressive racing accidents.



Proper respect to creator Tatsuo Yoshida (b.1932-d.1977), whose Tatsunoko Productions seahorse logo of was inserted into dinnerware patterns and racing flags throughout the cartoon, and Peter Fernandez, quite possibly the man responsible for the initial importation and translation of now-ubiquitous anime. This alone makes "SR" a watershed.



We can also posit that "SR"'s re-broadcast on MTV in the 1990s may have helped popularize the local Southern California import street racing scene to national prominence. In May 1998, hip-hop journal Vibe Magazine publishes Ken Li's article "Racer X", directly inspiring 2001's "The Fast and the Furious". "F&F" features an undercover cop who infiltrates L.A.'s car culture to bust some thieves, which is essentially what Racer X was up to.



Contrary to the shallow critics who kneecapped the live-action film's theatrical release, the 2008 meisterwerk requires no apologies. "The Matrix" might be considered the Wachowskis' "The One"-hit wonder, yet the story of the young race car driver who must use his burgeoning talents to change the fundamentally corrupted reality he operates in is instead painted in a stunning palate of neons accompanied by just enough metaphysical implications but without the same level of obvious didacticism.



Placed in a far more tech-oriented world where racing at the 1900s became a global touchstone, and tracks evolved into free-form roller-coaster spirals, turnpike butterflies, jumps and vertiginous drops, the directors designed a glorious context for such hyper-action. While all four racing sequences are CGI (production designers only built three of the 80 cars and the scale models don't actually run) it's far above Tron-esque as the actors' cockpit expressions all mesh with the external mayhem, and their performances reinforce the believability of the incredible action.



There's a problem with all stories that feature competition: The hero's slated to win, which is the payoff, but anyone can call that from the preview. The writer's trick is to play the adversity so high that as a viewer you doubt it on an emotional level, or at least can't logically see exactly how that victory's to be obtained without a surprise or spectacle that appears to supercede the narrative's foregone track. The Wachowskis did this in the Matrix Trilogy to an extent, while in the animated SR Speed had to do it nearly every episode with its freeze frame cliffhangers and nearly omnipotent supervillians. The movie only amplifies the soul of the show to dizzying proportions.



In terms of metaphysics, one has to more than suspect Yoshida integrated occult ideas given the use of an influential character named Prince Kabala. Tatsunoko Productions, the studio that did "SR", will later do animation on the kabalah-laden "Neon Genesis Evangelion". There's a partial Tree of Life and all the chakra points subscripted beneath the seven members of the Racer Family itself:




  • Pops is intellect, mind, and the Willful (Keter)/wrathful god-designer at the Crown.

  • Speed is the indefatigably Victorious (Netzach) spirit and newly opened 3rd Eye.

  • Spritle is energetic Intuitive (Chokmah) innocence, ever over-expressive Throat.

  • Sparky constructs mechanical Splendours (Hod), a forger from the fires in the Solar Plexus.

  • Trixie, the Adornment (Tiferet) of the divine feminine, the gendered Sacral with the strengths of both.

  • Rex/Racer X, the hidden baser element and Foundation (Yesod), the Root.

  • The Mach 5's the physical vehicle or whole body itself, the result of creation and Kingdom (Malkuth).




Also, in "The Most Dangerous Race" (episodes 9, 10, & 11), Spritle and Chim-Chim disguise themselves as distinguished gents (top hats and monocles, near to Victorian masons) and drive their go-kart jalopy far off into a spooky hinterland, encountering totem animals bear and owl, to find the deathly Captain Terror and his Car Acrobatic Team holding a mystical ceremony to bind the elements to themselves for victory. The otherworldly and dreamlike sequence mirrors the hero's journey into the underworld, and was the first in a few pointedly nightmarish passages in the course of the show.



"The Fastest Car on Earth" (episodes 20 & 21) opens in a graveyard. A sinister hearse parked by some headstones robs a grave, not of a body, but of a long-buried engine wrapped in its own death shroud. At the track, when Pops recognizes the GRX from the distinct beat of its muscley sub-bass throb, he warns Team Go to stay away: "There's something supernatural about that car. It might even be a ghost! I've heard of people ghosts, so it's perfectly sensible that there might be ghosts of certain cars." Against his father's odd warning Speed steals his way into the house of witch-like Oriana, to drive off in the golden car. The ultimate joyride nearly proves his last as Speed enters "Another dimension! A dimension born of Speed!", and passes out as the world bends and breaks around him. Pops' assessment and Speed's transcendent GTA testifies to the idea of the GRX's resurrection & undeath, that it's "cursed" condition ultimately claims its would-be driver with its inhuman speed.



Numerologically the East Asian traditions ascribe Speed's number 5 to be the sum of all the elements (water, fire, earth, wood & metal) which correspond to the five visible planets. On the other hand, the Japanese consider Racer X's number 9 unlucky as it's a homonym to the word for pain or distress. The Japanese Yakuza have imbued the number 9 as a losing number, particularly in gaming and in their penitential ritual of removing one finger to leave nine. However, these negative associations for Racer X's number could be an inversion as he both brings bad luck and pain to the criminal element.



As the family's hidden foundation, Racer X serves as a protective buffer for Speed. It's X's amoral necessity that affords Speed his boy scout purity. At times X even admonishes Speed for having too much empathy for other racers, but still admires Speed for it at the same time. X is the pragmatic and mercenary version of what Speed's in danger of becoming should Speed continue to aid Inspector Detector. Take off the mask and Speed would find a near-possible older & darker self. 



Mom Racer, who in the above familial equation is the Heart and Compassion (Chesed), sums up what the act of living gracefully is: "When I watch you do some of the things you do, I feel like I'm watching someone paint or make music. I go to the races to watch you make art. And it's beautiful, and inspiring, and everything that art should be."



Reaching from the initial 10-story manga, to the series, to the 1985 Now Comics' "Speed Racer" & "Racer X" titles, to Wildstorm's "The Origins Collection" & IDW's "Chronicles of the Racer", here follows a rough fanon (not canon) sequence (spoilers included) of creative influences and insightful story points to construct a multisourced continuity:





- 3100 B.C.E. In the kingdom of Nubia, a runner with an M-like design painted on his chest is chased by a masked slightly-older figure with an X-ish design on his chest.



- 49 B.C.E. Swiftus Romulus races his Marcus V chariot at Circus Maximus. 



- Medieval Prince Sprint Rackham and his horse MacFife receives jousting aid in the form of Mage V armor from his friend Sparkinton's father, the inventor Myrddin. Enemy to King Pellinore's reign is merry archer outlaw Robin Ecks.  



- 1680 C.E. Jamaica's Port Royal is ruled by Governor Cruncherbloque. Captain Reed Saber's pirate crew races across the Atlantic in the SS Marque, improved by the mechanically apt Swabby. Rival Wretched Rex crosses swords with Saber. 



- In the Old West, Indian outlaw Sleek Raven and his younger brother Little Spirit live outside the Arizona town of Mahfoon, which hosts sharpshooter Lil' Trixie Sureshot, horseless carriage Model 5 creator Reginald Krenz, and the masked Sherriff Tex. 



- Scientist Bent Cranium develops the superpowerful RX tank engine under duress for the Nazis. 



- Speed's great-grandfather Spitfire flies for the allies in WW2. 



- Post-WW2, Cranium will become disabled and wheelchair-bound while testing later versions of his RX engine. (The 1998 movie "RPM" features a wheelchair-bound car engineer. The injured Cranium appears in DC/Wildstorm's 1999 "SR" comics.) 



- Rapid Ronnie Racer, Pops' grandfather, does midnight moonshine runs, taking part in the nascent days of racing and starts up the modern Racers' family passion. 



- Pa Racer, Pops' father, drives in the demo derby circuit. 



- Pops wrestles and becomes champion of the West Side Grunters and Groaners. He later meets Mom during his stint as vicious champion exhibition wrestler Dragon Racer. 



- The 1964 film adaptation of Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger" includes a tricked-out Aston Martin DB5 (note the "5") armed with interhub extending tire slashers & oil slicker, which later is improved on by Delila's deadly and fully articulated wheel cones and Snake Oiler's rear-mounted road slickerator in the live-action SR. Also, villainous Goldfinger's Rolls Royce is made of smuggled gold hidden by a paint job, which will later inspire the plot for the anime's Mammoth Car.



- Elvis Presley's "Spinout" features a young race car driver with a dollop of frontal hair curl who wears an ascot, knows martial arts and follows his own star in a streamlined Shelby Cobra. A rich and jealous doe-eyed love interest tries to crash her convertible coupe into his heart. Sound like a couple we know? The King continues his racing theme in a few other films, but the seed for Speed's planted in 1966.



- Older brother Rex Racer coaches tween Greg (ergo the G on his polo) "Speed" in the Mach 3. 



- Rex Racer crashes in a dazzling near-victory. Rex blames his father's car, Pops blames Rex, and all communication between Rex and his family is severed by the fallout. 



- While racing for another motor company Rex meets his apparent demise on the track during a crash and burn. Still alive, Rex hides out from saboteurs in the racing industry that have ties to the international underworld. The Racer family thinks Rex dead. 



- Hank Racer, Pops Racer's nephew, drives for Racer Motors. 



- Aircraft company heiress Millicent (ergo the "M" on her top) Patricia "Trixie" Shimura and Speed attend school together, beginning a lifelong friendship. 



- Rex spends time in the island nation Kapecapek under the tutalage of Prince Kabala, royal heir and crazy-mad driver. An also thought-dead Bent Cranium appears in Kabala's employ and develops the ARX, the second generation of RX engines. (In 2007, Honda names an Acura racing engine the ARX-01.) Rex's training car bears the number 9 as he's Kabala's 9th opponent in the intra-volcano Fire Race. 



- Kabala dies, but his demise is disguised by his younger sister Princess Sylvana and Rex, who dons Kabala's hood to stop a coup. 



- Rex leaves Kapecapek to later join espionage outfit GAS (Global Arms Security) as Agent X. He soon re-enters the world of racing as the mysterious Racer X. (If Marvel Comics' "X-Men" [which premiered in 1963] did cross the Pacific, it may be that Cyclops' costume with its "X", fitted mask, and wraparound eyevisor influenced Racer X's disguise.) 



- Racer X runs a mission with a genetically intelligence-enhanced talking chimp named Randy, who gets damaged by electrocution while saving the world. Instead of destroying the now non-speaking animal as per GAS orders, X ensures it ends up in the care of an unsuspecting Sparky. 



- Hank Racer crashes in the Mach 4. The accident costs him his ability to race. 



- Unshaven bohemian Sparky comes back to support the Racers in the wake of Hank's accident, introducing an all-too familiar chimp into the Racer household. Mom cleans Sparky up as best she can. 



- Hank later recovers enough to continue young Speed's training behind the wheel of the new Mach 5. 



- Pops Racer quits his factory carcitect job at Mishida Motorworks, taking the design for his revolutionary new engine with him. 



- Here's where all the events of the classic 1966 to 1968 TV series go. Note the freeze and turn in the intro which the young Wachoskis will later emulate in the now common Matrix shot. Recurring and recycled adversaries include Alpha Team, gold thief Cruncher Block and his Mammoth Car, skullishly faced Captain Terror with his star driver Snake Oiler and their Car Acrobatic Team. The world's fastest car, the gold pointed GRX, would appear, now a seventh generation of the uberfast RX motor.



- Near the end of the series, Speed will call Racer X on his masquerade. Racer X sucker punches Speed in the gut to knock Speed out and avoid answering the question. X quits racing to go even further undercover as Special Agent 10 (note: Roman numeral X = 10). 



- The show ends with Speed winning the Race Around the World, proving that he is indeed the best racer on earth. 



- Starting in 1981, artist Jaime Hernandez in "Love & Rockets" features pomp-haired world-class celebrity mechanic Rand Race and his ballcap wearing assistant Yax.



- Only based in name on the classic arcade game, CBS cartoon "Pole Position" (1984) has teen brother & sister stunt drivers, a little sister character who owns a troublesome raccoon/monkey for a pet, and a wheelchair bound doctor of engineering.



- The indie publisher Hurricane Comics produces the short-lived "Chassis", a comic based in an alternate history art-deco world where WW2 never occurs, Rocket Car racing is the most prominent international sport, and the eponymous naturally talented woman racer rules the track despite saboteurs and espionage. The homages to SR are prevalent (and the retro-futuristic setting must be considered as possible influence on The Wachowskis live action adaptation).



- Young Magazine will launch the "Wangan Midnight" serial in 1992 and the "Initial D" serial in 1995, both featuring young men out to be the best street racer. "Initial D" becomes an anime in 1998, and "Wangan Midnight" animes in 2007. The latter features the midnight blue Fairlady Z (S30), an allegedly cursed race car, which semi-parallels the Now Comics' GRX storyline. 



- 1993's "(The New Adventures of) Speed Racer" wasn't a continuation but a remake produced by the same folks who animated "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". Enough said. 



- An article entitled "Racer X" by Ken Li from Vibe Magazine's May 1998 issue helps popularize the Southern Californian import racing scene. Its coverage directly inspires the 2001 film "The Fast and the Furious". 



- A Subaru racing enthusiast comes up with the concept of the "Trunk Monkey" in 2000, a monkey used to help distribute weight during high-speed handling. In 2003, a series of hilarious commercials for a car sales group feature a live-action "Trunk Monkey" chimp who emerges at the press of a button to fix drivers' automotive dilemmas. The obvious parallel is the original simian ex machina Chim Chim. 



- "Speed Racer X", an updated US-style animated version with a flying ("aero-jack"ed) Mach 5 appears in 2002. The Racers live in an hi-tech island compound, and have a mutant looking scientist enemy who is after their automotive designs so he can supply them to terrorists. Speed sports a ball cap and light brown hair, while Trixie's a blonde reporter. 



- An obscure tabletop RPG called "Wushu" will include an add-on called "Car-Fu: The Ancient Art of the Car Chase" in 2003, an idea later used in the feature film, though it's possible the term came about independently. Before its car fighting supplement "Wushu" did make an adaptation of "The Matrix"'s setting. 



- Tatsunoko Productions posts a short flash movie called "Mach Girl" featuring a very cutesyed-out character with the Mach logo on her pink cowboy hat and three-wheeler. 



- In the recent Nicktoons series "Speed Racer: The Next Generation", Speed's namesake son, an orphan who doesn't know his origins, goes to an exclusive racing academy run by a now wizened Master Spritle! A later iteration of Chim-Chim appears as an equally-mischievious and precocious robot chimp. The elite drivers are headed up by cool bad boy student "X". 



- The Wachowskis unveil the 2008 major motion picture, with a cameo by the original cartoon's U.S. scripter & animated Speed's voice Peter Fernandez to play the local announcer at Thunderhead Raceway, and Gennie wears a seahorse pendant as a refer to Yoshida's Tatsunoko Productions logo. Formula racer Milka Duno cameos as Gearbox, and soon after "Go, Milka, Go!" her biography written for children is released.





Given all the mythos above, the legacy entertains with a feeling we all know: Damn near everybody's hands touch a wheel, our right foot pushes down on the gas, and we accelerate toward a destiny. That's the track Speed Racer takes us down, pursuing our internal horizon of potential. We are touched by the excitement of the race as we live through Speed vicariously, who shows us that it's more than just mere race -- that it's both greater than the metaphor and ourselves, the white checkers of enlightenment and the dark squares of destruction waving for us when we make it happen.



See you at the finish line, you demons on wheels.









[Mach 4 vs. Prince Kabala!]





































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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

the Stick.

The stick came in over the counter. 



Nobody knew exactly whether it was equestrian, military, ornamental, or had some other function. Tapered black lacquer about two feet long, brass tip bottom, but with a huge brass knob on the top and a big number "3" in relief on the crown. A jocky's crop? An officer's short staff? Odd gent's accessory? Magick wand? Who cared! It was neat and fell into the hand easily. 



We'd been giddily branishing it about for a week or so, Ed hitting his people with the retail lovetaps, Sean daringly flipping it over near precarious stacks of CDs, Scott using it to help sell a VHS Charlie Chaplin box set, and Violet marching around with it like a parade baton. The stick was one of those items we would all play with for a good long while before we'd actually bother putting the thing out for sale because we enjoyed having it around. 



Tim calls me to electronics in that unnecessarily imperative way he has, so I grabbed the stick for backup on my way over. His panties in a bunch over why some complainer hasn't purchased an Xbox 360 request, I point at the system, flick my wrist to bring the stick over in a whistling arc in front of his face -- then we notice the knob's flown off somewhere and bust out laughing. After five minutes of crawling about the floor to look for it, complete with jests about "my knob being lost in Mary's box", it turns up on the lowest tier of a cart, nestled in a cleaning rag right in plain sight. 



"Hey, what's that grey powder on the floor next to it?" Tim asks. I pick up the brass knob and even more silt falls out of it to the floor. 



Taking a closer look, an inscription on the knob's collar reads: "Clyde O. Maddox Jr, 1st Lt, O3D13005, Korea 1959-60". 



"Holy cats! That's not dust! That's human cremains!" I'm simultaneously amazed & mortified, and suddenly feel completely horrible for spilling someone all over the carpet. 



"Oh my God!" Greg says. 

"Ewwwww!" Mary says. 

"Now the store's going to have a third ghost!" Samantha says. 



After getting a brush and dustpan, Tim & I proceed to get as much of Clyde as we could off the cart and floor and back into the head of his stick. 



Someone had sold us a bit of dead person. It's priced for $5, so that means we picked him up for about $2.50 in trade credit or probably a cool $1 in cash. 



The Grant store's still not quite sure what to do with Clyde, whether that's find his family, turn him over to a veteran's organization, or see what the military has to say, but we think we're probably not going to resell him for $5 in any case. As of this writing, he rests on my office desk, and he seems okay there for now until we figure something out. 



And maybe it wasn't just us that was so fond of the stick. Maybe it was the stick who was fond of us for liking it so. Thank you for coming in, Lt Clyde. Our staff salutes you.










[Not our stick, but Charles Darwin's walking stick, for illustrative purposes.]






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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

more than Song & Dance.

[Recently a singer/dancer/actress captured my attention by bravely writing an affectionate tribute to the Gothic in an honest effort to set down an understanding of the culture to which we are all dedicants. In turn, this brief & humble essay emerges as my sincere & complimentary effort to underscore her raison d'etre. This is for you, Lil' Miss. On with the show ... .]



The power of the musical stems from its ability to step into the same odd communicative space possessed the by surreality of dreams. Everything operates as normal, but when narrative moves towards a situation where emotion can no longer be contained, all is uplifted or downtempo'd into the empathetic superconsciousness of song & the actively hyperphysical expression of dance. 



If done wrong musical numbers feel like a device crudely meant to deceive an audience, a smothering of cheese to hide the thin insubstantial crust. If done right the arrangements build on the strength of story & character to make that risky grand jete off of solid ground into the aural realm, where instrument & lyric transmit soul. 



Watch Fred Astaire as he extends his matchless wit as far as he can, then break out into song to take it that much further, feet tapping away with an excitement towards crescendo, or a calming softshoe slowly sanding the floor with a grace & style beyond conventional gesture. He's not just dancing to dance or singing to sing for its own sake; he's out there to win Audrey Hepburn's heart and he must use his whole being in a choreography of skill and seeming abandon to which she can do naught else but irresistably chorus & partner. It will draw her hand into his, and in a matter of steps, there will come a harmony neither ever knew existed, and can only exist with none but each other. 



Those moments make one wish we really could get away with such seductively crooning magicks & moving excesses of sincerity outside a contrived karaoke serenade or the usual drunken dancefloor invitations. 



And this longing is the charm of it all, the infusion of spirit we receive from the musical, a form both evolved and inspired, the release of dance offered with the renewal of song. It clues into what we feel, and in turn, makes us feel. The musical artfully manages to affirm & amplify ourselves in a way that no other form can, and that is its miracle.









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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Monday, August 8, 2011

lensification: the glam of the cam.

My friend Nadine stands trapped behind glass. It's hour 26 of her nonstop shoeshop of just being in a window on the main drag in downtown Tucson. You can see the madness in her eyes, the tight rictus of skin supported by nothing less than fraying enthusiam, nicotine, booze, and the structural integrity of four drywalled coats of yellow Mac base and a greasepaint blue raccoon mask under high birdsnest hair, like some fugitive from NYC's late-1990s clubbery. I watch on the webcam feed from work and laugh at how silly, logging in bits of supportive chat, remembering she was only talking about doing this promotional bit a month ago over drinks at a bar just before she quit work to chase her dream. And, oddly, I'm eating it up, unable to pull away from her ridiculous lure. Hours later, I'm in the window on the other side of her loaner laptop's lens.



"Hey, I brought you a cigar. And I'm sure you're tired of the prop balloon animals you've got so I brought my favourite pair of real Springbok horns I gluegunned on a hairband to play with!" She puts them on, a wide-eyed hallucinatory child, and we proceed to drink these bullets of blueberry ale a fangirl brought her. I usually hate blueberries -- they're the devil's fruit. But in frosted scones or well-crafted microbrew at 8% they get a pass, and while showboating in a window to hundreds of passerbys it's the nectar of goodtimes.



And we're totally showboating. I suddenly find myself not only talking to 'Dini but to the camera, like it's a real person in the room, and not an inanimate apparatus. Before you know it, we throw on the Beastie Boys' "Root Down" and we shake arse, doing the Michael Jackson Woo Crotch Grab and The Shopper. Nadie sprays a Windex knockoff on the inside of the glass, sticking her flyers up with the moisture for people to read, as oggling boys put their lips to the dirty outside and blowfish back at her. Oh, and there's some way cute 20-something girl who got slipped a ruffie passed out on the couch in our little 4'x12' room. But we're live and feeding to the world and being fed in return, heard by the responsive chatroom audience. And some of them even know me. Sure, it's no more than nine voyeurs from cyberland at any one time, but it's the dynamic that counts.



You realize that the webcam, or just cameras in general, make one performative. You know people are watching in realtime, or during some later date in forever future, and even the least bit extroverted will shamelessly amp themselves up. The observer affects the observed. But the phenomenon is even more pronounced on the other end. We watch people everyday whom we don't even know, whether that's just pimping it on the street, on television, or streamed on the internet, and they seem bigger than us in some fashion because the camera refracted through our mind's eye magnifies them. They are the presented examples, the stars of our show, and we've willfully submitted to their presentation. There's an active/passive validation at work and its magick is hellahypnostrong.



As I left an audience member typed in, "Oh, you guys are having the best time!" Nadine and I look at each other and guffaw. "That's what she thinks!"



"But Nadine, from the outside it looks true! Just being up on the screen makes it seem 20 times better than that, so it doesn't matter because the interpretation is what sells it." Then I speak to the laptop. "But you Tucson kids out there are more savvy than that, right? We really do love you all." 



Tonight I got to taste what it was to be both supplicant and deity. It's fun to be a local god again. Thank you for your prayers, and this is my sincerest of gospels.











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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.


Friday, July 1, 2011

regard for the Gothic.

The Gothic has become a bit of punchline for the macroculture, for a seemingly false posture, a misanthrope, a social oddity, for someone who has gone "wrong". The macroculture however labels something once and never really bothers to examine it, to get past its appearance because it can't really be troubled to accept something so profound that might upset its limited ideas of what's true. 

And the truth really is that the Gothic is at the deep black heart of the world. 

Mythologies tend to begin with Darkness before the creation of the earth & sky, man & beasts. Even before the gods appear to cast first light, or land & sea marry, there is Night, primordial & chthonic -- it's integral, the canvas against which all is painted, and what's left in those same mythologies after the turpentine of time washes all that creation away in fire & flood, bangs or whimpers. Darkness is the permanent in a universe of impermanence. 

Goths recognize this: That besides being made of stars, we are also just as much, if not more, made of shadow, the spaces between the matter where the invisible desires of gravity and attraction hold everything together. The unconscious recognition of this force is something far beyond the misperceived need to be different, or to belong to a clique, or the compulsion to dance to majestic memento mori music. 

And so often we're asked by both the disrespectful & the sincerely curious just what is the Gothic, and all too frequently I've watched an equal exchange of the dismissive and sarcastic -- and that's sad, because it makes us no better than the intolerant. If we wish to be understood and not just culturally scapegoated by the media and those who don't question its pronouncements, then it would pay to be ready for when the braver passersby do stop and directly voice their wonder at the insight we represent. 

Why care what the rank & file think? Because there can be consequences if we don't. How many times do you see the flicker of Columbine behind the hateful eyes of others? And of course we know those little trenchcoated prats who stroked off to endless games of "Doom" & dog-eared copies of "Mein Kampf" were never Gothic, but damned if the major networks didn't decide to label them from day one as such. Ignorant bastards and their lazy journalism married to the now orthodox pop psych trend of blaming everyone but the individuals responsible. 

While the scene is thought of being predominantly gangly Caucasian teens who feel socially disenfranchised by the norms, this is just the holdover from the sun deprived & undernourished Anglais of an early 1980s London. That stereotype no longer holds, if it ever was an ideal more than a default. Now you go to Goth clubs like Roderick's Chamber in San Francisco, with its sinewy black men & mysterious Asian women, or Toronto's Sanctuary and see violet-eyed Hindu girls doing the kick-and-turn in big numbers, and it confirms that it truly is not so, and that our tribe's beauty & variants cut across all veins. 

Having endured for so long to carve out our hard-won legitimacy, we certainly don't owe anyone apologies nor are we to be held accountable for explanations about whom we choose to be in our grand excess of eyeliner & blackened fingernails, but we can grace the world with a winning diplomacy & patience we're more than intellectually capable of. 

Ultimately, with all the specialized niche media and marketing, there's enough room in this house of alternate ideas for all the subcultures to thrive, while being given the mental real estate to adorn themselves more richly as they grow -- if they are able to evolve as judiciously as the Gothic has. I've just never agreed with anyone that mistakenly thinks we have to be nasty about it when someone wants to take a look over the fence and try to see or understand what's happening in our garden. They may even taste its dark fruit and decide they like it far better. And even with such new blood we will never be the macroculture -- thankfully -- but we will always be present, the shadow between the buildings where the light never reaches, a perfect pitch inside the heart's secret conservatory, the eternal stillness that compliments the pulse, for we really are no less than the undeniable dark at the heart of the world.


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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

the fallacy of social networks.

I must begin by saying that I don't buy into the idea of a "virtual community". The phrase itself reveals its oxymoronic limitations, as the concept is seeded by falsity from the get-go.



Largest case in point: Facebook. Why is Facebook fake? Are those 1,289 so-called friends going to buy you a drink tonight at the club, bother to make & bring you chicken bullion when you've got a cold, come pick you up when you've got car trouble, or bail you out of jail? No, they aren't.



Recently an umpteenth friend of mine exhorted, "You should get a Facebook. And just wait until someone adds you -- it's the best feeling!"



"Oh really? Better than sex?", I asked pointedly.



"Um, well no." And the exaggeration of it all began to dawn on her.



A page is just a page, a fill-in-the-blank non-paper representation of a person's perception of themselves, which may not even be them. Just go search for Claire Standish from "The Breakfast Club" or Ferris Bueller and you'll get nine of them. And that's not even a real person. Think you're friends with George Clooney? Think again.



Users generally slap together overcluttered pages, busily wallpapered with annoying midis, or animated gifs, even trite and unnecessary videoclips lifted from the distorted lens of television. These are not real nor honest representations. And the text is rife with baselessly clever attempts having no depth or substance. And face it -- most of the hits you're getting are probably from some glammed-out-in-your-fancy-sexpot-boots picture you put up, or from some flippant & ridiculous countercultural pose in lighting that doesn't exist in nature. It's someone at their most winning if it's them at all, and perhaps that's insightful in a limited way, but it's not really them 24-7, which is all a setup for disappointment if you ever met. And maybe even then said photo gallery visitor shan't bother to read a word of what you have to say, which is ultimately far more important than any photoset.



Such online networks only impart a false sense of intimacy. Still more than six degrees of electronics & geography away, we've been sold an illusion that an add is better than a handshake. And while those comments you post to someone, or the inbox messages you receive might illicit an emotion, it's in isolation, self-generated, with no real interactive event or other corporeal presence to reference. We keep tabs & bookmarks in the virtual so we can more easily take each other for granted without putting forth any real attention or commitment in what probably never was or will be a real friendship.



Without any postmodern realization about what they are doing, it feels as if everyone is building these cybershrines to slotlist these comparative images and shortlist answers about ourselves, 2-D temples of ego, all packed in an invisible server's silicone filing cabinet. The hint of shirttail reality is that it all refers back to the physical world, that these pictures of things, those goods we click upon, the email we traffic in are only phosphors or LCD ghosts, a nothing. 'Tis all a maia because there still isn't a "WarGames" where you push "Y" to execute superpowers via DOS, much less a trigger button to permaheadshot your enemy outside a cyber deathmatch.



None of it matters until the box is on your doorstep, you set foot on that faraway soil, or you hold a cuppa and look each other in the eye and touch actuality, the fist connecting, the discomfiting silence, the slippery bliss of a slow kiss. That's the sugar you really want.



So what does this stance have to do with my bothering to write this negation, and your precious time reading it? It is this: If I choose to give you anything at all, it will be myself, because that's the one precious thing that I have to bestow, and that's what I will post on my page & within my words to you.




[Not me, just photo illustration.]






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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

On Horlogerie: My pursuit of replication.

When that GQ style issue fell open on that watch ad with the pilot wearing the sweet old school leather helmet and goggles, I knew I was having a moment. It wasn't the branding, which I'd never heard of before, but the aesthetic. Based on WW2 airplane gauges, the watch called to my currently SteamGoth addled imaginings. Besides, both my mechanical-have-to-wind-it-up watches were gummed up, and it cost me $125 alone to repair one of them only a year ago, so it was a worthwhile justification to upgrade my previous daily & dress watches to mechanical automatics.



The first thing you find hitting authorized timepiece dealers is sticker shock. Nice watches tend to be a rich man's game. The Bell & Ross didn't look to be any great shakes, but their 03-92 I only wanted in stainless steel turned out to be just under $3,000. As far as luxury brands go it's a gonga, but no way was that anywhere within reality. Hell, it wasn't even in my city as the nearest dealer was over 200 miles away.



So unreality was what I needed to pursue: a replica. Not so I could fake any sort of false prestige in saying I had a Bell & Ross, but in that I had fallen in love with the aspects of its highly polished beveled edges, the satin finished casing, its anti-reflective unscratchable sapphire crystal, luminous hands & numbers, and the single-minded purity of its smooth Swiss movement.



The research? Three months of Wikipedia, long threads from replica watch forums, digging into manufacturers' technical white papers, referencing catalogue thick glossy watch mags, alot of back and forth correspondence with a couple replica dealers, squinting at online pics of sequential teardowns, and reading many posts by a really spot-on mechanically objective user, LysanderXIII (props to L13!). And those three months also allowed me to save up for my purchases.



From all this due diligence I have learned what factors make for a quality watch, that replicas are sometimes comparable, and why watch geeks really are justified in their geeking out.



The heart of any automatic watch is its movement, the spring driven mechanical construct that determines its accuracy. Depending on who makes the movement, what grade of movement they're selling, and if that individual movement is certified, adds up to how accurate that watch is.



Believe it or not, Swatch, creators of the must-have 1980s battery-powered quartz plastic fashion watch, own the dominant supplier of watch movements to the world, the Swiss ETA (eh-tah [not to be confused with the Basque separatists]).



On the high end, most automatic watch movements are models or variants of ETA's 2824 or 2892 movements. The 2824 was originally designed in the 1950s, while the 2892 came about in the 1970s, when there was a need for a thinner mechanical movement during the advent of thinner Quartz watches. ETA makes movements in four grades: Standard, Elaborated, Top, and Chronometer. As of this writing the Standard 2824 goes for ~$130, the Elaborated 2892 (there's no Standard grade) around ~$220. The differences between the four grades are usually the quality of parts used to make up the movement (i.e. spring materials, shock absorption system, type of ruby jeweling, etc) with Chronometer being determined by official third-party testing.



The Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres, (the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute), or COSC, grades watches as chronometers if they meet a standard of -4/+6 seconds per day. But these tests are performed on the movement alone, meaning that it's not even tested in the case, which isn't respective of the real world. That and only 3% of Swiss watches sold are even COSC tested and their movements engraved with a unique COSC serial number to prove it.



Yet even more exacting than this are watches that have been Observatory graded. In places like Kew and Glashütte (glas-soot) during the 1800s there were competitions where watchmakers would show up with their finest offerings and accuracy would be tested, usually for nautical use, at an actual observatory. These tests were more realistic in that not only were the movements tested in different positions at rest at different temperatures, but were left in their cases, and even tested while being moved around to simulate actual body and travel motion. Only recently have the Germans resurrected the Observatory grade of testing, which seems a far more honest way to gauge accuracy because at the end of the day the consumer buys a watch as a whole and not just a naked movement. This makes for the lesser-known fact that German watches from Glashütte are the most accurate, but since the Swiss have established themselves as the cornerstone of fine timepieces this difference goes mostly unnoticed.



All this de rigueur and quality control determines some of the price differences, while market, brand perception, and limited supply determines the other. And the exceeding demand and high-end four-to-six figure luxury price hike creates another market: the replica market.



At one point ETA sent Swiss technicians into then-UK Hong Kong to train Chinese watch repair staff how to work on their movements. Little did they suspect that not only would they learn, but master the skills enough to clone their movements. While in most instances the clones aren't as finished with the Geneva striping or pearlage (the fancy circular beveling) or higher grade parts, sometimes they actually are, and for all appearances are pretty indistinguishable. Shopping online renders hordes of replica Rolex, Cartier, Panerai, Omega, Phillipe Patek, and others. Sometime there's even models that the original luxury brand never made, which gives the buyer some especially creative options and "limited editions".



The B&R 03-92 I coveted uses an Elaborated 2892 (ergo the 92 in the model number), but looking around I could only find replicas with a Standard 2836-2 inside (a later version of the 2824). The 2892 has a maximum variation of +/-20 seconds per day, with the 2836-2 having +/-30 seconds per day. Given that I was still getting a real Swiss ETA movement with only a possible 10 seconds maximum difference, made in the same 316L steel, and with a "croc" band at 1/10th the total cost of the actual B&R I was more than sold on the replica, which showed up inside of two weeks and turned out to be 25-hours-a-day of kick-ass retrostalgia.




[Yes, that's my wrist.]

While it's illegal to make and sell replica watches, it's not illegal to buy and own them. And like the Bolsheviks exporting faux Faberge products to establish themselves, the Chinese government doesn't actively pursue manufacturers of replica Western goods, which means the global grey market for replicas isn't going anywhere.



Caveat emptor: The replica market by nature is one of questionable ethics. There are many horror stories of people getting something not even close to resembling what they saw online, watches with functions that don’t work, dealers that don’t respond once you’ve sent a gob of money far beyond reach, customs confiscations, and general customer service nightmares aplenty. Find a dealer with good feedback on watch forums, and pictures of actual product received by actual customers. Most dealers are all selling the same replica watch from the watchmaking district of Guangzhou, so comparison shop, and make note of differences in descriptions, pictures, and especially the movement, of which the best case scenario is having a picture of the actual movement in the watch case. Take the time to ask specific and detailed questions until you get satisfactory responses before you commit to purchase. While with replicas you’re saving a considerable amount of money, be sure you don’t lose what you’re spending.



On the legitimate side before the replica market, the Chinese actually began their own watch making tradition in 1955 (and way before that, Chinese royalty had a love affair with Swiss Bovet watches, even using them as a medium of exchange). But the communists ordered four men to make a watch from scratch, and soon the Wu Xing (Five Stars) from Tianjin Watch Factory was born. By 1961 they were making chronographs for their Air Force, and much later morphed into Sea-Gull, the officially licensed and distributed Chinese watch brand, using their own ST-series of movements.



For my dress watch upgrade I found the Power Reserve Parnis, a Chinese homage to the German-made A. Lange & Söhne, who once provided watches to Zeppelin airship crews. (See how that totally came back around to the SteamGoth thing?) Homage watches aren't replicas; they're clearly their own brand, but made in the style of another watch, usually a high-end one. This particular Parnis is a great choice as it uses Sea-Gull's well-executed ST-25 movement, which is essentially an ETA 2892-based design, and the watch has an exhibition back that shows off the decorated rotor and movement, so I can see and appreciate the workmanship involved. Plus it has a date complication, which the Langematik it's based on doesn't have. Surprisingly, it cost less than a third of what I picked up my B&R for, and even seems to be slightly more accurate so far, which speaks volumes for the Chinese in a business where seconds do count.




[Uncommonly vertical subdials. Swankomatik!]

Given the longstanding ETA models above, watch movements haven't really changed much from their basic design. Design infringement aside, some of the passive argument for replicas is that if the Asian makers can duplicate $3K-$10K+ high-end timepieces for only $100-$1,500, then it finally forces the horologists to up their game to the point of where actual advances and improvements will be made. The last decade or so saw the advent of the gyro and flying tourbillon, and while the regular tourbillon's been around for 100 years, making a carriage spin around on itself and even gyroscope in reverse like a haunted garden armillary to ensure greater accuracy is pretty dazzling.



And new materials such as beryllium or silicone for hairsprings, 3/4 or microrotors that put less wear and weight on the pinons while working even more effectively and give different looks to the rear of the works now force the replica makers to chase the new technologies. The Spring Drive, crafted by Japanese watchmaker Seiko, uses an electronic break to moderate the mainspring's release, giving exceptional accuracy. Mechanical traditionalists might call that "cheating" but the electronics involved are mechanically powered and thus are still automatically regulated.



Bottom line is that a cheap battery powered quartz digital you can pick up for $20 is more accurate than any Swiss mechanical no matter how much you shell out for it. Even the Swiss will admit this because they use digitals to measure their mechanicals. So why all the fuss over something that works less proficiently and is more expensive to produce? Because the analog hands on the clock are the analog to our hands, the same hands that design, define, and drive the miracle that is the wristwatch. The imperfection and variance of a mechanical movement has a beauty that's almost organic by comparison, and contains an art that reflects the striving to make a solid clockwork measure & capture the ephemerality of time, a quality that is ultimately more conscious perception than mathematical absolute.




[Exploded view of the ETA 2836-2. Beautiful genius/madness.]


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12/2013 Addenda: While the Bell & Ross with its ETA movement hasn't given me a lick of bother, mechanically the Parnis has needed to be sent back to Guangzhou three times in the two years I've owned it for losing hours, stalling, and misgauging the power reserve. The forums may tell you that the ST-25 Sea-Gull's a "premium movement", yet my experience seems less than optimal. While Parnis' very willing customer service repairs all their product for free, sending it overseas for $12 shipping at a month's absence speaks otherwise -- though this still totally beats a U.S. $20 bench charge plus parts & labor. Will update if the troubles continue.



12/2019 Addenda: The Bell & Ross unexpectedly stopped, so I emailed PureTime to authorize a repair, but 18-years on after my purchase I was told they no longer service my particular replica as they now use different works for their current replicas, and they advised me to purchase one of their current ones. Their current B&R selections were about half the price, and pricing a local repair was only a bit more. Noticing that most of their current B&R replica models didn't have ETAs, I opted for the repair to keep the better Swiss works. Point here is that in the very, very longterm, unlike luxury firms, replica makers may not continue to support their product, so far future repairs may happen out-of-pocket as opposed to warranty. Mathwise, I'm still wayyyy ahead on the buy, so while that disappointing lack of product support & repair cost was unexpected, if such a repair occurs at so long an interval, a good replica is still worth it.






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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

i miss my dead dog ... so what am i?

I fucking miss my dog. I miss him so much, my packmate, Buddy Guillermosson. And the thing is I know, I know he's having a good time, ...