#anthony bourdain i grieve for you everyday

[javiersprincess]

Anthony Bourdain once wrote:

“Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people — we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy — the restaurant business as we know it — in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.” But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position — or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them — and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires. Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs — while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us. The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit — it’s there to see. What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years — mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.

Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness. Its archeological sites — the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime. It is in fact, old — older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention. The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation — many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe — have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.

It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there — and on the case — when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them. To small towns populated mostly by women — where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North. I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.

In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.

The received wisdom is that Mexico will never change. That is hopelessly corrupt, from top to bottom. That it is useless to resist — to care, to hope for a happier future. But there are heroes out there who refuse to go along. On this episode of “Parts Unknown,” we meet a few of them. People who are standing up against overwhelming odds, demanding accountability, demanding change — at great, even horrifying personal cost.”

thinking of anthony bourdain again

[averyboleyn]

So, I’ve seen people post on Tumblr that the Shadowhunter fandom was attacking other fandoms and being mean to other shows on twitter by taking over their tweets and posting mean comment and that they harassed Netflix for extending Anthony Bourdain’s show. I for one haven’t seen any harassment and I’ve been on twitter everyday almost all day long watching and tweeting. I do know that there have been many tweets taken over about different Freeform shows but it’s mostly just stuff like “love to watch but I’m too busy with #SaveShadowhunters” or “I’d rather you #SaveShadowhunters” or something along those lines. Yes, people have attacked the network itself and I know some people have said the fandoms not very smart for doing so but if you don’t watch the show you don’t understand why the fans are attacking the network in the first place. The only time I watch tv is when Shadowhunters is on but many fans have said that there’s little to any promotions for the show. I do know that they do very little online. I’ve seen a million ads at the beginning of Youtube videos for The Bold Type, Cloak & Dagger, Siren, Beyond, etc. but I’ve never seen one for Shadowhunters, even during a season or leading up to a premiere and they get add all through hiatus. There’s very little update to the website for Shadowhunters and the app never sends me any notifications about the show but I get them for different shows and reruns of movies all the time. Anger at the network in my opinion is justifiable because of their handling of the show and the fact that they’re blatantly ignoring he fans since the cancellation. They’re been all over twitter to promote The Bold Type, Disney Weddings, and Cloak & Dagger since they canceled Shadowhunters and they’ve even been tweeting about Mulan, The Incredibles, Wreck it Ralph, and Zookeeper. It’s a slap in the face to the fandom. There pinned tweet about Pride month is a video that opens with Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood from Shadowhunters kissing. They know how popular Malec is so they used them and the fans to improve their image. The fact that they posted that video with our characters in the opening and had already cancelled our show in the first week of Pride month was too much for a lot of people. I know the cancellation was for economic reasons but the show’s been on 3 seasons and they knew what they were getting into when they took it on originally. They could have promoted more and gained more viewers and more money through the ads that play during commercials. The show had the potential to be huge for them and it helped shape their brand when they originally rebranded. Shadowhunters was the first new show to air on Freeform, everything else on the network was already there from the ABC Family days. The fans are angry. This show is more to them than just a tv show. It’s a friend, family, a safe place. This show provides representation for so many different people who deserve to see themselves on tv. It’s honest portrayals of relationships, family drama, abuse, prejudice and more. It shows the damages that prejudice can have on a society and the struggle to fight against them and fight for equality. It shows the importance of celebrating differences and using those difference to contribute to the betterment of society. There are so many reason why this show should stay on the air for years but I just can’t type them all just know that anyone how’s seen the show and seen its treatment from the network would understand the rage the fans feel. They’re grieving and sometimes that makes people lash out. The only thing that will make these fans shut up is the salvation of their show. Until then we’re not going anywhere.

[castlepinesmusic]

Proletariat Punk Rock

Punk Rock Proletariat

A Modern Music Manifesto

We use it everyday,  consciously or not, you are absorbing it like air in a restaurant or coffee shop.    In our times of grieving and drinking ourselves to sleep it is there. When we wake up and rub the boogers from our eyelids we use it with a cup of coffee to invigorate us. 

We use it when we have dinner, when we have sex, when we attend sporting events, when we graduate from high school, when we learn to drive, when we kiss our first time, when we are withered and gray and draw a final, shallow breath it is there. Film and movies, all the things we use to distract us from the realities of life would not be the same without it.  

It is music. 

Music is a conundrum for me to think about.  It is one of the greatest joys of my life (apart from my wife) and music is also one of the greatest so-called thorns or banes in my side.  Why?

To jump into its creation is to wade into the deep.  It is dauntingly massive and too much collective knowledge to understand every facet in one life time. 

To record it, to make it a tangible thing with 0’s and 1’s in the digital realm and to share the product of hours of anxious creation to the world is another difficult task. Thats why we are here.  To create and leave a legacy. But why I am currently writing this is another matter entirely.  

We as consumers, western or non-western, affluent or poor, need a better understanding of the model of music consumption that we presently face.  For an artisanal craft, usually passed down from sage to student throughout its course of history, Music has been devalued, defaced and devoid of any commercial value or integrity for more than 99% of those that create it.  We bastardized  one of the most beautiful of human creations. Millennia of culture, folk lore and traditions have become the plastic bullshit bargain bin “throw away”, one and done, mass produced flavors of the week.  And I am calling it out.  We need to be better.  

We will be better.  

Much like the food industry complex, we spend and consume, waste and throw away without knowing the painstaking process of creation.  The growth from the seed in the dirty earth, cultivated to become a singular tomato for us to scoff at its flavor.  

Music is this exactly.  

Years of tribulation, tumult and doubt of whether or not we will harvest.  For those of you who are music creators, you know exactly of what I speak of, time seemingly wasted in a vacuous industry where only Drake and corporate controlled radio stations shovel their sonic fodder with monstrous finance budgets.  The independent artist is a drop of sand in the swirling sea of constant consumption.  This leaves the humble, working musician distraught and disappointed, angry at the status quo and at the constructs of which their precious art is lost in the digital void of oblivion.

Even when the musician or collective manages to birth an album or song, there are mavens, gatekeepers and tastemakers who have the pseudo”final say” as to what is good.  The blogs, the critics, those that judge from their screens, another hurdle to pass on an unmapped road to reaching your audience.  We actually made a video for our new song “Woo Hoo” that brings light to this very issue.  We took all the negative reviews and petty comments from blogs and record labels and slapped them on some footage from our friend Are Jay.

 Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/pFju7IXsXII 

 It is how we consume, how we interact with Music.  I am not calling out all users of whichever poison they picked, whatever platform suited your fancy be it Spotify, Google Play, Apple Music, Soundcloud etc.  There are those that are active seekers in the endless noise.  But it is the majority, the groupthink mentality of glazing over the details and not engaging with the art they are consuming.  It is a tired argument “Spotify only pays 0.0001 per play!”  This is the current climate and technology the masses use to listen, and instead of griping about it, lets use the advantages of its convenience as an asset.  Don’t believe the tired “Rock Star” American Dream Story of rags-to-riches from yesteryear. That age is dead, and we live in the working class musicians era, where we have the tools and the means to create our own history, our own legacies.  

I started recording music, not knowing what I was doing with my friend Blake Miller when I was 22 in a garage littered with stale beer and cigarette ash.  I saw Wilco and Radiohead in concert at Golden Gate Park, and the muse of inspiration lit inside me and I wanted to make an audience encounter the same things I felt when I was stoned in a large crowd. Ten years have passed since then, after forming a band called Castle Pines with my friends, playing greasy dive-bars and recording several albums, I have the memory and legacy of these moments embedded in me.  A much different reward than I thought I would obtain when I was a young, dumb 20-something.

I went through homeless years, living out of my car years, drunk years, years with court cases, assaulted years, meandering years of self doubt and whatever meaningless office art thats says “Discovery” years.  And throughout these years I had the comfort of faith and music.  I have seen the transition from buying albums and music in person at a record store to the digital streaming model, and although they are very different, the latter can still hold value and provide somewhat of a living for the millions of creators that can’t turn a buck. 

 How do we consume music ethically and consciously?

3  Rules:

Rule # 1: if you appreciate the art, show gratitude to the artist. 

As self-serving and indulgent as it sounds, the common trope and meme of “artists need to eat too!” is true.  If you can, buy the song or the album.  If you can’t share it.  We are constantly engaged in the dribbling faucet of social media, so share the music, how it effected you, how it made you feel a certain way at a certain time.  Share the emotions a song illicit in your everyday, and this is an invaluable and free method of support.  We live in this weird period, where the most popular music being consumed is being infiltrated by corporations where it is repackaged and sold in the vein of authenticity.  You need a lot of money to turn a head, and financing to get attention.  This is the arms race for “Cool”, the stock market of social transactions peddling less than desirable lifestyles to the youth and the world. 

The popular green, sustainability movement of eating and shopping locally should be applied here.  The rise of the microbrew beer and etsy shop, handmade craft should be a lesson we use in listening.  Listen small.  Listen to the handcrafted and the workers.  

Rule #2, stray off the beaten path. 

This is one is hard because it asks something of the audience.  You skip the lines and fervor of the industry giants if you do a minimum amount of research and discover.  Whatever you use to listen, dig deeper and find something new, it could be the best song you’ve ever heard by a band that you’ve never heard of. 

Rule #3, Know what you like and grow it. 

I don’t know if it political divisiveness, social constructs of genre affiliation or what, but I do know that EVERY single genre, style and practice has VALUE.  We can go into how rock and roll, Hip-hop and mainly Black American artists formed the modern musical language and how we don’t appreciate or know where it comes from.  But all we need to do is “Anthony Bourdain” it, try a new dish, or flavor or something you are scared of.  Only listen to Rap and R&B?  Put some Black Metal on and listen to it without prejudgement or preconceived notions on what it should be. And vice versa, whatever genre you are stuck in, break out of it and try something completely new.  You are doing an injustice to yourself by going to the same party everyday.  Your music tastes are a combination of that nature nurture thing, your environment, what mom would play when you were still in the belly and what you heard at junior high dances. 

  Grow your musical genre vocabulary. 

I see so many artists, creators and musicians get discouraged or feel downtrodden, and I hope this brought some levity and lightness to your struggle and journey.  We are all in this together.  

 Our next song “Swim Team Sucker” drops Friday, September 14.   Pre-save it here:

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/castlepines/etyX

 Thank you for all of your support, and remember

Castle Pines is for life homies.

#CPporVida

WEBSITE: https://cpporvida.com SMART URL-ALL MUSIC: http://bit.ly/woohoo-cp  FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/CastlePinesMusic/  TWITTER: https://twitter.com/cpporvida INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/castlepines/  YOUTUBE: http://bit.ly/castlepines-youtube SPOTIFY: http://bit.ly/FollowCastlePines-Spotify iTUNES: http://bit.ly/iTunes-Castle-Pines SOUNDCLOUD: http://bit.ly/cp-soundcloud BANDCAMP: http://bit.ly/Castle-Pines-Bandcamp Hype Machine: http://bit.ly/Castle-Pines-Press TUMBLR: http://bit.ly/Castle-Pines-Tumblr EMAIL: CPporVida@gmail.com