At the footstep of Camp Bullis, in the outskirts of San Antonio sits Eisenhower park. Reportedly one of the nicer places to visit and hike around but it happens to be on the opposite side of town from me. The easiest way to get there is by taking the 1604 loop but the construction around those parts is kinda crazy so I avoid it at all costs. I happen to have the week off and my niece was in town so I thought it would be a good idea to kill a little time with her this evening and exhaust the dog a bit before I split town tomorrow.
I can confirm that the park is indeed very nice. We didn’t explore much outside of the paved paths because I’m not sure how my niece will do on hikes yet. She young and full of energy, but she isn’t a fan of walking. I’d like to get back out there and check out some of the non-paved paths but i’ll check it out when I’m on my own with Canelo. Hopefully the stars will align again and we can knock it out on a random weekday morning I have off so that I can avoid some of the traffic that builds up on 1604.
Ya know, if there’s one thing I like about hiking with someone it’s the random conversations that can kinda organically occur. My niece was surprisingly quiet on this little venture, I tasked her with holding Canelo tightly on a leash and took the responsibility pretty seriously. I didn’t tell her about the Tower at the park so that was a little surprise. Her only observation was that “I can see where I get my eyebrows done from here”.
Peca's Pecado
Took in a lot arts over the weekend including a production of “Peca’s Pecado” at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio.
The play itself was ok, I learned a lot about the pedigree of the play on the evening of the performance. I wasn’t aware of its accolades and the many places it’s been performed. I admittedly got tickets because I misread “Petra” for “Berta” which happens to be the name of my mom, so I snagged a pair of tickets and surprised her with an evening of theater and eats. She didn’t particularly care too much for the performance, but we both agreed it had a good communal message.
The play centers around a sin that occurs at the very start of the play. Petra and her husband own a tortilla business and are having a hard time making ends meet. Petra was faced with a difficult decision of paying the staff or paying taxes…. she opted to help her workers and that has put the business in peril. To distract herself and her husband of all that she ordered Cable TV for the family because there was a 30 day free promotion. An absurd thing to do but I’m pretty sure I’ve made similar missteps in my lifetime. Pop Culture has always got me thru some tough times. I recall a number of times where I would forego eating to catch a concert or buy a CD I probably didn’t need. I digress…. included with the cable package was some premium channels that included a XXX Channel. Petra found her self channel surfing and found herself briefly watching Porn. This was her sin (pecado) and this thrusts her into a confession that results in a new local priest asking her to put on a production of the Virgin Mary. Later on in the play, we’re led to believe that statue of Mary in the Church (that goes missing) comes to life and helps resolve a number of issues in the community, Petra’s sin isn’t really revealed until the very end where she feels comfortable to tell her husband about what happened.
After leaving the performance I thought a lot about a handful of productions put on at the Guadalupe Arts Center and its made me think a lot about how I want and need to write some family stories in some capacity. the plan this week is to attempt to write and post three short stories about Christmas.
Writing isn’t the hard part, it’s more about having the courage to get into the creative process and allowing it to be digested warts and all. I remind myself that this is to an audience of none tho and that will make it all better.
Stage Right of the Guadalupe Theater
Leave The World Behind (It's Time I Had Some Time Alone.... and I feel fine.)
On any given night, there’s a good chance that I have a hard time falling asleep and I find myself doing gloom scrolls on Instagram or TikTok. Most of the time it’s just me looking at mindless videos from friends around the globe, but I’ll occasionally find myself seeing a trend appear in the random reels. The movie “LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND” became said trend so I threw it on to see exactly what people were collectively watching on Netflix. I jotted down a number of notes while I watched so i’m going to share some reflections but it’s going to be broken out into some categories that will make sense if you’ve screened the movie.
Adaptation from the page to the screen:
At some point during the movie, I did a google search to see if I could snag a screenshot from a specific scene in the movie. It was at that point that I learned that this movie was adopted for the screen from a novel that I hadn’t read. This isn’t exactly the type of fiction I go out and try to read on my own accord, but if someone would have recommended it to me I may have read it. Having seen the movie, I’m kinda curious to read it to see what decisions the director made for the adaptation of the novel. I’m leaning towards not reading the book
Art of the Implausible:
When I watch movies, I really enjoy the process of allowing myself to enjoy the art of implausibility. When I saw this movie, it occurred to me that many may see this and feel alarmed that something like this can happen. I’m firmly not in the camp… but the film did however make some overtures to undertones and sentiments in America that are very real.
They kinda go out of their way to say that this isn’t the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard. So it’s totally plausible that this would occur in the Non-Hamptons/Non-Martha’s.
Race:
I admittedly think about race more than most. I don’t really know why or when it started. I think I happened to come up at a specific time in America where “race” seemed to be imbedded in everything I listened to, watched or read in the 80s and 90s. I haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone directly about this movie but one of the questions I would ask is what aspects of ‘racial implications’ did they happen to pick up during the movie. The film goes out of its way to introduce some heavy handed RACE themes when they introduce the main group of characters when the blackouts occur.
How many home invasions occur in America where the perpetrator wears a Tux?
Friends:
I admittedly didn’t watch friends. It kinda had its heyday when I got to college and watching scripted TV was not a priority of mine when I fumbled thru my 20s. A poignant comment was made in the movie about how the show harkens back to nostalgic time that never existed. A very damming and kinda truthful thing to say about a show that depicts a New York I’ve never set foot in. Chuck Klosterman had an opinion that Friends did something that no other show has ever really done before. After college, there’s a period in life where a group of Friends become the immediate family that you surround yourself with. Marriages and kids splinter that core group of “friends” but for a number of years the spirit of that show is something that is very real. I kinda think something was being said generationally by way of the kid, her age and detachment of what the fuck is going around her.
the come hither blue yes on this one
So what was this movie really?
Not entirely sure if this was an end of times movie, as much as it was something I would liken to Night of the Living Dead. When I saw the movie, I sorta saw a circumstance that immediately put central characters to distill a number of real prejudices out of their system before trying reconcile what it means to be a human. If you want to be technical about it, there’s a Die Hard movie where a “Patriot” hacks America and brings it down from the inside. I don’t think it’s a particularly good movie. I would kinda describe this as a B+ episode of Dark Mirror…. I will however concede that it made me think at times.
Naughty Fiction
I don’t know how much reading you do, but I have quietly attempted to read a minimum of one book per month. This puts me at about a dozen books a year and while that isn’t all that impressive, I believe that to be a lot more than most. I’ve been kinda let down/burned out by scripted shows on TV and it’s incredibly rare to feel all that excited about a movie being screened at theaters or streaming on whatever platform.
Books have quietly provided incredible stories and backdrops for the head and heart to sink into. I’ve never really been a part of a proper “book club” but will occasionally take on a book recommendation from people I know and then talk to them about what I think. This usually allows me to break away from the books I typically read, which are more a long the lines of Non-Fiction/Band/Musical Artist biographies.
Just before thanksgiving, my friend Naomi and I were catch up on a number of things and she recommended a book she was in the middle of reading. She warned me that it would be “smutty” but that I might actually enjoy it. I’ve admittedly never read “romance” novel. I have a number of books where something intimate occurs but I wouldn’t really categorize any of those books as “smutty”.
The book she recommended I read was entitled “Ice Planet Barbarians”…. I stared at the cover and it’s kinda hard to not let your imagination run wild. I probed further as to why she thought I would like the book and she told me that besides the freakishly graphic sexy alien sex, that there was gripping backdrop of ‘Alien Abduction’ and this indescribable need that one has to be cared for and worshiped.
I read Ice Planet Barbarians and can attest that it’s both Spicy and it has a surprisingly great story backdrop too. A woman (I think 22) never believed in Aliens until she was abducted by them. She finds herself on a spaceship with several other 22 year old females that are all being held captive on a space ship. There’s a need for the Ship to stash the females on an ice planet and before you know it, the main character ventures out into the ice and snow to find a blue horned devil looking dude that wants to help her. He also wants to impregnate her because there’s only 4 “females” on the ice planet. These characters end up in a cave that is really a wrecked alien space craft and before you know it, a hologram computer provides the woman character details on what the Blue Devils are and it also helps her with understanding their language. Everything I just blurted out onto this screen makes no sense - but I promise you that it’s surprisingly good to read. There’s also the sex. Holy shit there’s lots of steamy alien sex.
I finished the book in a couple of days, sent over my observations in a series of wordy texts and then got another recommendation for my “next smutty read”. A book titled “PRIEST”, which I didn’t like as much as the Ice Barbarian book. Not sure if it was the catholic guilt but the central character in that book goes out of his way to talk about his thoughts and actions going against the vows he took to be a priest. There’s an interesting backdrop on what directed him to take the calling of the cloth, but this book seemed to really block characters into a room of some kind so that they can boink each others brains out. This book didn’t really have that much of a grip on me and it admittedly took some time to finish it. I would find myself reading only a couple of chapters and then finding other things to read or do.
That being said, I can say that i’ve added “smutty books” as something I’ve peddled in. Looking forward to finding my January 2024 book and go out of my way to actually write about what i’m reading going forward.
