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+.

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+.

The Carnival of Illusion.

"Which way's the magic show?"

"We don't have a magic show," insisted the concierge. "We have a 'Carnival of Illusion'!"

Leading the way to a nice doorgirl/promoter who pointed out my name on the reservations list ... without any hint of who I was ... even before the show began. (Just psychic? Or secret Italian gypsy strega princess? Hmmmm.)

Once through the curtains, low slung tables and pedestals show off trappings of historical magicians, sepia-toned daguerreotypes of serious people, peacock feathers in brass spittoons, and bejeweled boxes with unknown contents from dark corners of Asia. Implications of travel, a thick black and gold ticket, velvet pile and damask hangings all have a terrific RomantiGoth setpiece feel to them.

Yet for all its Victorian window-dressings, there's something almost postmodern going on under the ruffled hemlines at Sarlot & Eyed's "Carnival of Illusion". You know it's a magic show, they know it's a magic show, and because of this there's a mental combination of shrug and wink which occurs at that cognitive crossroads that are completely acknowledged during the first few conjurings. But in a very quick reversal this matching pair makes you feel like you've taken a mysteriously exciting wrong train a couple stations ago, the compartment door's locked, and it's too late to get off now.

The whole hour-long affair mostly doesn't stray too far from the conventions of clever math, decks of cards, linking rings, folding of money, slights of hand, and bladed objects, but it's not the tricks that are exceptional -- it's Susan & Roland's unique delivery of their material that will charm the socks and garters off anyone who meets them. Using stylized movements, sophisticated and warm patter, sketch character acting, leading questions, and a proper alchemy of grace and humanity, they renew and give personal context to tricks of the trade and illusions you may have seen before, but never with this palpable sense of affection for the art of illusion and matchless savoir faire.

And above this, Roland conjures a couple David Blaine moments, when your suspension of disbelief actually no longer needs suspenders and you slackjawedly wonder how he just managed to pull off that bit of miraculous weirdness. He's arch and has this knowing look about him, but not in a condescending way like some illusionists, more in an intimate here-let-me-share-this-with-you fashion.

Case in point, my personal brush with Roland's phenomena: Being selected from the audience is never something I shoot for, but if you're the Gothic with a top hat in a small parlour audience limited to 35 people, you're unavoidably going to get picked to go up front. During an illusion called "Postcards Around the World" somehow three cards from a stack of 10 were dematerialized out from under my very-secured-to-its-chair behind, and just as mysteriously rematerialized under a lady's derriere across the room. For my bafflement and cooperation Roland awarded me with a large box of M&Ms.

And as for the very winning Miss Eyed, there's an Uno Attack-like moment as cards aggressively launch themselves from a brazier and she even more aggressively skewers a five of hearts in midair on the tip of her sword -- a card drawn by an audience member only minutes before, and completely uneyed by Miss Eyed. She's lovely, energetic, quite the dancer, and possesses expressive orbs that more than merit her surname. All that, an aisle of chips, and she gives great email.

True magic has been resurrected in the parlour at the DoubleTree in Tucson, and if you want a taste of what might possibly be on the real supernatural wonder, you'll go place yourselves in the deft hands of Sarlot & Eyed's "Carnival of Illusion".

[Miss Eyed & Sir Sarlot. Go get a fancy ticket to see them at www.carnivalofillusion.com or book them for your next fête.] 

P.S. No, I'm not being paid to write ad copy, or comped in any way to endorse said performers whom I had never met until tonight. I'm up at 5 am, a whole nine hours later, writing this and still thinking about how brilliant it was, okay? Okay.

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Addenda/Updated Disclosure (4.21.14): So since posting this show review back in 2010, I've hung out socially with these local living performance treasures, played much Jenga, smoked hookah, and then had the honour of being hired to successfully draft the text of the new version of their current souvenir program! Recently watched their performance again with some great changes (mentalism, op-art costumes, & knife-throwing!) and building upon all the same strengths they already have in their show, plus the now much more poetic program. They rock magic socks!

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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+.

the Legacy of Tron.

The success of 1982's "Tron" was because it rode the crest of arcade culture. If you were a kid pumping quarters into those arcade machines back in the day, you ate, drank, and sweated pixels because underneath it all you felt as though something more important was being accomplished on the other side of the screen. It was split-second life-or-death reaction times, and the payoff was when Flynn ends up on the other side of the cathode glass, and you find out it's all horrifically true: That we as users are electronic caesars committing our progamme gladiators to fight it out and kill for us, again and again and again.

Given how well that ethos of translation played out, you'd expect this 3.0 (because 2.0 already happened in a PC & console release awhile ago), that the game grid and digital environs would now reflect the ideas of time-consuming MMORPGs, first-person shooters, real-time strategy sims, higher-speed internet communications, terragig storage, smartphone applications, sexting, and all the other bells and whistles such technology has gifted us with in the last 28 years since the original "Tron". Instead what we have are updated designs on much of the things in the first film, plus a few new vehicles that should fly off toy shelves in time for the holidays. (Yes, I bought a die-cast Light Runner.)

Perhaps the true Legacy here is this: The investment of $200 million into this sequel only supports the fact that the 1980s still and will always rule the cultural school.

[Excellent double feature art poster credit to Eric Tan.]

Best bit? The Score. Pounding threat, electronics laced with a nearly human jarvik heartbeat so you know something's at risk. While Daft Punk's never been past a fun and rarified novelty, if they don't win an Oscar for this soundtrack, there's no justice on the aural grid.

The strength of Tron is its setting with all that it implies. The moment of emotional reaction of user being trapped in a computer world, that emotionally neutral wonderland of cold blues and angry reds being the dominant factor. Contrast with the compounding of Sam Flynn's reactions, and pushed over the edge by Michael Sheen's over the top performance as Castor, and what was once the placid cyberworld is now upstaged and imbalanced. The only apologetic I can fathom would be that since programs are now more sophisticated their behavior would be more emotional to reflect that, but the film doesn't imply this, and I had to come up with it.

Olivia Wilde is the digital hotness, and on top of that every lady in tightly glowing striped pajamas in this film is. Notably, icy blonde Beau Garrett's the digital coolness as Gem.

Nit picks: Jeff Bridges young computer generated face looked like digital botox -- it just never looked organically believeable. The light cycle sequence didn't have the uncontrollably insane velocity that was so felt in the first movie. Yes, it had alot of clever dynamic changes, but if it'd been rendered differently it might have possessed the hammering-heart-pushed-up-into-your-now-choking-neck thrill it should have.

And for a movie encapsulating the currents of lightspeed electrons, pacing flagged in a few spots. In the first even when there were moments you were learning something about the digital frontier, and it was more the still hum of a machine that you knew could wake up at any second. Here in parts where the chase isn't on, it's more like the machine's i7 got swapped for a P1 and you're waiting for the flippy hourglass to turn back into a cursor so you can get on with it.
Visually everything's very, very pretty. Spatially well defined, imparting a sense of place one'd love to visit and is left wanting more of at the end of two hours.

As a sequel "Tron Legacy" doesn't stand alone, but it makes a worthy successor to one of Disney's most ambitious modern classics. Helmets off to the house of mouse. Now let's go play some deadly frisbee on the Wii!

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Post-Review Film-Influenced Addenda:

from 12.3.14:

Exciting Tron-esque teaser panel from "Batman Incorporated" issue #7 (July 2011).

Followed by Batgirl on lightcycle in issue #8 (August 2011).

Morrison & Clark may have partially wanted to homage 1990's "Batman: Digital Justice" (and "Dick Tracy" from the dialogue and catchphrase in that first panel [clever!]), the first completely computer illustrated graphic novel, but the lines of light, neon primaries, and the lightcycle are pure "Tron Legacy", and speaks alot for Tron programming our expectations of what a virtual reality version of the internet might look like as Bruce Wayne upsells it to potential investors.

A month before the film, Marvel did a few "Tron Legacy" style variant covers as promotion for Disney, its parent company:

[Thor.]

[Spider-Man. Note Tron City-scape.]

From 9.12.13:

And then they got in ... to the real world:

[Happy accident lightcycle race in foreground. Photo credit goes to yours truly.]

It seems "Tron Legacy" director & professor of architecture Joseph Kosinski's design sensibilities & lightline styling accents have influenced someone else, and actually crossed through an I/O tower to rez up as Tucson's aLoft Hotel at Speedway & Campbell. At night it really does look like a data construct from The Grid.

from 8.3.13 at 4:07am:

Then there's nights when one re-screens with your peeps:Yes, Stacia & I derezz programs for the MCP!

[February 2011.]

Below, note the bottles of blue & green energy for thirsty video warriors, bowls of red vs blue computer chips, and, um, data-salsa. Yeah, hot mexi-data-salsa.

[Melisszler Vs Gwyeniflynn. July 2013.
Due to Grid wavelengths being outside of the visual 3700-7000 angstrom range, this photo's blurry. Also, Sark Lives! {somewhere in this shot}]

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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+.

all too NinPotent.

Eric's being a geeky sassypants, telling me he just bought that chic pinstripe sterling silver card case ... for cards he hasn't even made yet. "But they're going to say 'Eric Issac-Basset, Stupidity Prevention Consultant."

Jim Wise walks in, red in the face from too much driving in the 100+ degrees to and from Mount Graham Observatory to work on telescopic mirrors as an optical engineer. Always gives me grief for wearing the black low-top split-toe tabi shoes. ("I need them to climb castle walls 'cause I'm shinobi like that.") A few months ago, Jim almost got into a fight with two skate punks in the parking lot, one of whom slapped his car with his deck while he was stopped at an intersection. Those pimply faced punks were lucky Jim decided otherwise. 

Why? Jim's a freaking ninja.

Back in 1990 he was cast as a Foot Clan soldier in the first live-action TMNT. But it's not Hollywood that gave him his Ninja status -- it's the decade and a half of training before that in the arduous and deadly art of Ninjitsu that qualified him to be an adversary to guys in green foam rubber turtle costumes. And to give me grief over shoes I've got no business wearing.

Yet I've unwisely decided to get his attention by saying, "Eric, Jim there needs you as a consultant."

But red-faced Jim's actually in no mood to trifle. Stepping towards me behind the front desk, he replies, "Here, I brought you something."

His arm flicks down, and *click*, the blade flips out of the quicksnap folding knife he's got cradled in his hand. All the action's happening just below the counter so if the blade comes up under my ribcage he'd probably have enough time to nonchalantly walk away before I collapsed in a pool of my own organs.

Unthinking in no-thought, I sweep my left hand down to block his rising wrist, while my right thrusts palm out to connect with his chest. Well almost, as he steps back, half surprised. But not as surprised as I was, because I've no idea where those moves came from.

"Hey! That's really good. You've earned your ninja badge."

Today, I am Ninja!

[And this is the secret badge I'm waiting for, all the way from Koga, exclusively handwoven and delivered by a fivesome of hot Kunoichi. Well, not really. But Jim is bringing me something like this.]

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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+.

no longer missing.

My worthless elementary art teacher comes into the store. Miss Abrams. Young angry hippie woman flailing about irrelevantly at my inner city school to make a difference, now a week away from retirement. Bitter, judgmental, dressed like all the rest of the 1960s burnouts. We exchange neutral and practiced empty pleasantries. I ask the important question: "Whatever became of Mr. Martinez?"

"He died of AIDS."

I reel inside. My favourite teacher is dead.

Unexpectedly, she follows up, "He was such false man."
As though her surviving by pure chance into retirement somehow made her superior.

"I loved him dearly," I replied flatly. "He did have a roommate Chris that he used to speak of quite a bit." He spoke of the death of Chris' mom to teach us in a heart-rendingly personal confession about loss. This conversation didn't seem like it was going to match that. "Maybe they were more than friends."

"All that time with Lily, the third grade teacher. It was a scandal. And what with all the machismo back then, the men on staff got all the love from Conrado, the principal, and it was such a boys' club. You know, a few years later, Ramon didn't even take his class into art anymore. He said it wasn't important, they didn't need it, and Conrado said that was just fine."

Ah, so that's what it was about. Of course this was the "art teacher" who declared "There's no wrong way to do art" and proceeds to unnecessarily modify the aesthetics of what you're trying to create. Fucking hypocrite. Maybe Ramon figured that out, too.

"To the contrary, I remember he actually touted art. He even won an award in college for a little sculpture called 'Medulla'."
Judy Abrams seemed to think for a second before partially backpedalling, "Well, I didn't know him that well. He was good in the beginning, before all the politics."

The justice here is that even if Ramon was fabulous enough to be incidentally gay, at least he will never be eulogized for having a paintbrush stuck up her useless ass.

And who was Ramon Martinez? The man I knew was a young firebrand who was a Chicano in the best sense of the word. A responsible, divorced single-father who drove a white convertible MG. He took care of himself, ate a tablespoonful of honey every morning for health. Honest enough to fail the student teacher Benny who didn't know fractions any better than we did. Ramon would speak first with joy about his mother, then with frankness about her loss which happened that very same year, having to be strong to come back to the chalkboard. So audacious as to teach us about Juan Diego & the Virgen de Guadalupe in a public school, the Mexicano hero-martyr Jesus Garcia who saved Nacozari from a burning trainload of dynamite, required a verbatim recitation MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech and the hope that it encapsulated. With science, it was astronomy's Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, nuclear power generators and bombs, brought a practicing neurologist in with an actual human brain on a tray and gave us gloves so we could touch the curves and crannies in the gray matter, even the mind-bending ideas of the big bang and oscillating cosmologies. The curriculum pulled no punches, raised questions, made us not only learn but want to think. So ambitious his classroom made front page above the fold of the metro section with its presentations on race and classroom philosophies. The passion and conviction in his teaching was palpable, and equally effective.

I last ran into Ramon around 1991 and we talked for about 45 minutes straight. He'd changed his name after some ancestral research and said he was working on drafting educational software to teach children about Mesoamerica. I'd always meant to follow up with him after that chance meeting, but getting my double degree and other personal involvements took the intention off my radar, regrettably. It seems the only thing I can do now is ask people who knew him to fill in the blanks for me. But what I learned from him and remember of Ramon Martinez, an enlightened man and teacher, I will never forget. Thanks for everything, Mr Martinez.

[Sartorially suited Ramon Martinez in the left foreground. Third from the right, lil' young me sporting the "Pak Rat" shirt at the height of videogame arcade culture.]

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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+.

the undead subtract the subjectivity of math.

"Vampires a mathematical impossibility"?!?

If physics professor Costas Efthimiou thinks he's so damned clever, why isn't he working on applied fusion, as opposed to pulling this cynical nonsense to get his name in some third-rate science website's well-buried Halloween feature article? Publish or perish, indeed. (What's also odd is a dead link from his homepage to Transylvania University, and vacation pictures of the Greek islands -- an alleged hotbed of vrykolakas activity! Is he really a disinformant?)

Math relies on unproved postulates to complete its geometries, and resorts to imaginary numbers to solve its problems, while even Euclid's unreal linear thinking unravels and frays when distances inevitably curve. If some number zealot needs to go comfort himself under spreadsheets of theory so he can feel safer at night, then let him fool himself. Anyway, Efthimiou's based his formula on a zombie mechanism, not a vampiric one. Single vampire bites do not necessarily spread the blessing.

Stoker's Van Helsing, yet another self-proclaimed "Mr Know-It-All", was partly deceived the by this same misconception: "... they cannot die, but must go on multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-Dead becomes themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water." (pp. 263-264, McNally & Florescu, eds.), which is likely where the mathmonkey drew his flawed timestables from. Plus, the idea of vampirism's been around for far more than 400 years, as paintings on ancient Assyrian pottery suggest. And by the time numerous official military and medical accounts of vampirism crashed upon the intellectual shores of the Ages of Reason & Enlightenment, it was none other than philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788) who had the illumination to conclude: "If ever there was in the world a warranted and proven history it is that of vampires."

Maybe Count Vladislaus Dracula in 2004's "Van Helsing" encapsulates it best: "Why can't they just leave us alone? We never kill more than our fill. And less than our share. Can they say the same?" Only stupid hunters shoot all the game, while the smart ones care to leave enough for next season, and vampires aren't required to kill their prey like humans, monthly or otherwise.

Leave the vampires to the vampirologists, and go say your faithless rosaries on the abacus you litanical mathematicians, because undeath defies not only math, but the limitations of life itself.

[From a long-ago blog, re-posted/re-contexted here in honour of the recently deceased Jerry Nelson, the voice of Sesame Street's Count Von Count. His character lived the folklore that vampires are possessed by a compulsion to count grains or thistles, a facet that could be used to stymie pursuing undead or delay their entry into homes. But for The Count it was not only a teaching technique but a joy that seemed to celebrate his infinite nighttime existence, a creature beyond the rational using the rational to sum up the world around him, and arguably the happiest of characters on the Street. Thanks for all the love of countless things in life & unlife, Mr Nelson.]

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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+.

Tucson, obviously.

So beyond sick of hearing complaints about the heat, the "scene", that it's not a "real city", the "boredom", the "lack of culture", and most ridiculous, that "there's no trees".

I also hear I-10 is still open. You may leave now, if that is really your wish. Believe me, we won't object.

Aside from being a third-generation Tucsonense, there actually are alot of reasons Tucson is the superior home. Cairo, Amsterdam, Olympia, Seattle, DC, Chi-town, Vancouver, Toronto, Detroit, Manhattan, New Orleans and more. I've been to all of them, but at the end of the night I still come home to Tucson. As a collective we lay claim to:

• Saguaros. Anyone can have and plant trees, but Saguaros are available nowhere else.

• Big city amenities without metropolitan ills. The crawling traffic, overtly violent crime, and indifference of the population haven't come here to detract from our fine dining, clubs, and culture.

• Astronomy. City codes prevent civic lighting to be over a certain amount of lumena, so the night skies remain relatively visible for professional and amateur stargazers who are lucky enough to be in the astronomy capital of the world. Yes, the world.

• Residents are nice, smarter than the average bear, and relaxed, which translates to all of those good qualities rubbing off on you. Sure they can't all be winners, but on the curve we're a brain trust.

• Most tectonically stable place in the world. NYC sinks by 2020. San Andreas will one day turn LA & SF & SD into New Atlantises. Meanwhile, we'll have a beach in Yuma so sit tight and wait for the new coastline.

• 300 days a year of good weather. No ice scrapers, snow shovels, or salted roads eating your car's undercarriage. July & August swelter, but it's a small trade, and nothing swamp or A/C can't remedy.

• More galleries per capita. While I'm not sure where I heard this, I'll buy it with all the artspaces downtown, the Historical Society, UA museums, and, of course, the TMA.

• Coyotes! Hear their mournful howls at night. Watch them cross breed with lonely dogs. They go through your garbage but you'll feel so sorry for them you won't care.

• A club scene more than proportional to our size. Also, unlike most cities, even major metropolises, we have a Gothic weekly happening at three different venues, on three nights a week. Other cities usually only host a monthly, if that.

• The Wishing Shrine. El Tiradito is the only wish fulfilling shrine dedicated to a sinner who got shot for loving a married woman. Amen.

• San Xavier. Rising from a dusty plain, a white stucco brilliance that is called "The Dove of the Desert" is an intact structure of Spanish colonialism. The indians of the surrounding reservation have made their peace with it and every weekend booths outside sell the best frybread you'll ever eat.

• The re-opened Fox Theatre. The 1930s art deco cinema reflects Tucson's civic sense of historical preservation over progress. Rio Nuevo will feature a mission-like structure at its heart as well, which will retrofit these same sensibilities.

• Bats! Droves of them. I hear them many nights, twittering about lampposts for flying insects. Seasonally camped out in underpasses at River Road and East 22nd, they emerge in big living whirlwinds at sundown.

• Our weirdest secret is The Door to Pandaemonium. In the heart of the city at Speedway Blvd and First Ave there's a bit of prime real estate that should've been developed ages ago, but never has been. This cactus and scrub lot just feels ... wrong. Don't believe me? Go visit in the dead of night for yourself, and we'll compare notes.

• Sunset. Reds like you can't buy in a jar.

• The largest All Souls' Procession in the world! You'd think Mexico City being the most populous, but no -- it's us with our 10,000+ mourners and celebrants who photograph each other and dress with an inventiveness rarely seen elsewhere.

• The ladies. That 'Zonie accent, the Latina calenturas, and given the enclaves of Greeks, Russians, Indians (feather & dot), as well as the flood of university and corporate transfers we get like a respiration of new beauty every season, every flavour you can savour is here for the seducing. Come get some.

Still dissatisfied? Then it's you, not the city. Only boring people get bored, so go be boring elsewhere. I hear Portland's the new spot for this year's grass is greener crowd. Get in your fucking Volvo and go be too hipsterist for Portland instead. We'll probably see you in two years when you realized how good you had it and what a fool you truly are. By then however we'll have rented your cool Barrio Viejo apartment to someone far less whiny than you.

[This long arm of Tucson belongs to Clay.]

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+.

the Secret of the Golden Bowl.

The singing bowl haunts me, its note following me hundreds of miles away from that back alley music shoppe hidden within the depths of San Francisco's Chinatown.

I ran the striker hard around the bowl's lip and suddenly the space just filled with ringing as if out of nowhere. Or maybe an unheard sonaressence pulled from the corners of the room into the bowl and poured out again, an invisible but tangible aural reflection.

It made me wonder if there were bowls that sang, like celestial choirs, or others, a dark portal of lowest basso pouring up from an Abyss. Genesis stories state that matter gets created from sound, God conjuring the world from The Word, and the Aum, same as song evoking an emotion from nothing.

I asked an esotericist I know about the bowls and he mentions the blocks of the pyramids, after somehow getting treated, being lifted with a tap from a resonant staff or tuning fork (perhaps our ankh ...). I think of lamas & saffron robed priests levitating in their Himalayan temples, attuning themselves, perhaps with the bowls as a focusing tool. I'm sure my odd source also thinks of rounded saucers with their otherworldly humming being a slight friction against the atmosphere as they spin & turn at high velocity -- ships also rumoured to land or originate from within the Earth's highest mountain ranges.

Apparently around since 11th century BCE, the bowls were made with a now lost technology that used 5 to 12 metals, including amounts of silver and gold, all of which seems alot of trouble for a simple bell or container for offerings, so there's more here than meets the ear. On a molecular level everything vibrates. If you place one singing bowl near a silent one including some of the same metals, it will begin to sing.

Silver's negative charge attracts particles, and gold's noble and electrically conductive qualities may have factored in the forger's choice of materials for the bowls. The older the bowl, the darker a tarnish it has, affecting the tone.

Listen to the still, to the silence where there's supposedly absence. Instead you'll hear presence, the hum of yourself & your echo reflected back, a low roar awash with subtlety, as blood passing through artery and vein. Call this frequency or soul or anima or chi, the bowls reveal the ringing that is everywhere to begin with.

Last week, dozens of dealers in imported wares brought bowls into Tucson to sell at our international gem show. After playing hundreds of bowls, many centuries old if not unknowingly older, I found the bowl that hummed my song, a deeply shadowed opera conducted in infinite wavicles that push and flow through the invisible so hard you can feel it through your very skin.

With the right bowl one could summon the prima materia sound, to fill the bowl with intent, as a magician does a cauldron, and then send it out with the sound's return to whence it emanated to act on that will & wish from within, to affect the timbre & fibre of existence, to destroy, to refine, to reform, to remake the World. That is the secret of the Golden Bowl.

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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+.

it breaks my heart.

I would send that photo of you on a clear blue day in SF, holding the flask. It's that bright and shining moment of perfection where everything you feel is unquestionable and more than real and so solid it flays you free of the unimportant past and cracks opens the future like a pomegranate, each bead a sweet red bit of life to come, and you know in your soul it'll all taste good from here on out.

You're holding the flask in your hands, the one thing you wanted more than anything for your 30th birthday, and it reads "fire in a bottle", and it doesn't matter that nobody else knew what it meant, only us, only us, only us, only we knew.

Later, there were moments and pauses where our love flagged. The difference was that I had to try and pay attention to the ones where it didn't: the nights of sweat, breakfasts of unneeded donuts and fritters, you in marabou slippers, us driving out to see that total tourist trap in Dragoon that was so stupid it didn't matter because we were there together snickering among the scorpions frozen in paperweights; leaving the apartment like a dream in the stewardess outfit at 4 in the mornings, sleeplessly sexy, touching down like the setting sun when you got back in the evening, rising, falling, rising again, out into the world and ovaling back to me where I waited with presents washed up on the shore of my nights at the store. In them, I saw you, and the desire I had for you.

It was you who doubted, who saw those same moments not as answers but as questions to be raised but for your own reasons, because in the end security was more important than love for you. Is it? Have you now found it a few just too convenient doors down? I can't say. I've always been secure with myself, safe in my own arms, self-contained. I still am, but you've cracked that container, and while it's all still together in my boundless soul, there's a space where you're missing, where the cold enters, depressurizing my insides when I don't expect it, and I see you through the hairline gap, and I miss you: the bangs, the full smile, eyes of dusk, charms you never even saw, but that never failed to surprise, seen as though it were always the first time. Through the heartfissure I accidently watch re-runs of the Christina channel, and what was once my favourite show now breaks my heart, and the fucked up thing of it is you don't even have to be there to do it again.

Yet I can't tell you, or send you the photo. Pride forbids it, my righteous anger tells me such offerings are undeserved, that they weren't adequate to save us in the first place, that maybe, after it all, they'll signify only to me, and are ultimately unasked for.

I wonder if one night you'll realize that more than that immediate family you love, the shoe leather father of impossibly high regard, self-declared asshole brother, sweater-vested aloofly uncaring younger brother, and especially your unwinnable mommy dearest, that for that time, I cared for you more than all of their small mouths could ever hold, and cared most of all.

And in the end, now a year later, in the wake of your unsober tear eyed unannounced visit to my parents, I'm right: love isn't enough. In the end I was the one left holding the bag, the bag filled with gifts left ungiven, gifts poured back into the oceans of unwanted things, these artfully wrapped presents that weren't just gifts -- they were years of I love yous to come, the red seeds of pomegranate that once shined and burned inside that bottle like a fire, impossible but true, if only for a moment of our lives, flowing away from you,
almost,
but not,
tasted,
given up ...
gone.

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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+.