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september/october 2007
t’s you that’s flowing through my veins and when on lonely afternoons the clouds pass by high above the roofs of this old town, a part of my heart joins them, hoping to find you. Two ravens, the same ones as always, watch us, whilst we make love on smouldering ground. The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death, says Jackie Leven, and I think, he is right. He must be, after all, he is Scottish. When the plague visited London, 1665, I strayed like a madman through the city, looking for you, driven by the fire of love and not by the fear of your death or mine.
my heart at that Niveous bus station. Although you claim to find no pleasure in the flesh or cleverness of men, not in Gods house, not in your heart. Truth is, me myself I broke my heart. How could it be any different? It has always been like that. We are the ones that invite doom into our homes.
included, what do I owe this world? It has given me everything and taken double. With pale blue eyes I watch the moon standing lone on a mountain with a violin. He plays for everyone in transition. But, begad, that’s not many. Down in the valley entities and half-entities mingle to become stone and gallows.
But not everything is ashes yet, in Mexico they still dance on the graves of their beloved ones. And that’s all I am asking of you: Just one dance on my deceased heart: I will be peeping under your skirt and smile at the thought of our little secret.
Why didn’t I jump back then, when you threw the empty book with white pages into the dirty canal? It might have made a difference. Just like the dog that’s chasing its own tail, I will always succumb to the distant horizon, without ever reaching it. For doing so I would first have to recognize and abandon myself.
A year later four fifth of the city burned down. Today I blame myself for it, because I don’t dare to accuse God.
Since you have vanished, I have visions of exploding volcanoes. I stand at the rim of the caldera, peek inside and they burst. If you hear people saying they saw me very drunk, recently, tell them proudly, its because of you.
If you knew what I know, you wouldn’t hang out with him no more. You broke
Everything bores me except the thought of you, may they all die, the swans and locusts
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Above my head two flies are flying in squares, over and over again, until even I notice. First I consider them stupid, but then I begin to see and I smile: The best present that a friend can give, is still a mirror. It’s a beginning and the only way that’s left for us. Everything else is sure death. SM
Verano
y
porristas
tontas
»Summer & Stupid Cheerleaders«
n one fine night in August at whilst going to a Naco Nights event at King King in Hollywood. Naco wase showcasing two kick-ass groups from Mexico’s Distrito Federal. These band kicked ass and King Kings is a great place check it out any time! For all you transplants that say there is nothing to do in Hollywood, well here’s your chance boys & girls! After the crappy DJ went off and they turn off the crappy house music the night really started! DISCO RUIDO flashes on two projected screens with lasers and lots of fog! They really got everyone’s
attention and fast! Check out some of their songs especially Do it again; and Icky Thump (hostage remix). if you go to their website at: http://discoruido.tv/ blog/ check out some of the other previous posts and there are like 100 different songs to download plus a lot of stuff from other band that they play with. NSM or No somos machos pero somos muchos came on after that and really kicked ass too! They had this live drummer who was really cool. Their website is under construction but their myspace page has some of the songs that they played. They are playing at some gigs around Mexico so be sure to see them if you are down south. HARD ROCK
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LIVE México D.F.; Sep 21 2007 11:45P @ Festival Zacatecas; Sep 22 2007 11:45P @Festival Internacional de Chihuahua and Disco Ruido is playing at Pasagüero on September 24 in D.F. SM
www.myspace.com/discoruido www.myspace.com/nosomosmachos www.usanaco.com www.kingkinghollywood.com
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CINEMA cinema The 2007 Valley Film Festival (www.valleyfilmfest.com) runs September 12-16, 2007 at the El Portal Theatre in NoHo Arts Districts.SM
In the last 6 years, The Valley Film Festival has screened over 250 independent shorts, features, documentaries, music videos, pod casts & more, from all over the world: Australia, Canada, El Salvador, England, Germany, Holland, Iran, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland & United States. Studio productions include: Boogie Nights, Chinatown, Encino Man, Terminator 2, Valley Girl and World Trade Center. For our 7-year itch, we’ve programmed a festival that’s more Valley than the (818) itself -- 39 shorts, 9 features & one AllAmerican classic! And that’s not all: We’ve renamed our monthly screening series Focus On: and have expanded it to include screenplay readings, new technology seminars, and more.
editorial good, old fashioned paid advertising! Additionally, if you’d like to distribute Super Monkey in your local shop, university or brothel, send us a letter of intent and we’ll be sure to review it!
If you’re reading this Editorial, you are among an elite few who have in your hands a limited, first edition, Super Monkey magazine! Super Monkey is published every other month and is distributed in Argentina, Switzerland and the Republic of California. Global access is granted at: www.supermonkey.la We encourage you to contribute by submitting your writing, article suggestions, cartoons, hate mail, Mentos and
In this issue you’ll find Hank Bandini’s musings from his shithole motel in Meixco; prose from Steve Fluid and a new take on bad album reviews in Rewind/ Review. Pull up an ottoman, peel yourself a banana and enjoy your new, dirty little secret: Super Monkey! Welcome home, simian lovers. Welcome home. H.R. Helfrick — Editor-in Chief banana@supermoney.la
september/october 2007
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Universal Health Care is what’s
‘sicko’ eople like Moore believe capitalism is the disease and government takeover the cure for our health care ills. They think people have a “right” to free health care simply because they need it. If so, why stop at medicine? Couldn’t we claim the same “right” to other necessities? Take food, for instance. What if the government seized control of the food industry and fed us for free with a new entitlement, “Foodcare”? Initially, Foodcare will empty the horn of plenty into your lap. With your appetite and wallet parting company, the lobster you ate only on your birthday will become regular fare, as will your favorite Belgian chocolates and filet mignon. Because the same idea occurs to 300 million others, costs skyrocket, and a Foodcare crisis develops. Big Brother can no longer foot the bill for your busy mouth,
so he must limit your mastication. This requires new agencies, bureaucrats and a 100,000-page rulebook. You visit your favorite restaurant to find it changed. Gone are the tablecloths, flowers and cheerful hostess to greet you, enhancements you had gladly paid for in the price of your meal. The Department of Restaurants eliminated them as frivolous indulgences of the people’s resources. The menu is reduced to a few modest offerings. Missing are the savory specials of the talented chef, whose last creation took 40 pounds – not of ingredients but of paperwork – to gain approval from the New Recipe Administration. You want steak, but getting it requires that the chef call a central office to obtain pre-authorization. With the clock ticking and a long line waiting to slide
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into your barely warm seat, you order hamburger instead. You notice your neighbor eating steak – and sitting at the best table. You remember when he was laid off and you bought him dinner. Back then, he thanked you for your charity and quickly got another job. But now that he has a “right” to food, he’s stopped working to eat courtesy of your tax dollars. You barely recognize the frazzled chef buried in paperwork. The once-happy figure doting over your every need now slaves for a new master, one that denies his fee for serving Cognac, secondguesses his decision to make cheesecake, requires a Certificate of Need to buy an oven. You know that under Foodcare, he’s merely biding time till retirement. When he goes, you doubt he’ll be replaced because enrollment in chef’s schools has dropped as the number of bureaucrats hounding them has risen.
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As time passes, everyone forgets how it started, but the crisis worsens. Michael Moore makes a pilgrimage to North Korea in search of adequate food. You realize that the amount you pay into Foodcare exceeds what you had paid when you bought your own food and didn’t obtain it for “free.” Then, you didn’t pay for bureaucrats and inspectors to tell you what to eat, or for those milking the system like your neighbor. Besides emptying your wallet, Foodcare has drained all the pleasure you once derived from eating. Politicians blame their scapegoat, the capitalists – grocers, chefs, food manufacturers – and pass laws to prevent any from owning a Mercedes while someone goes to bed hungry in America. They tell us profit is evil and free food for all is a moral ideal. You wonder: Is there something wrong with this picture? The ideal isn’t the pri-
vate system, with happy chefs and grocers earning a good living in return for their talent and entrepreneurial risk, and satisfied customers enjoying a Shangri La of affordable food. The ideal isn’t a spectacular abundance, with everyone’s standard of eating – including the poor – raised dramatically, and this achieved without government force, without fleecing taxpayers and robbing consumers and suppliers of their freedom to make their own personal choices and to interact voluntarily. Instead, the ideal is to transform free, self-determining individuals into state-controlled puppets. The Foodcare scenario is actually playing out in health care. Once the gold standard of the world, American medicine has fallen to its knees from decades of crippling regulation, with the final blow about to come from universal health care. To stop this despotism we must repudiate the notion that health care is a right. No one has a right to demand for free the
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goods and services produced by others. We have the freedom to take action to further our own lives – to work, earn money and pay for the things we need – while respecting the same rights of others. We don’t have any right to enact laws to seize people’s money, control their activities and force them to provide services on terms dictated by Big Brother. No good can result when the means used to achieve it are plunder and coercion. Universal health care merits the label “sicko,” or more accurately, “tyranny.” SM
Genevieve (Gen) LaGreca is the author of “Noble Vision,” an awardwinning novel about a doctor’s fight for freedom in a state-run health system. She is a former pharmaceutical chemist and holds a master’s degree in philosophy from Columbia University.
shithole mexico the Lost tales
Economic rooms for 1 day week Or 3 hours For private romantic moments seriedad y discrecion servicio de masajes relajantes
on Carlo worked night reception that night, we called him CAPITANO, as I shake the gate for him to let me in, he usually locked it at night, but it had no windows, it was just a metal gate so usually I could slide my hand in there and open it myself. Just when I was getting in the camp German guy from Hamburg was coming home, so I told him about the events of today. So. Chronologically then: Waking up at 6:45 am, rushing out the door around 7:20 am, to be precise, to catch the bus for the hotel job that I am going to start today — could it be that I got on the slowest Mexican bus in history (as she moans in the background) --- well it is difficult to write when your mind is distracted by grunts & moans
coming through my wall through the bathroom wall and into my hotel room. I must say the girls are sluts down here, just wanna get laid, ain’t nothing wrong about that — hup hup hup! So then, as I was saying, leaving the house @ 7:30 am, but the clock downstairs says 8:00, SHIT! Something’s fucked up here, running outside asking the TAXI drivers, ‘ocho, es ocho!’ they reply. Well I am supposed to be at my hotel job @ 7:45 am, I get on the slowest bus, yelling @ the driver, ‘Andale güey necesario irme a trabajar!! Vamos ahorita!!’ I arrive and waiting for me is my contact, he starts in Spanish! ‘Yo dije que deber ser aquî a las ocho menos un cuarto. (I SAID FOR YOU TO BE HERE @ 7:45!) Already yelling at me, I sign and explain the situ-
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ation, didn’t apologize but said the problem will be fixed tomorrow. ‘Good!’ He replys, ‘be here tomorrow at 7:45 A.M. OKAY?’ ‘okay.’ ‘FINE?’ ‘fine. SWITCH BACK TO NEXT DOOR: Now the couple in the room next to mean have finished after making all that noise, she complains about closing the bathroom correctly. It’s just a door with a wire lock, she screams like a pig for 15 minutes, then complains about a stupid bathroom wire lock. But as frantic as things are now I must continue, so I leave, trying to get change for the bus ride home, I decide to get another pair of trousers and another white shirt, you have no idea how long it takes to get a good price, well actually I saw it right away
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at Woolworth & Company, 89 pesos. I can’t beat that me saying while taking a bus all the way out to Patella (where all the Mexicans live who live in the hotels here) so this… YUP you guessed it! This hot girl walks in Re MULATA, a real aboriginal Indian but still tall & NICE! First comes & sits somewhere in the middle, me being in front of the bus (to have the driver advise me of when & especially where to disembark). Well the seat next to me exits and SHE ... comes and sits down right next to me. I play it cool. One hand out the window other on the back of the seat. You could tell she wanted to say something, but was afraid, Ol’Hank starting with a ... what time is it? or a ... is it much further now? You could tell she was an aboriginal, when I started talking to her, she though I was from Guada LA WHORA! She actually lived past Nueva Vallarta, i cannot even remember the name, SHE HAS 6 (SIX) SISTERS though (pant, pant, ogle!) but 4 brothers (hmm?). A real 19 -year-old beauty though. We exchanged numbers, she her house number and mine the porn motel, as you just witnessed. Now I was going to take that room #20 but now i’ll just stay in #19 for now. She was walking around with me helping me find my white dress shirt, everything was double that what I had imagined... 200 pesos, 150, 164! NEIN! We parted with backward glances, we’ll meet this week, the problem is the last bus is at 9:00pm; so - - - she’ll just have to sleep at ‘ol Hanks place! HEH HEH HOWL! Once again quiet here, sir. Hour 23:55, with cool calm winds coming from the SE with a silent ocean swell. Ahem, so Steve ahh, yes. Looking around for another hour or so, I went to eat street tacos –––––> 4 pesos!!! But
the meat was really tough (dog? cat?) it could have been dog this time or as the Signora says at my local 5 peso taco stand “CHOO CHOO”. Racing back on the great Mexican bus, everybody getting thrown around, I stop off at home and try to flirt wit the chica, at the laundry shop, just 3 shops down to planchar {iron} my work shirt. After several unsuccessful attempts she says her boss will do it and that she doesn’t know how —— never mind that, now what I needed was some hangers, a radio and another notebook since I ran out of paper. Walking back, I decide to check out Señor Muñoz of the English school, I was actually surprised, he thought I did
good on the exam, offered me a juniors Saturday class coming up and said I could post up our english/german/italian flyer, but then disagreed 30 minutes later when I zoomed back on account of it saying LEARN ENGLISH real big on top. Albeit the people at the quik copy place offered to put up my sign. And good news, i’ll have a number soon, Elba {from the agency that I wrote about in my last letter} she has one of those old Motorola…NO! NO! NO!— —> ARGGH. COUGH — SPIT. Damn Mexicans, a Mexican rendition of Ackey Breaky Heart, turn it off, i’ll sneak down and put in some punk! HA HA! That’ll show’em! So to be curt, i’ll have a number on monday. After that I just did meaningless errands, but taking in the beautiful sunset at 6:30 pm, as always walking on
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the beach barefoot 28˚C weather. Oh this music is shit, the have no idea really. But now listen to this {now there are some idiots yelling in the stairway!} SHUT UP! Going to Coppel {a department store} [they were closed] looking for a radio, not impressed with the street prices, damn… saturday night and I have to work tomorrow, Swiss time 6:45 am this sucks. So to be even curt–er… Looking at radio was either closed or too much money. I’ll be looking tomorrow. Walking home over Rio Cuale they have two suspension bridges over the river onto the ‘tourist island’ like a Mexican ‘Canal Street’ in New York City, but whilst crossing my ears picked up the sweet sounds of Bossanova! Yes! I raced over there AND by the larger {auto} bridge, a fine establishment called the RIVER CAFE, well I was spanking my ass with one hand and snapping my fingers with the other. Just what I wanted to hear, since I have been deprived listening to Banda or Norteña shit from outside my hotel room for 2 months now, ah but there that one time in Guadalajara where we had the Brazilian night with the drums huh!?! I waited for them to close Antonio Carlos Jobim - The Girl From Ipanema when I sprung up from my cement curb outside seat and raced to the market to get 2 cans of Sol beer, being on 7.50 pesos each and then racing back to catch Astrud Gilberto - Corcovado, I lay there, complacent and passive sipping my beer whilst searching for a pretty skirt to feast my eyes on. I close by saying ‘so long’ A mi hermano ¡Continúa! Hank Bandini
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REWIND REVIEW
he frenzy that followed the release of Get The Knack spawned a doubleplatinum album with fan faves Good Girls Don’t, Oh Tara & Frustrated; fans were known as “Knackette’s,” and the slogan “Get The Knack…Or Get Lost” was birthed. 8 months later, The Knack returned with…but the little girls understand, producing two releases: Baby Talks Dirty & How Can Love Hurt So Much, the backlash campaign “Knuke the Knack” and harsh reviews from critics: “The music can’t redeem the lyrics–not only because such dehumanization is irredeemable, but also because the music is lame.” Dave Marsh. Rolling Stone #314. Well, Mr. Marsh, it’s time to Rewind & Review …but the little girls understand – 27 years later!
The liner notes promise the listener many different sides of The Knack and they didn’t lie! Baby Talks Dirty leads off Side One and it’s easy to spot its familiarities to My Sharona and “the” sound of The Knack. The lyrics of Mr. Handleman, “…you don’t need a waterbed to have a good time…” gently remind us that this was the late 70’s/early 80’s cusp, when pimping out your wife was, apparently, not frowned upon. Cant Put a Price on Love with it’s slow, methodic beat, just ROCKS! Side Two fuses guitar-driven, rockabilly, Spector-esque songs – y’know, the kind the Stray Cats would rise to fame on only a year later – with the emerging sounds of Punk! When Doug sings It’s You, I know he’s singing to me! Bruce Gary and his drum kit are singled out in The Feeling I Get and the ballad, How Can Love Hurt So Much, closes this sophomore effort.
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The music is far from lame and, for the time, an exotic collection of sounds. Each instrument and their performances stand out and, even though lyrics to this album are non-existent online, one can’t help but know that Doug Feiger gave us a glimpse into his pervy world! …but the little girls understand was reissued on CD in 2005. If you have a turntable and access to they vinyl version – listen to it as it was meant to be. For more on The Knack, I recommend the 2004 documentary, Geting The Knack – you’ll be surprised! SM
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www.knack.com
september/october 2007
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