Overusing the Word "Village" for Degrading Purposes

Or
Don't Piss Off the Bears, It Only Makes Them Sarcastic

Dear readers,

A few months ago I undertook an assignment to write the Buzz column for L.F. magazine. The column consisted of drafting witty briefs regarding the goings on in relation to the Albuquerque food scene. As happens with printed materials, I printed a mistake in my first Buzz. The error I made was in using Rio Rancho (an Albuquerque suburb of no specific importance) in the place of Los Ranchos (another, smaller Albuquerque suburb of even less importance). In response to my errata, I received the following letter. As a cathartic exercise I wrote a follow-up, though have yet to send the letter off and crush the spirit of my critic. Why have I hesitated in sending this letter to my critic? Well, because it's rather cruel and unusual and a bit after the fact. And I'm not sure if I'm petty enough to actually need to send the letter. Maybe I've grown up a bit. But maybe I am that petty. Or maybe I'm just bitter. I don't know. Based on your comments, I'll allow the readers to decide for me whether L.M.'s harsh words should be dignified. And so we begin.

The Flagrant Folly
When eating salmon, it’s less important to know the mariner jargon for commercial salmon - king salmon is chinook, silver is coho, and red is sockeye - than it is to know that the salmon you’ve poached, grilled, or stuffed into the broiler is good for you. Adhering to the credo that wild is best, [prefers to remain unnamed], also known as the [company name], is a veteran angler who catches Pacific salmon and sells it to conscientious consumers and eco-friendly restaurateurs. Making an appearance every Saturday in May at the Rio Rancho Grower’s Market, [Mr. Unnamed] will be available from 7 - 11 a.m. to take orders and fill you to the gills with everything you ever wanted to know about Alaskan salmon but were afraid to ask. He’ll also field queries about 100% grass-fed New Mexico beef. Bonus holistic tidbit: According to the company website eating fish can help battle certain psychological disorders, which may or may not be your cup of tea depending on how much you enjoy those nature walks with your flashbacks.


The Response to the Flagrant Folly
Hi Eric:

I've just been reading the May issue of L.F., which I usually enjoy, especially your "the Buzz" column. But this time you have made a major error, and I hope you will see fit to correct it in the next issue.

[A vendor, who prefers to remain unnamed], is mentioned as appearing in the Rio Rancho Growers' Market.

Now, Eric, every month I produce a thirty page magazine, the Village Vision, for the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, so I know about getting your facts straight in print. I also volunteer every Saturday morning at the the Los Ranchos Growers' Market. [The unnamed party and his marital partner] are vendors at our market, so I know them well. [The unnamed party] will be appearing as guest chef at the Market on May 20th, demonstrating salmon and spring greens.

Eric: as far as I know there is NO Growers' Market in Rio Rancho!! The Los Ranchos Growers' Market takes place at 6718 Rio Grande Blvd., next to the Los Ranchos Village Hall, surrounded by lush green fields and folks actually growing crops in them. We're next to the river, not up on a dusty mesa. In case you've never heard of the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, we're on every official map, including AAA. We were incorporated in 1958, and we have a Mayor, a Board of Trustees, and our very own Fire Department. We have what many folks tell us is the best Growers' Market in the area. And we have [the unnamed party]!

Now that you've sent your readers off to the wrong town, perhaps we should invite you to come and visit our wonderful Market. We have lots of vendors, and an Arts and Crafts Market, too. We have great music each week by an assortment of very talented performers, we have various experts on things related to growing and water, and we have a guest chef every month. In August, for example, our guest chef is Jennifer James, who comes every year to demonstrate creative things to do with our superb produce.

Sound like fun? It is, and you're invited to visit. Perhaps you'd like to do an article for L.F. on our wonderful Market. Our next big celebration (we have several of these each summer) happens on May 20th. It's Old Vehicle Day, when the Model A Club, some model Ts, and various other old and interesting vehicles turn up. We usually have a car from the Unser Racing Museum (that's in the Village of Los Ranchos, too, and if you haven't been there, you should go!), too. And you can meet [the unnamed party], if you haven't already done so.

By the way, the Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque enjoys the presence of several very nice restaurants, some of which you may know. Indulgence Cafe is a favorite breakfast and lunch spot, Sadie's provides wonderful New Mexico specialties, El Camino also does New Mexican food (and has the best red chile!), and the Calico Cafe, late of Corrales, has just opened its brand new reincarnation in our Village. We can't compete with Graze and Fuego and Joseph's Table, but our friend, Jennifer James, thinks we're just fine!

So come visit, Eric - but first of all, please make that correction! Los Ranchos is not Rio Rancho!

Sincerely,

L.M.
Volunteer Coordinator, The Village Vision



[Editor's Note: L.M. carbon-copied the above letter to the mayor of Los Ranchos and somebody named S. Brawley]


The Rough Response to the Response to the Flagrant Folly

L.M.l;

Let me thank you first and foremost for your correction to the May Buzz column published in L.F.. I would have written sooner but was prevented from speaking my piece by my own ethics, as I did not want my words to damage the reputation of L.F. magazine. Now that I am no longer under this publication's employ, I have elected to respond freely. Let me assure you that nothing I'm about to say reflects the views and attitudes of any man or machine at L.F.. Below you'll find my opinions and my opinions alone. That being said...

I can assure you that as soon as I caught wind of the error you so politely pointed out I wept endlessly. How could I have made such colossal error? (A MAJOR error as you put it, which indeed it was!) Los Ranchos and Rio Rancho? How these two culturally, ethnically, and geographically distinct townships have become linked in my mind really is a marvel. Why, they're as different as Belgium and the Belgian Congo, they are. Worlds apart. Paint my face crimson and call me Scarlet, for I am ashamed and embarrassed and ashamed.

True, I did make in print print - it happens. But allow me to correct you on a few points of error that YOU made. If you pay attention to what I have to say, which I doubt you will or are capable of doing, you just might make life a little easier for those unfortunate few with whom you are acquainted. Had it not been for your superior attitude, your tactless approach toward resolution, and your assumption of my ignorance, I would have been more empathetic to your cause. As it stands, your indecent calumny was arrogant and crass, and so I am responding in kind. I take full responsibility for the mistake, which is why MY email was listed with the article. And for those curious patrons who were confused by the error and had enough wherewithal to contact me, I pointed them in the right direction. So you see, the chances of someone circling Rio Ranch in utter bewilderment (as I'm sure you were horrified would happen), looking in vain for the fantastical Rio Rancho Grower's Market, are pretty slim. And the telephone number and URL printed with the article (which, I might add, were both correct) offered other ways of confirming where the event was to take place. Anyone with any sense would surely do some legwork and find out where the Grower's Market was located before embarking on an epic quest to find it. We're not talking about El Dorado or the Fountain of Youth here, we're talking about vegetable stands. And for those people foolish enough to blindly wonder around Rio Rancho without ever stopping to ask for directions or call the provided telephone number, well, the effects of Darwinian fitness will swiftly and justly take care of their ilk.

You mentioned that you usually enjoy reading MY Buzz column. Is that so? This is where the authority of your argument lost all its footing because, you see, the May Buzz was the first buzz I ever penned. So it would have been physically impossible for you to enjoy my Buzz prior to this event. So unless you - in the middle of May - read the future June Buzz via some mystical orb of prescience that I have yet to encounter, you too made a mistake. See how easy it is to do? It happens to the best of embarrassed is where YOU get become ashamed and embarrassed and ashamed and get bucked from your high horse.)

Your second mistake was in assuming that I've never been to Los Ranchos. Despite what you might think, I have indeed been to the plush utopia you described. And a much delayed congrats for having your "village" printed on every official map, including AAA maps. You truly are on the up and up. I see only good things for you and your village kin. And should I come to visit your village again, I'll surely send a messenger to announce my visit so your village watchmen can lower the village drawbridge for me in a villagey fashion.

I'm sure you're pretty steamed by now and saying things to the effect of, "I never..." and "Was I really so curt?" and "What nerve!" I've been writing a good many years and have been called a lot of nasty things (a Nazi, a demonizer, a dirty liberal), and am usually able to brush off comments from dregs such as yourself and those who write with such impoverished decorum, but I'll take it upon myself to give you this sage advice in an effort to spare my writer brethren contact from you in the future: should you ever feel the need to contact a newspaperman or woman again, say what you have to say without being such a clod. We hate making mistakes in print - we really do - but we certainly don't need doddering old shrews rubbing our faces in them as though we are a puppy who went woopsy! on the carpet.

And if you'd like to forward my response to his highness the mayor of Los Ranchos as you did with your original message, be my guest. Given that he received your first correspondence he familiar with your attitudes, and allowing him to read my response to your hastily scrawled platitudes will surely bring a smile to his face, as it will assure him that his impression of you as an officious busybody is a minority opinion.

Have a truly splendid day.

Sincerely,

Eric Howerton

What's Stopping Me

If I didn't love myself so much I'd probably hurt myself more.

Howerton Hears the Who!

Recently I was afforded the opportunity to take a baked bean bath with the original members of the Who and conduct the first mass interview since the late 1970s. After scrutinizing my notes, which were smudged with molasses and Keith Moon's flop sweat, I was able to extract the following quotes, quotes that will surely make you love the Who even more than before. You better, you better, you bet!


Pete: "Did you know the bloody Kinks invented a number between three and four?"
Roger: "Bollocks."
Keith: "No, no. S'real. I've...urp...heard of 'at one. S'bloody five, ainit?"
Roger: "No, Keith. Five comes after four."
Pete: "Those bloody Kinks bested us again!"
John: "Fuckin' slag Ray Davies."
Keith: "John, be a dear and pour me a pint of gin in a thimble, wontcha? Ta."




Pete: "If I'm not yet Jesus I someday will be. All I need now's a dozen apostles. No. A baker's dozen. One up the old Hebrew."



Keith: "Alright, my lovely. I'll be the butcher and you'll be...the butcher's mother!"



Roger: "I can see for kilometers and kilometers. I can see for kilometers and kilometers. Hey, Pete. Are you sure about these lyrics? Feel a bit cumbersome."



John: "When Y2K hits the Who will be ready to rock! We've also stocked up on space ice cream and bottled water."

Chock a Block in the School of Rock

I spent the past few days hanging out with my buddies in Skybox, a band that I predict has the potential to make it in the industry. And for those of who have been reading The Hereafter from day one, remember I predicted Mozart would be huge too, and now look at him!

My only concern is that the guys in Skybox are young and not incredibly business savvy. They're a lot like the American Democratic party; they're honest, they're reliable, and they lack the sleaze factor that helps propel people to the top. This is both good and bad; the guys in Skybox are nice, but nice guys get taken advantage of. Nice guys finish last. Nice guys get elections stolen from them (read: Al Gore). So toughen up, Skybox! Go by some nightsticks and beat the crap out of each other.



But this post isn’t about shameless promotion of my friends’ musical talents (for more about Skybox see below). This post is about the rock 'n' roll fantasy. The rock dream. Being on tour with Skybox reminded me of my own musical days. My salad strumming days.

When I was younger, my mother forced me to take piano lessons. We had a piano so somebody had to learn how to play it! Aside from helping me understand the movie Five Easy Pieces, which, along with Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger is the best Jack Nicholson movie of all time, piano lessons didn’t do much for me.

Later I became fairly proficient at the trumpet and was first chair in my middle and high school band, and though playing jazz solos at high school basketball games didn’t turn exactly help corral the cheerleaders for easy pickins, the strengthening of my jaw muscles and the lithe agility my tongue developed from playing staccato got me plenty of make-out praise.

Musically, however, I would never become an accomplished bugler for two reasons a) I didn’t listen to acid jazz and had no appreciation for free form composition, and b) [more importantly] I refused to learn scales. I clearly understood what it meant when music was in the key of E or the key of C, the infrastructure and mathematics involved in composition were intelligible to me, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what notes made up the scales. And I never made any effort to learn.

As I got older I fantasized about being a rock star. Forget that I wasn't a sloppy musician and couldn't sing very well the Sex Pistols, Nirvana and Bob Dylan all proved that precision and vocal range are secondary, nay, tertiary tools in the rock arena. And so I bought myself a guitar and a Crate amplifier and started a band. Honestly, we sucked. And to congratulate our suckiness we came up with a name that advertised our suckiness, so that should anyone hear the name of the group they would be immediately repelled, lose interest, and thusly save us the ignominy of actually having to perform for an audience. This helped us save face, as all the members of the band played their respective instruments rather primitively. The group was called The Assman and it was composed of myself on guitar and what barely-passable vocals, a pathological liar on bass (who would later become an astrophysicist) and the world’s laziest drummer (who would later do nothing). Our fourth member was a slew of vulgarities. Our fifth member was pot. Our fourth member made us cool (or so we thought) and our fifth member made us sound bitchin’ (or so we thought whenever our fifth member showed up to rehearsal).

And so I dreamed of being on stage and back stage and passed out in a pool of my own vomit. It seemed like heaven. The life of a rock star is appealing in ways that the life of a writer is not. Rock stars are highly recognizable. Sure, writers like Stephen King get spotted all the time. But can any one of you tell me whether or not Dostoevsky had a mustache or not? What color were Faulkner's eyes? Ha! Rock stars are celebrities of a different pedigree than writers.

Secondly, rock stars, should they so choose, have what's professionally known as "ubiquitous fornication opportunity." In laymen’s terms, rockers routinely boink the members of their audience after the show. It's a fairly balanced way of making sure everybody gets a chance to sing.


Of course, not always respectable is the type of women willing to fornicate with strange, loud men who live in vans with other strange, loud men, men who smoke a lot of cigarettes and argue endlessly whether Graham Parsons was single-handedly culpable for the Eagles (and also whether the addition of Joe Walsh to the group spelled redemption for the other members). You all know the type of woman I'm speaking of. We've all seen her. Men know this type of woman because the mere sight of her actually compels the male brain to begin thinking of its own genitals in reptilian terms. And woman know this category of female because they downright hate them and consequently refer to them as “groupies,” “sluts” or some variant and/or combination of these words.


The groupie is an interesting phenomenon; ordinary women hate the groupie because she is able to sexually out-compete them, and men immediately recognize the groupie as the type of woman who, like a wooden roller coaster, they want to ride at least once in their life even if it leaves them with terrible back pain the following day.


But ultimately, fornicating with throngs of dethonged, nameless, faceless women is not an appealing enough offer to encourage me to put down the pen, pick up the pick, and struggle financially for the rest of my life. And neither is the constant exposure to toxic cigarette smoke, the likelihood of jaundice from years of free Bacardi shots, nor the weakening of one’s immune system due to the repeated cellular insurgencies led by gonorrhea, Chlamydia, and syphilis.

Nevertheless, being on tour with a band is fun. For a writer, it's an escape. Musicians and writers are both creators, but musicians, for the most part, are children and being in the tour van allows you to act like a child and get away with it. Hanging out with musicians is uncomplicated, which is probably why musicians love being musicians. Wandering caravans of minstrels and musicians have been a reality for thousands of years. Musicians are ultimately children who have sex, take drugs and, by necessity, have learned how to operate a vehicle. And they’re happy being children; they have no responsibilities save for playing a gig and consuming enough calories (either in solid or liquid form, preferably from a bottle [again with the regressive behavior]) to make it to the next gig in time to slough a beer before, during, and after the show. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It comes as no surprise that a few insightful musicians wrote songs like “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Band on the Run.” These songs epitomize the rambling, wayward nature of musicians.

Why I Would Make an Amazing Rock Star!
1. I don’t have allergies. You can’t “bring the thunder” or spearhead a “rock assault” with allergies. How many times have you heard Robert Plant say, “Throw all the joints you want on stage, man, but seriously, stop throwing peanuts, I have a condition.” And I’m not certain but I don’t think Gene Simmons of KISS ever screamed through tear-streaked face paint, “Okay, who brought a f**king cat in here?!”
2. I love to hear crowds chant my name. I’m a Scorpio, so the world revolves around me. It’s and Bizzle-centric universe. The only thing larger than a Scorpio’s ego is Jupiter and the only thing more active than his libido are Mars’ volcanoes.
3. Aside from a hammer to the shins, music is the only thing that can actually make me cry. I believe in the power of music. Music is life in your ear.


Why I Would Make A Terrible Rock Star
1. I can’t gyrate my lower extremities in a way that make women swoon and tremble like wind socks. Mostly this has to do with my outright refusal to wear pants made from animal hide of any kind.
2. I can’t drink all night and be functional the next day. When I’m hung over I curl into a ball and wait for a friend to notice that I’ve gone missing. A good friend will show up at my house with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and some Advil. Usually I take the Pepto-Bismol willingly, but my mouth has to be jarred open, the Advil thrown into the back of my throat, and my neck massaged to complete the recovery process. Like the sickly runt kitten you kept in a shoe box and nursed with formula when you were six, I have to be nurtured back to health.
3. I would get political on stage. And when people go to concerts they think about two things: woman think about how sexy the band is and men think about how the only true aphrodisiacs are jewelry and live music. (And since concerts are usually held at night - when all the jewelry stores are closed - men are banking on the power of the music to razzle dazzle the women) Nobody’s thinking about the Iran Contra or genocide in Third World Africa. Concerts are like movies and sports; people attend them to rejoice and escape their crummy realities. They don’t want to be reminded that their lives - their very ordinary, mundane lives - are waiting for them as soon as the show’s over. Me reminding people of their crummy realities would get me booed off stage night after night.
4. I’m paranoid enough about Mad Cow Disease, I don’t need the compounded fear of viruses setting up shop in my genitals after an indiscrete Green Room encounter with a girl who swore she was 18!
5. I like my privacy and I can’t read unless I’m alone.
6. I refuse to sleep on the floor. I like my bed, thank you very much. And I like two pillows and a sheet. I’m finicky and I don’t try to hide it.
7. I’m happiest falling asleep next to the same woman every night and waking up next to her. And if I remember her name, that’s great too.
8. I’ve written some interesting songs, but I can’t always remember how to play them.
9. I’m far too much Apollonian and not enough Bacchanalian.

To find out more about Skybox, click here.