PHOTOS: mediterranean revelry (part 2)

 

 

 

 

PHOTOS: mediterranean revelry (part 1)

SO many more to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

seemingly random selection

first post of several photos I overlooked in the past year or two, and reworked in color. hope you likey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goddamn Tourists: Running Downhill On The Cultural Curve

Lorraine scouting for secret beaches – photo by me

There is a beach, in Moulay Bousselham (a small town between Rabat and Tangiers on the Moroccan Atlantic coast) that my parents used to take my brother and I to, along with my Mom’s entire family. And because she is one of eleven siblings (therefore include their wives/husbands, plus all the resulting cousins), these were quite the family events. Moulay Bousselham was my favorite, and the one I wish I could revive the most. Two things fascinated me about that town, as a kid: the horizontally looping motorcycle show (one, sometimes two dirt-bikes racing around in horizontal circles inside a 30 foot diameter wooden cylinder, while you watched in amazement from above, wondering what had happened to gravity); and, naturally, there was the beach, with super strong water-streams, and super high sand dunes, which were SO MUCH FUCKIN’ FUN.

Earlier this week, I was laying down on the very same beach. We didn’t quite make it to the dunes, though. Time wasn’t our friend and we had to make it to Tangiers by sundown. By “we”, this time, I mean my friend Lorraine and our new acquaintances, Julie and Fatima-Zohra, on the second day of our impromptu, on-the-fly, budget road trip through the Moroccan north-west. That’s three girls and one not-quite-so-manly dude, which made for interesting situations at times.

That day, as I was taking a snooze on the Moulay beach, I heard the voice of a kid near me. “M’sieur, M’sieur!” Hmmm? “M’sieur, M’sieur!” Okay, what? Wait… what? This little dude was 12 years old at best when I looked up at him; he was miming a cigarette to me, pretty much asking me for one.

Let’s be clear. What bothered me wasn’t so much that he smoked, or that he lied about his age when I asked him. Many underprivileged children do that there, and that is the least of the problems they go through. Not that it should be disregarded either. I sent the little bastard off on his way empty handed and pissed off… What got to me, though, is a bit more selfish: he thought I was a Gaori – a local, benign slang for ‘Westerner’ – called me “Monsieur” and MIMED a cigarette; little fucker wasn’t even bothered to speak to me. To say that I felt out of place in a town I used to go to with my entire family would be an understatement. Moulay Bousselham isn’t exactly a touristic hub. Yet there I was, getting my tan on, with 3 French girls. Why the hell wouldn’t some kid, or anyone on that beach, call me “M’sieur” upon seeing us?

It was a small, bitter, yet predictable reminder of the big question mark surrounding how much I fit in inside my own country. This type of scenario would repeat itself in one way or another throughout the trip, in Fez, Seffrou, Tangiers, in various food joints, cafes or beaches along the way… Every once in a while I was to be reminded that I not only appeared as a tourist, I basically WAS one, and every time I attempted to shake the feeling off, take charge and talk to the locals like the local I was, things spun out of control: I would stumble on my words, completely mutilate some of them, my thoughts went back to what I was wearing, how I must’ve appeared to them; shit, I even had to rehearse some basic colloquialisms in my head before saying them out loud. The discomfort was obvious and apparent. At one point some less-than-subtle guy laughed out loud at how I butchered one particular word.

At the end of the day, I must admit that my Gaori trip-mates fared way better as tourists than I did as a local… Actually, they fared better than me, period. If I hadn’t just landed from 12 years in the US, I would’ve hid in the closet for months, out of shame…

Yet I have a feeling I should not only brace myself for more, I should pretty much embrace it. To my knowledge, I haven’t been able to assimilate Moroccan culture as my own ever since Punk Rock took over some 15 years ago. I mean, for fuck’s sake, why can’t I write this post in Arabic? Or even in French? I can’t! Not easily, at least. At this point in time, I may as well start referring to Morocco as ‘exotic’ and look out for camels and palm trees. My childhood memories are just that: childhood memories… Hey, at least I have those.

All I know is that you can’t beat racing down those sand dunes at full speed simultaneously with 25 or so family members, all holding hands. Even if we weren’t tourists then, we certainly looked like a bunch of absolute dorks, and I don’t really think anyone gave a shit.

So why should I?

Moroccan couple taking a dip at a small beach East of Tangiers – Photo by me

fort hood shooting coverage: thanks a lot, assholes

Photo by anonymous photographer

Thursday November 5th 2009. A day that will forever live in infamy.

…Or something.

At the Military Base in Fort Hood, TX on that day, Major Nidal Hassan, an army psychologist of Muslim conviction, had the fabulous idea of loading his arsenal and spraying about 100 bullets haphazardly in whichever direction he saw fit, killing 12 soldiers, 1 civilian, and wounding a couple dozen more unlucky passerby’s. What a flippin’ idiot.

So I want to, first of all, stress a few brief points contained in the above paragraph, then we can move on:

1) Fort Hood, TEXAS.

Hmm… Texas. The most liberal, tolerant and progressive state in the Union… What a surprise that this should happen in the home state of the Bush family, the death penalty, the dark side of Roe vs. Wade, and countless other manifestations of bigotry and intolerance. What a fuckin’ SHOCK. Never in our wildest dreams could we imagine that some dude would just go ape-shit in such a haven of tolerance and human decency as Texas, let alone in the ONE military post with the highest suicide rates since the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Fort Hood.

2) An Army Psychologist.

Once again: hmm… The US Army. The one army in the world with a brilliant record of treating it’s soldiers from the trauma and shock of their delightful tours of duty in bloody, war torn, fanatic infested areas. Here is an institution which has failed badly enough at treating it’s wounded and/or psychologically traumatized soldiers and veterans that it has engendered high-profile investigations, law suits, protests, and has discharged many soldiers (by the thousands, mind you) who have since gone to become severely depressed sociopaths, psychopaths, rapists, racists and (hey, whadya know!) religious fanatics and murderers. That is, of course, if they haven’t already taken their own life.

3) Major Nidal Hassan of Muslim Conviction.

Great. Now all we need to know is the guy’s name and his religion, to cry wolf and run around screaming “TERRORIST!!!!”.  As Yogi Berra famously said: it’s Deja Vu all over again…  Seriously though:  who the hell exactly is this dude? And if he DID have some link with radical Islamists, wouldn’t one think that he would have planned and executed a much more elaborate and thought-out rampage – as is the norm, usually, with Islamist cells – rather than look like the fucked up kid from Virginia Tech? Shouldn’t we know a tad bit more? The answer, obviously, is Yes. But you won’t hear it from your government (nope, not from Obama himself) nor from your shining “independent” media.

Ok, now we can move on.

PS: Make sure you check out the links. I know they’re easy to overlook, but they’re quite important.

PHOTOS: Beer, Kickball & Photography – Watching LEFT FIELD the movie

Photo publication: Chicago Reader cover page, Week of 02/26

LEFT FIELD the movie is out.

www.leftfieldthemovie.com

…which, in a deliberately fortuitous way (and vice versa) earned me two publications in the same week:

One for the front cover (!) of the Chicago Reader and the other for TimeOut Chicago,  two of the most prominent publications in the city. So I can’t really complain  In fact i’m rather psyched about it, and yet I have to maintain a certain amount of dignity and a low profile about this, for a number of reasons.

Left Field is about the very kickball league I belong to. It was shot mostly during the 2007 season as a way to portray a community of young adults in their late twenties to mid-thirties, shedding their social inhibitions and letting it all hang out every summer sunday at drunken kickball games. Essentially, the movie aims to show how commonly held perceptions of adulthood  can be, and ARE refuted once a week, through playing a game for children and consuming (and eventually abusing) life. But it also shows these kids are still able to maintain a sense of self, and a strong sense of community.

What the movie crew didn’t see coming, though, was the tragic accidental death of one of the league’s central characters, KC Haywood, who was arguably one of the kindest guys of the whole league and beyond. All of a sudden, the movie project ceased to be a mere portrayal of a community’s weekly debauchery: it showed how a group of degenerate punks come together in strength and humility in the face of tragedy. So needless to say that the movie is not only good, it is deeply relevant.

The strangeness of watching a movie about the very community you hang out with every summer is difficult to describe. Far from being any of the characters featured in the movie , I had the unique experience of being (mostly)  part of the league , but also part of the photo crew, and part of the audience in the sense that although these are people I know, I have never  gotten to know them this closely. It’s a tremendously confusing position to find oneself in, and puts me in the least likely category of people to be writing a review of the film.

So i’ll limit myself to sharing some shots from that season and from the film shooting. I feel that these photos – and I am infinitely thankful to Chris Batte, the film producer, for his support – have become part of the kickball community itself, for having been projected so many times and now published as the public face of the movie and the league. I have gotten the unique experience and honor to have a lot of these shots shown at the movie opening as well, and i’m incredibly thankful for anyone who has shown their appreciation on that evening. It goes straight to the heart.

These all go out to the memory of K.C. Haywood (R.I.P.)

I am also posting newer photos from the KC Haywood memorial All-Star game, which haven’t yet been distributed.

PALESTINE: A Message to the Israeli Government

To the Israeli Government (but NOT to the Jewish people):

“This scarf i wear, and that you threaten everytime you see it, this scarf that you use to frighten your dependents, that you abuse of everytime you wish to portray the idea of a threat… this scarf is all we have to protect us against your tear gas, it is all we have to protect us from the asbestos from the buildings you bomb, it is all we have to protect us from the fumes, the dust and the smell of death that you spread around our neighborhood… and it is all we have to cover the faces of those you have killed, women and children who have done you no harm, and kids in the street who know nothing of politics and whose worst crime is having hurled a stone at you.

You are a disgrace to the Jewish people, with whom we have lived in HARMONY, not just peace, for hundreds, for THOUSANDS of years, as Nomadic Arabs and Berbers, and as Muslim Arabs and Berbers, as Yemenese, Moroccans, Tunisians and on and on… Why all of a sudden are we mortal enemies??

YOU have CREATED this rivalry.We are not the enemies of the Jewish people, YOU ARE. Your arrogance and your unabashed display of military power reveals a superiority complex that is DANGEROUS and UNACCEPTABLE to ANY decent human being of ANY religion. People who have lived under South Africa’s apartheid government and who have been to Palestine denounce your government’s treatment of Arabs as FAR WORSE. And like that government, you will simply have to GO.

In the meantime, dear Mr. and Mrs. Israeli government, it is my duty, I feel, to lay down a biiiiiiig FUCK YOU, for preventing us from living in peace with our brothers and sisters of the holy land, MY fucking friends, not yours: the JEWS.”