Ernest Hogan's Blog, page 77

SEEKING SAN FERMÍN'S HELP WITH MY BULLFIGHTING NOVEL

Saint Fermin isn't a patron of the arts. His cloak protects against close calls, and I have plenty of those. And look what he did for Hemingway. Maybe he'll be willing to help another Ernest write a novel.

Luckily, in this day and age, I don't have to actually go to Pamplona. The interwebs have provided ways for me to take in the the fiesta and still be there for my shift at my day job. I am a Walter Mitty of the Information Age.
PETA's pre-fiesta protests were disappointing again. Gone are the days when they were like the climax to surrealistic, sadomasochistic spaghetti westerns. They brought back exposed breasts, but kept the black loincloths. And I noticed fewer participants. I would be sad if this tradition faded away.

Crowds getting out of control caused the Riau-Riau, a march of Pamplona city officials, to be canceled due to a near riot triggered by orgiastic behavior – women riding on men's shoulders, breasts shown and touched – after the opening Tuxpinazo rocket launch: the Tuxpinazo begins a high that for many people will last the whole week,according to SanFermin.com.
Attempts to ban fountain jumping did not curtail the dangerous activity. Some traditions can't be stopped.
In the first encierro, a bull hooked a man's shirt and bandana, dragginghim for 39 meters. It was like an old-fashioned men's adventure magazine story.
On the second day the bulls from Miura – infamous for killing matadors (one killed Manolete) – did a badass run, though there were no injuries. There were injuries during other encierros.

There were runners with cameras strapped to their heads, though I haven't seen any of their videos online yet. More women are running. And people of color. Also folks with gray and while hair. One guy had a red turban.
More and more, I see the aspects of a religious ritual: Some runners jump up and down like pogoing punk rockers while waiting for the bulls, while others sing to the effigy of Saint Fermin. There is a strong compulsion to touch the bulls, and run with a hand on the bulls back or holding a horn. Pagan bull worship is alive and well.
Some people cower in the awesome presence of the bulls. At the beginning of the encierro, you see them, hesitating, deciding not to run, or letting the bulls pass and running behind them. One guy with a camera strapped to his head froze, his mouth open, hands shaking beside his face as a horn cut by him. Others fell and curled into fetal position. Another crawled and tried to hide behind the legs of people who were frozen with terror, leaning against a wall.
I don't think any less of these folks. Here in the artificial environments of 21stcentury civilization, we lose touch with nature, forget what it can be like and how powerful it is. These people may have gotten scared, but they got face-to-face with the Beast. I congratulate them.

The final day was dominated by Juan José Padilla, back from having lost an eye when he was gored in the face. Now he wears an eyepatch. El Ciclón de Jerez now flies the skull and crossbones. He kills magnificently without binocular vision. The crowds treat him like a saint who was resurrected from the dead.
Gracias, San Fermín. I am inspired. The sci-fi/dystopian ideas are raging across my synapses.
It's all about crowd control. Which is mind control writ large. Which is what religion is all about. Politics, too.
That's dangerous territory. And that's where I need to be.

CHICANONAUTICA ASKS LATINOS ABOUT BULLFIGHTING

As part of the research of my bullfighting novel, in Chicanonautica at La Bloga, I'm asking Latinos what they think about bullfighting – though if anybody else has anything to add, come on down!
Unfortunately, most of the time when I bring up the subject, I get reactions like this:

Did you know that bloodless Portuguese bullfighting is legal in California? Here's how they do it in Thornton, to honor Our Lady of Fatima:

They also do Spanish-style bloodless bullfighting in South Texas:

And in Las Vegas:


Even though the bulls are not killed in the ring in bloodless bullfighting, after they get too smart and dangerous they are taken behind closed doors and slaughtered.
Like I've said, civilization is an unnatural act.

ERNESTO GUEST POST ALERT

I've done another guest post at The Future Fire's editors' blog: Scifiista Rumblings in De-Colonializing Aztlán -- dealing with fascinating developments among Chicanos, Latinos and science and/or speculative fiction that spawned some interesting activity at La Bloga. Hopefully, this will make some connections between the two blogs and their audiences, and spawn some visions of the future unlike any that have come before. So check it out, and start doing customized sci-fi in your barrio.

GETTING INTO SAN FERMÍN 2012

I will probably never run with the bulls in Pamplona. I'm too old, and my knees and ankles tend to give out when I run. I'm more of hiker, “a mountain goat” as my wife puts it.
This being the 21st century, I'm a virtual bull runner. The Information Age has made bullfighting a global activity, and the FIesta de San Fermín hasn't had such a boost since the publication of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I can go online and wallow in interweb coverage.
And I have in years past. Here are links to my San Fermín blogging:
Bullfighting: the Mother of All Artforms


The Mysteries of Saint Fermin

Wild in the Streets with Traditons and Mutations
Commercialized Paganism Online

Death Comes to La Fiesta

Running with the Bulls in Cyberspace

The Naked and the Pseudo-Naked on the Road to Pamplona

San Fermin: Bulls and Beyond

Chicanonautica Does San Fermin

Chicanonatuica: La Fiesta de San Fermín Online

Chicanonautica Does a Post San Fermín Show


Chicanonautica: ¡Viva San Fermin!

I'll be writing more on the subject, too, but this year is going to be different: I'm doing research for my bullfighting novel. There's going to be a San Fermín sequence – maybe more than one.
Just as Las Vegas has developed far beyond Hunter S. Thompson's wildest hallucinations, San Fermín has now made what Hemingway shocked the world with look like a quiet tea party. Straight reportage of it comes off like far-out dystopian satire.
If you don't believe it, check out SanFermin.com, for multimedia coverage of not just the runs, but all the other craziness – for those of you who prefer to “watch the realbeasts perform,” as Thompson said about the Kentucky Derby.
Those of you who prefer more artistic and reverent coverage can go to SanFerminEncerrio.com.
And the bullfights can be seen on Ferias Taurinas Online.
It'll be weird. I will be inspired.

CHICANONAUTICA CHEWS SCIFIISTA HOLES IN THE TORTILLA CURTAIN

This time at La Bloga, Chicanonautica attacks the cultural and language barriers that are keep science fiction in the Dark Ages, with links to some Spanish language ci-fi blogs, and a few others that will open portals into other worlds.
There was a time when science fiction from across the border were like these movies with the incredible Lorena Velazquez:

But times have changed, and Mexican sf is having it's own New Wave:

And of course, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra have been chasing sci-fi realities across assorted borders for some time now:

We may need to look to the Tamalli Space Charros Collective for clues to what we may soon be facing, not to mention what to eat on the new frontier:

MY WIFE, BELARUS, AND CORPORATE HAL 9000-IZATION

Flash! My wife has a new ebook out. Her novel Belarus. It's available through both Amazon,and Smashwords and has a sensational cover by Elinor Mavor.
For a limited time, get this ebook free from Smashwords!  Just apply coupon # RN55L when checking out.
This would have been a simple, short and sweet announcement, but as usual in this Disinformation Age, there are complications . . .
Belaruswas originally published under the pseudonym of Lee Hogan. The publisher thought it would sell more to the readers of military space opera if it the author's name was androgynous – and maybe they were right. The problem is, now Amazon doesn't want to link their Lee Hogan Belarus page  – with all it's great reviews – with the Emily Devenport Belarus page, even though they linked the Maggy Thomas Broken Timepage with the Emily Devenport Broken Timepage.
Yeah, it's complicated and confusing, and if I've learned one thing over the years in the writer biz, it's that these corporate entities have a tendency to go HAL 9000 on you.
What you the reader can do is write reviews of Belarus and post them on the Emily Devenport page, so more folks will buy it -- and maybe Em and I will have more time to write books rather than explaining the bizarre complexities of the transmorgrifying publishing world.
So please help. Besides, it's one helluva good book!

CHICANONAUTICA GOES SCI-FI REVOLUTIONARY

Chicanonautica (via La Bloga) is all about science fiction, evolution, revolution, chicanos, latinos, Zapatismo, and the decolonialization of our visions of the future.

It's not just writers: It can happen in movies, with reality catching up fast:


Why not? Hollywood has done its own take on Zapata:


And the leading Chicano Elvis-impersonator has endorsed the Zapatista movement:





So maybe we should let Subcomandante Marcos have his say:





With the globalization/decolonialization of science fiction, and multinational corporate sponsorship, this may just be the beginning:

FRANKENSTEIN PENIS FLASHBACKS

Just when you thought is was safe to read again, it's baaaaaaaack!
I'm talking about my most infamous story, The Frankenstein Penis, once again available for sale in the anthology  Love That Never Dies: Erotic Encounters With the Undead editied by M. Christian. It's an ebook, and a paperback is in the works!
This is probably a good time for me explain why I wrote such a bizarre story. Fortunately, I've done it before here at Mondo Ernesto. The saga of the story can be found in And the Great Penis Rip-Off Goes On , and I discuss the two student films – and have links to them so you can watch them online – in The Frankenstein Penis: The Movie(s), and More .


And even if you own Semiotext(e) SF , the May/June 1990 issue of Penthouse Hot Talk , the Brazilian Futuro Probido , or the unauthorized Greek cyberpunk anthology, you should buy Love That Never Dies. I've made some slight changes for this new edition for you obsessive types of look for. So reading it on Scribd is no longer enough.
There are also stories by editor M. Christian, publisher Jean Marie Stine, and Chris De Vito. 


Chris published a thoroughly deranged magazine back in the Nineties called Fuck Science Fiction (yeah, it was as crazy as it sounds). He also published – in a one-shot called Proud Flesh – a sequel to The Frankenstein Penis, called The Dracula Vagina .
No, The Dracula Vagina is not currently available. I guess all you fans of this degeneracy have something to look forward to . . .

UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF RAY BRADBURY

Pardon my gonzo here. The memories keep popping – exploding. I'm struggling to keep up. This is going to be more of a Picasso portrait than an academic landscape.
Hell yeah, he was an influence on me. When I found his work in science fiction anthologies in the library, they stood out from the pack and stuck in my memory. It was in one of his stories where I saw the term “son of a bitch” in print for the first time. I identified with The Martian Chronicles – when we moved from East L.A. to West Covina, our house was on a tract that was surrounded by empty, ploughed fields – it could have been Mars.
Thenthey showed us this film at Willowood Junior High, Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer. That office with walls full of books seemed like paradise (my house looks like that now – there are even lots of masks). That was the first time I got the idea that I wanted to be a writer, that I could be a writer – a dangerous thing to happen in an adolescent brain.
He seemed to be everywhere: Television, magazines, books . . . and he seemed to be on top of it all.
Then I found out that one of the weird science fiction magazines I was reading was published a block and a half away from my house. I knew the editor's son from school. My neighborhood had its own sci-fi publisher – anything was possible!
William L. Crawford – and his wife Peggy – published and sold books as well as magazines, and soon got into putting on science fiction conventions. Another world to explore. And Ray Bradbury was there.
Bill and Peggy knew just about every science fiction writer I could name. They were friends with Ray Bradbury, and others. At their conventions, I not only got to hear him speak, but sometimes had dinner at the same table with him and the likes of A. E. Van Vogt, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, George Clayton Johnson . . . my teenage mind was blown.


Living in California in the early Seventies, Ray Bradbury seemed to be speaking everywhere. Through both fandom and school I attended many of his lectures. They were always electrifying experiences – he had incredible energy that could get great, crowded halls of people excited. He was like his own fabled Mr. Electrico. I always left feeling that I could go out and do anything.
At the first Mount San Antonio College Writer's Day, he and Harlan Ellison arrived late – there was almost a riot.
Though known as a science fiction writer, he never let that limit him. He wasn't intimidated by Hollywood, New York, fine art, or “literature.” He could put down presidents before it became a national pastime. He was always trying something new, working in new venues.
And he was always a guy who liked comics and monsters.
Once he told me that he had just gotten a rejection slip. Afterwards, I went up and asked to see it.
“It's just like the ones they send me,” I said.
He autographed it and gave it to me.
It helped get me through my years of rejection. When I met Emily, I gave it to her. Later she passed it on to another writer friend.
In college, I heard professors talk about him as if he wasn't a “real” writer – that he was a kind of sideshow they would dangle in front of the vulgarians, hoping to pull a gypsy-switch and introduce us to “literature.” I wonder if they ever realized that it was they who were the sideshow.
I am still writing, and facing the future, under the influence of Ray Bradbury.

CHICANONAUTICA RETURNS TO LATINO ART

This time, Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga is about a double feature about Latino art I experienced courtesy of Latinopia and Barrio Dog Productions.



So, here's some background on the Mexican muralist movement:





An update on the state of América Tropical:






Some insight into Chicano aesthetics:






And how it all comes together in art the cruises the streets: