Monday I received an email from Deborah that our friend Ramon had suffered a heart attack the previous Friday. He was scheduled for open heart surgery Tuesday morning. Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez is well known in San Antonio as an artist, culturist, Chicano activist, and a spiritual leader and elder of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation. I expect he’s known to some through my blog. I spoke this evening with his former wife, Gloria Vasquez. She’d spent the day at his side, along with her three children and her and Ramon’s extended families. The surgery is over and as of last night he was still in intensive care. I hope for a complete and speedy recovery. I’ve seen Ramon on so many occasions sharing a ceremonious Indian blessing with sage smoke and words of deep truth, and so, at the risk of tarnishing my street cred as a confirmed agnostic, I’d like to think that the entire city is returning all those blessing. Ramon is one of my favorite people, and I expect to see him soon at some art or cultural event slyly whispering some inappropriate off-color comment that only those standing near can hear, causing me to unexpectedly snort and chortle as the canapé-set shoot me admonishing glares over their trifocals and the rims of champagne flutes.

See you soon, Ramon.

Here’s a favorite portrait I took a couple years back of Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez, the man, the myth, the legend.

@@@@@

An unfortunate event has fallen on my friends in Redford, Texas.

My sister has been emailing me links for the last few days to news stories about the flooding in southern Presidio County. It sounded bad, and I would click over to the links and read the articles with squinted eyes, afraid I might see the name of someone I know from the region who had been swept away.

Heavy rains had swollen the arroyos in the region, but the real problem was the rising waters behind several reservoirs up the Conchos river in Mexico. There are little in the way of flood control systems, and when the waters crested the dams in Mexico, the waters rushed towards La Junta, that region where the Rio Conchos joins the Rio Grande at the international boundary where the Mexican city of Ojinaga faces the American town of Presidio.

It’s the worst flood in the region in recorded history. The international bridge is shut down. Dozens of farming communities in the flood plains of the Conchos and the Rio Grande have been swallowed up.

But it was the little farming hamlet of Redford I was concerned about. It’s on the Rio Grande sixteen miles downriver from the town of Presidio.

I finally broke down this morning and called Enrique and Ruby’s home phone number. I was surprised that someone answered the phone. I’d assumed that the entire village had been evacuated and I would have to call up their friend Roberto in Presidio to track them down in some FEMA trailer in Shafter or something. Ruby answered. And a couple of minutes later, with her on one phone, and Enrique on the extension line, the years melted away. It was back to those long and languid nights when I lived in Redford over fifteen years ago and we’d drink cappuccinos and talk of philosophy, science, literature, and local gossip. Since living there I probably haven’t visited more than once every two or three years — I hadn’t spoken to these important friends in about a year and a half. But soon we were on the conference call vibe chattering about Coen Bothers movies, the Large Hadron Collider, Schopenhauer, Herman Melville, Enrique and Ruby’s recent trip to Berkeley to talk at a scholarly symposium about the goddamn border wall, and eventually we got around to the big flood.

Enrique, in his slow and laconic manner, explained where the flooding was making trouble. There were swollen arroyos flooding the river road in both directions. Traffic couldn’t go to either Lajitas or Presidio. Enrique did explain that there was a rutted jeep trail that 4-wheel drive vehicles could travel from Presidio, but it was pretty rough going. They had been receiving their mail and emergency food via helicopter. I think we were talking about Melville (or maybe string theory) when Enrique explained that he heard the daily helicopter, and they would have to head out to check the mail and get supplies.

Below is an aerial photo lifted off the Presidio ISD website. The building at the lower left is the Redford elementary school. Just a few feet further below the image is FM-170, the only road through town. The school is directly across the road from Enrique and Ruby’s house. That big region of brown at the top would be the flood waters. The river is usually a quarter of a mile away.

I plan on visiting Redford for a week or two in early November.

Expect an update.

@@@@@

This coming weekend will be the fourth time I will have attended the annual Manhattan Short Film Festival at URBAN-15. This year there are twelve films from ten countries. So come on out.

I’m going to be there both Friday and Saturday night. You’ll see me selling popcorn, pouring out complementary aguas frescas, tearing your ticket, hell, I might even be running the projector. This is best annual short film festival I have ever attended. It never disappoints. You also get to vote for your favorite film.

Click over to the website and read about the films:

http://www.msfilmfest.com/

You can now order tickets for the Manhattan Short Film Festival online through the URBAN-15 website:

www.urban15.org

Or go straight to the ticket site:

https://urban-15-group.ticketleap.com/

Of course, you can also buy tickets at the door.

WHO: Why, you, or course.

WHAT: Manhattan Short Film Festival.

WHERE: URBAN-15 Studios, 2500 S. Presa / San Antonio, TX / 78201.

WHEN: September 26 and 27 at 8 p.m. (either night — Friday or Saturday — you can see all twelve films: two hours of films, with an intermission in the middle.

WHY: Must you ask?

See you this weekend!

Earlier in the week I attended an advanced screening of Chris Eska’s “August Evening.”  It’s a smart, beautiful, and sensitive film (and not deserving of the shit review it received from the San Antonio Current).  I’m going back again tomorrow (Sunday) to show my support.  The distributor is waiting on the opening weekend audience numbers before fully committing to getting Chris’ film out into more theaters.  Sunday is the last day when the people in San Antonio can vote on this film with their pocketbook.  Come on out with me and $how your love.  I only hope that others would do the same for any future film I might make and then struggle to get into the market.  I also hope that San Antonio filmmakers (and those in town wanting to become filmmakers) will hurry out and see what can be done with: 40 thousand dollars, a clear purpose, and love of the craft.

A “shifting baseline” is a concept found in science and statistical modeling.  It’s often used to describe current systems whose behavior is different than that of the past.  For instance, the initial use of the term was in a fisheries study where the researcher found a need to show the deviation between the current population of a species of fish in a given region to the population level that had been previously encountered before human exploitation.  Back when  Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for 7 thousand (or whatever the amount was), many of us were so enamored by the wonderful product created for so little money that we all helped as midwives to bring about this inane period of budget fetishism.  And thus began the race to the bottom.  The bottom line.  The baseline shifted, each year, to a lower and lower budget.  After the digital revolution, it became moot.  We began to hear about filmmakers who were acquiring equipment by buying it from Best Buy and shooting the film in 30 days so that they could return the camera for a full refund.  These sorts of stories became the central kernel for so many press releases of low-budget films being created.  I only wish more of these films were worth watching.

What I would hope is that we let that micro-budget independent film baseline shift back towards aesthetic value.  Because the truth is, if you make a feature-length narrative movie for under a hundred thousand dollars that knocks my socks off, I could care less if you made it for 90 thousand or 9 hundred.  Why?  Because you probably fucked a few people over along the way.  If you make a feature narrative on film or HD and pay people a living wage for their work on the project, most likely the budget is going to start shooting up fast.  A hundred grand soon ain’t nothing.

Let’s have two baselines for independent features.  One for the cash-strapped under-funded underdogs who make heart-achingly beautiful pieces of art.  And another for the savvy first-time filmmaker who wrangles a shitpile of cash and spreads it around to all his or her colleagues within the community.

I want people to see “August Evening” so they can applaud a perfect example of the former.  This is unabashed art which has bubbled up from a disciple that so often strains to become simply entertainment.

@@@@@

Around six I rode my bike downtown to Travis Park for the annual Jazz Alive free concert.  I’d never attended it  before because I love jazz, and most jazz performed for the hoi polloi is to real jazz as a Hostess Ding Dong is to an eclair.  I decided to go because URBAN-15 would be performing.  Also, I was almost curious to hear  David Brubreck, because he played with loads of folks I love … although I must admit that I have never found his compositions to be more than pretty and unchallenging.  I prefer my jazz gritty, scratchy, a bit dirty, and sometimes, yes, even ugly.  If I can understand the melodic structure, I want my fucking money back.  Give me Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayers, and Sun Ra back before he learned to say please and thank you.

I guess my Brubeck bigotry will continue apace, because I didn’t stick around.  I stayed only for URBAN-15 and a leisurely chat with my favorite waiter from Tito’s restaurant.  I would have lingered, but I’m not a fan of dense crowds, and, man, that park was packed!

After peddling back home, I got in my truck and headed over to my current grocery store, the La Fiesta on South Flores.  Maybe this says more about my social life than I care to examine, but it seems that I do my grocery shopping mostly on Saturday nights.

I found myself in a little sweet interlude that is usually lost to San Antonians not living on the south or west sides of town.  The woman working the register was being assisted by her daughter, who I’d clock in at about eight years of age.  She was kneeling up on the counter, bagging the groceries.  Mom was polite and reserved, but the kid looked up and gave me a nod.  “How’s it going?” she asked.  I let her know it was going good.  “Glad to hear,” she said, and began separating the items her mom slid down the counter.  She gave a running commentary as she worked.  “Eggs go with the milk and cheese.  The tomatoes — oh, they’re plums! — they go in here.  Oh, here are some tomatoes.  Same place.  Dish soap and laundry soap together.”  The girl turned to her mother and asked, in Spanish, something about a woman named Ofelia.  Her mom shook her head, placed a finger to her lips for silence, and touched her watch.  “La media,” she said, meaning, I assumed, that this Ofelia would be there at nine-thirty.

Kids in the work place doesn’t always mean child labor.  Sometimes it’s just a kid hanging out with her mom because a babysitter crapped out.  And I’m fine with that.  We should all be good with that.  So many businesses are anti-family.  Not La Fiesta.  Bravo!  La Fiesta is pro-family!!   But fuck HEB, the evil supermarket chain in town.  They hate you.  And they hate your family.  And I bet they cheat on the crossword puzzles.

And, below, for the Google search quote:

I, Erik Bosse, take my business to La Fiesta.  Shouldn’t you?

@@@@@@

Last night was the ¡Presente! show at the Centro Cultural Aztlan gallery.  This being September, and September being FotoSeptiembre(tm) here in San Antonio, well, the show was photography.

The place was packed.  Mombasa Code played a loose jazzy latino soundtrack to the evening.  And there were even artists not known for photography showing work, such as Luis Valderas, Sabra Booth, George & Catherine Cisneros, and Erik Bosse.  For those who missed it, try and make future shows at Centro.  Malena and Deborah are bringing in some excellent artists.  Besides, the openings always makes me feel like I’ve been embraced into the hippest family I never knew I was part off.  Centro wants to be part of your family, so come on out.

Here’s my photo from the show:

I’m littering my day with chores of procrastination.  It’s eleven pm and I’m writing a blog.  Things must be desperate.  What I’m supposed to be doing is working on my Artist Foundation grant proposal.  Oh, and preparing film proposal submission guidelines for the 2009 Luminaria Arts Night.  But, nope.  I’ve rearranged my living room.  I hesitate to say that I’ve cleaned it.  And I really should clean up this shithole I quaintly call home.  In fact, I had to turn away a fellow filmmaker yesterday.  All he wanted to do was use my place to prep his actors — wardrobe & make-up — but the truth is, I’m sick of seeing the raised eyebrows when people take a glimpse at this midden pit.  So, I’ve shifted the gyno examination table under the air-conditioner (and, as the charm of this playfully exotic piece of furniture has clearly diminished, I think I might contact the owner of our local annual haunted house — I’m sure he can put it to good use).  I then placed my sectional sofa with its back flush against the fireplace.  I won’t be using that anytime soon (actually, it’s a faux fireplace, and good, because the birds like nesting up there).  I moved my stereo from my breakfast nook (where my desk and computer are stationed — I had been running my amp and speakers into my computer for video editing, but because I not longer have a dependable video deck (or camera to use as a deck) the sound equipment had been going to waste).  It’s been  ages since I have felt inclined to play my hundreds of CDs.  Usually I connect, on-line, to a distant hipster radio station, or else I run the paltry collection of CDs I’ve bothered to rip to iTunes.  But this is nice.  I’ve fed into my five disc changer “White Light From The Mouth of Infinity,” by the Swans; “Tanglewood Numbers,” by Silver Jews; “Laser Guided Melodies,” by Spiritualized; “Waiting For the Love Bus,” by the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy; and “Terror Twilight,” by Pavement.  Put the lot on random rotation and there you go.  “Punks in the Beerlight” following by “Rosemary Davis World of Sound” and I think we’re onto something.  I’ve also pulled two of my bookcases out of my gigantic walk-in closet (which is actually the 3′ x 20′ central hallway down the middle of the house that I appropriated back when the other two apartments were untenanted).  I crammed all my books and bookcases in there over a year ago when I was shooting a scene for a movie.  Shit!  That was during the filming of the ill-fated (and poorly titled) “Leftovers.”  Man, that was the spring of ’07, I believe.  I am indeed a lazy bastard  Anyway, these four bookcases were made by Dallas artist Buddy Mitchell for the defunct Chelsea Books.  They were made to sit atop six foot tall  bookcases to take advantage of high ceilings.  There was a rolling ladder to get to these high books.  But by themselves, sitting on the floor, these cases come up to my sternum.  I usually stack them two high, but presently I have two of the cases pulled from my closet, and they are back to back, an island in the middle of this room.  I’ve always wanted a standing desk.  I placed my little ASUS notebook on the surface.  Plugged in the AC power cord.  Plugged in the mouse.  Plugged in the snazzy portable folding keyboard.  And then — what the fuck — I lugged in the chunky VGA monitor that came with the Gateway Computer I took away after the demise of the Aldredge Book Store.

And here I stand, typing away, serenaded by the dreadful poignancy of the Swans.  I’ve a brace of red votive candles illuminating the keyboard.  I’m leaning here at this ecclesiastic station fiddling with these empty rituals of typing and waiting and waiting for a deep inspiration worthy of this jury-rigged cockpit of this spaceship running far into midnight galaxies.  The fuel, or course, is a heady mixture of procrastination and mixed metaphor.

There was another ill-fated feature film I worked on, this one during the tail  end of summer 2006.  Two years ago this week, I do believe.  Now, as it was back then, we have hoards of butterflies flitting about Bexar County.  They are to Monarchs as Border Collies are to Lassie — drab miniatures.  I believe they’re called snoot-nosed butterflies.  They formed denser clouds back in ’06, but I’ve been finding wonderful pockets of them on bike rides out around the southern missions — Mission San Juan and Mission Espada.  There’s a spur of the bike trail that runs between Mission Park and Rancho Charro.  The mesquite and pecan trees make a shaded tunnel, and when you roll across the asphalt with the free-wheel bearings making their speedy metallic purr — tickticktick — the snoot-nosed butterflies, startled, lift off from the links of the wire hurricane fence where they were drowsing and they become jubilant confetti that refuses to settle.  And, I swear, there was one of the little fellas about a mile further south that raced with me — keeping pace, and I was going fast —  and he and I ran nose and nose for a hundred feet, easy.

One of the problems typing at this station is that I have no internet.  This notebook is enabled with wi-fi, but none of my neighbors are caring enough to provide me with an open wireless connection off which I might mooch.  I am learning how dependent I’ve become of Google, to function for me as a dictionary, style book, arbiter of idiomatic usage, and an all-around idea-generator.  It’s back to the basics.  Hell, I might have to poke around this place.  Where the hell is my dictionary?  As I recall, it’s red.

@@@@@

For those film fans in San Antonio who have been wondering when will a film come from here which we can be proud of, I have only to draw your attention to the Bijou theater.  Crossroads Mall.  You know, one of those Santikos joints where you can eat bad pizza, drink over-priced beer, and watch a movie.  The dates? September 19, 20, 21.  The film?  “August Evening.”

I still haven’t seen the film, but I know it’s the local-boy-done-good story of the last decade or two or three.

When was the last film of importance to have come out of San Antonio?  Maybe Pablo Veliz’s first two movies, back when he was relevant.  Yeah, that was back before he started making action films which one would assume were being ginned under the Ponderous Productions banner.

I have been keeping track of the feature films to come out of this city for the six or seven years I’ve lived here.  They’ve run the gamut of marginal to execrable.  Most, in the later.  Hell, I’ve crewed on some of those.

Perhaps it’s problematic to ask who will be the next Robert Rodriguez.  He’s an independent filmmaker, and we love him.  But sure as shit he ain’t no John Sayles.  What happened to you, Bobby?

But we have a hero, it seems, in young Chris Eska.  He’s from some small town a bit east of here.  And even though no one in the San Antonio film community seems to really know him, he’s done something so many of us want to do.  He created a feature narrative film embracing the quirky and beautiful essence San Antonio.  In short, an unabashedly regional movie.

And so, for those film fans in this town who want more than Double Daggers, The Innocence Saga, or the newest “intentionally bad” zombie or flick, plant your ass in a padded seat at the Bijou this coming weekend.

“August Evening,” I suspect that’s where it’s at, man.  That’s where it’s at.

It might be hurricane season for those poor saps living in the gulf coastal regions, but in my neighborhood it’s clearly sap season according to the pecan tree arching over my driveway.  My truck is currently encased in a mottled veneer of syrup.  Tonight I got out of my truck and leaned over the side rails to fish the grocery bags from the bed.  A gibbous moon, set in a mackerel sky, played behind the clotted clouds drifting aglow and to the west.  I had to peel myself off the side of my truck.  It took me back to boozy midnight breakfasts in Fort Worth at the Old South Pancake House where your forearms would adhere to the tabletop if you got too comfortable.

The trees know the seasons are changing.  And I too can sense it.  It’s been cooler in the mornings.  The summer is wrapping up.  I really need to put an end to these film events I’ve been coordinating.  They’re killing my summers.  Dammit, I want stress-free time to enjoy the endless sunny days and languid heat.

The Josiah fest is over, as is the 48 Hour Film Project.  In fact tonight was the final 48HFP conference call (though I still need to turn in my paperwork for my 2008 obligations to officially sunset).  But it all keeps chugging along.  I’m helping to get the word out for URBAN-15 for the Manhattan Short Film Festival which they are, again, hosting.  And then there’s the up-coming Adelante Film Forum, hosted by SA-NALIP.  As a member of the executive committee of the San Antonio chapter, I will be involved in some of the organizing.  Then there is Luminaria Arts Night.  I’m co-chair of the film committee.  It’s turning into a fairly serious commitment … and things are just going to get more hectic as the event itself approaches six months from now.

Did I mention that none of this pays?  It seems that all I ever do is attend meetings.

It helps that my sister wrangled me a temp gig as a “guest cataloger” for the Dallas auction house where she works.  Ten days of low-impact research & data-entry in the rare book department paid me as much money as two stressful months pimping the 48HFP.  I hope I can keep making periodic visits to the auction trough.

Monday night I headed up to the opening reception for the European Film Festival.  I’d planned to skip the EFF again this year because, two years running, it’s up on the far northside.  Call it the Boerne Film Festival and be done with it.  But for some reason I decided to make an RSVP phone call Monday morning and go see who might be attending the gala opening.  The upstairs bar was packed.  Of the 160 people mingling, I recognized seven people from the San Antonio film community.  Everyone else seemed to be poised (and posed) for the paparazzi (conspicuous by their absence).  The chocolate fountain chugged away on an adjacent table and waiters moved about dispensing free wine and mini quiches, but it took no great amount of time for me to feel topped-off by the desperate ambiance of abundant wealth.  Not even the delightfully hennaed toupee perched  atop a very familiar elderly man could hold my interest for more than half an hour.  I enjoyed an excellent wedge of baklava and washed it down with one of the most appalling glasses of iced tea it has been my misfortune to sample, and then I headed back to the southside, where a chocolate fountain is a scatological euphemism  and Chardonnay ain’t nothing but your co-worker’s baby’s mama.

@@@@@@@@

My friend Venus allowed me to share some wall space in her studio for last week’s First Friday.  She’s up on the second floor above the Jump Start Theatre in the Blue Star Arts Complex.  September in the San Antonio arts world is more properly FotoSeptiembre(tm), a chance to focus (so it were) on photography.  And therefore I printed up eight photos and framed them.  (Well, Deborah printed them up for me, and I owe her big time.)  The pieces were priced to move.  Yet they didn’t.  But Venus sold two of her postcard-sized prints for five bucks.  Perhaps that was the magic price point.

I could have expected a few of “my people” to have popped by, but they were busy on the other side of town with brisket and beer and wishing Andy Miller a happy birthday.  I can’t blame them.  Andy and Dar do parties right.

But not to panic, people.  My photo-dabbling continues into September.  I will be showing a photo in a group show at Centro Cultural Aztlan. “¡Presente!  Photography of the Present Moment.”  There will be work by dozens of photographers.  Many of the local luminaries, such as Arturo Almeida, Mimi Duvall, Ned Meneses, Kathy Armstrong, Ramin Samandari, Justin Parr, Sabra Booth, etc.  Come out to the opening reception. Friday, September 19th, 6-8 pm.  Eats, drinks, and music by Mombasa Code.

See you then.