"I immediately notice that his education is poor before he speaks
He asks me for identification with an ugly expression"
Apache & Canserbero

I walked onto the set of Total Recall today, for the purposes of buying a new phone.  It looked like a mall, but it was the set of Total Recall.  Heavily-armed policemen guarded the doors, the walls, the escalators, any point of egress for any criminal entity of any kind, from any dimension.  I walked past a shop displaying a neon sign which read, "Be A Badass With A Good Ass," quote unquote, in English.  Jarring statements aren't as jarring when they're not in your native tongue.  The Christmas music and decor mixed with the warm weather and postmodern, hedonistic ideology gave the mall a strong L.A. vibe, and made me feel like I was an extra in Commando, in the scene when Arnold Schwarzenegger beats up all the cops and shakes David Patrick Kelly out of the phone booth.  I walked into the phone store and told the guy I wanted the cheapest phone in stock.  I was directed to a long counter with different numbered workstations, separated by partitions, like the DMV.  The guy behind the counter asked me for my passport.  I told him I was only buying a phone, and not planning on booking a flight from the set of Total Recall.  I didn't tell him that, actually, and gave him my passport, wondering why I needed to show a guy at the DMV a passport to buy a phone.  He was friendly, but it was weird.

I stood there in the DMV phone store on the set of The Running Man, and the security guard had his revolver out for some reason.  It was an old revolver, from a vending maching in the Wild West, and the security guard was pointing it down toward the floor.  His finger was NOT on the trigger, but he was at the ready.  I had no idea why.  The DMV phone salesman told me about the various monthly plans I could buy, and I pointed at one and he told me to go to the bank part of the telephone DMV store and pay the lady behind the wall of bulletproof glass.

I walked toward the bulletproof glass station, and befriended the guy in line behind me.  We commented on the strangeness of the security guy talking into his watch, and made jokes about the future which I didn't understand.  His Spanish was flawless, and I understood little of what was said.  Including by me.  But we became friends anyway, and I paid the lady behind the bazooka-proof security thing and went back to the check-in counter, where the guy turned his computer screen toward me and asked me which phone number I wanted.  He was friendly, as was everyone there.  It was weird, but everyone was really nice.  It wasn't hostile or aggressive at all.  The hostility was baked into the process itself.  I was only trying to buy a phone, and here we are looking at hairtrigger security guards with rusty 6-shooters and talking watches and bulletproof glass.  The devil is in the details, as they say.  A lot of plate, but not much coconut.

"So I notice, it's the same as talking to crazy people
Does not listen.  Lots of plate, but little coconut"
Apache & Canserbero

I took a short nap on my feet, standing at the DMV station waiting for the guy to actually sell me a phone.  Eventually, the impossible happened.  I exchanged money for a telephone.  It was hard to believe.  I went back to the apartment and tried to install the SIM card with the blunt, simian hand of an old-school practitioner of the hard, archaic-copy arts.  I couldn't figure out how to open the overpriced electric coconut with anything more complicated than a rock.  I considered cracking the shell by prying it open with a guitar pick, but there was no obvious prying-place, no way to access the battery without a passport or criminal background check.  It was aggressively displeasing.  Like being outsmarted by a stick of gum.  Or a monkey.  Or a rock.

"They are worse than inopportune blackouts
With a face that they haven't even put on breakfast"
Apache & Canserbero

My computer died last night, and I had to find a computer repair shop or buy a new computer, something I REALLY didn't want to do.  Fortunately, there was a repair shop on the way to the DMV Christmas mall, where they were selling phones in between shooting scenes from the Mexican remake of Robocop.  One of the things I like about Mexico City is that you can buy anything on the sidewalk.  The repair shop wasn't actually on the sidewalk, of course, but it was a shady-looking place with no door, only a service window looking out onto the street.  It was on the way to the set of the sci-fi telephone Christmas movie/DMV ticket office at the mall.  The interior of the shop was decorated with computer guts, and put me in an inexplicable mood for mechanical tacos.  The girl behind the counter was friendly.  She asked me if I spilled taco sauce or motor oil on my computer, which, in fact, I had.  She told me my computer would be ready in an hour.  I didn't hesitate to leave my computer in the presence of this undocumented technician, who didn't ask for any identification, and was the smiling storefront face of a streetside computer-evisceration company.  I only had one question.  I asked the girl, with the existential gravitas of someone walking on the moon, you marinate the chorizo in motor oil, right?

Por supuesto, gringo.  What does this look like?  The set of Total Recall?

My nonexistent fears had been assuaged.  I walked into the city like someone who escaped from the set of 12 Monkeys.   Finally, the future was behind me.

"L.A. is Jetsons buildings and Jetsons people
on a Flintstones landscape."
Pablo Smog

I was losing patience with my Jetsons device by the time my computer was ready.  I walked back to the repair shop and handed my phone to the mechanical taco vendor.  She configured it with ease.  Her fingers did a tapdancing routine on my phone, and I told her I felt like the Flintstones, or "Los Picapiedras," as they're known down here.  She laughed.  The other guy in the shop, the guy who obviously did the actual technical work laughed as well, and I told them if I ever had any computer problems in the future, I'd be back.  I walked into the Jetsons landscape like an outtake from Quest For Fire.  It was a blessed, successful day.

"So all the bugs stung, because they found nothing
We didn't give him a paticho, they couldn't beat us (Jaja)"
Apache & Canserbero

Canserbero was a Venezuelan rapper who was stabbed to death by his female manager.  She talked her brother into throwing him off a 10-story building after killing his friend, to make it look like a murder-suicide.  It's an interesting story.  Cool track.

I discovered this video a couple days ago, but apparently I've already heard of him.  I clicked on the video below, and was surprised to see that I'd already liked it.  So, I've discovered him twice.  When?  It isn't even now anymore.  When is it?  Then?  If it isn't now, it must be never.  Is this 12 Monkeys, or The Flintstones?  Maybe I liked the video in an alternate cinematic timeline.  Is that what happened?  Are we in Back To The Future 2 without knowing it?  Or did they just figure out how to digitize deja-vu?  The rabbit trail is actually a 10-lane highway.  There's a burning sofa in lane 3.  Pull up a chair.  We're having mechanical tacos, and refrescos.  The cops are blasting pre-Maduro Venezuelan rap while they're on patrol.  The sky is a giant breathalyzer.  Shall we huff these songs, or inhale them?  Haven't we been here before?  We have a digital record of events that never happened.

Jeremías 17:5, indeed.

Enjoy the show.

“Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth
in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose
heart departeth from the LORD."
Jeremías 17:5