Buenas tardes, mis peeps fabulosas/os! Estoy muy ocupada. But we’re all bizzy. Whatevah!

So here I am on my way to LA for the faboo Book Expo America. I’ve heard as many as 37000 people go to this thing, so maybe I’ll be able to do some networking. Holy hell, one HOPES I’d get some of that done at a venue like this! DUH!

All right. So I left my base camp around 12.30 PM MST and la la la I’m driving along U.S. 285 headed south through Alamosa, Colorado. Things seemed fine. Then about 20 miles outside Española, New Mexico the car I was driving started making a most heinous noise and I got a Very Bad Feeling. I said to the car: “20 miles, pal. Get us to Española.” The most heinous noise increased, as did my Very Bad Feeling, which had progressed to a Holy Shit What’s Happening To My Car feeling.

The car did get me to Española, and I pulled into the parking lot of a Motel 6 where I discovered that somewhere between Alamosa and where I am currently writing this, all of the car’s transmission fluid had disappeared. Like this country’s budget. POOF. Well, the car had just been serviced two days ago and the mechanic had said he’d drained the transmission fluid.

uh-oh.

Pray tell, sir, did you remember to 1) replace said transmission fluid? and 2) tighten the bolts on that pan thingie (technical term) where the filter sits?

At this point, nobody’s sure. All I know is I hoofed it a while to get to a place that actually had some t-fluid to sell. So I poured 3 quarts in, thinking the guys just hadn’t replaced the fluid. I waited a few minutes, checked the car. Seemed okay. Tried backing up and driving forward a little bit. Nope. Still the most heinous noise. I got out of the car and as if the vehicle had been in some kind of Butch and Sundance showdown, where it had hunkered in a canyon as the sheriff’s posses opened fire and a spreading pool of pink fluid stained the parking lot under tire and the car gasped out, “Ah took a direct hit, Andi. Ah cain’t make it. You go on without me” and it bled its fluid onto the asphalt.

I patted it on its tender fender. “It’s okay, ol’ paint. You did what you–HEY! Wait a minnit! I CAN’T go on without you! DAMMIT! HOLD ON!”

So I went into the Motel 6 lobby to chat with the woman behind the desk. She’s older, and looks like she can probably trace her ancestry back to the first Spanish conquistadores who settled this valley. Now, Española isn’t that big a city. Maybe 12,000. So, given my experience with places like this, I figured she had to know somebody who would know somebody who would know somebody else whose cousin could fix my car, maybe even on Memorial Day.

And sure enough, she got on the phone and called her husband who gave her the number to Augustino. She called up Augustino, who still speaks Spanish and Spanglish mostly, and she explained the problem, infusing her conversation with terms like “ese” (”buddy” or “homie” in northern NM-speak) and phrases like “sí, soy esposa de TONY. (Yes, I’m Tony’s wife!–she rolled her eyes at me at that one and mouthed “MEN!”) in the sing-song, rolling accent that colors this part of the state, whether speaking Spanish or English. And then she called her sister-in-law who called somebody she knew, who always take their cars to Raymundo. I don’t really care who Raymundo is or even what his last name is. All I know is that he fixes transmissions and he might be open on Memorial Day. And chances are, María’s in-law’s friends aren’t going to steer her or me wrong. That just wouldn’t be bueno.

So a la mañana, we’ll see if Raymundo can help me out. Meanwhile, I’m chillin’ in this part of New Mexico and you know what? I’m just so happy to be back that even a bloody transmission isn’t gonna freak me out. I love the rounded, melodic accent in this lowrider-ridden bastion of New Mexico and the ties that bind the community to its historic Spanish past. I love that just 15 miles or so up the road I’ll be cruising through Pojoaque (po-HWA-kay) Pueblo and Tesuque (te-SOO-kay) Pueblo and about 10 miles past that, I’ll be in Santa Fe. And then Albuquerque.

A nice piccie of Pojoaque:

It’s true what they say about New Mexico. It gets under your skin, like the layers of dust that blow in from the high desert and leave a film of grit on your windowsills. New Mexico is as much a state of mind as a state, and I feel a strange fiery peace for the first time in 4 years.

No, I don’t have much luck with cars when I start on a journey. But that’s all right. As Garrison Keillor says, “nothing bad ever happens to writers. It’s all material.”

I hope y’all are having a nice 3-day weekend if you’re in the States. If not, I hope you had a great weekend. Take it easy and thanks for joining me vicariously in Travails of the Transmission. And for those of you in the path of those scary storms across Kansas and Missouri and on into Illinois, hunker down and stay safe.

Catch yuh on the flipside, yep.

Posted on May 25th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Havin' ISSUES!, Life, meaningful mundanities | No Comments »

WOOOOOOO Nelly!

Greetings, mis peeps, from the other side of the mountain. Mountains. Uh…continental divide. Or something.

Suffice it to say that I have finished something and am now embarking on other things, one of which involves a major-ass road trip to LA via the entire state of New Mexico on the way out and the entire state of Nevada on the way back. What sort of insanity is this? The usual.

So today, I’m thinking of pirates. But then, I’m generally thinking of pirates. All kinds. High seas. High deserts. High flying. Emotional, physical, and spiritual. Pirates, rogues, bandits, and outlaws. The stuff of which dreams and amazing novels and stories are made. The reason maps to scores of buried treasure are drawn, followed, and stolen. Ah, yes! Pirates! Behold, Anne Bonney:

Now THERE’S a tale. Bonney was born in Ireland sometime in the 1690s. Her parents immigrated to South Carolina, where they managed to scare up a plantation. But Bonney was a restless soul and she bailed from landed gentry life, hooking up with a small-time pirate named James Bonny (or Bonney–spellings vary). The two ended up in New Providence (Nassau, in the Bahamas), a veritable seething pit of pirate heaven. There, Anne dumped James and sailed with Jack Rackham, the pirate allegedly responsible for inventing the skull n’ crossbones and thus spawning myriad bad tattoos.

On board that ship, Anne met fellow woman pirate Mary Read, who was sailing disguised as a man. Legend has it that Read and Bonney became friends and raised holy havoc across the Caribbean. To which I say, “you GO, girls.” Pirate lore, however, says that both ended up captured by the Bahamian governor’s pirate-hunters. Rackham hanged. Both Read and Bonney were apparently pregnant and escaped the noose because of that though Read died of a fever in prison, waiting for the birth of her child after which she would be hanged. Nice. “We can’t hang a pregnant pirate, but gosh darn it, we’ll hang her AFTER!” That’s probably where baby pirates come from. Imprisoned mothers treated badly. Anyway, Bonney disappeared and the record remains unclear as to where she ended up or what she did.

See what I mean? Fascinating stuff, pirate-teering. Nasty, brutish, vile, evil, heinous people, most pirates. So why, then, do they capture the imagination of so many people? I mean, I don’t want to string somebody up and remove their entrails through a hole in his or her neck. Nor do I particularly want to pull people’s fingernails out in order to acquire yet another treasure map to yet another deserted island where the damn iron chest is buried under the 5th palm tree at the foot of the dormant volcano beneath the shadow of the monkey-king idol 19 paces from the crossed sword emblem chipped into the boulder beneath the idol. Or wherever the hell it was stashed.

But what if…

What if pirates weren’t so bad? What if a couple were kinda good? What if they were sort of sexy, too? And dashing and interesting and…well, okay. Roguish. But in a sultry or maybe debonair way, depending on your proclivities. And what if they became pirates because they were forced by circumstance to do so and they try to steal only from evil British or French government ships and give some of the loot to the poor. Like seafaring Robin Hoods or something.

Yeah, what if? And that, my friends, is why pirates embed themselves in the wandering souls of writers. That’s why they dig at the buried psyches of our own internal treasure chests, reminding us that there’s a world outside our windows.

So I spent today thinking about pirates. And about Anne Bonney and Mary Read. And Calico Jack Rackham and maybe even Blackbeard. And I thought, “what if?”

May you live more of your life asking just that question.

Posted on May 21st, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Andi's Take, Life, meaningful mundanities | No Comments »

All right, so I’ve been working on this goofy-ass project for about a month and it requires that I get some action figures (as opposed to get some “action,” which is a whole ‘nother kind of thing). That is, the 12-inch articulated kind of action figure. You know. Like GI Joe only not.

So I’m thinking “hey, okay. Let’s see what’s out there.” I needed action figures that aren’t affiliated with movies or TV shows. Just some “generic” kinds of action figures. Granted, I grew up playing with action figures. Stereotypically, my sister went for the Barbie variety while I gravitated toward the Luke Skywalker/Han Solo kinds of action figures. It always kinda pissed me off, though, that female action figures were basically like barbie dolls with limited range of motion, lame-o vacuous expressions, and clothes that just did not lend themselves to saving the galaxy, invading secret Mayan strongholds, or doing some international ass-kickin’.

Well, slap my booty and call me a mass-produced chemical composition. Things sure have changed since 1975. I discovered that there’s a brave new world out there with regard to action figures and FINALLY female figures kick ass. There’re also a ton of clothing and accessories you can buy to fully outfit your kick-ass female action figure and prepare her for her myriad adventures. These are definitely NOT your grandparent’s action figures. Check it:

The outfit she’s wearing is called “Saturday Nite Fights” and you can find it and others at Triad Toys, which provides clothes for action figures. Mostly female. And these are some bitchin’ threads, all. Behold “Knight Runner,” here:

Or how about THIS one?

“Yeah, I may be plastic and 12 inches tall, but I am going to KICK YOUR ASS with my tiny ninja sword!”

And this s*** ain’t cheap. That Knight Runner outfit? That’ll set you back about $25 U.S. And a ninja outfit? About $32 U.S. It costs almost as much to outfit your action figures as it does to buy yourself clothing. I did a little price check and found some tiny sunglasses (modeled after Oakley and Ray-Bans and that kind of thing) for $5. TINY PLASTIC SUNGLASSES, friends. Five bucks. Hell, you can buy those for yourself at one of those cart vendors in Venice Beach for that price.

Okay, so yeah. I had to get my action figures some outfits. After all, I’ve got to keep up with the plastic Joneses, here, and make sure my little plastic charges look good AND can kick some ass. But they’re gonna have to make do with just a few outfits each. And only one pair of sunglasses each.

This girl’s gotta eat, after all. And save up for some more action figures.

Posted on May 4th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Andi's Take, meaningful mundanities | No Comments »

Ever have one of those days where you get kinda frustrated because you’re trying to figure out how to deal with new blogging software and you kinda know intuitively what you need to do but the coding sort of escapes you and you try all different combinations and your head starts to feel like it might explode because you’ve tried every conceivable angle except the one that works and before you know it you’re writing these massive run-on sentences…

Yeah. Like that. What IS it about wanting to get a blogsite set up that can consume almost all your life, time, day, resources, and natural-born children? If you had any, that is. Or resources, for that matter.

So I spent the day wrestling with WordPress, which is sort of like “Dancing (-es) with Wolves” except I would have had better luck with the wolves.

Now, let’s not get too carried away. These here blogs run off WordPress and that’s fine n’ dandy. I like using WordPress to do the actual blogging, since it’s pretty easy to figure out. It’s the dinking around with templates and &#^*&^%&*#* like that…THAT makes me a little tired. Okay, a LOT tired. And when you spend a good chunk of your day dealing with the SAME little issue–a matter of trying to figure out how to code a link–rgh.

Yeah, I know. I’m doing something wrong. I know that. I accept that. Because HEY I’m good enough and I’m smart enough and darn it, people LIKE me! Or something. Anyway. Yeah, blogging. Wooo. The greatest thing to hit the internet since Al Gore invented it. Well, Al, if you’re not too freakin’ busy, could you stop by this week and code this (*^@&*&*%^(*#&%( link for me?

Anyway. May you all have a fabulous week and remember, the most interesting things can happen when you least expect it. Like, maybe me figuring out this software…

Posted on April 27th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Havin' ISSUES! | No Comments »

All right, I don’t pretend to be the world’s greatest mountaineer. That’s a job I leave to qualified professionals and assorted wildlife. However, I am a pretty outdoorsy and active person, so I figured I’d be okay on the hike my colleagues dragged me on yesterday.

Bless my heart, as they say in the South.

First, I haven’t done a hike like that in about 4 years, because the hills in Middle Tennessee look something like this:

Look beyond the bovine-type wildlife. See how the ground kind of slopes up? Okay. Now compare to this:

Just sayin’.

Not to diss some of the hills in Middle Tennessee. There are some good ones. And of course the Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee are another matter entirely. Anyway, my point is this: I’m in pretty good shape. I’ve been running out here since January, getting acclimated to the altitude again. I ain’t no pushover. But holy hell, yesterday kicked my ass! I made the summit–dragged my happy butt up there, after several pitched battles with scrub oak, mud, snow (yes, snow still lingers up there), and a pissed-off cactus.

But by god, I did it. Me. Fifteen years older than my outdoor-livin’ and lovin’ colleagues. So damn right I got up there and did a serious butt dance to commemorate the event. And then we went down. A hell of a lot faster than we went up. So every muscle I ever thought I might have in my body got put to good use. Today I feel like somebody hitched me to a team of sled dogs and ran the Iditarod. Without a sled. SO not a special feeling.

So here I sit, popping ibuprofen like pez, wondering if it’s possible to sprain your butt. And I think “what the hell was I doing up there?” And then I remember the astonishing view across the North Fork Valley, where the border between earth and sky is marked by mountains and on a clear day, like yesterday, you can see the San Juans and maybe, if you look really close, you might even see the deep-down parts of yourself, and feel how the wind can knife right through your clothing and your skin and sandpaper across your bones. And you might see the way life and death close a circle, in the carcass of a deer melting into the hard mountain soil and the track of a cougar on the summit’s ridgeline.

And talking to friends and colleagues afterward, watching antelope steaks and salmon cooking on a grill, I raised my glass and toasted the way the rhythms of predator and prey and seasonal changes feed me, body and soul, and I breathe deep and smell spring in the new buds of trees and the rich odor of wet earth and I remember that cougar track and I know that maybe on some other day, I’d be like that deer carcass, leaching my blood and body into the dirt of a snow-carved wash.

Yeah, it was a hard-ass hike. And yeah, I almost didn’t go to the summit of the peak. But something made me do it, something made me haul my butt up there. And in the wind and cold and on the cloud-shadowed spine of that microcosm of the world, I think I saw some of the deep-down parts of myself.

Thanks for stopping by and happy hiking, y’all.

Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Andi's Take, Life | No Comments »

Bienvenidos, mis peeps, a mi casa loca.

This week’s “deep thoughts corner” deals a bit with acceptance, freak out, and inner weirdness. In other words, pretty much what most of us do all the damn time. I’ve been thinking a lot about things like the past and how heavy it can get if you carry it around all the time and I thought I’d explore that a bit here. So if you’re expecting a stroll through my usual zombie-fied corners and intergalactic portals, you may be disappointed. However, it is a little skip through allegory-land, a place I’ve been visiting quite a bit since that whole hoo-ha with the imaginary friends (refer to “Fake Friends” blog).

All rightie. C’mon, Grasshoppa!

Read more…

Posted on April 13th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Andi's Take, Life, Therapy Corner | No Comments »

MIS PEEPS! How are you? Here’s hoping you have a fabulous week.

Some of you may have to do some traveling. Business, pleasure…for the hell of it. Well, it has come to my attention that I am currently living in a part of the country that offers an alternative to those annoying travel websites. No longer do you need to call up _________[insert annoying travel website here] and slog through endless options, trying to find just the right price only to realize that there are 14 connections involved and that you’ll be routed through Argentina to get from Denver to Boston.

Helpful tip from yers truly, livin’ large in da holla: interdimensional portals. Yep. Right here in western Colorado. Avoid those annoying “extra fees” tacked onto your plane tix. The “security fees.” The “what the hell can I and can’t I take in my carry-on?” The long security lines. And don’t EVEN worry about how many tiny-ass bags of peanuts you’re gonna get.

>p?Because you can bypass all of that and access a portal to…well, we’re still working out the kinks on that. But I’ll bet wormholes are cool this time of year. Anyway. I’m always looking for travel bargains and cheap fares. Why? Because I AM cheap, dammit. Less money on actually getting some place means more money to enjoy yourself when you get there. Whether it’s food, drink, a place to stay or…well, whatever.

So I think I might be checking out these “portals.” They don’t ever go down for “maintenance.” They aren’t ever delayed (no word yet on how often and where they’re open–hmmm, kinda like airlines…), and no matter what you take through it, you’ll probably end up butt-ass nekkid on the other side, anyway. Did you see the original Terminator? Any time you make a leap through some kind of portal, you’re nekkid on the other end. And in the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Same thing. Nekkid on the other side of a portal. Think of the money we’d save on security if we implemented interdimensional portals at airports. I’ll bet they’d let you take those bigger-than-3-oz.-tubes through.

So if you’re looking for a bargain and you don’t really care where or when you end up, join me on Grand Mesa. At the very least, it’s a nice view of the night sky. And no, you don’t have to get nekkid BEFORE you go through.

“Uh, you first, Jim. You look better nekkid then Vulcans do…”

Posted on April 6th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Andi's Take, meaningful mundanities | No Comments »

Greetings, mis peeps.

The web can be a powerful tool. And as with any kind of tool, it can be used for good or for not-so-good things. I’m sure everybody here has some kind of story about somebody “freaky” they met online. And also some stories about some pretty cool people they’ve met there, as well.

Writers use the web quite a bit. Not to suggest you don’t if you’re not. But in the changing world of publishing and promo and networking, writers tend to be online a hell of a lot. And because we all want to believe the best about people, maybe some of us take a little too much for granted when we’re cruising around out there in the ether as “virtual selves.”

This is a tale, dear readers, about love, loss, and life. It’s got a little of everything. And I hope it serves as a warning, reminder, and maybe confirmation about the importance of following your instincts and doing your homework.

So get yourself a cup of coffee or tea or whatever you feel like drinking. Settle in. Put your feet up. And let me walk you through some dark corners of the net. Click the link below. It’s a convoluted tale, a little longish, and not as “blog-like” as some people might like. Not so much “sound-bite” culture as it is “about culture.” Online and offline, I suppose. Anyway. My tale awaits below.

Read more…

Posted on March 30th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Freak Shack, Havin' ISSUES!, Life, Therapy Corner | No Comments »

Did you ever wake up one day and realize that “hey, the last 3 months have been entirely too insane”? And maybe you thought about taking a break or building that tiki bar in your back yard so you could watch all the games during March Madness pretending you were on the beach in those beer commercials, but you got caught up in hoo-ha that might mimic what Dante envisioned in the various levels of hell.

Or, alternatively, you realized that you were living life in a Dali painting. Like maybe the one at the other end of that link there. Everything seemed outta whack, but you kind of recognized some of the elements of it all because they looked remotely recognizable. They just weren’t quite…right.

And because you woke up in some Spanish surrealist painter’s dreamscape, it makes perfect sense to go Yeti-hunting and then do a little fishing in Loch Ness. Why the hell not? Maybe even try a little golf on the Moon while you’re at it.

“Trippin’” thus can involve multiple meanings. One, you’re, like, TRIPPIN’ and you totally need to chill. Translation: your perspective is way skewed, dude, so let’s assess. Or two, you’re taking a trip somewhere. Like maybe to the Himalayas to get a picture of an elusive hairy creature that roams the upper reaches of the icy, windblown, largely inaccessible but somehow alluring mountain crags. And three, things are so entirely freaky that you just stop one day and think: “whoa. I’m trippin’.” And yes, it’s entirely possible to trip in different ways all at once. If you can do that, you, too can be a surrealist painter.

I bring this up, dear readers, because as spring…well, springs, I strongly recommend the number two option above with regard to trippin’. That is, travel. Go somewhere. If you can’t/won’t, try something new and different where you live. Turn your stereo on really loud and have a dance party on your porch. Teach your dog a new trick. Teach yourself one. Buy that leather jacket you’ve been thinking about getting. Or get that tattoo that’s been calling you. Watch a sunset and then read a new murder mystery.

GO trippin’, rather than BE trippin’. That’s an important distinction. Make your verb active rather than passive and open some possibilities. Like, say, that fishing trip to Loch Ness.

But dance parties on your porch are nice, too.

Posted on March 23rd, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Freak Shack, Therapy Corner | No Comments »

You have SO got it. Don’t EVEN try to lie. C’mon. You’ve got Colbie Caillat on your iPod and you’re dreaming of West Coast beaches and your beat-up cargo shorts and Birks and you tell yourself that this is the year you fall in love with yourself, the year you move to LA and learn to surf. The year you get out of that rut you’ve been in, pack up your vehicle, and just drive off toward the sunset. Or maybe the sunrise.

And then you look out the window at the gray, shitty weather and the snow floating to the street below and you think: “jesus god WHEN is this going to end?” And you go to your closet and you put your shorts on ANYWAY and your Birks and your tee and you dance around the house singing along to Colbie because your body, friends, KNOWS it’s spring time. And you cannot deny the natural rhythms of the world. In this hemisphere, north of the equator, it’s spring time and every little cell that fires messages through your infrastructure knows it. They’re ready for a beach party.

As am I. Sign me up. I know every freakin’ song on Colbie’s first album and yeah, I’ve been wearing shorts in the house since February, desperate for the first hints of warmer weather, for the presage of summer. Desperate to get on with it, to shed the baggage that winter seems to hide in your closet.This past winter has worn me down in a lot of ways. It’s left me empty at times, trying to make sense of life and how fragile it is, how things can change in the space of minutes and how everything you thought you might have a handle on you suddenly realize isn’t your damn carry-on anyway so you let it go, leave it on the tarmac as you board a flight that you don’t have a ticket for.

Sometimes you’re left to your own devices in the middle of uncharted territory. This past winter has been a topography I know in some ways, but I don’t recognize in others. It’s the buckled and blasted western vista of myself, terrain at once familiar but also different than the last time I traversed it. Parts of it have a hell of a great view. Other parts…not so much. But that’s okay. It’s spring time, after all.

Time to reassess, rejuvenate, reacquaint. This spring IS the advent of my new year, the recognition that yeah, I’ve got work to do and things to sort through. I have some grief I need to acknowledge and lives I need to celebrate, including mine. This spring, more than many others, I feel the stirrings of new beginnings and the solidity of knowing the road I need to take.

So I’m taking this old baggage out of the car–I don’t need it anymore. And I’m bringing the things that serve me best and reflect the inner reaches of my deep-down. I’ve got my camping gear, too, just in case. And my mountain bike. Oh, and look at this. A surfboard.

I’ve always wanted to learn to surf.

It’s spring time, after all.

Surf’s up, y’all. Let’s go.

Posted on March 15th, 2008 by Andi
Filed under: Life, meaningful mundanities | 1 Comment »