Many years ago I used to play baseball now and then on the weekends with a bunch of guys at a field a few blocks from our house in Guatemala City. Among these was Jorge, a big dude who was our sandlot’s version of Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez. When he stepped to the plate, one or two of us in the outfield would climb through a small hole in the chain link fence and go wait out on the street, which served as a sort of McCovey Cove for us.

Jorge once went missing for a few weeks, and when he returned he was wearing a Dodgers hat and told us he’d been visiting his brother who was playing in the minor leagues in the Dodgers farm system. Hugo, I would go on to learn, was the first (and as far as I know, still the only) Guatemalan player drafted to play professional baseball - discovered, as it happens, by the same dude who found Fernando Valenzuela in Mexico years before.

In one of my Google-search attempts to follow Hugo’s career several years ago, I found an article from a Guatemalan newspaper, and since my Spanish was rusty-to-nonexistant at the time, I plugged it into one of those free online translators and what it gave me was nothing short of amazing:

Hugo Pivaral lit up with its curves and straight before the observers of the Yankees, Sailors, Gigantic and Mets, during the session of lanzamientos of yesterday in the diamond. The activity gathered to near 100 spectators, as well as to elements of press written, radio and television. The spectacle lived with intensity and all coincided in affirming: “I Hope Hugo achieve to go Large Leagues”.

“The adrenalina rose me al most maximum”, said Pivaral al moment of performing the exercises of straightenings. “In ten days will be known if I go or not to some of those equipment. I have confidence in achieving the dream of being in the great tent of the béisbol American”, he commented. The curves, to 77 miles for hour, and the quick balls, to 91, they left the sensation of security in the lanzador. “I felt myself well. Better than when did the first test. That it gave me confidence”, indicated finally.

Robert Engle, observer of the Sailors, of Seattle, of the American League, of the béisbol of the Large Leagues, of United States, recognized that the lanzamientos you done by the Guatemalan of 25 years, Hugo Pivaral, they were “good”.

There were hopes that he would continue the long line (five years at one point) of Dodgers who won the Rookie of the Year award, but he apparently got injured, which set him back, and unfortunately, just last year tested positive for doping at a Latin American tournament, though it seems there is some debate as to whether the positive test results were because of treatment he had received for his injury.

I’m not sure what became of Jorge. But someone of the same name appears to be the drummer in a Guatemalan nu-metal band called Disel.

Two guys are sitting on the twin black pleather chairs in the coffee shop. One has his feet kicked up on one of the metal chairs with a yellow seat cushion. The other guy also has a chair pulled over in front of him, which he uses to collect the slivers of fingernail he apparently forgot to clip off this morning.

Newspaper Guy occasionally grunts and lets out a monosyllabic laugh in a cynical, “figures” sort of way. Nail Clipper Guy, without looking up from his task at hand, then says what, but he says it without the voice inflection at the end like you’d expect in a question, instead uttering the one-word sentence as if it ends with a period. Newspaper Guy then summarizes/editorializes the latest article he has just read, about hassles with city government or the fellow who got arrested for dog fights or the disabled, elderly woman who died in her home after the power company shut her electricity off.

“Tell you what I’d do if that lady was my mom,” asserts Nail Clipper Guy as he slides the clippings into his left hand, “I’d sue that company for every penny they’re worth.”

“You’d have to find a lawyer,” mumbles Newspaper Guy without averting his eyes from the paper.

“I’d have no trouble there, believe me. Lawyers would do it for free. They’d line up. That’s what they did with my injury. They knew they’d win, big time. And they did.”

Nail Clipper Guy gets up with the clippings collected in his palm and makes his way to the trash can where he drops them in and wipes off his hand, then returns to his seat.

Newspaper Guy folds the paper in half and tucks it under his arm. “Someone just went in the bathroom. I’m watching the door and as soon as it opens I’m going in. Then I think I’m gonna go home and go right to sleep… after I take a shower.”

“Aren’t you going to play with your cat at all? Do you sleep with your cat?”

“Nah, man, I throw her out when I go to bed. I’m allergic.”

“Why do you have a cat in the first place, then, if you’re allergic?”

“Well, I’m attached.”

“When did you first get allergic?”

“Oh, I was allergic since day one.”

“So what happens when you spend time with her?”

“My eyes get puffy and itch like crazy. And I can’t stop sneezing. It’s bad.”

“Wow… well, I guess I’d have a hard time getting rid of her too. I know what it’s like to be attached. My cat is my best friend in the whole world. Damn, only real friend I got.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you this. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I see is my cat. She’s always there…

[pause]

…but I’m allergic.”

In this photo, Sara Isabel ponders the deeper meaning of life. Pretty impressive, considering it is her first day on the planet. Whether these ponderings occurred in English or Spanish is unknown.

August 28 can’t come fast enough.

Clean (Fortress Productions, copyright 2007)

This past weekend, for the second time in as many years, I was privileged enough to be a part of the 48 Hour Film Festival. There were 48 teams in Baltimore this year competing to put together the best short film humanly (and technologically) possible in a two-day period, so you can imagine it is a chaotic sort of thing.

At 7pm on Friday evening we learned that the genre we had to work with was Detective/Cop, and that we had to somehow work in a house painter, a character named either Glen or Glenda, a flag, and a specific line of dialogue: “I can’t remember everything.”

Having gathered at the Tress residence in Enola, PA with a group of very talented people (who are also a blast to be around), we collaborated on the story until after 4am, with our best ideas coming sometime after 3 when normal inhibitions get swept away due to sleep deprivation and copious amounts of caffeine. After about an hour of sleep it was time to wake up and get back to work.

We spent most of Saturday filming, between a farm house somewhere in the countryside in the general vicinity of Harrisburg, an old movie theatre in New Cumberland built in 1939, and then Porter’s Furniture in Lancaster, which is this fascinating multi-level warehouse that I highly recommend if you are in the market for, say, an antique refrigerator, a bird cage, a cigar store Indian, a Route 462 sign, or an incubator for a human baby with breathing problems.

Saturday evening until Sunday afternoon, for those left standing, entailed a whole slew of editing, as well as some last-minute filming, and the composition of an original score to accompany the film.

Tomorrow the film will screen at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the winners will be announced sometime in the next few weeks.

If you’re interested in checking out the film we did for last year’s festival, click here.

Now that I am working fulltime like a responsible citizen, Saturday is the only day I can go to the market, so it is in my best interest to capitalize on the opportunity whenever Saturdays allow.

A market routine was something I never had before Cambodia. It is something I might have gotten bitter over had I stayed on for those two more years - you know, the fact that I never got to make it part of my routine. This is one of the easily overlooked blessings, then, of being back.

When I get there I begin what I now affectionately refer to as The Trifecta by making a beeline for Rafiki’s African Deli where I make small talk with Roger from Uganda while my two meat samosas heat up in the microwave. I bid him well and then make my way up to Saife’s Middle Eastern stand, passing by Meck’s Produce where I make a face at Luke who has been working there for as long as anyone can remember even though he is only twenty or so. At Saife’s I get two chicken fajita wraps, or if they are out, I settle for a chicken vegetable roll.

There is normally a lull at this point.

Someone is talking with Luke next door. Someone who has never spent much time outside of Lancaster is grabbing their boring (but admittedly satisfying) all-American sub at S. Clyde Weaver’s. Someone is catching up with so-and-so they knew well at one point but have not seen in a couple years and they conclude their conversation by saying “it was good to see you” and that they ought to get together sometime, and I am eating my fajitas, having already enjoyed the samosas in all their raisin-and-curry goodness.

The final dot in The Trifecta is the place with the fresh-squeezed juice where I order the number five smoothie on the menu, the one with mango and orange and coconut and who knows what else. Most times, anyone I am there with does not have a plan like I do, no Trifecta or Quadrazoid or anything like that to speak of, so they wander more or less aimlessly through the market, and there is something to be said for this approach, but what this means is that I am normally finishing off my smoothie while others still find their food, and we normally all coalesce somewhere convenient, like where Andy’s parents sell horseradish on Tuesdays and Fridays. A couple of weeks ago, we happened to congregate in front of the pastry guy but he yelled at us for blocking his delicacies which have limited time to sell, so we won’t make that mistake twice.

After five or ten minutes, someone inevitably has to go here, someone else has to go there, and I head down to Prince Street Café to drink coffee and, like any good twentysomething, to make sense of life, and whoever doesn’t have a better plan accompanies me.

This is a routine, and it is (for now anyway) a good one.

february 11, 2006 in the year of our Lord.

i made the move to my first apartment, 222 west james, with josh. we went to high school together. we went to punk shows together. we went to creation together. we went to church together. we went to college together. we went to south carolina together. so, it was only fitting that we rented jimmy together.

we sat in the living room, orange corduroy recliner, maroon love seat, talking theology or politics or art or ricky oh. we ate food, he and i, something organic, something processed. we - he - took in a cat and we - she - named him jack. he was asthmatic and fat, he farted and smelled so josh gave him bottled water. and i offered to throw him out the window.

dmx across the alley yelling obscenities and beating his wife and cursing his barking dog in the early morning hours just below my window. conversations with charley, always in circles, always about the weather and the saint louis cardinals and kids these days. full-time smoker, that charley, and full-time kook. but he made jimmy home.

out the front we had the fireworks on summer nights, the street all parked up with baseball fans. we tried to catch a glimpse of juan, but juan was gone.

josh took the big room, the front windows, the trees. i took the small room, back window, the view.

i’d climb out the window to breathe, onto the roof to live. i’d strain my ear in an effort to hear the members of live playing basketball in the tower downtown. there were two steeples in view, the catholic one beyond the townhouses and the episcopal one just to the left of the warehouse. the dome on mary baker eddy’s place had a certain warmth from across the street that is hard to come by when you’re walking past. sitting on my roof you could also see the park, that piece of semi-recreational goodness, slicing its way through the block, that would-be oasis if not for the shooting in the leg.

in february the weather is cold but the apartment is not. i turned the heat off a week after the move and never turned it back on. i slept with the window open beside my bed from april through august - first because there is something to be said for digging deep in the covers to escape a cold wind blowing through your room, but later, in the summer, as a survival tactic, seeing as jimmy was/is sans a/c.

and so i left jimmy in august, setting out for the orient, fully expecting to return three months later and to resume life as usual. but rent has no respect for a jobless man, so my return to jimmy was delayed. december, gone. january, gone.

so, now, february 1, the end of an all-too-brief era: jimmy is gone.

i took one last polaroid out the window. to remember. to show the grandkids someday. this is jimmy, i will say. this was home.

and sitting in the cafe, the author makes a compelling mention of a song by an until-now foreign (to me) artist, and downloading and enjoying the song, i got the whole album, and - this happened today, mind you - on the album, completely unbeknownst to me, is this song, and it is epic.

So long, Jimmy, so long.

Life goes on.

This summer I had the privilege of being a part of a team of filmmakers at the 48 Hour Film festival in Baltimore. Working with the soon-to-be-legendary Tress brothers, I was the second cameraman. Suffice it to say I was happy to hear recently that the film tied for best cinematography and production design. If you have a fast connection, and seven minutes to spare, I would like to share it with you.

The reasons I admire Derek Webb are many, and most of you probably know this. His latest album, Mockingbird, is in my opinion one of the most important records out there these days due to its subject matter, not to mention that it represents musical innovation and artistry at its finest. His other two albums aren’t bad either. And by not bad, I mean that they are fantastic.

If you haven’t heard of this guy, or you haven’t heard the new album yet, I have great news for you. In 49 days, FreeDerekWebb.com will be launched, and Mockingbird will be set free. That’s right, not only will you be able to listen online, but you’ll be able to download the album in its entirety and you can burn as many copies as you want and give them to everyone you know. And it’s legal. It was Derek’s idea, for Pete’s sake.

Read more here…