International Affairs

I started a grad program yesterday, in international affairs with a focus on relations between the EU and the Mercosur. Tonight was the first econ class and we talked about growth, mostly Argentina's history which has been the story of a progressively richer nation hitting many economic walls. Today it is a country that could have been, that still hopes to become fully franchised, always looking to the US, Italy and Spain to join the ranks of the countries it identifies with in the First World. While 50% of Argentines subsist in poverty.

I take the bus from the marginal neighborhood where I live on the south side of the city, the old section of Buenos Aires proper, to the elegant part of town. Recoleta is where the wealthy shop and dine, it resembles areas of Paris, and Fendi and Louis Vitton are around the corner from the Universidad de Bologna.

The program is made up of 50 students, most in their late 20s from upper-middle class families in BA and neighboring La Plata. I had coffee with a well-dressed girl from Venezuela today and chatted up a guy from Puerto Rico. Rio, Mexico City, Quito, Rome and Milan are also represented. So far it's a nice program and I'm the only English speaker, deciphering Spanish and Italian lectures and trying to ask questions without stumbling. It's both exhilarating and extremely humbling.

One thing that always strikes me, living here, is that even the people at the top of regular society live well within their means. They are frugal, they live with their parents until they can buy something of their own, they eat at home, they wear clothes that show signs of actual use. They ride the bus. I saw the same when I lived in France and Italy.

Waiting in line for the bus on my way home, in my own skirt and blouse circa 1998 and Payless shoes from 2005, I revisited the lecture and how Argentina escaped the Great Depression by being in their own private economic bubble. Their economic progress has been bleak compared to that of the US but I thought how we Americans could learn from the Argentine response to crises.


I've spent the past four months working at the British newspaper here, doing some writing about economics and social issues and being really glad I don't have to be in this economy forever. On Wednesdays I visit the office of the paper, bought out by the national financial newspaper - their equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. Ambito Financiero can't pay my salary in full because they can't get access to funds. Their advertisers pay by check and the bank holds their funds for reasons I can't quite wrap my head around. So I join a thick book of invoices that have to be paid out bit by bit since the accounting department only gets a few thousand pesos in cash a week, and works through payments as it is able.

The accounting department of the national financial newspaper.



I'm reading my way through events at home and peeping chapters of Studs Terkel's Hard Times but obviously I am disconnected. Still, here in Argentina where I live off pesos I gather as I can from jobs long completed, I'm in the rhythm and thinking of you people back home, living through a gloomy piece of history. This cool article from today's NYTimes looked for the upside of dealing with market dribbles.

Let me know what is happening with you? It's hard to picture NYC slowing down or LA without petty cash. Besides, in economic downturn, isn't that when Hollywood, bars and city nightlife make the most loot?

The American Vote in Argentina

Today I went to the U.S. embassy to cast my vote for president. It was a large party from 9am to 12pm that involved lines, food, and confusion. McDonalds and Starbucks had tables, a band played, there were news cameras and members of study abroad programs.

Figuring out how to vote was quite a challenge, though the event was well staffed and the set up facilitated voting and even last minute registration. There wasn't any material with the names of candidates, there wasn't any instruction as to where to go to cast your ballot, there were no visuals and few posted signs. People didn't talk to one another to find out what the line they were in was really for. It was a disconnected scene with crowds of strangers but it was exciting being a part of the voting process (hopefully, if the ballots are in fact received and counted).

My friend and I got out our New York methods of doing business and got through the process quickly enough. The process involved the following:

1. Wait in line to enter the embassy (one hour wait at 9:30am)
2. Go through security (they never checked my ID but did take my phone and camera)
3. Get inside and look for the voting station after making your way through the food
4. Get a write-in ballot, again without showing ID
5. Write your address, social, etc on a form. Write the name of the president and vice president on a second page. Wish that you knew the names of the congress members you'd like to vote for and leave that pathetically blank (like every other person in there).

The highlight of the event was hearing a woman ask a volunteer for the spelling of Sarah Palin's name. The lowpoint was looking at that woman and thinking that she has no idea what she's doing.

That was the general feeling inside the consulate, that we the people haven't a clue. It was as messy a scene as the Argentine traffic outside on the street. My friend and I left, went down to the subway, and got on with our day.

Breathe the Good Airs

Some days you just focus on breathing through it. Overload of work, people, city, whatever it is bearing down, your breath has that feeling at the end like you just ran upstairs too fast.

I’ve hung out with New Yorkers a lot this month and loved hearing their fresh take on this city. Similar perspectives all around on what's great and what lacks in Buenos Aires.

One comment stuck with me, the fact that people are quiet on the subway. It's a great thing to ride public transport in peace but yes, it's a bit odd to share space with so many silent beings, solemn on the subte, passive transit riders. It reminds me of what made me uncomfortable in European crowds. A sort of submissive group dynamic hangs over like a cloud, everyone obedient and well behaved.

I could probably do with some more of that exact quality though, more cooperative spirit please.

We all have our methods of getting through situations that sting. Today, mine feel like a bumpy ride on a narrow canyon road, winding through the dark, city lights below, danger around the bend. An ex boyfriend used to tell me about riding his skateboard down a road like that, up in the state park outside of LA. He and daredevil peers would take turns at high speeds, seated, like a roller coaster plunge, no security bars. Some days this month are like that, free fall ride on gravel, not sure if I’ll be okay when I stop.

Then I wake up the next day generally pleased with where I’m at and how and when. There’s no clear progression or paper trail to my world here, no climbing of ladders or buying stuff or family planning. There’s only the immediate rush of a romantic city, friends and outings, audio and visual. It’s all very here and now, unsettling for the future and typically Argentine in scope. The future always holds uncertainty in this country, economically and politically, so people plan and act short-term. Hence the lack of investment in private and public projects, immobility of social class, long nights out.

The end of something can be a downward spiral at times on a dark canyon road. It can be a retreat under the covers, a respite from the weight of compromise and responsibility. It can be a calm agreement to take an independent direction. I guess it’s each of those here for me this month in Buenos Aires.

Kasha and I moved into our new apartment yesterday. It’s really nice and in the best part of San Telmo, a half block from a friend’s house. I was lucky to find it through another friend and get on with the spring here in a furnished, easy, one bedroom with tasteful BA décor. I chose it over the huge antique house with cheap rent and English girlfriends. It’s out of character for me, completely, to be here instead but I’d reached my limit of instability. I needed easy, for now.

When I walk in the door I think of my grandma. She spent 40 years or so single in apts like this one in LA, nice, safe, no one to bother her. I have the space here to process this past year of living with someone who didn’t have time for me, which made me mad and then pushed us to an end. I can look forward to a better fit, sure I will, though maybe not in a foreign country.

Living here continues to be new and nice mostly, with adjustments that have to be made. Every day, there is something of the unexpected wisdom found in a different culture, a view of their take on business as usual, not like what you know.

I’m thinking life resembles the speeding canyon ride, in the absence of something to lock you down. When faith weaves in and out downhill and you are alone and human.

I’d like to use a hitchhiker analogy too but I think you feel me already.

(Next blog will be jam-packed with superficial blather about parties, trips, and other playgrounds, promise.)

Winter in Buenos Aires

Elevator music in the Buenos Aires supermarket and I remind myself there's more to South America than the one-block radius where I spend most of my time. "And I keep wonderin' who's holding Donna now" fills the produce aisles and the aisles of wine priced at $3. I wonder which cut of steak, out of the 50 plus offered, would be make the best companion for a "guiso de lentegas," Argentina's winter lentil stew.

It's cold every day - early 40's mostly but the difference is no holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, nope. South America celebrates the holidays at the beach in the middle of their summer and that means nothing to break up the cold and gray. Except a visit to California.


Max and I will be in LA for my cousin's wedding. It's his first trip to the US outside of NYC. It's my escape from the cold - which I didn't mind in New York City. But that was NYC.


In Buenos Aires there is inflation and protests, cold, and soccer finals. This past month I wrote a feature article on digital cumbia for Urb Magazine and went to a very musical BBQ. Everybody here seems to be able to sing, play the guitar, rep decent on the drums. Really big on sing-a-longs - men showing off their vocal ability and guitar chops for other men, I mean straight men. It's not the dancing-est culture, but they're not quiet folks. People here give me a run for my yapping.


Super highlight was a visit from my parents. They're official Buenos Aires fans now. They went big - tango, steak, gauchos, tourist traps, boho circus, getting down with the locals, I wore them out before they did me.


After riding around with the king of Gangster Cumbia, I was reborn as a cumbia villera fan (Argentine urban music, the local version of hip hop) and got to immortalize the genre in English in the current issue of Urb magazine. First feature, printed joint! I also contributed articles to Time Out Buenos Aires. Since everything else I do is digital, it'll be nice to flip pages and cut out paper for the scrap book, right?

My day job is getting more interesting as adult social networks take hold. And a friend in London and I decided to try our hands at a themed blog.


If you're in LA, I'm excited to see you next week. NYC is looking like September, much as I should hold on to my pesos, I can't help it. I'm an NYC addict in need. Only thing that'll keep me from it is Colombia. Colombia or NYC? There's a lot of Colombia in Queens.

Smoke and Mirrors

The breeze comes in crispy most days here now in the city of good airs. The sun is a joy and the wind is welcome, especially so this past month when rolling clouds of smoke covered the entire city in a fog and a stink.

The smell woke me up in the middle of the night as it seeped in through the French doors of the balcony off our bedroom. It wouldn't leave and got into every crevice of the apartment and of my nose.

Since it was man made, and affected an entire city to the benefit of just two landowners looking for extra grazing room for their cattle, I had a hard time containing my frustration at a government and a people that seem to passively accept the blatant abuse of the many for the benefit of the few. At least in the US it's slightly less obvious that we're being tooled. Here, two individuals started a fire an hour outside of the city that blazed out of control and disrupted 20 million respiration systems for five days. And people didn't like it but they seemed to take it all in stride. Much like the rampant inflation that blazes on, unthwarted.

On a happier bent, since I wrote you last I visited New York City, played with Redheadphone, and saw some of my favorite people. Maxi played two live shows since I've been back and played one televised show with his band El Tucu y los Paroquianos. He wore over-sized, ladies' vintage sunglasses and kind of resembled my mom, Harlene, while he pogo-ed around on the electric guitar. The show was like a dope gong show episode in Spanish with a mascot in full furry monster suit and horns and a trannie guest commentator.

Max produces a morning show on public TV and they put his band on to promote a big live show played the following day. Seems like the rules here are different than in Hollywood, where I grew up. So I may soon be posting a clip of me playing on Argentine TV with Kasha meowing back up.

I've been going out again finally. I had to, for work, this month, when I got to write a nightlife section for Time Out Buenos Aires and for two English Language media outposts here - one magazine and the site What's Up Buenos Aires, home of Zizek Records that's making waves stateside with cumbia-hop. So I was forced to go out and get involved late night, thank goodness.

I feel much better when I've been running around with a martini glass in hand (or smuggled to go in my purse) until the wee hours. You'd think I'd have grown out of it but even if I don't drink much I can't seem to shake the urge to vampire and see what people are up when they get down. Thankfully, many of the nightspots aren't that original, so one trip does the job. But a couple weekly parties have me hooked so I sneak out of bed at 1am, meet up with a 22 year old girlfriend or two, and explore a bit before getting back under the covers in time to see Max off to work at 7am. It's been like that the past two weeks but now I'm done with the assignments and hopefully I'll be focusing on this next record Max and I are looking to do. Except for Thursdays, the Thursday night party is too good. At least every other week, then.

Len-dog and Harlene are arriving soon and we're heading out to pick them up at the airport. They'll be here almost three weeks and we might make it to Brazil for a few days. They're meeting Max for the first time shortly, which should be interesting.

I'm not worried at all about them liking him, obviously, I'm concerned for his sanity and for the massive unrest that usually occurs in my daily life when those Hymans tag team me with drama. Max has been warned and I have no excuse but to try to keep it together and put some limits on Len-dog's hyperactivity and Harlene's spontaneous, unwelcome, public performances and then we should be at a decent level of bananas, rather than on overdrive.

The hardest thing won't be my nice, funny, neurotic parents, it'll be the fun-house mirror family tends to hold up for you, you know? We bought this beautiful antique mirror and we'll put it up this weekend, which seems fitting. Harlene and Leonard are staying in this amazing apartment down the street. I'll get some photos of them tango-ing, eating steak at a kosher parilla, and diving into the Argentine landscape. Kasha will be happy to get their added attention - unless Len-dog steps on her like he usually tries to.

We had a birthday party for Max and forgot to celebrate our one year of being together. We'll handle that once the dust has settled after these people visit. We can celebrate our survival as a couple then, if all goes according to plan. Dude is an avid Woody Allen fan but he hasn't lived one of his movies, yet. He'll have that pleasure starting tonight I guess.

Buenos Aires is Italian for Barcelona

This city has a disproportionate amount of Barcelona. For a place so far from Western Europe, it's got a lot of Catalan and Basque - as well as Napeolitan, Calabrian, and French bistro. If you've been to Barcelona you know what I mean - it's not exactly Spanish, it's got a Boho-edge-of-Europe, port-city feel to it. So does Buenos Aires, and the two cities seem to be connected. What's popular in Barcelona does well here too - mullet/rat tail haircut concoctions, tapas with no condiments, anarchy wishes and revolutionary dreams, and the music and Euro/gypsy, campfire-jam spectacle of Manu Chao and Tonino Carotone.

I'm not hating, nada que ver - definitely celebrating. This is my type of reggae-hippy, eurotrash party. If you're going to have hippies, I hope you'll please serve them in this variety. In fact, the silliness and light-hearted good times of these dreadheads just strips the hippy moniker from the whole thing. The American hippy subculture takes itself seriously. This brand of anti-establishment includes faux, soft-porn videos in costume and with mannequins, a personal style that combines soccer gear with indigenous beanies or leather blazers. There are orchestras and Tango dancing in a theater space that ends in a hand-holding sing-a-long. Adults with gray hair in suits embracing total chaos with cheers? It's a beautiful world, that of Tonino and Manu. Enough to inspire my rant over how much fun I find this video. That's okay, Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello finds it inspiring too - and look where it got him? Playing with Madonna and making some enz off his gypsy/anarchy mantras. A rat-tail 'do with an AmEx platinum card - it's an ever-changing playground of a world.

I'm in the middle of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, great reading from a participant in the mess that is American foreign policy. He was there when Iranian self determination was sabotaged by our great nation. Howard Zinn is a fan and I am too. I'm trying to read Las Venas Abiertas De America Latin, by Eduardo Galeano, but there's still so much vocabulary to learn I quit after a couple of pages each time I pick it up. An average native speaker of a language has an arsenal of 12,000 words at his disposal. Even Dubbya knows a few thousand possibly. I'm fluent by some standards now but far from the target number. So Las Venas will have to wait a bit while I practice with tabloid lit - Argentina's version of In Touch is a great teacher.



There's a lot of middle eastern influence here too - Syria and Lebanon represent in Buenos Aires. And there are Heebs - everywhere. It's a comfortable place to be a white minority but no other continents have historically been invited to the immigration fiesta. I miss black people very much. I get excited when I see a lone face in a crowd - it's weird seeing so few people of African or Asian decent. There is a growing community of Chinese many of whom came by way of Peru. Blacks in BA are from Africa, with the occasional US, French, Brazilian or British tourists. Everyone seems to be a new immigrant or a tourist - even Europe isn't this European.

You're probably wondering if there are any Latinos in this Latin American country. I'm still trying to figure out the big picture. Apparently, Buenos Aires has the least number of ethnically indigenous people in Argentina because it is the port and the capitol and has always been the center of immigration. Immigration here means European immigrants, or traditionally it has meant people coming from Europe - most recently from Eastern Europe. Though, of course, that fact has changed in the last few years as the Eastern Block's economic situation has undergone a dramatic change for the better.

The bulk of the visible Portenos trace their roots to when, in the 19th and 20th centuries, large numbers of Spanish and Italians came to Argentina for a new life. In the mid 1800's there was expansion into the Pampas, the middle of the country that is the nation's bread basket. For years the colonizers had been losing the battle over indigenous lands in the Pampas but that changed with one general's savage defeat of native fighters in a famous battle. He murdered or expelled 100% of the people in the area and that explains why so many people have remained ethnically European in this area of the country. There's recent immigration from Peru and Bolivia and there are native Argentines in the North and some in the South of the country, but here in the city there are few from what I can tell. Racial identity isn't a popular subject so I do my best to get an accurate perspective of my new home. One thing is certain, Argentines don't call themselves Latino. They do call themselves Latino Americano and view the name Latino to be a "Yanqui" construction. They call Americans Yanquis because they view all inhabitants of the Americas to be American. The few that do identify as Latino also identify with hip hop culture and the emcees here adopt a Puerto Rican accent when they rhyme. I guess it makes for a complex and interesting place to examine ethnic identity.

There were African-Argentines here once - people stolen from Africa and forced into slavery like in all the other colonies of the Americas. The story goes that in the mid 19th century, the government mandated military inscription for all black males in the war against Paraguay. When the war ended, no one was allowed back home. The women intermarried and the country has been white and aborigine ever since.

So I count the faces I hope to see increase in number. The population yearns for more global influence, as does the food. There's no spice, like I've told you before - no spice! Pepper is a special request in a restaurant. In this culture there is singing and dancing and warmth all over, despite the blandness of flavor. There's plenty of sausage and wine, como Barcelona.

Writing, for the Chatterbox Chic

Writing works for me because I talk so much. I can't help it, always have been a big mouth. And the thing about talking so much is it makes demands on the listener. If you don't listen, you're rejecting the speaker. But with writing, I can talk through the keyboard or pen and then the reader decides to listen on his/her terms - when, how long, where. It's a more considerate form of communication. And it takes it back to the old school, pre-phone and tv when people read when they were ready to take something in. Aight, so I've made my peace with writing, embraced it, now I'm computer bound and, like the rest of the First World, my eyeballs are bugging out of my head from following this digital line.


I will pay my bills with words. It makes sense for a blabberhead like myself. I'm a lucky yapper. But here I'll write to you all for when you feel like entering the evezone and hanging out with me and Kasha here, down South.


This week was working in Spanish at a real estate agency downtown, getting hired at a bilingual middle school in Belgrano where the unpoor people are, going to my first Argentine wedding with Maxi, saying goodbye to my favorite Italian chica, working on rewriting a TV pilot script for an Anglophile audience, doing voice overs, and writing piles of articles for a website out of Atlanta, Georgia. Sounds like a lot when you write it out like that, but life really is slow mo outside of NYC.

Argentine wedding
Adele's last night of Tango before heading back to Italy

Tonino Carotone

My friend Vicky and I went to see Tonino Carotone at Niceto in Palermo Hollywood. Tonino is the great '60's Italian ballad singer and entertainer extraordinaire. Except that he's actually from Barcelona and was born after the sixties. This video gives you the idea - "Me Cago en la Amor," which translates as "I take a dump on love" more or less. With lyrics like, "It's a difficult world. Why should I believe in love when she abandons me right when I'm at my best? Between you and I, it's not the couple's fault, it's Love. I don't want to suffer but here I am suffering and I take a dump on Love." (Writer's note: I do not want to "take a dump on love." I don't currently identify with Tonino's lyrics in the least. But I like him - he's funny.)


Kasha went all Requiem For a Dream on this new cat food that isn't good for her. It's her meth. She doesn't want to eat anything else now and it's garbage so we're duking it out over the crackfood. Max is recording a new record with his band and got offered an additional radio show at one of the two stations where he works. So he'll be even more busy than he already was. Dude sleeps 4 hours a night mostly. He hooked us both up to deejay different nights at this great spot near our hood. I wrote about it a couple weeks ago.

They're doing a series on music eras and Max chose blaxploitation, songs from the films. I think I'll do blue grass from the thirties first, since I got to rip some great old recordings from a friend while I was staying in Greenpoint last month. He had a compilation box set of songs about tragic disasters in US history - drought, the Depression, the Titanic. The next release in the series will be the Evangelistic backlash - "The Gospel According to Terrorism" - and will cover the hostage crisis of the US economy in the hands of the Christian Right. Mostly Sage Francis and Lupe Fiasco tracks.

Did I tell you how crazy it was when I deejayed at this bar I like two weeks ago?
It was so hectic I didn't think about taking them up on the offer to be their resident Tuesdays. Too much drug pushage - on me, I mean - and madness nonstop with my computer subjected to full cocktails hovered over the keys in the hands of drunk, attention ravaged, mercafiends. Not a good look for the cash-poor girl and her gimpy computer (I dropped it off the bed back in the basement in NYC and it's been gimpy ever since with the screen falling to the left. Just like my back, lol).

We had our housewarming party last weekend and it was cool. Guy that created Gawker was here visiting Buenos Aires and he and a couple of other New York City media rockstars came by for an Argentine houseparty experience. It was the most mellow party I've ever been responsible for but it was nice. Still so weird getting used to being an adult. I'm making up for it by making 21 year-old girl friends left and right though. I like them, and they probably have a higher tolerance for someone who hasn't mastered the language yet or something. Plus they're so cute!

Hey, I figured out I had limited comments to blogspot users for some reason. Now it's open - if you get the urge to holleratchergirl.

News is I may have a real job with real income for the first time in too long to admit. As web editor on a US salary, I'll be a person again, as far as capitalism is concerned. Unlike most of the people dealing with the horribly backward economy here. Which is a rant for another day.