Film director Macdara Vallely came to the Bronx from Northern Ireland and quickly decided he wanted to use the Boogie Down as the canvas for his next film, Babygirl, which will make its theatrical debut this Friday, October 4th at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village. I met Macdara through some mutual friends, and immediately I understood […]
Read moreNY Times De Blasio Piece: Fair and Balanced
This morning the Times has a prominent feature on mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio that amounts to a classic piece of red-baiting. The issues raised in the article have next to nothing to do with the mayoral race, and features much of the same kind of jaundiced bias toward leftist activists that have appeared in the mainstream […]
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The Song They Should Play for Mariano
Man this whole Metallica thing really doesn’t make any sense to me. Mariano, I guess, being the gracious guy he is, accepted the whole thing like everything was cool. But I really don’t get what “Enter Sandman” has to do with anything. Just because they played the Apollo last night means they got soul I […]
Read moreMarshall Berman Vive
At Monxo’s thesis defense = doc party in a non-descript Irish bar rapidly vanishing into air somewhere between Murray Hill and landfill, he couldn’t stop talking about Marshall. I was reading him in Puerto Rico and I loved him and I came to New York because of him he said sadly and proudly. There he […]
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Gramsci Takes the Bronx
Wailing away like a 21st century version of the Fugs, the contemporary alterna-pop consortium known as Urayoán Noel/Edwin Torres with Los Guapos Planetas performs its counter-hegemonic re-working of the Talking Heads’ song “And She Was” at an open mike in my hometown of Morrisania. The lyrics re-imagine 20th century philosopher, organic intellectual, and Maxist journalist […]
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City Council Forum: Rumble Uptown
For some reason the New York Daily News mobile app went with this story about last night’s City Council forum on affordable housing, sponsored by East Harlem Preservation and JustPublics@365, as its lead this morning. The headline, “Ugly Council Debate Paints Melissa Mark-Viverito as a Gentrifier” seems designed to stir up some shock-value interest on another sleepy summer […]
Read moreAnother Annoying HuffPost Post Starring Erick Salgado
Yes, we know the Reverend Erick Salgado is a goofy guy who, as a mayoral candidate, is barely above clown status although he actually says interesting things at times. He’s played the raza card several times, most notably in objecting to Anthony Weiner’s fantasy about himself as a Latin lover stereotype called Carlos Danger. We’re not going to […]
Read more200 Cartas Screenplay Leaked!
200 Cartas, a film about the Nuyorican/Puerto Rican experience, is coming this September! You’ve probably already read this feature about the clever way the producers raised money to make the film through “product placement and brand partnerships.” Let’s not kid ourselves–bringing in corporate partners to support “the arts” is an essential strategy in today’s globalized […]
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Puerto Rico: Statehood or Enhanced Partiarchy?
The above is a sequence of Puerto Rico governor Alejandro García Padilla answering questions during last week’s hearing at the Senate Committee of Energy and Natural Resources dedicated to resolving the territorial status of Puerto Rico. (Why that committee? Well Puerto Rico is not a state, nor a sovereign nation. It’s a “natural resource” of […]
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Edward Snowden and the Chilling Effect
Edward Snowden is now safely ensconced somewhere in Russia as the result of his one-year asylum deal, something that will probably afford him the opportunity to collect himself after weeks in an airport holding lounge. Most likely in a room somewhere that isn’t under some kind of surveillance, or, according to conspiracy theorists, back in […]
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ED MORALES 