SOUNDTRACK: LOS BITCHOS-“Pista (Great Start)/Frozen Margarita” (2019).
This was Los Bitchos’ second release of 2019. This one had a decidedly different look on the cover.
This single has two songs. The first, “Pista (Great Start)” opens with whooping–a party is in full swing. Musically, this is a great mix of cumbia and reggae with a smattering of Taureg in the guitar sound.
The song feels like they are partying in the desert no doubt drinking the title of the next song.
Although “Frozen Margarita” comes in at a quieter pace. There’s a grooving bassline and a slinky lead guitar line. It’s a very pretty piece.
[READ: July 14, 2020] “Johnny Tremain”
This issue of the New Yorker has a series of essays called Influences. Since I have read most of these authors and since I like to hear the story behind the story, I figured I’d read these pieces as well.
These later pieces are all about one page long.
This essay later appeared in Saunders’ book The Braindead Megaphone under the name “Thank You, Esther Forbes.”
Saunders talks about his school days in Catholic school when Sister Lynette was a nun that he fell in love with. He imagined her leaving the church for him (he was in third grade, but whatever).
He trusted her wholeheartedly, so when she gave him Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, he knew it was a special book– it had a shiny gold medallion,the Newbery Medal, right on the cover. Sister Lynette had given him an award winner!
She said “I think you can handle this” which he understood to mean “Only you, George, in this entire moronic class, can handle this.”
He imagined all of the nuns in the convent watching The Flying Nun (of course). Lynette announced that she gave the book to George One of the nuns said that even she had trouble with it, did she really think Saunders could handle it?
Evidently Johnny has an accident in which his right thumb is melded to his palm from a silversmithing mistake. Young George imagined the same accident had happened to him and he walked around with his hand in his pocket pretending it was useless.
He loved the book, but really what he liked most was the pathos of the accident. Johnny was like Charlie Brown–the story of the cast-down being cast down further “and I couldn’t get enough of it.”
The question is, did this book influence his life and his writing or was he always interested in this facet of life and that was why he loved the book? Who can tell?
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