Authentic Mexico

I now have two good, thought-provoking posts hostage.

Tex related a story about some of the new summer program students who have began flooding Xalapa with their bermuda shorts and bad accents. A large group of Americans were in La Oveja Negra drinking mojitos, and one of them commented, "I feel like this is, like, authentic Mexico!"

Really? White people and everything?

One of my favorite ways to experience authentic Mexico is to go to the pulquería on the other side of the center. Pulque is an alcoholic beverage made from the maguey plant, a relative of the agave from which we get tequila. Mexico's indigenous peoples used pulque for rituals, and it remained popular under Spanish rule because a drunk population is easier to control. Pulque was widely consumed until fairly recently, when the beer companies started misinformation campaigns claiming it was detrimental to the health. Now, there are just a few pulquerías still scattered about.

Yesterday I rounded up what became a rather large group of foreign students to go for pulque. I had no money, but with Jon and SB buying I managed to sweet talk my way into three mugs of the citrusy beverage. On previous visits I'd only ever had one, so I didn't really realize what I was in for. But pulque is most definitely stronger than beer.

The fun began after most all the white people had left, leaving just Nick and me behind. We had only been alone for a minute or so when some Mexicans invited us to go talk with them. They were all in their mid-twenties and wanted to pick our brains about "what Americans think of Mexicans." Let me tell you guys: I sure get sick fo speaking for you.

It ended up being a lot of fun. We spent hours with them hanging out at one guy's apartment and talking, and I gave my phone card to one of them who calls his girlfriend frequently from pay phones.

This is authentic Mexico: you meet people, you befriend them, you talk and have a good time. I've found that, in general, people here are far friendlier than in the States - though sometimes they need to get some race resentment out of their system first (I find I'm often listening to someone I just met rant about how Americans treat Mexicans).

Striking again

I wrote a fantastic post yesterday but am holding it hostage because nobody's commenting again.

A creative history of Frockleton

Many who know me will know that I have essentially written a full fantasy fiction book series in my head, and simply lack the motivation to type up these best-selling novels. These books have a sort of solemn outlook, inspired in no small part by The Lord of the Rings. Perhaps someone reading this will understand that the sort of setting for a book series like that may not lend itself well to, say, a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, or even a more differently styled, fun-filled adventure story (contrast LOTR with The Hobbit and you'll see a remarkable difference).

Because of this, I have over the years brainstormed many a fantasy fiction setting (and one or two half-baked sci-fi settings). I tell you all of this to introduce something that's been drifting around in my head for years: The Adventures of Nidgin Idberry of Frockleton.

The adventures started back when I ran the old version of nickkauffman.net and was looking for content to spice up my site. I planned a chapter-by-chapter, fast-paced story packed with adventure and hilarity and wrote out the first chapter from scratch, never making any character plans or actually developing the world. The project never came to fruition.

That was not, however, the death of Frockleton. I'm not sure if I have any fan crossover, but I used to post a stick figure comic called Nickslife Comics on a Xanga account*. Considering what little effort went in to drawing up the MSPaint-produced comics, I had a surprisingly dedicated fanbase. With Nidgin's adventures still in my head, I drew up this comic, converting the first part of Chapter One into a visual adventure.

I put an awful lot of work into that comic, and the limitations of using such a format are clear. Nothing ever came of it.

Finally, we arrive at today: I have in the past week drawn a full map of Jedya and written descriptions of the various inhabitants. I've thought through the overall plot of the greater story, with a few cliché twists in there. And I'm considering publishing it chapter-by-chapter on a separate blog.

What I have to ask myself is, is there a market for this kind of story? What this really should be is a comic. Unfortunately, my drawing skills are limited to cubes, funny-looking trees, and something that is getting closer and closer to looking like a front view of the U.S.S. Enterprise (the Starfleet ship, not the U.S. aircraft carrier). The remaining sliver of hope is the observation that two of my favorite web comics, Penny Arcade and Three Panel Soul, both involve a writer-artist partnership.

So, does anybody know a good artist?

*The reason I'm not posting a link is that Xanga did not at the time allow image hosting, so all the comics were hotlinked to a folder on nickkauffman.net. I canceled my web domain, which wiped out the images. The original copies were lost from my hard drive at some point along the way.