Been a while since I did a Sunday Shoegazer. I’ve been busy.
Operating out of Guadalajara, Mexico, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete hits a sweetspot between shoegaze, slowcore and psychadelic, sounding a little bit like a heavier Mazzy Star. “Waves Over Shadows” is off Balance.
A giant fireworks explosion ripped through a market in Tultepec on the outskirts of Mexico City.
It blew up real good:
A reminder to be careful come New Year’s Eve…
Update: Seeing reports of 26 dead.
I attended a signing at BookPeople for Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, co-edited by Turkey City’s own Chris Brown (formerly Chris Nakashima-Brown, now renamed after a long and painful de-Japanization process).
The event was fairly well attended, with about 40-50 people showing up.
Two of the authors flew up for the event: Pepe Rojo of Tijuana:
And Bernardo Fernandez of Mexico City (who also works as a graphics artist and teacher, as well as a crime writer):
(I’m not sure if you can tell, but Bernardo’s shirt features a robot (or possibly an android) and an electric sheep.) I believe he mentioned that he was working on a graphic novel about William S. Burrough’s time in Mexico. I bet it ends with a bang.
I also found it interesting that both of their fathers were engineers.
In attendance were also many members of the Austin SF community, including a few that my pictures of weren’t completely awful:
Stina Leicht and Sara Felix.
Jessica Reisman, a few moments before the police arrested her for the Hollywood scriptwriter they found dead facedown in her pool.
On Saturday, there was a party at Chris Brown’s newly opened East Austin hipster-pad-cum-1970s-science-fiction-movie-set. Sadly, none of my photos of the house (taken at dusk) came out well. But I did get a few pics of the party attendees:
Don Webb, who co-edited one of the most influential Spanish-language anthologies of speculative fiction, for which he was paid $50 and three bottles of Tequila.
Stina and Jessica redux.
The rest of my pictures were various degrees of crappy. (Hopefully Jayme Blaschke, who was there with a bigger, better camera, will put some up.) Sadly, one picture that didn’t come out was that of Bernardo wearing a t-shirt depicting Mexico’s most famous science fiction character: Bender Bending Rodriguez.
Finally, no expects the Spanish Steampunk Zeppelin!
