Regulators, Move Out!

I am anticipating being gone for the first part of next week on another excursion of awesome, so I thought I would share a quick thought this weekend.

So, Saturday is pozole day at El Tapatio near me casa.  I am somewhat of a regular anymore, enough so that I get a weird look when I say no to the Negra Modelo.  They have kickass coffee and food.  The coffee is the good kind that can take a little cup of half and half and barely cloud.  Cowboy coffee.  Or vaquero coffee.  Or caballero coffee.  Not sure, really. 

Anyway, while I sat working on the gallon of glorious red liquid with about a pound of hominy and what I would estimate to be the hock of a 1,200 pound sow, I watched the muted Banda music videos.  I think the music video as a cultural reference is much under utilized among sociologists. 

Or maybe not.  In my brief education via the cathode tube universidad de Mexico, I got the general idea that potato farmers are screaming hot lanky girls wearing halter tops and that chubby unibrowedmen have a hell of a lot better chance with super models south of the border than they do with average looking entitlement queens up here.  Me and my brothers are packing the Scout and getting international service on our cell phones as I type.  Also, there seems to be a great racket in trading side of the road Volkswagen repair for affections of even hotter looking, but somehow wholesome, lingerie models in distress. Again, the Scout is packed (with a tool box and a Chilton’s Manual, Volkswagen Beetle ‘55-81) as well as a tutorial on how to put out magnesium fires. 

In between what seems to be a retrospective on the career of said potato farmer/lingerie model, there were the same awful sorts of commercials known the world over.  I noticed the word dolores kept coming up in the ads whenever an old lady rubbed her hands together.

This is important because A: Dolores is a major contributor to the watershed of the Colorado River System, and B: I was baptized into the Household of Faith* therein.

I was curious what the word meant, so when my waiter returned I asked in horrible Spanish for a definition.  He couldn’t find the words, but he made the same hand wring motions and grimaced like the fat lady in the commercial and said “Ay yi yi!”

Pain? I asked him.

Si. He said.

I had always been told the Rio Dolores was the “River of Sorrows.”  Apparently, it is actually the “River of Pain.” 

This is important for this very reason:

I will find before I die, I swear to you, some reason to respond to some query thus, probably while smoking a cigarette and staring menacingly/broodingly/handsomely into some bandita/senorita/English major’s eyes with whiskey voice baritone:

“Sweetie, I was baptized in a river of pain.”

And so for now I wait…