mouse_rants

went to see culture clash's "zorro in hell". culture clash is a group of chicano writer/performance artists - they do a lot of political stuff - pretty funny,but often rather thorny. i've seen a couple of their other things - one at the la jolla playhouse, where they were tonight. i always rather wonder what they think, performing in la jolla - which is a very wealthy, generally conservative town in a pretty conservative, republican county. as i said, culture clash are chicanos, and much of their stuff is about the chicano experience in california, from the treatment the native people suffered at the hands of the spanish missionaries to current incidents at the border. they do it with quite a bit of humor, but there is a message underneath it all - we are people too, we are part of california - and needless to say, they are liberal, pro-environment, and anti-bush. they had a lot of digs at the antiterrorist activities of the current administration and our "governator" (appearing as el governardor aka don del oro in the play) - oddly, nothing on the 750-mile wall or the anti-immigration stance of local politicians - but they ended up with a plea to stand up against things like that, to fight for justice for the little people, like zorro. i wonder how many of the audience are of the same opinion (well, to be fair, the theatre is on a university campus, so they are working from a bastion of liberal thought) - and if the performers wonder if they have any chance of making an impact, or if it's just a good place to make lots of money. still, one hopes that the presence of the piece indicates that there are at least some like-thinkers around - at least enough to return mr. bilbray to his career as a lobbyist, whether or not i deface his sign. (the ironic thing is, i would probably be caught by our somewhat humorless but very determinedly rule-enforcing security guard, a middle-eastern immigrant who is probably also on my neighbor's not-welcome list.) (i always seem to be in situations where i see things from the most twisted perspective - i believe these neighbors were among the admirors of a previous, much loved and very competant security guard, jose, who really got to know the people and the neighborhood, kept the skateboarders in line, etc. - and left rather suddenly when his employer got a visit from ins, because it turned out he was here illegally.)

of course, being me, i know zorro mostly from cultural references - never saw the tv show. and what i'm mostly wondering is if one can still get copies of the first book - a bit of pulp fiction published in 1919. failing that, i will probably hope netflix has the original 1920 douglas fairbanks movie. i am a failure as a baby boomer.