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This Summer 2025, I have assigned a novel with my classes I recently plucked off my shelf here in Mexicali. It's called Paradise Travel, and it is written by Jorge Franco. I'm not giving any spoiler alerts, but it focuses upon the American Dream – two teen-age lovers, Marlon and Reina from Medellín, Colombia,…
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They told her not to come, but she came anyway. That's Bobby Kennedy on the left. That's President Kennedy on the right. And you know who that is in the middle – That's Marilyn Monroe. She had flown to New York to sing "Happy Birthday" to the president on his 45th birthday at Madison…
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I’m a big fan of Mexican crime writer Elmer Mendoza. Each time I read him, I read him TWICE: ONCE in English; and ONCE in Spanish. I have now read like five of his Narco-Lit novels; this counts for TEN on my shelf. Most of the Mendoza books I have read follow Detective Edgar “Lefty”…
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I know Chrissie Hynde from the seventies. In her Pretenders song, “Up the Neck,” Chrissie belts out, “Lust turns to anger, a kiss to a slug…” Up until then, I don’t think I had every seen a woman like that on stage before; in front of the band, her guitar slung low across her hips,…
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Rock stars come and go, but the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan television show in February 1964 changed the world forever. Before Ed Sullivan, few people in this country had ever seen or heard the Beatles. This was before the internet. Television at the time offered maybe three to four channels. Ed Sullivan was a…
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Earlier this month I read a memoir about alcoholism that included the life and struggles of legendary playwright Tennessee Williams. The book, called “The Trip to Echo Spring,” written by Olivia Lange, shed light on hardcore drunk writers that despite their addictions were somehow able to produce some of the most brilliant literature we…
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I know about Actors Studio from reading biographies about Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Al Pacino. In the fifties, Marilyn’s greatest fame as an actor became her greatest disappointment. She was so beautiful that she couldn’t land serious roles. At a certain point, Marilyn left Hollywood to spend a year training with the world's…
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To introduce my SUMMER 2025 students to their assigned novel, Paradise Travel. I ask them to use their research skills to familiarize themselves with the setting of New York City. Of course, few of us will have little understanding for NYC, but that's why we want to dig in before we start the serious…
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I’m not sure WHEN or HOW it happened, but at early age, I became drawn in, sucked in, to the books written by boozy, drug-addled authors. For me, this may have been in high school, and I didn’t even drink or smoke. At age 16-17, I probably got turned on by Stephen King’s strange,…
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Recently, I read a novel based on Ernest Hemingway's final days, Adios Hemingway by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura. Near the end, the famous writer suffered extreme bouts of depression. Back then, the doctors prescribed electroconvulsive therapy. This is 1961. I'm not sure if these sessions gave him any relief, but I believe they severely hampered…