Today’s soundtrack: who loves the sun
Today at 4:02pm: receiving change in pesos



If you are a frog you should move to Rosarito, Mexico. Because there are many flies there for you to eat. Clusters of them, it would be like a banquet for you. You’d be whipping that tongue out like an amphibian ninja.

Flies were not the most outstanding thing about the place, but I needed something to kick this entry off and the frog thing just doesn’t go in the middle.

For me, the thing Mexico had in common with the transcendent state of nirvana was that they were both places I’d never been. Nirvana’s a long way from L.A. but Mexico’s just a couple hours. So we downloaded directions, tanked up the car and put Los Angeles in Los Rearview Mirror.

The drive was smooth sailing, two hours of pristine freeway. I was folded in with a pack of cars going slightly faster than the bulk of traffic. One of them was a white convertible driven by a blonde woman. She was in front of me so I couldn’t see her face. She had a ponytail, which I guess is a practical hairstyle when a windscreen is the only thing dividing you from 80 m.p.h. winds.

At one point I pulled alongside her, and was surprised to see a child sleeping in the passenger seat. We were all driving pretty fast. I imagined the woman and her child were fleeing something, headed for a future of gringo anonymity south of the border.

It started to rain. First a little, then a lot.

Next the skies opened up and it began pouring.

But the woman in the convertible wouldn’t stop to put the roof up. She kept going, like Thelma & Louise.

The entrance fee into Mexico was two dollars and thirty cents. Crazy when you consider getting into a club back home can cost like twenty bucks.

Actually, come to think of it, the $2.30 wasn’t just to get into the country, it was for the toll road. There are two ways to get down to Rosarito, the free road (libre) and the toll road (cuota). The toll road runs along the coast and supposedly has less traffic.

The second you cross the border, things change. It’s as if you were driving around in America looking at everything through a Photoshop filter, then they suddenly took the filter off. Everything is at a slightly lower resolution.

The signage fonts are different and almost look hand-lettered. The roads feel softer. Bridges and overpasses are clearly built with less concrete and inspire doubt. Some of the first residential structures you see are ramshackle corrugated-tin huts built into a hillside, and suffering the effects of gravity.

I hate seeing people living in conditions more...challenging than those in the ‘States, even as I realize that my sorrow at feeling this is a perverse luxury and perhaps something to be ashamed of.

Everyone goes to TJ (Tijuana) but we left it alone and headed for Rosarito, which is supposed to be a little calmer.

We’re there inside of thirty minutes. We pull off the highway to find a long, dusty main drag lined with Mexican commerce--shops, grocers, pharmacies, eateries. It’s low-rise and pretty flat. Rows of cars are parked along the sidewalk, at a diagonal.

I’m a little nervous ‘cause we’ve clearly got the nicest whip in town, but no one seems to give us a second glance. I’m glad we picked Rosarito though, because I don’t see any other tourists, or anything too touristy. Just dusty shops and dusty locals going about their business.

She and I pick an outdoor Taqueria. A dark wooden countertop with a row of handmade stools, each slightly different than the one next to it, all topped in red vinyl. You take a seat and the grill and a bunch of sizzling pots are right in front of you, along with all kinds of steaming foodstuffs.

They serve us Pepsi in thick, substantial, worn glass bottles with the Pepsi logo on them. They’re reused, like drinking glasses so you give them back when you’re done with them.

The best goddamn fish tacos I’ve ever had in my life. I’m adding these to the death row mealplan list.

Sometime in 1995 I was on a train from Paris to Madrid. Backpack on a rack above my head. Next to me in the compartment, a chatty Spaniard in his fifties, Manuel. Short, squat and dark. Looked more Mexican than Spanish but what the hell do I know.

Back then my Spanish was perfectly serviceable (date a boricua, you’ll learn fast) and when Manny found out I spoke a little, he started talking my ear off. It was a long trip and I didn’t mind. We’d just crossed from France into Spain. Several times he used this word I didn’t know, frontera, and through pantomime he managed to explain it to me: ‘Border.’ Aha, like ‘frontier.’

I got off the train with a handshake and a dozen new vocabulary words. But throughout Madrid, Barcelona and the subsequent ten years in New York, I never got to bust out ‘frontera’ in conversation, not once. It just doesn’t come up, ‘border.’

Fast-forward to 2005, I’m in a Mexican cigar shop picking up some stogies for pals back home. I buy six Mexican stogies, individually wrapped in cellophane. I ask the counterguy for a box, afraid they’ll get crushed in my bag.

He gives me a box for Cuban cigars. Cubans are illegal in the ‘States, of course, and I don’t wanna catch shit for it when I try to re-enter the country.

“Uh,” I say, scrambling for the words. I don’t have ‘illegal.’ Then, lightbulb: “Pero eso...es un problemo a la frontera,” I say, pointing to the Cuban label.

“Ah, si, si,” he says, swapping the box out for a Mexican one.

I walk out of the store secretly thrilled I got to use “frontera.” Thanks, Manny!

Wait a sec...“un problemo,” I’d said. Is it “una problema?” Ah, dammit. In another ten years I’ll be in Argentina trying to get this right.