I am on a low-rent book tour with my new cult classic El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption In Mexico City. For the next three months, I will stumble across this land from sea to stinking sea probing the underbelly of Obama's America. The findings will be posted on these pages.
1.
First stop was the near north woods, Humboldt County USA, to wheedle the medicos into granting me a clean bill of health before I hit the road. A year ago this February, my doctor who has poked and probed my old broken cadaver for nearly 20 years, pronounced me dead. "Liver Cancer" he parsed gravely -- but I am still alive and kicking. The class enemy be warned: I am not dead yet.
Humboldt had just been wracked by a 6.5 earthquake that cut a swath through Oldtown Eureka's antique shops but was not quite Haiti. Nonetheless, the shake-up worked its usual bad mojo and implanted the seeds of fear and loathing in every soul. On January 22nd, three separate police agencies shut down the north end of Arcata and evacuated hundreds of residents after a scruffy hippie-type tried to fed ex a suspicious package to Berkeley that leaked, according to the clerk at Kinko's, "a chemical odor." The offending package was blown up in a back alley. Read more »
