By M. Tekel, on September 29th, 2010%  His laugh is ominous. It’s pathetic and sad and it will creep into my dreams for years.
My mother dragged me to this thing, this convention, this seminar to learn about a way to make money. I told her I wasn’t interested, but she said, “C’mon you need a summer job. Just check it out.” Collecting aluminum cans was earning me a nickel a day, so next thing I know, I’m at an “information study” with a circle of my mother’s church friends, all of whom are drinking bottled water and laughing with this guy about luxurious vacations, prostate cancer (I’m not kidding) and finance. Lots of finance. Read More
By M. Tekel, on July 31st, 2010% 
The RV was the covered wagon of the 20th century, the head of a caravan cutting through the same arid landscape of Manifested settlers. Their foreheads swathed in familiar sweat, both the Modern and the Industrial man knew this expansion was justified and inevitable. Nowhere but Arizona holds fervent dogma like this, even to this day. Whether true or not, this land is my land, this land was always my land, this land was never your land.
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By M. Tekel, on July 25th, 2010%
Reposting this old thing. It came before this.
At the first of the year, I took a little crazy adventure to the south of California and tripped over the border to Tijuana. When relating this story to people, most are surprised or confused, so I’m cementing this tale in writing for anyone wanting to know how bizarre and terrifying Mexico’s streets are during the hours of darkness.
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By M. Tekel, on June 20th, 2010% 
She calls me after work, carrying an orange juice box full of flowers and she says, let’s go to the cemetery.
I’m reluctant. I’m slightly hungover, at the very least tired, not amused by anything. Like the sky, I feel overcast.
Trudging through puddles, accumulations of soggy pine needles and dead leaves, fall feels omnipresent. Inescapable drudgery.
We place brilliantly-dyed flowers, the stems hacked off, onto any graves that look lonely. Neon green, canary yellow, periwinkle and opal white. Fake colors.
I’m ignoring any new or military graves, looking for the markers placed in Citizen’s Cemetery that are for normal people, people so long dead they never knew what electricity was or chemical warfare or strip malls or nuclear holocaust or ATM’s or any of this. Doesn’t their pain, centuries old, long buried, seem more justified than this? Even if it’s forgotten?
I yearned for causes of death, some kind of excuse, but there were none. My thoughts couldn’t connect.
I searched for the graves of children, babies with the same birth and death date. I found pairs, two brothers who died before they were my age. Those tombstones for married couples, the one side already etched deep with dates, the other, empty . . . patiently waiting. Over one such couple’s grave, I kissed her, long and hard.
She was crying. It was hard, raw. It could be us soon. But maybe that’s just selfish thinking.
And there’s a picture of our feet, the box, the tomb.
We gave the remainder of the flowers to a man bringing his kids to the cemetery.
originally published Oct. 10 2009
By M. Tekel, on May 19th, 2010%
So this was it. We were homeless now, crouched low in the overgrowth behind a university gym. To us, home. Smoking cigarettes, our hands placed over our sleeping bags and blowing twisted smoke rings at the branch canopy above us.
“This is the taste of freedom,” Levi was saying. “The best cigarettes are the ones under a night sky.”
“Isn’t this kind of patronizing, condescending, you know?” I puffed, cringing, paranoid of every sound. “Like, we’re homeless, but we’re only tourists. We can escape this whole thing tomorrow if we wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“We chose this. We had a bed for the night and we chose this. Urban camping. But is it belittling to those who can’t choose it?”
“Even if this experience is fabricated, it still means something,” Levi said.
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Specialty Gunk Runner
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Last Night: The Donkeys at Yucca Tap Room 5/14/12
Originally published in Phoenix New Times’ Up On The Sun
It’s hard to tell your friends “I’m going to the Donkeys show” with a straight face. No, not some perverted freak-show in Mexico. I mean the psychedelic San Diegan blues rockers The Donkeys, who tore the Yucca Tap Room apart with their ’60s-inspired pop and ’70s-era jams, a blend that’s earned praise from indie contemporaries like The Mountain Goats and The Hold Steady. The Donkeys treated the bar and lounge like they were regulars, which is pretty close to the truth — this is hardly their first rodeo in Tempe. . . . → Read More: Last Night: The Donkeys at Yucca Tap Room 5/14/12
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Tekel’s Book of the Month Club Returns!
This isn’t some Oprah bullshit. We read kickass books and at the end of it, have a swag party with cocktails, cigars and coke. Most of all, we talk all posh about literature. It’s an incentive to read and discuss ideas rather than what’s on TV or who’s sleeping with who.
Tekel’s Book of the Month Club existed in some form as a weird Facebook group, but now it’s public. Anyone can (and should) join!
. . . → Read More: Tekel’s Book of the Month Club Returns!
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The Filthfiller Interview: Jerking-off, spider dongs and BDSM photographer Natacha Merritt
San Francisco-based photographer, Natacha Merritt, made waves in 2000 with her book Digital-Diaries, an erotic exploration of her excellent sex life as she toured the underground S&M and slut-sex scenes. The book moved over 300,000 copies, featured in everything from The Wall Street Journal to Playboy to Rolling Stone.
So what do you after your pornographic diary becomes a best-seller? Well, for Merritt, she went back to school to study biology. Perhaps that’s an odd choice, but between photographing Cirque du Soleil performers and amateur models, she was getting close and personal with arachnid genitalia. Her passion for sex . . . → Read More: The Filthfiller Interview: Jerking-off, spider dongs and BDSM photographer Natacha Merritt
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Rock Monster: Flagstaff’s Tonsil Yeti gets by (and triumphs) with a little help from their friends
Published on 03/22/2012 in Flag Live
(Author’s note: This article was the blood and sweat of over eight months, where it was post-poned and delayed repeatedly. I feel like I became really close with the band in that time and I’m finally glad to see it in print. Enjoy it uncensored after the break.)
It took a number of beer-pounding sessions before settling on the offbeat name Tonsil Yeti. Other suggestions thrown about were Bronson Johnson, Six Year Old Girls, Konkey Dong, Vagiant (taken, as it turns out), and Bloody Sex. But what exactly is a Tonsil Yeti? To . . . → Read More: Rock Monster: Flagstaff’s Tonsil Yeti gets by (and triumphs) with a little help from their friends
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Phoenix Indie-Rock Band Knesset Is Big in Japan
By Troy Farah Mon., Mar. 19 2012 at 7:00 AM in Phoenix New Times
Released last year, Coming of Age is an appropriate title for Knesset’s first album, as the band is only now starting to step up locally. Pronounced KA-NESS-ET and named after the legislative branch of the Israeli government, these locals have played in the background of Phoenix since 2007.
. . . → Read More: Phoenix Indie-Rock Band Knesset Is Big in Japan
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His laugh is ominous. It’s pathetic and sad and it will creep into my dreams for years.
