smoke_signals p2 victor: you need to look like a warrior, like you just came from hunting buffalo thomas: but our people were fishermen victor: what do you think this is? dances with salmon? 021111 ... p2 "Back then Arnold Joseph was a hippy- but that was ok b/c most hippies were tryin' to be Indians anyways... and he stood there with peace signs splashed across his face like warpaint... and the sign beside him said 'make love not war' just as he proceeded to beat the fucking shit out of a national guard officer... they charged him with attempted manslaughter, then they plea bargined it down to assault and battery and then they plea bargined it down to being Indian in the 21st century." 021111 ... blue star my favorite part is the car that will only drive backwards. 021111 ... p2 From http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/alexie.html: Cineaste: Would you comment on the two young women driving their car in reverse? Alexie: [Laughs] Well, their names are Thelma and Lucy! Cineaste: To avoid copyright problems? Alexie: It was an in-joke for me, playing around with the idea of a road movie. I love that movie, as an anti-road movie which deconstructs the whole macho road/buddy movie, so I wanted to put them in there as an homage to Thelma & Louise. It also has to do with the sense of time in the movie, when the past, present, and future are all the same, that circular sense of time which plays itself out in the seamless transitions from past to present. Within that circular sense of time, I also wanted to have this car driving in reverse. The phrase I always use is, "Sometimes to go forward you have to drive in reverse." So it's a visual metaphor for what we were doing. It's also an Indian metaphor because our cars are always screwed up. There was a man who one summer drove his pickup all over the reservation in reverse because none of the forward gears worked. It's one of those moments that I think everybody can find amusing, but non-Indian audiences are going to say, "OK, this is funny, but what the hell's going on?," because there is no explanation for it. Indian audiences are really going to laugh, however, because they're going to completely understand it. I call those kinds of things Indian trapdoors, because an Indian will walk over them and fall in, but a non-Indian will keep on walking. 021112 ... perfectly_chaotic Today reminds me of the father pointing out the irony of a 4th of July celebration on their Spokane reservation. 110704 what's it to you? who go blather from