Educate a Cuban Today

Oh Yili...how I love thee.

I am a parrot head, you know those crazy people who get together for the Jimmy Buffet concerts, they get drunk, they smoke what ever you hand them, and they enjoy the same old songs that Jimmy sang back in the 70's. How do you not love Jimmy?
The last Jimmy Buffet concert I went to I was pregnant, still not a chance in hell I would miss this offer, 2 free tickets from a friend. We went, I had fun, I enjoyed the 2nd hand smoke, all of it. And longed to join in the festivities. But being pregnant I could only enjoy the music sober. And like a bloodhound rubbernecking to the smell of party favors, just sniffing up and inhaling bits and pieces, I may have inhaled but never got to smoke.
I told my co-workers, so excited I could pee, most were clueless. My Yili asked if he was a country singer. I sang a piece of Margaritaville, nothing. Cheeseburger in Paradise, strike two. Come Monday, strike three, you're out. I work in the Little Havana side of the building, no one really knows much about music that has English lyrics, and well I can't comment on their music or telenovelas because I am too enthralled in pop culture here and now, not back in Hialeah, not in the 80s. I love Hialeah and Miami but you just don't get that rich Latin culture in Tampa (at least not the quality) except for 2 stations that are not worthy of my time, or unless you are buying spanish CDs and I just am not into that. But really how do you not know Jimmy, I bow to the man, drink to his name, he is a legend and an amazing entertainer. I have him on DVD and CD, and play him out like my Beatles CD, lets not go there, although they know of the Beatles, they only know "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah." No way I can bring up Yellow Submarine or Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. I love you John, Ringo, Paul and the other one, Billy or Michael or whatever (is it another John).
Just the other day, I got a message from Yili it read- "Do you know who Bob Marlin is?"
I had to hold myself back from climbing over the cublicle like Spiderman, and putting her ass back on a boat to Jamaica this time to show her who he was. I know my Yili and usually these messages have to do with...well you know who the hell she was talking about. How did these people come to work with me, had fate found a list of conversations that would torture me and just sporadically send them my way. I must be on God's sitcom list up there, I know it.
I responded "Bob Marley".
"Who is that?"
How the fuck do you respond to that. Sure it was like me asking her "Do you know of Julio Iglesi?"
She would just laugh and laugh and laugh, everyone knows Julio Iglesias, and just to be a bitch I could say do you know John Church, or Julio Church, because that she may take a while to get, but eventually it would click, and then smoke may come out of her eyes and ears from the cranks going into overdrive. Church is Iglesia in english. Just to have fun with her and time her delayed reaction.
Bob Marley is the stuff legends are made of, he is amazing in all he did, and he was all about peace, like my John Lennon. Drugs had a big part, but usually it does, you need it to deal with the hell of a world we live in now. Marley is big in the islands, all of them, I guess but Cuba, most at work knew him, but she didn't. I sang alot of songs and she was clueless, I showed her pics, famous pics, with the red, green and yellow rasta colors, nothing. It was like a light bulb with no flicker. There was no chance I would ever get through to this one.
I reluctantly gave up, I still plan on handing her a CD, not that she will listen to it much, she will give it back in a day and continue her Wisin and Yandel. And I will feel defeated, this kind of stuff is what I like to share, some people like to send out emails on how Jesus loves you, I don't know that Jesus ever used the internet, but I guess he is channeling himself through these people, they spread the word, or they send chain letters about how if you don't forward you will die and be chased by a demon, raped and gutted while your family never finds your body, crap like that. It's fear and religion, well this is my religion, I believe in happiness and paying it forward, in music being a big part of life and smiling and singing along, and in the fact that no one is better than me and I am better than no one. But for the love of all that is holy, please how do you go on living and breathing without knowing Jimmy and Bob, and Bon Jovi and Blink 182, the list goes on and on, I will never attempt to bring these people up, it would leave me as a college professor at a lecture and they would get it all wrong in the end just pissing me off by swiching songs and bands. But the top of the list, the Beatles, the Beastie Boys, the Bobs and Jimmys, and Billy Joel, she doesn't know his ass either. I just don't know how she was shackled and kept in a cave about them. Maybe she knows were Bin Ladin is, maybe they shared caves and we are just looking in the wrong place, I will ask her tommorrow if she was hanging with Fidel wearing a towel on his head, speaking tounges, to this I would respond, No Fidel wasn't practicing Santeria and getting possessed, you have been bunking with someone who we have been looking for, tell me where you were, I will follow. (back on track)
Please spread the word and pass the pipe, let's make the world a better place with music sharing, hand a CD to a Cuban, they are missing out on a lot, they ration things in Cuba, so they are probably scared to take the CD, but assure them that Fidel isn't watching.
Your life is a movie, totally unreahearsed, totally unexpected, the only thing you have control of is the soundtrack. Love you guys...Bita