Marge Simpson and the Byrds in PLAYBOY: Life is Weird

Yeah, folks, Marge Simpson is on the cover of the November issue of Playboy and inside is an article about El Paso "A Weird Calm at the Edge of the Abyss" in which prominent mention is made about the Byrds and Cinco Puntos. The article is by our friend Luis Alberto Urrea (or here)--novelist, non-fiction writer, poet and now essayist. (Luis, of course, has done several books with CPP--an award winning collection of short stories, Six Kinds of Sky; VATOS, a collaboration of a poem by Luis with photographs by José Galvez; Ghost Sickness, a book of poems; and in February 2010, Luis' first graphic novel Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush with Christopher Cardinale.) The editors at Playboy asked Luis to write about the paradox which is El Paso and our sister city Juarez, Chihuahua. Juarez, such a wonderful vibrant city, is enduring the soul-sickening mayhem of the narcotraficante wars, but El Paso is the third safest city in the U.S. How can this be? Luis, who was born in Tijuana and has lived on the border for much of his life, has written extensively on border issues, especially immigration (please visit his website for links to all the various books). So he came to El Paso and stayed at the home of publishers Lee and Bobby Byrd. So, of course, the Byrds and Cinco Puntos wandered into the article as guides. Co-publisher Bobby Byrd has written on his blog about Luis' visit here and here and here. The Playboy article is available and googlable in the blogosphere in PDF form, but as publishers, we will respect copyright laws and not insert the link here.

But there we are in Playboy. How weird, huh?