Akil and Hong welcome Tino Garcia to the show to discuss the Multimodal Lab at SBCC. From there, the three discuss Tino's path to SBCC - with stops in Spain, Greece, Mexico City and the Antelope Valley on the way - and then discuss New Mexican cuisine and tacos before going on a deep dive into Tino's favorite hip-hop artists. Show notes are loooooong for this one!
Mentioned in this episode:
SBCC Multimodal Lab - https://sites.google.com/pipeline.sbcc.edu/multimodalsbcc/home
Title V Grants - https://www.sbcc.edu/institutionalresearch/institutionalgrants.php
SBCC Lyricist Lounge and other events - https://sites.google.com/pipeline.sbcc.edu/multimodalsbcc/upcoming-events
Makerspaces - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace
Zines - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine
Alternative Press Expo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Press_Expo
Off Register - https://www.offregistersb.org/
Riot Grrrl - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_grrrl
“Industry Rule #4080” - https://genius.com/A-tribe-called-quest-check-the-rhime-lyrics
Lyricist Lounge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyricist_Lounge
Umoja - https://www.sbcc.edu/umoja/index.php
Dream Center - https://www.sbcc.edu/equity/dream-center/
Basic Needs Programs - https://www.sbcc.edu/equity/basic-needs-programs/index.php
Raices - https://www.sbcc.edu/raices/
Miguel Cruz - https://sbcc-vaquero-voices.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-45-miguel-cruz
Red Panda - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda_(acrobat)
Santa Fe, New Mexico - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico
Concordia College - https://www.concordiacollege.edu/
Mexico City - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City
Claremont Colleges - https://www.claremont.edu/
EF Santa Barbara - https://www.ef.com/wwen/ils/destinations/united-states/santa-barbara/
Antelope Valley College - https://www.avc.edu/
Puente Program - https://www.avc.edu/puente
National University - https://www.nu.edu/
Imposter Syndrome - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
“You’re only funky as your last cut” - https://genius.com/Outkast-rosa-parks-a-cappella-lyrics
Hand wave (for motorcycles in the article, but similar to the car wave) - https://laist.com/news/transportation/moto-wave-in-la
Black Star - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Star_(rap_duo)
Sopaipillas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopaipilla
Z Reisz - https://sbcc-vaquero-voices.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-21-z-reisz
Hotdish - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotdish
Ganas - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ostBQcghsPI
Frito Pie - https://thebitenm.com/frito-pie-a-new-mexico-classic/
Zona Rosa - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zona_Rosa,_Mexico_City
Tacos de Mixiote - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixiote
Tacopedia by Deborah Holtz and Juan Carlos Mena - https://www.phaidon.com/en-us/products/tacopedia-the-taco-encyclopedia
Chili fries from The Hat - https://thehat.com/
Black Thought - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Thought
Notorious B.I.G. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notorious_B.I.G.
Nas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nas
Tupac Shakur - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur
Black Star - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Star_(rap_duo)
Jay-Z - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z
AZ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZ_(rapper)
Brother Ali - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Ali
Wu-Tang Clan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu-Tang_Clan
Lupe FIasco - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupe_Fiasco
Ice Cube - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Cube
Mobb Deep - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobb_Deep
Common - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_(rapper)
Lauryn Hill (L-Boogie) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauryn_Hill
Snoop Dogg - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoop_Dogg
Chuck D - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_D
Rakim - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakim
Residente - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residente
Immortal Technique - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Technique
Missy Elliott - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missy_Elliott
MC Lyte - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_Lyte
Queen Latifah - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Latifah
Outkast - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outkast
Goodie Mob - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodie_Mob
Rhymesayers - https://rhymesayers.com/
Doomtree - https://www.doomtree.net/
Eyedea - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyedea
Slug / Atmosphere - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(rapper)
Felt (hip-hop) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felt_(hip-hop_group)
Yasiin Bey fka Mos Def - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasiin_Bey
Amerigo Gazaway - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Gazaway
Yasiin Gaye - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgljHfgMQl4
Common Wonder - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLI71xx56Mg
Miseducation of Eunice Waymon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-THq0-EDJrE
Mixtape vs. Album - https://www.dictionary.com/e/mixtape-vs-album/
Doggystyle by Snoop Dogg - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggystyle
Kid Frost - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_(rapper)
Smif N Wessun - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smif-N-Wessun
Rawkus Records - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawkus_Records
Native Tongues - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Tongues
2 Live Crew - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Live_Crew
Hyphy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphy
Xzibit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xzibit
The Alkaholiks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tha_Alkaholiks
Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik by Outkast - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
Black on Both Sides by Yasiin Bey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_on_Both_Sides
Black Thought Freestyle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmQgSpV3fA
Michael Eric Dyson - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Eric_Dyson
Between the World and Me Documentary - https://www.hbomax.com/movies/between-the-world-and-me/db726bb8-8a45-44f9-bf72-01fa55161c7f
Resurrection by Common - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(Common_album)
One Day It’ll All Make Sense by Common - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_It%27ll_All_Make_Sense
Ahmad Jamal - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Jamal
Soulquarians - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soulquarians
Eminem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminem
SBCC Student Resource Finder - https://www.sbcc.edu/student-resource-finder/
SBCC Multimodal Lab Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/multimodallabsbcc/
SBCC Multimodal Lab Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MultimodalLabSBCC
Captions Provided by Zoom
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Hong Lieu: Hello, and welcome to another episode of SBCC Vaquero Voices - a podcast highlighting the unique voices that comprise our campus culture, and how we're all working together to serve our students and the community at large. As usual, I'm joined by my co-host, Akil Hill.
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Akil Hill: What's good, y'all?
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Hong Lieu: And today, we are honored to welcome Tino Garcia to the show. Welcome, Tino!
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Akil Hill: Welcome to you.
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Tino Garcia: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I dig your show. I love that SBCC has something like this, because I don't think very many colleges do, probably. You guys would know better, but it's an honor to be here.
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Hong Lieu: And speaking of things that SBCC is grateful to have, Tino, you are helping to coordinate the multimodal lab at… on campus.
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Hong Lieu: Along with being English faculty. If you want to just speak a little bit on that, because I remember when it was a communication lab, the con lab was really cool, it was a nice place to chill, but y'all have really overhauled the space, and if students have not, if y'all haven't had a chance to go in there, I mean, it is…
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Hong Lieu: pretty mind-blowing. Like, I stopped in for the first time during the campus kickoff.
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Hong Lieu: And I was just really so impressed with how laid out it was, in terms of you have different nooks for different kind of flavors. I mean, there's just a multitude of vibes going on. I mean, if you just want to kind of go into… go into Multimoto Lab, and how you came to be involved with it, and just what you offer to the students on campus.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, well, thanks for coming through, and thanks for the shout-out to the lab.
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Tino Garcia: you know, I… I inherited it, and it's not just me, but, you know, we have a whole team, really,
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Tino Garcia: you know, the comm lab days were before I got here, so when I came in, it was already, burgeoning into the multimodal lab under the former director, Joshua Escobar, right?
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Tino Garcia: And that's under a Title V grant, so it's being funded now under a grant, and so…
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Tino Garcia: that's how come we've kind of, shifted the direction of it. And so, you know, it's a Title V grant, so we're trying to make sure that we're giving the support, sort of wraparound
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Tino Garcia: Dynamic support, to students, and particularly equity-deserving students, through an array of services and spaces, kind of, within the lab.
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Tino Garcia: And so, you know.
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Tino Garcia: It's hard to kind of distill what the lab is, because it's part tutoring center, it's part computer lab, it's part study space, it's part classroom.
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Tino Garcia: because faculty can come in there and use it to teach, right? And then we can also hold events, so it's an event space. And then it's also, like, a maker space. So, like, part of the ethos of the lab, something that's really unique and dope is, like.
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Tino Garcia: we want people who are creative, and who make things, and then we want a space to also display that, you know? So we have…
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Tino Garcia: a host of things where you get in there and you start making things. So we have, like, a multimodal creation station where you can make zines, you can make posters, you can make buttons, you could laminate your study guides,
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Tino Garcia: So that's, like, one little area, right?
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Tino Garcia: We have The Loaf, which is a super dope spot, because it has, you know, it's like a lounge vibe, and in fact, that's where we host the Lyricist Lounge. You know, if anybody out there has seen any of the promotional material there.
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Tino Garcia: You know, in the loaf, we have very comfortable furniture, we have literature, we got a record player.
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Tino Garcia: We have, lighting in there if you want to put on some kind of little open mic, or…
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Tino Garcia: presentations…
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Tino Garcia: And so, you know, we do writing circles in there, we do the Lyricist Lounge, which I can talk about more later if y'all are interested. So that's, like, the loaf part.
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Tino Garcia: And then, you know, we offer tutoring, not just comm tutoring, but we have commuters.
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Tino Garcia: We have some English tutors.
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Tino Garcia: But we're trying to really tutor across disciplines so that anybody who walks in can get academic support, you know? Obviously, like, if they… they have a particular class, like a STEM class, they might want to go to one of those labs and one of those tutors. But for understanding assignments, for getting resources, for working on projects.
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Tino Garcia: For just getting guidance,
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Tino Garcia: you know, we can help them with that, and really, it's kind of a student-driven space, and so we try to have our staff and the students who come in tell us, what do you want? What do you need? What should we create here with these funds?
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Hong Lieu: Very cool. And I know, as someone who was running a makerspace at my previous position at the public library downtown, there's a lot of people that want to make stuff, but that first kind of step of
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Hong Lieu: of, like, they have a lot of creative energy, but it's kind of hard for them to focus it on actually creating something and seeing it through, because, you know, you can always get started on something, or… or, I mean…
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Hong Lieu: Do you see that's a similar kind of thing here, or is it kind of just where people have a lot of ideas and they're ready to go, and you just kind of have to guide them, or is it kind of a lot of, you know, inspiration kind of building as well to get them started on where they want to go? Because I'm sure the ideas are just pouring a mile a minute with all the students on campus, but in terms of how do you focus that and get it, you know.
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Hong Lieu: Through the process of creating something and getting it done.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, well, sometime I'll have to ask you more about your experience in a makerspace, because, a lot of this is actually new to me, personally. Like, I just… I stepped into this, in the spring of last year, so this is just my second semester kind of doing this, so I'm kind of… I'm kind of learning the ropes myself.
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Tino Garcia: But I feel very lucky to have kind of landed here, because, you know, we're doing creative stuff, and I'm a very creative person,
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Tino Garcia: some… yeah, some students will just come in, and they'll start making stuff. Like, we have this student who's in there quite a bit this semester who… he'll… I think he's taking anatomy, and he'll… he'll use our laminator to make study guides, you know, and he's just… he's in there every day, putting in work.
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Tino Garcia: And then some people are really into zines, and they'll come in there, and they'll make a zine. But, you know, like, I think for a number of students, like, a lot of it's kind of new. They're like, oh, like, what's a zine, you know? So…
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Tino Garcia: we hope to do, like, some more workshops about that. I'm gonna bring my students in, actually, tomorrow, and introduce them to zines, and, hopefully get them… I like to offer different, like, options for projects, and some that are, like, creative critical, and so hopefully…
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Tino Garcia: with this research project they're going to be doing, some of them will choose a zine, so I'm going to kind of introduce them to the ethos and kind of how it works tomorrow. And so the lab is a space that can,
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Tino Garcia: Hosts, things like that.
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Akil Hill: What is a zingo?
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Tino Garcia: It's like a magazine, but it's, like, the ethos is really DIY, and it's trying to get away from, kind of.
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Tino Garcia: having to go through a publisher or a gatekeeper, right? So you, on the cheap, you can create and get your message out, right? Especially, a lot of it historically is geared towards, sort of, social change, maybe getting around
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Tino Garcia: surveillance apparatus, right? Like, I mean, you could do whatever you want with it, but those are some of the benefits. So, like, that kind of analog materiality,
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Tino Garcia: is really appealing right now, I would say, to a lot of folks, because of…
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Tino Garcia: how dominant and omnipresent AI is, and just, like, the digitalization of our everyday life. You know, it's, like, kind of… for some folks, it's kind of alienating, while at the same time, for others, it's super empowering and magical, and so forth.
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Tino Garcia: So it's kind of this, like, alternative. It's a way of, like, embodied… learning in an embodied way, rather than this kind of disembodied way that we get when we're sort of just doing it digitally.
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Hong Lieu: And as a punk rock guy, zines are definitely in my wheelhouse, because, you know, a lot of it ties back to some of the early punk rock stuff, and there was, like, a second wave when Riot Girl kicked off, and the… and they kind of took a little bit of… a lot of scrapbooking, because early zines are literally just, you know, text on paper, Xeroxed for mass production and mass consumption and distribution.
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Hong Lieu: You know, so you had, you know, Maximum Rock and Roll, early punk… all the early punk magazines were kind of zine-distributed. The Riot Girls really brought a lot of more visual, like, just really…
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Hong Lieu: a lot more pop, honestly. They really took it and evolved it and made it… they took some scrapbooking elements and really added that element to it to make it really… each page kind of pop. And then, see, one thing I saw at the kickoff when y'all were doing, you know, had the students come and demo their zines.
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Hong Lieu: They now have digital templates in Canva now, where you can get most of that pop without having to kind of scrapbook, lay it out, Xerox it, and do this and that. It's just in there, and you can just build it out, so it's really cool to see
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Hong Lieu: how the aesthetic has still survived and still transcends across the different media, because when I looked at it first, I was like, wait, did y'all really cut everything out and glue it and then zero? Because it was so… it had that…
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Hong Lieu: that visual, that aesthetic, but then when… but then they're like, oh no, we just built this in Canva. I was like, oh man, that's such a trip that it's… it's become, not to say standardized, but that… that that stuff is just kind of… like, the hallmarks and touchstones are all there, and it's really, yeah, beyond the communication.
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Hong Lieu: there are little nods and homages to the past, and it was… it was just really cool, and it's really cool to see students really latch onto that stuff, because, yeah, I mean, the… it's always been an alternative press element, like, Bay Area has Alternative Press Expo they do every year, and then, you know, Santa Barbara we have off-register now that…
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Hong Lieu: James Van Arsdale is doing, that brings a lot of little independent publishers and stuff out. So it's just… it's cool that we have that outlet here on campus, that if folks just have an idea or something they want to
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Hong Lieu: put into, kind of, some communicative form that they want to distribute, you know, en masse, that they can just hop in there and just get it cracking, so that's pretty cool.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, thanks for that additional context. Yeah, like, I'm fairly new to zines myself, so I'm still kind of learning about it along with the students.
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Hong Lieu: Yeah, definitely with… I mean, a lot of the early punk rock, quote-unquote, magazines that people used to read, like Slash Maximum Rock and Roll, they were just literally fan, you know, fan magazines, fanzines.
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Hong Lieu: And that's where the kind of zine thing took off, and really, I had to give a big shout out, like, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, those… that… those early 90s Riot Girl, you know, Girls to the Front, they took that medium and really just evolved it so much, and just…
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Hong Lieu: I mean, the visual touches and cues I saw in the zine template in Canva that really… that caught my eye were all Riot Girl touches, so I got… you gotta…
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Hong Lieu: really give it… give the credit where it's due for them for evolving the media and making it now palatable into the 21st century, so… and then from then on, it's just whoever has an idea, because, you know, when I was at the library again.
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Hong Lieu: there was a huge zine component to it in terms of getting folks starting publishing because of the whole DIY aspect of it, where, you know, publishers have always, you know, industry rule number 4080,
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Hong Lieu: You know, you want to avoid the big ticket sometime, you know, so anything you can get out there, if you have that idea, you throw it out there, so… but yeah.
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Hong Lieu: I guess I… I know a follow-up question in terms of the lab real quick, and then we'll touch on just your faculty position in general, but in terms of
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Hong Lieu: getting folks into the lab, is there still something where folks think it's just for communication, or have they been quick to kind of be like, oh, you know, anyone can come in here? Because at first, I was like, isn't this the comm lab? And then I… when I… once I came in, I got it, but in terms of, you know, not before you step in.
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Hong Lieu: Is there still that kind of trepidation, or has the message got out, word got out, people kind of know what's up already?
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, I think it's a mixed bag. You know, I think probably for some faculty and staff and administrators, it's maybe a little bit off the radar, you know, or still the comm lab in their mind, just because of the historical, kind of, inertia.
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Tino Garcia: For students, I think less so, and in part because, you know, a lot of… a lot of the students probably got here when it was already the multimodal lab.
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Tino Garcia: That said, I think one of the stumbling blocks has been the name itself, because multimodal is a little mystifying.
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Tino Garcia: So, it's like, we're actually in a discussion right now. It's like, do we try to demystify it, which is kind of what we've been trying to do with things like the open house, and…
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Tino Garcia: And so forth, but we're actually considering a name change, because
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Tino Garcia: it's actually not a lab, per se, as I was suggesting earlier. It's kind of more of a center, and kind of a lounge, or like a commons, in a way. So we're playing around with some other ideas that are hopefully more straightforward, in terms of what it is.
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Tino Garcia: of course, a big kind of question mark hanging over all of this, because it is Title V grant funded, is that our funding will be going away, and so there's sort of an uncertain future for the lab.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, so, that said, we are seeing more students coming in than in the past, right? Like, right now, we're on track to have anywhere probably from 20% to 30% more
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Tino Garcia: visits than last semester. And so word is getting out, and once students do get in there, they start to see, like, that it's… it's a very unique place, like, it can offer them a lot. So I think word is spreading, but…
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Tino Garcia: We're kind of still working on that.
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Hong Lieu: And then touching on the event space aspect of it, I love the… I love the Lyricist Lounge idea.
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Hong Lieu: I… I… if you just want to go on that a little bit, because I loved the actual, you know, the punchline, Wordsworth, all the… all the old Raucus albums, Lyricist Lounge Volume 1 and 2. I loved all that stuff growing up, so it's… it's really cool to see
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Hong Lieu: you bringing that to the students as well, and I mean, just if you want to speak on that a little bit, how that's been on campus. I'll definitely have to go check it out one time, although my mic… my microphone skills are not… definitely not up to snuff in that regard, so…
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Tino Garcia: Well, you don't need mic skills to show up. Like, we encourage folks to just show up and vibe, or just listen, just maybe show up and write if you want to write, and it doesn't have to be, you know, like, lyrics. It can be just whatever's on your heart, whatever's on your mind. That's kind of the vibe, and…
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Tino Garcia: you know, this is a joint collaboration, really, with a number of programs. We're, you know, we're calling ourselves the Liberation Collective,
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Tino Garcia: And so it's Amosia, it's the Dream Center, it's basic needs.
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Tino Garcia: the Multimodal Lab in Raises, and then, you know, Miguel Cruz and I kind of, co-lead it. And so, you know, he's… he's a sick MC. I don't know if you guys have heard him get on the mic, and he's also a musician. So,
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Tino Garcia: So yeah, we're kind of,
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Tino Garcia: It's a space to come, and usually we have, like, a check-in, we have a little writing, and then if people want to share, they can share, or if they just want to listen, they can listen.
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Tino Garcia: And it's just kind of an organic thing, you know, we'll often just play some instrumental beats, although the other day, you know, we were like, well, let's bring in some instruments and let people play around, right? So…
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Tino Garcia: Miguel brought his guitar, and we, at the lab, we have, like, little, stylophones. We have a xylophone, so we have little electronic instruments where you could create little drum beats, and so we're kind of exploring that more, we're just getting started.
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Tino Garcia: Because beatmaking is a type of composition, and so, like, you know, you write something, but then you put it on a beat, and now you have this multimodal composition. So we're playing with that, but… so, I think it's… he's either a former or a current professor, I didn't catch everything.
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Tino Garcia: He came in with his trumpet.
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Tino Garcia: And we were like, oh, man, cool. So… so he started laying some stuff down on the trumpet. We had a student, play some stuff on the guitar, and then Miguel grabbed the guitar, and we just made a beat on the spot, and then we just wrote to it, and we're gonna see if we can…
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Tino Garcia: record something based on it, because it was really cool. Like, had this kind of, like…
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Tino Garcia: my… I was hearing, like, a little, like, Miles Davis, but then, like, Miguel's giving it, like, this hip-hop kind of…
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Tino Garcia: beat.
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Tino Garcia: And so, it was this cool thing that we didn't expect that just kind of came to fruition for our last Lyricist Lounge.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, and then we do writing circles in there, too, where, you know, we don't usually have music with it, but people can write in whatever kind of form they want, and just the space to share their voice. Yeah, just be in community.
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Hong Lieu: Do you have recording?
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Hong Lieu: Equipment in there, too, if you ever want to just record what you lay down in there.
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Tino Garcia: We do, yeah. So, we have some… we have different mics in there and stuff. I'm not technically that savvy, so, you probably are. If you come through, we'll have you hook up the recording stuff, but yeah, like, we could do more, and maybe down the road.
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Tino Garcia: Think about, yeah, recording some of those sessions in a more serious manner, yeah.
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Hong Lieu: Definitely. That sounds… that sounds pretty cool.
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Hong Lieu: All right, before we head on to the next section, I just gotta ask you, in terms of, as a member of English faculty, you know, you're doing races, Emoja, all these classes, I mean, how do you balance multimodal lab, teaching load? I mean, is there a balance? I mean, what's, what's, you know, how do you… how do you play that game and make everything settle and keep your mental health in check as well?
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Tino Garcia: That's a good question.
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Tino Garcia: That is, that's an evolving…
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Tino Garcia: process. You know, some of it is this kind of,
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Tino Garcia: embodied learning that, you know, I know you're a part of. I'm not sure if Akil is, but
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Tino Garcia: This sort of,
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Tino Garcia: trying to find ways to align vision and values with behavior and actions. And part of that for me is, like, just trying to stay grounded through different embodiment practices and kind of contemplative practices.
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Tino Garcia: I have a… I have a philosophy background, so that… that plays into some of it,
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Tino Garcia: I try to, like, throw… I try to throw things into, like, a zen mode, but, like, a sport mode, like a…
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Tino Garcia: a Buddhist sport mode sort of thing, to kind of…
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Tino Garcia: stay in equilibrium as I'm trying to balance all these things.
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Tino Garcia: But…
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Tino Garcia: you know, it's a good problem to have, because everything kind of cross-pollinates, you know? Stuff I'm doing in the lab gives me ideas for stuff I could do in class, or that ISIS Faculty Institute, you know, will bring in
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Tino Garcia: a speaker or something, and then, boom, I'm putting that in class. I like to experiment a lot, and I like to take what I learn and just kind of try to remix it, make it my own, see if it… see if it works. And so, you know, I'll bring some stuff to the English department, or some stuff from the English department, to the lab, or to…
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Tino Garcia: To classes, and, yeah, it's… I feel kind of…
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Tino Garcia: sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but a lot of times it's like… there's just, like, an abundance of innovation and support that I've stepped into at SBCC. It's kind of wild, so…
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Tino Garcia: I don't know if that answers your question, but I'm spinning a lot of plates, and I'm just trying not to let them fall.
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Hong Lieu: Shout out to Red Panda, she just came back yesterday, so… speaking of plate spinning and bouncing balls and stuff.
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Hong Lieu: All right, seggering right along. What brought you to SBCC? So, Tino, your path to SBCC, I don't know how far you want to go back. Childhood, or, you know, wherever you want to start. What brought you over here? How'd you get… how'd you come over to…
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Tino Garcia: Oh, man.
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Tino Garcia: Well, I'll go geographically here.
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Hong Lieu: Yep.
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Tino Garcia: I'll draw a giant triangle across the western part of the United States for you.
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Tino Garcia: So, I'm from outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, right? So that's where I grew up.
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Tino Garcia: I have a Chicano family, so my dad's side is Chicano, my mom's side is white, Anglo, and they're from Minnesota. My parents, you know, they met in the service,
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Tino Garcia: in Germany, back in the 70s, and then came and lived in New Mexico.
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Tino Garcia: And so…
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Tino Garcia: you know, I'm situated in the borderlands, and then I have this bi-cultural, you know, bi-ethnic identity,
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Tino Garcia: And, pretty early on, my family kind of split up, my parents divorced.
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Tino Garcia: my mom moved back to Minnesota, and so I ended up…
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Tino Garcia: moving back with her and my brother, to go to high school and college in Minnesota.
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Tino Garcia: So… so I went from NM to MN, and that was a culture shock, that… that, you know, coming from kind of one of the brownest places in the country to one of the whitest places in the country. But, you know, there were a lot of opportunities,
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Tino Garcia: somehow I think I implicitly just gravitated to those opportunities, because
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Tino Garcia: New Mexico is so rich in so many ways, but the education system is so under-resourced, you know, in a lot of ways, kind of like California.
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Tino Garcia: And…
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Tino Garcia: So, I don't know, some part of me knew that I could have different educational opportunities there, so that's what I did. So I ended up, going to college there at a predominantly white institution that had a lot of opportunities, a liberal arts school, called Concordia College.
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Tino Garcia: And… interestingly, you know, it's a religious school, it's a Lutheran school, but I didn't go there for that, but then I ended up minoring in religion because I found it kind of fascinating. So, I studied English and Spanish, I double majored.
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Tino Garcia: And then I started getting interested in religion. I did some studying abroad, which was really eye-opening and kind of gave me the travel bug. I traveled a little bit to Spain.
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Tino Garcia: And then did a semester abroad, in Greece on the island of Crete.
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Tino Garcia: kind of got deeper into philosophy and religion and thought, you know, maybe… maybe I could become an educator, maybe I could become a professor or something.
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Tino Garcia: And so, I decided I think I'm gonna try to go to graduate school. So, I graduated college, and,
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Tino Garcia: I thought, well, let's take a year off and do a little traveling. So, my then-girlfriend, who's now my wife, we went down to Mexico City for a year, and we taught English. It was amazing, because,
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Tino Garcia: one, you know, Mexico City is just… there's so many marvelous, interesting things to explore. You know, we explored a tiny sliver of it.
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Tino Garcia: But, they also taught us how to teach. So, you know, we were teaching ESL, but we didn't know how to teach, you know? And so they had a kind of inductive, humanistic approach that is kind of the backbone of my approach now that I got down there.
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Tino Garcia: So we did that, and had we not been slated to come to California to go to graduate school, we would have probably just stayed there, because we kind of fell in love with it.
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Tino Garcia: So yeah, so we both got into graduate school in Claremont, and so that's what brought us to Southern California. We're talking 2003. So, been in California since then.
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Tino Garcia: So we both did master's degrees there, and then I decided to transfer to UCSB, so that's what brought me to Santa Barbara. So I did a master's in religion and philosophy of religion.
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Tino Garcia: And then I… at UCSB, I was working in religious studies, philosophy of religion.
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Tino Garcia: I completed coursework on a PhD there, but I never did the dissertation or the field exams. It's a long story that I won't go into, but basically, I changed course, and I had been teaching ESL in Santa Barbara at a language school called EF International.
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Hong Lieu: What, downtown, or…
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Akil Hill: It was on Chapala Street. Michelle Terena? You got… you all know it? Yeah.
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Hong Lieu: Hell yeah.
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Tino Garcia: so I… that was cool, because, see, you know, like, at UCSB, like, I TA'd for one semester,
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Tino Garcia: But I wasn't able to teach very much, and like, my fellowship had run out, so now I was going further into debt, you know, because I was already in debt for my undergrad, and so forth. Like, I should have gone to a community college, probably.
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Tino Garcia: And so anyway, like, but I loved teaching, you know? So I was like, I'm gonna… I'm gonna try to make it…
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Tino Garcia: teaching, and I don't know if I'll come back and do, you know, finish the PhD or what. And so I was doing that for about 5 years, and I started to realize, like.
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Tino Garcia: I love this, you know, I was meeting students from all over the world all the time, and it… it was… it was amazing, but it's like, I don't… I don't fit here. Like, I think I really belong at a college, you know, or university or something, so…
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Tino Garcia: I applied to Antelope Valley College, which is out in Lancaster-Palmdale area, northeast of LA, high desert.
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Tino Garcia: And, you know, I got hired as an adjunct, much to my surprise, and then,
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Tino Garcia: shortly thereafter, I got hired full-time, and so…
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Tino Garcia: I… I taught there for about 8 years, and before coming to SBCC, and… and it was phenomenal. Like, I love… I love the people, I love the programs. So that's where I started to… to get deeper into some of these, you know, student empowerment programs, equity work,
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Tino Garcia: they… that's where I met a lot of mentors who kind of really started shaping, like, who… who I am in higher education. You know, I got involved with the Moja, I became a Puente coordinator.
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Tino Garcia: I don't know if you guys are familiar with Puente,
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Tino Garcia: It's kind of like RAISES, but it's a cohort. It's a smaller, scope.
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Tino Garcia: And…
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Tino Garcia: And yeah, did a lot of other cool stuff. Like, I was an advisor to a student club called the United Artists for Social Change, so we would do open mics, and we would do, you know, art workshops, and we would do, like, protests, and we would do all kinds of cool stuff.
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Tino Garcia: And so, it was… it was tough.
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Tino Garcia: deciding to leave there, okay, but I live in Ventura. My wife teaches at Ventura College, and so I was commuting, basically, an hour and 40…
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Hong Lieu: The whole time? For 8 years? Over 8 years, I was commuting.
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Tino Garcia: An hour and 45 minutes, if there were no… if there's no traffic, one way.
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Tino Garcia: And so that was… it was too… it was not sustainable. You know, my life was, like, bifurcated.
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Tino Garcia: Plus, I had heard some really cool things about SBCC, you know, and I was like, oh man, that would be like a dream if I could… if I could land that.
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Tino Garcia: Sorry, this is a long answer, because it's like a twist… my path is like a twisting road.
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Akil Hill: No worries, no worries.
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Hong Lieu: for, yeah. And my wife's from Lancaster, so we can go talk about ABC, too, if you want to, so…
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Tino Garcia: Okay, yeah, no, I love talking about ABC, and I miss it, man.
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Tino Garcia: So… So…
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Tino Garcia: I… but here's… so here's the wrinkle. When I… when I got hired at Antelope Valley College, I got hired on the strength of, you know, I had a BA,
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Tino Garcia: And I had teaching ESL experience, but I didn't have a master's in English, which is typically what you need. And so there, they accepted a master's in any humanities, which I did have. So that's how I got in the door there.
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Tino Garcia: But at SBCC, and most other colleges in the area,
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Tino Garcia: they won't grant equivalency, for that. They won't let you in the door. So I actually applied to SBCC the year before. I ended up getting the interview and getting hired.
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Tino Garcia: they didn't let me in the door. I had to go back and get a second master's degree. So I went back and got another master's in rhetoric, composition, and rhetoric, which was super fun, actually. I really enjoyed going back to school, as it was a little weird, because I was already teaching in the field.
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Tino Garcia: But, I like being a student.
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Hong Lieu: from… or from.
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Tino Garcia: No, so I… I had to, you know, pragmatically, I had to do it online, so I did it through National University, so it's asynchronous, online,
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Tino Garcia: And…
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Tino Garcia: and it… yeah, I really enjoyed it. So, because I was working full-time, and then trying to do this master's,
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Tino Garcia: And I ended up doing it, so… so that's how I got my foot in the door at SBCC.
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Hong Lieu: So, working full-time, commuting from Ventura to Antelope Valley, getting a master… I mean, the earlier question asked about how you balance multimodal lab with your current team. I mean, this is light… this is light work compared to that. I mean, that's…
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Tino Garcia: Well, yeah, let me… let me add this piece to the puzzle.
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Tino Garcia: the unit values are such at Antelope Valley College, in the English department that to make a base load.
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Tino Garcia: I had to teach 5… 5 classes of what, you know, is like,
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Tino Garcia: first level, first semester English. You know, the name keeps changing, so I'll just call it that. Here, the unit values are such that, I don't… I only have to teach 3 to make a base load.
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Tino Garcia: If you've ever been an English instructor and you know the labor that's involved when you start multiplying, you know, when you start adding 30 more students, 60 more students, 90 more students.
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Tino Garcia: Game changer. Game changer. So that's partly how I'm able to balance all of this stuff, is I have a different unit load and that kind of thing.
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Akil Hill: Best believe if you had… best believe if you had a baseline of 5.
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Akil Hill: You would be really tied up.
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Tino Garcia: Well, yeah, that said, though, I have friends who,
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Tino Garcia: my… one of my best friends, who, you know, we did a lot of stuff in Emoja, we co-led some really dope events.
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Tino Garcia: He teaches 8 on the regular, and intersession, and summer.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, so, like, when I see him, you know, he's, like, Atlas over there, like, I feel like I'm barely… barely doing anything.
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Hong Lieu: And I've done that drive many times, you know, 126, you can either go through Valencia.
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Akil Hill: Yeah.
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Hong Lieu: All the city streets, or just…
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Hong Lieu: 126 to the 5 to the 14. Yeah.
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Hong Lieu: No joke, depending what time you were going and coming back, I mean, traffic, you know, the high desert is built on cruising, you know, desert, like, when it's hot, you can cruise to, like.
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Hong Lieu: 1 in the morning with the top down, windows down, but there is traffic now. Used to be there was no traffic. Used to be a grid, you know, the freeway, the 14 was clear, you could drive any which way. There is traffic now, because there's a lot of expats either coming… they either came from LA, or, you know, there's a lot of connection there, so the 14 gets
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Hong Lieu: at certain times of day, you don't want to play with the 14th, so I don't know when you were going, what your schedule was like, but mad props to you. And so I guess, as a corollary to the question I asked earlier.
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Hong Lieu: What… what was your… the carrot on the stick that kept you going? Especially when you found out…
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Hong Lieu: I need to go and get a master's now, or… I mean, what… did you just know, like, okay, once I get there, then I'll… because, you know, there's people that chase things, and
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Hong Lieu: Like, you chase things, you get it, and that's… you know, the end is… it's the journey, not the, you know, the end is to justify the means, et cetera, et cetera.
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Hong Lieu: So, like, what kept you… kept you going, and then once you kind of achieved everything, and now you're where you're at now, is that enough, or what else did you need after that? Because, I mean, you probably had to really be pumping yourself up some days to just keep it moving, and just keep pushing to what you're doing, so…
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Tino Garcia: Oh, that's a great question.
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Hong Lieu: Some of it is, like…
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Tino Garcia: Some of it has to do with my family, you know?
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Tino Garcia: if I could… if I could have a more sustainable lifestyle, I could have a better balance and be able to spend more time with them, so that's part of a shift I've made, shifting from… from ABC to SBCC.
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Tino Garcia: part of it is internal, and, you know, like, it has to do with, I would say, the imposter phenomenon.
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Tino Garcia: Where it's, like, part of it is the fuel, in a way,
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Tino Garcia: it's like, I still feel like I gotta, like, prove myself, and… and then…
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Tino Garcia: start… part of it's like a hip-hop ethos, like, you're only… you're only as fresh as your last joint sort of thing, you know what I mean? Like, you gotta keep pushing and innovating and growing,
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Tino Garcia: So, like, I feel that… that poll. And… because a lot of it, too, is, like.
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Tino Garcia: it's about… and I don't know, it's about serving, you know, those who deserve to be served and aren't being served. So, like, some of it, I think, is like a…
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Tino Garcia: here's some of our… my religious studies background is gonna come in here, but, like, I think it's, like, a secularized form of the Catholic…
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Tino Garcia: guilt on the one side, but the… on the positive side, the… the deep push to do good works, you know,
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Tino Garcia: that… I think that shaped me very young, you know? I used to be, like, an altar boy, and I used to,
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Tino Garcia: you know, that I was raised in a… you know, I was raised in a city called Santa Fe, Holy Faith, and the mountains were called the Sangre de Cristos, the blood of Christ. You know, so, like, that stuff runs deep, even if…
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Tino Garcia: at some point, you start demythologizing it, or you start getting some critical distance from some of the doctrines and that kind of stuff, you know?
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Tino Garcia: And…
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, so I think some of it's, like, religious, some of it's cultural, some of it's internal, some of it's familial,
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Tino Garcia: It's a rich… it's a rich question, but I'll leave it there.
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Hong Lieu: And that's a great answer, because in terms of
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Hong Lieu: people that listen to that, you can all… people can pull and take for their own, because I think for everyone, it's a similar answer. It's never going to be one thing that drives you, but you have to be able to holistically kind of combine them into some kind of…
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Hong Lieu: source that wills you forward. Like, for me, it's a similar thing where it's imposter syndrome. I feel like… I feel like I was blessed to be able to live a somewhat non-Asian life in certain parts of my life, and not have to just be grinding my entire life, so I feel guilty a lot of times.
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Hong Lieu: feel guilty about some of the fun things that I've done, and I feel like I have to give back by just pushing myself way beyond what, you know, I should be doing. You know, there's all these things that kind of drive us, and it's important for everyone to find that within them. It doesn't have to be the same thing, but we should all realize that we all have that kind of…
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Hong Lieu: force, you know, that exists when we… if and when we need it. Not that you can tap it all the time, because burnout is very real, and we do need to be cognizant of mental health and physical health in these kind of situations, but in those situations, when you know, like.
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Hong Lieu: okay, we're almost there. I've been on this journey for so long, I'm almost over this proverbial hump, like, let's just make it happen, and let's just push that last part through. Although, your proverbial hump was 8 years of 2-hour commute to the AV, but, I mean, you did it. You're here, you know, like, not to say you're chilling.
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Tino Garcia: Nope.
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Hong Lieu: But…
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Tino Garcia: Once I get tenure, once I get tenure again, then I'll be chillin'.
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Tino Garcia: Yes. I gotta go through it again.
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Hong Lieu: Yeah, but I mean, and I guess, in terms of, yeah, you've been able to, kind of, not to say meet all your goals, so to speak, but
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Hong Lieu: you got over that hump, and you still find things to continually, you know, drive you and push you, and it's not as extreme as it was before, but hopefully it's still as fulfilling, because that's what I found as well, in terms of… I see other things now that I don't have to…
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Hong Lieu: kind of test myself, because when I was younger, I wasn't sure if I was even down like that, so I would have… I would just be like, let me just test myself, and just push it, and see, and now that you've kind of…
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Hong Lieu: You know, answered yourself.
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Hong Lieu: and, you know, pass whatever test you gave yourself, you don't have to go that far. You still have to, you know, like you said, you're only as funky as your last cut. Shout out to Outcast, but, you know, it's one of those things where you just… you do have to keep kind of pushing yourself, but you don't have to go that far, you know? You can just kind of find those little things that still kind of speak to you and kind of satisfy your soul like that.
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Akil Hill: Well, you know, that's a good point, and what I kind of also think about the struggle is, like, like, the blessing is sometimes often in the struggle.
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Akil Hill: Right? And so, you know, sometimes, you know, there's that old, you know, adage, you know, you may, you know, despise a thing, but in the thing that you despise, there's much good and benefit, right? And there's some things that you may think is, is hardship, but in that hardship, there's an immense amount of blessings. And sometimes, you know, we…
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Akil Hill: I think we always want the easier, right? We always want the easier life.
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Akil Hill: And sometimes, often, that could be the beginning to the demise, right? Where the actual, sometimes the struggle itself, that's where the blessing is in. And so, when I hear, you know, Tino talk about driving an hour and a half.
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Akil Hill: And while that traffic is no joke, sometimes often the reward is in that, right? And then when you get comfortable, things kind of change a little bit, right? So, just being mindful of both of the things, you know, and so I… that's why, you know, I really appreciate how you answered that, you know.
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Hong Lieu: And there are ways to remix that drive where it's not as bad as it is, because, like, when I did that two-hour drive going from East LA to West LA, it was, like, news… no podcast yet, but it was news radio, and just timing my own thoughts, so it was almost like a Zen meditation.
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Hong Lieu: Where I was like, okay, gotta sit here and not drive myself crazy, and not get angry at anybody, and not rage, and not, you know, and just… and it worked. I was able to… I can, like, still, some of the happiest times of my life is just driving, either listening to music, or just driving. I mean, I'm an LA guy, too, so I'm a little biased towards driving, but otherwise…
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Akil Hill: I've ridden with Hong, and I know what type of driver he is, so we'll save that for another podcast.
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Hong Lieu: Relatively chill. I don't yell at nobody. Although, if they don't give me the hand, the hand is absolutely necessary. If I don't see a hand, then I get mad. But I'm still not mad at anybody. I'm just mad at the world for not teaching more people about the hand, so, you know.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, no, that's how… both of you make excellent points, and… and I like… I like how you frame that, Akil, because there is something about, like… I'll use the language here of, you know, some people will say the soul, some people will say the deep self, or something, but, like, it tends to…
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Tino Garcia: Animate and galvanize in, in the midst of hardship, you know, I think there is something that…
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Tino Garcia: I wouldn't want to push that too far, you know, because sometimes we get into this mode where we start thinking that, like, suffering is redemptive, and I think there's certain kinds of suffering maybe that is, but then there's certain kinds that maybe aren't, or something.
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Tino Garcia: But I think there… there is something really there where, like, you're… you're, you know, like, I feel like I was built from some of that.
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Tino Garcia: that early struggle in my life, and and how a lot of things weren't very easy, you know?
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Tino Garcia: And then, yeah, in terms of those drives, I would educate myself, you know, or I would prep for class, or I would… it was like a… it was like a rolling thought laboratory, you know, so I just tried to take advantage of that.
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Akil Hill: Absolutely.
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Hong Lieu: I was thinking about that black star line? You know, chasing after death just to call yourself brave, but still living like mental slaves, you know?
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Tino Garcia: Yes, sir. Bringing that raucous and that Blackstar energy, you know, they're up in the pantheon of my,
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Tino Garcia: the hip-hop gods for me, so I hear you on those.
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Hong Lieu: That I have to have the vinyl, and the brown-skinned lady still skips because I played that track too much, so…
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Hong Lieu: You gonna say it, Keel, what are you gonna say?
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Akil Hill: No, I forgot. I was just… yeah, it's all good. All good stuff, man, all good stuff.
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Hong Lieu: Cool, cool.
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Hong Lieu: Yeah. Thank you for that, Tino. Moving right along, segue into our food section. Good eating!
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Hong Lieu: So if you wanna, if you wanna bring sopapillas and chili into this, we can talk about that.
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Tino Garcia: Hung knows what's up. Hung's been chillin' up in New Mexico.
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Hong Lieu: Oh, lately.
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Hong Lieu: Shout out to Z, he was a previous guest from New Mexico, so he dropped the knowledge on me. I mean, I haven't been out there, but I've had the food before, because, you know, LA, we got a little bit of everything down there, but yeah, so, but…
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Tino Garcia: Any food? Who is this?
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Hong Lieu: Z, he's institution of research, where, Keller is now. But he, yeah.
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Tino Garcia: Oh, okay.
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Hong Lieu: Right? Yeah.
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Akil Hill: Yeah, he was from New Mexico.
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Tino Garcia: Okay.
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Hong Lieu: Tell us about all the restaurants out there, but I mean, I've had green chili and, you know, soup of peas before in, like.
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Hong Lieu: in Phoenix and stuff like that, but never, like, actual full-blown, so… But if any… any food you got, we're here to listen. If you want restaurants in town, in Ventura… oh, one more thing before we go fully into food, I want to shout out your wife, because allowing you to continue on your process, which you could at any point have been like.
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Hong Lieu: Hey, you know you're driving a lot.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, I mean, that, that is, that is,
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Tino Garcia: an excellent… an excellent point. In fact, I should have shouted her out, so thanks for the assist there. Because it's not just…
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Tino Garcia: it's not just that she had to bear a lot of the burden of parenting our son while I was out there
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Tino Garcia: struggling to make it while I was out there doing all these things. But then, you know, then I went back, so she supported me through the PhD, initially. She was teaching, full-time already at that point, while I was still going to school, and then while I was teaching ESL.
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Tino Garcia: And those were not easy times, you know, so she had to shoulder a lot of that. And then I went back and did another degree, and she had to support that.
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Tino Garcia: Meanwhile, I'm, you know, trying to get tenure, and I'm involved in all these things, so… yeah, she's…
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Tino Garcia: she's really, like, the MVP of the whole thing there. And not to mention that she was a mentor for me in this field. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without her, because she was a master of the craft, she was an anchor, she was a co-pilot.
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Tino Garcia: She was a champion of what I was trying to do, so, thank you very much for… for circling back to that.
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Hong Lieu: And now, if you want to enlighten us with any kind of food picks you got, either in this region or anywhere you've been, I don't know what they got in Minneapolis, too, but, I mean, Minnesota, but, you know, anything you got, we're here to hear.
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Akil Hill: They have a hot plate. What do they call it? Casserole? Oh, yeah.
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Tino Garcia: Hot dish. Hot dish. No, I don't mess with… I don't mess with most of that.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, where to go? Well, I mean, yeah, like, if… if I'm… it's funny, I was at this, this Zoom writing workshop at Santa Fe Community College, recently, and they brought in some writing prompts, all around food.
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Tino Garcia: And I chose one that was like, you know, what's your last meal?
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Tino Garcia: And, I was like, I think my last meal would be, like.
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Tino Garcia: a carne asada burrito with Christmas-style chili. What that means is you got your New Mexican.
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Hong Lieu: There it is.
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Tino Garcia: chili, as well as your hatch green chili, right?
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Tino Garcia: A bunch of guac in there.
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Tino Garcia: you know, in California, I would have black beans, probably, but I'd go, you know, I'd go pinto beans in there.
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Tino Garcia: because I think there's, like, symbolism in the burrito. I think, like, burritos have powered so much of, sort of, my… my ganas of, like, being who I am and becoming who I am, you know? It's like my… my dad owned his own glass shop and worked with his hands, and
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Tino Garcia: so there's something about that, you know, and he always told me, kind of like, work really, you know, work really hard at school, that way you don't have to break your back, you know, like I do. And so that's what I did.
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Tino Garcia: But anyway, so, like, there's the burrito, and then gotta have sopapillas as part of that dessert, and, you know, with honey, with a little,
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Tino Garcia: Sugar, powdered sugar, and
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Tino Garcia: that way I have that on my tongue when the kiss of death comes, you know what I mean? Like, there has to be that sweetness, but I still have the spice of the chili…
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Tino Garcia: there as well, you know, as I prepare to kind of cross over to the other side, whatever that holds.
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Hong Lieu: Hmm. That sounds so good, and I mean…
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Hong Lieu: Not the last… not the… not the death part, but the…
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Tino Garcia: How do you know that… how do you know that death ain't sweet?
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Hong Lieu: Oh, yeah, maybe death is lovely as well. I mean, I believe in reincarnation, so yeah, it probably is pretty sweet, but…
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Hong Lieu: Sounds pretty good.
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Hong Lieu: And is there anywhere you found in California or the surrounding region, you know, high desert, anywhere, that does…
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Hong Lieu: Christmas chili, any kind of New Mexico, you know, sopapillas, like…
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Tino Garcia: No, I'll tell you a place that doesn't, that should.
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Tino Garcia: There's… so near… near Ventura in Ojai, there's this place called Tres Hermanas. It's relatively new, I mean, it's maybe been here a year or two now, so… so I was, like, curious, because, you know, it's supposed to be New Mexican-style food.
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Tino Garcia: So we went up there to get Frito pies. So Frito Pies is a New Mexican specialty, too. I don't know if y'all are familiar with that.
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Tino Garcia: We have that weekly at our house here,
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Tino Garcia: that's a staple, but yeah, so their Frito pies, were… you know, like…
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Tino Garcia: they weren't my… to my taste, whatever, but then we got a soap Ipea afterward. First of all, it was like…
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Tino Garcia: I think… I can't remember if it was $8 or if it was $14, right? It was, like, crazy. Like, usually that's complimentary, like, in New Mexico. But then, you know, usually they're…
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Tino Garcia: They're puffy and, you know, airy and light.
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Akil Hill: Right?
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Tino Garcia: These… these were, like, thick and dense.
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Tino Garcia: They were like saucers! And I was like, what, what is this? I had to, like, had to cut it with a knife and try to, like… You fell into an alternate universe? Yeah, yes.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, so I was not… I was not impressed, and we haven't gone back. Maybe I'll give it a chance, maybe they've, upped their game since then. I guess it's probably been a year or two. I don't think so, because I think they're actually closed, they're gone, so… Okay, okay.
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Akil Hill: And that's hence the reason why. Tino just explained it.
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Hong Lieu: I remember when they opened, too, I was like, I don't know about this, but I, you know, so I never tried it, but I'm glad that… I'm glad you got to at least test it and let them know, so…
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Hong Lieu: Yeah.
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Akil Hill: I'm curious to ask you this, you know, you talked earlier in the show in regards to traveling and spending some time abroad in Spain and stuff like that, and so, you know, I'm a big fan of traveling, I've traveled quite a bit myself, but what was the best thing you ate when you, were in Spain or Greece?
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Akil Hill: Or what does your taste buds crave, if you could have one dish?
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Hong Lieu: because Mexico City, I mean, that street food in Mexico City is un… unparalleled, so… yeah.
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, so I'm gonna take… I'm gonna take the third door, I'm gonna go Mexico City here on this one, and I'll tell you why. So…
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Tino Garcia: Back when, you know, back when we were teaching, in Mexico City, we lived in this place, it was called Colonia Roma. It was near the Zona Rosa, which is the more touristy area, a lot of international students, a lot of, like, business people going to these language schools.
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Tino Garcia: And,
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Tino Garcia: right outside of our apartment, there was a taco stand, right? And they had tacos de misote, which is, like, lamb tacos. They had other stuff too, but that was kind of, like, their thing.
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Tino Garcia: And so we would go get these tacos, and they would come with these big old bags, you know, like a plastic bag of green salsa and a red salsa, and then you got lime and everything.
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Tino Garcia: And they were, like, the most amazing tacos that we could imagine, and they, you know, they were there on Wednesdays, and then I think they were there on Saturdays, so every time, we'd go hit those up, because we were teaching, like.
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Tino Garcia: 12-hour days. It was crazy. We were making, like, $3 an hour, you know, teaching 12-hour days.
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Tino Garcia: And so, you know, we fantasized about those for years afterwards, right? This was 2003 when we were there. And then, just a couple of years ago, we went back,
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Tino Garcia: we brought our son to kind of… to see it, and we were like, man, I wonder if that taco stand will still be there. Because in the meantime, we had picked up this book called Tacopedia.
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Tino Garcia: Right? Like, a taco encyclopedia, and we had seen that our taco stand featured in it, and they were talking about this guy who has been doing it this whole time, right? For decades and decades, he's been doing this. So we went back, figuring, you know, like…
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Tino Garcia: we're never gonna get those tacos again, but that's alright, because we have our memories, you know? So we show up there, and he's still there putting it down, you know? Still there. So we pull up, we get some of the tacos, and, you know, our son doesn't understand, like, the appeal of this.
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Tino Garcia: So we sit on the bench there, and we have these tacos, and we both just, like, start, like, crying, you know, like…
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Akil Hill: Yeah.
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Tino Garcia: because it had been, like, so long, and that connection was still there, you know, so I talked to the guy and told him how we've been coming here this whole time, and…
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Tino Garcia: It was a beautiful thing, so those are, like, the iconic tacos in the imagination of the Garcia family here, the,
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Tino Garcia: Yeah, so those would be another one I would consider for a last meal, but probably tacos or burritos would have to be my last meal, one of the two.
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Hong Lieu: Pil, have you thought about this? You have a last meal?
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Akil Hill: Me?
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Hong Lieu: Yeah.
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Akil Hill: No, I haven't really… haven't thought… I thought about it, but it would probably be something…
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Akil Hill: Well, when I spent some time in West Africa.
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Akil Hill: there was… when I was in Muritania, there was a dish that I ate that was, there was probably two dishes. When I was in, Muratanian, there was a dish that I ate where it was actually camel.
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Akil Hill: But the way that they prepared it, you know, they just kind of made it fresh on the spot in honor of, you know, the people that, you know, the guests that were there. So that was… that was an amazing dish. And then once, the other thing maybe I would think, say is,
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Akil Hill: when I was in Medina, we went and caught some fish, or we were taken to someone's home, and they freshly caught the fish, and they made this…
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Akil Hill: fish, really fresh, and so those are probably the two dishes that I would like to eat again, but I have to really kind of sit and marinate with that, but those two jump off the top of my head.
360
00:53:20.450 --> 00:53:21.410
Akil Hill: What about you?
361
00:53:21.880 --> 00:53:27.360
Hong Lieu: I'm easy. Well, I used to always think about it from a death row perspective, so I would always just do, like, a huge, like.
362
00:53:27.380 --> 00:53:39.409
Hong Lieu: like, giant thing, but actually, it's like, normal, normal meal would be a really good carnitas taco, and then, burger, chili fries, and a Coke.
363
00:53:39.410 --> 00:53:50.310
Hong Lieu: I used to love, yeah, hamburger. The hamburger, to me, is like… I think it was Wimpy from Popeye that really turned me on to burgers, but I've just been, yeah, total burger guy for just the longest time, so…
364
00:53:50.790 --> 00:54:04.929
Hong Lieu: And they had chili fries on the hat, but… yes. But thank you, Tino, for bringing up all these memories, just getting us… getting us thinking about food in this way. I love it so much. But segueing along, higher learning, pieces of culture. Anything you want to shout out?
365
00:54:05.340 --> 00:54:07.630
Hong Lieu: Throughout the years, whether now or…
366
00:54:07.790 --> 00:54:15.339
Hong Lieu: Formatively growing up, that really kind of pushed you a certain way? Or, you know, like, things that kind of moved your mind, body, and soul?
367
00:54:15.810 --> 00:54:17.580
Hong Lieu: Kick us off, let us know what you got.
368
00:54:17.740 --> 00:54:20.469
Akil Hill: Your top 10 hip-hop artists. Top 5.
369
00:54:20.470 --> 00:54:22.399
Hong Lieu: Jam, that's a lot! Oh, yeah. I know.
370
00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:23.810
Akil Hill: That's why I reduced it down to top 5.
371
00:54:23.810 --> 00:54:31.519
Hong Lieu: If you're here all day, yeah, you could do, like, top two or top 3, even, top… or even… if you have a top 1, it's like an hour, you can go, you know, could go in.
372
00:54:31.520 --> 00:54:51.809
Tino Garcia: Alright, alright, we'll see you atop the pantheon. I got Black Thought next to Biggie, Nas, Pac, and Black Star, then Jay-Z, AZ, and Brother Ali, Wu-Tang, Lupe, Cube, and Mob Deep, Common L. Boogie, Snoop and Chuck D, Rakim Residente, and Immortal Technique, along with Missy, Light, and Latifah, OutKast, Goody Mob, and all the rest of the teachers.
373
00:54:52.110 --> 00:54:55.389
Hong Lieu: I like the Minnesota shout-out for Brother Ali.
374
00:54:55.390 --> 00:54:56.460
Tino Garcia: Yeah, yeah.
375
00:54:56.670 --> 00:55:07.150
Hong Lieu: I had to look up Concordia to see how far you were from Minneap, because I'm like, so were you all up in the Rhymesayers and the Doom Tree, all that stuff? Because, yeah, I mean, that was… I listened.
376
00:55:07.150 --> 00:55:09.539
Tino Garcia: Yeah, no, but I was way on the other side of the state.
377
00:55:09.540 --> 00:55:17.200
Hong Lieu: Yeah, that's why I was like, he wasn't that close, but maybe he went to First Avenue for a couple shows, but yeah. Brother Ali is definitely one of the nicest to ever do it, for sure, so…
378
00:55:18.110 --> 00:55:20.480
Tino Garcia: Yeah, he's so smooth with it.
379
00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:23.740
Hong Lieu: He just put out an album, and it still goes. I mean, it was really…
380
00:55:23.740 --> 00:55:25.640
Tino Garcia: Yeah, I heard a couple joints off it.
381
00:55:25.640 --> 00:55:33.670
Hong Lieu: Yeah, because Sha… I mean, Shadows on the Sun, that era, you know, when you go way back, is like, but… but he still got it. And, like, even, you know, us, it was, like, 2011, 2012.
382
00:55:33.670 --> 00:55:34.060
Tino Garcia: Yup.
383
00:55:34.060 --> 00:55:47.579
Hong Lieu: That's, like, later era, but still there, so… I mean, I… because I'm an idea guy. Idea and abilities, to me, I mean, not… not just idea and abilities, but just ideas and MC. I mean, rest in peace, he passed in 2009, so it's been a minute, but he…
384
00:55:47.710 --> 00:55:54.210
Hong Lieu: he's probably my guy, and so, in terms of, yeah, Minneap is where he came up, so…
385
00:55:54.210 --> 00:55:57.689
Tino Garcia: Yeah, well, and I love Slug and Ant as well.
386
00:55:57.690 --> 00:56:12.129
Hong Lieu: Red Atmospheres, they just put an album out, Album Gestures, and it was good. I mean, he's… he's… his content has migrated, you know, because he was, like… everyone talks about emo rap now, but he was, to me, is the godfather of emo rap, and he's now just, like.
387
00:56:12.130 --> 00:56:31.380
Hong Lieu: he's doing dad rap now, and it totally, like, it doesn't feel… it doesn't feel forced, it's just the same, like, he just tells it like it is. He's a true storyteller, but using, you know, using the personal experience to kind of inform his songs and stuff, like, yeah, Slug is the two… the two or three Felt albums that came out, turn of the century, I mean, those.
388
00:56:32.180 --> 00:56:36.319
Hong Lieu: Yeah, absolutely, Slug is one of the best to ever do it as well, so…
389
00:56:37.050 --> 00:56:41.860
Hong Lieu: But, yeah, that's… and that's the other full list. That's not even top 10, that was, like, 15 to 20 right there.
390
00:56:41.940 --> 00:56:43.200
Tino Garcia: Yeah, that's a…
391
00:56:43.200 --> 00:56:43.760
Hong Lieu: That's a big…
392
00:56:43.760 --> 00:56:45.330
Tino Garcia: Pantheon, you know, and I just…
393
00:56:45.330 --> 00:56:47.289
Hong Lieu: And you may still have got some, yeah.
394
00:56:47.780 --> 00:57:01.869
Tino Garcia: But, you know, Mos is up there in the top 5, you know. In fact, so, like, I'm wearing this shirt, it's called, Soulmates Flying High. This is a record label of this dude, Amerigo Gazaway. Have either of you heard of him?
395
00:57:02.220 --> 00:57:15.039
Tino Garcia: he mashes up hip-hop and, like, soul classics. So, like, earlier I was listening to… he has one… so, here, here's a little quiz for you two. I'm gonna… I'm gonna… don't look it up, Hong, don't look it up.
396
00:57:15.220 --> 00:57:20.530
Tino Garcia: I'm gonna tell you the name of the album, and you tell me which two artists he's mashing up.
397
00:57:21.370 --> 00:57:21.970
Tino Garcia: Alright?
398
00:57:24.130 --> 00:57:33.129
Tino Garcia: You'll get these, I think. So one's called Yassine Gay. Yasin Gay. So it's a hip-hop artist, and then it's a soul artist.
399
00:57:33.130 --> 00:57:35.150
Akil Hill: James Brown and Yassine Bay.
400
00:57:35.210 --> 00:57:37.259
Tino Garcia: Nope, close. Yasim Bey.
401
00:57:37.260 --> 00:57:38.059
Hong Lieu: and Marvel.
402
00:57:38.060 --> 00:57:39.840
Tino Garcia: called Yath and Marvin Gaye.
403
00:57:39.840 --> 00:57:40.380
Hong Lieu: Yeah.
404
00:57:40.380 --> 00:57:42.560
Akil Hill: Oh, Marvin Gaye. What was the first one?
405
00:57:42.710 --> 00:57:43.090
Tino Garcia: Cassie.
406
00:57:43.090 --> 00:57:43.760
Hong Lieu: Bay, who.
407
00:57:43.760 --> 00:57:44.260
Akil Hill: Do you guys seem to be…
408
00:57:44.570 --> 00:57:44.970
Tino Garcia: Yeah, yeah.
409
00:57:44.970 --> 00:57:50.319
Akil Hill: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, got it. Oh, Marvin Gay, I got it, I got it, okay.
410
00:57:50.860 --> 00:58:01.369
Tino Garcia: Yeah, so, you know, he would… he takes them and mashes them up in the dopest ways, because he goes back, I guess, and gets the original tracks,
411
00:58:01.370 --> 00:58:13.559
Tino Garcia: which I guess a lot of them are, like, separated, so he goes and manipulates them. Like, I guess he's trying to, like, draw attention to how Marvin Gaye was also a producer, you know, and not just a musician and lyricist and stuff.
412
00:58:13.630 --> 00:58:20.859
Tino Garcia: But then he'll mix it with most staff, and it's amazing. And so he also did Common Wonder, which, you know.
413
00:58:20.860 --> 00:58:21.500
Akil Hill: It's crazy.
414
00:58:21.500 --> 00:58:22.510
Tino Garcia: obvious one.
415
00:58:22.510 --> 00:58:23.140
Hong Lieu: Yeah.
416
00:58:23.140 --> 00:58:28.900
Tino Garcia: But you see the affinity there, right? Like, there's, like, a spiritual affinity between these artists.
417
00:58:29.390 --> 00:58:38.419
Hong Lieu: For a second, I actually thought you were into Indonesian rock, because there's a band called Barren Soulmates from Indonesia, and they put out an album, like, 2008 called Flying High, so I was like.
418
00:58:38.420 --> 00:58:38.950
Tino Garcia: Oh, okay.
419
00:58:38.950 --> 00:58:39.560
Hong Lieu: That's true.
420
00:58:39.780 --> 00:58:40.820
Tino Garcia: I don't know if it's.
421
00:58:40.820 --> 00:58:41.170
Akil Hill: Yeah.
422
00:58:41.170 --> 00:58:43.450
Tino Garcia: Maybe it's an allusion to them, because I don't know.
423
00:58:43.450 --> 00:58:50.390
Hong Lieu: I wonder, I don't know, I don't know much about, you said Amerigo Gazaway was the name? Yeah. I'll definitely get him in the show notes, that's…
424
00:58:50.570 --> 00:58:51.380
Hong Lieu: That's cool.
425
00:58:51.430 --> 00:58:57.120
Tino Garcia: And then he had… he had one of the… I think it was called the Miseducation of Nina Simone, which…
426
00:58:57.120 --> 00:59:03.620
Hong Lieu: I mean, they gotta be mixtapes, though, right? Because in terms of clearing these samples, I mean, you're gonna be, you know… Yeah, yeah.
427
00:59:03.840 --> 00:59:04.810
Hong Lieu: So…
428
00:59:04.810 --> 00:59:13.299
Tino Garcia: So if you like those artists, and you're interested in hearing some mashups, it's… I think it's really well done, the way he does it.
429
00:59:13.640 --> 00:59:16.679
Hong Lieu: Oh, yeah. So I guess I'm… I guess I'm curious in terms of…
430
00:59:16.990 --> 00:59:36.799
Hong Lieu: Was it… I mean, was there something that got you… was it a certain moment in time that got you into hip-hop? Because you mentioned how you grew up, you know, in New Mexico, you know, religious, and… I mean, was there, like, a certain moment that you kind of, like, found the stuff, or were people always keeping you hip to it, or what was… what was that process like in terms of your musical discovery aspect of it?
431
00:59:37.820 --> 00:59:50.620
Tino Garcia: Well, I had an older sister who was into, like, a lot of stuff. I remember she got me into, like, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Guns N' Roses and that stuff, but then I also had an older cousin, and I remember he, like…
432
00:59:50.810 --> 01:00:06.090
Tino Garcia: he brought, doggy style, right? Like, he got a copy of that and was, like, showing it to me, and he would hide it under the bed, and, you know, and, so some of that West Coast rap kind of entered my consciousness, you know, Kid Frost.
433
01:00:06.510 --> 01:00:13.139
Tino Garcia: La Raza, that kind of stuff. But then when I moved, you know, when I moved to Minnesota, it's like.
434
01:00:13.390 --> 01:00:25.780
Tino Garcia: I didn't know anybody, I was kind of… I was always kind of introspective and somewhat introverted as a kid, as it was. Like, people used to wonder if I was mute, actually, because I just didn't speak very much.
435
01:00:26.270 --> 01:00:39.070
Tino Garcia: But I started listening to a lot of East Coast hip-hop, sort of when I moved to Minnesota, because that was, like, 95, 90s, you know, that's when I got there, so…
436
01:00:39.540 --> 01:00:45.270
Tino Garcia: Wu-Tang had come out, you know, OutKast had come out recently, Mop Deep, Smith & Wesson.
437
01:00:45.270 --> 01:00:45.620
Akil Hill: Then…
438
01:00:45.620 --> 01:00:52.699
Tino Garcia: you know, the raucous, and the native tongues, and these, you know, that kind of stuff. So, like, the lyricism…
439
01:00:52.920 --> 01:00:54.910
Tino Garcia: The…
440
01:00:55.250 --> 01:01:03.909
Tino Garcia: the depth of the music, all of that, just… I was just like, wow, this is genius, and like, I just was just learning about
441
01:01:04.620 --> 01:01:15.399
Tino Garcia: you know, these other cultures from very far away. So it was like a… it was like an education in higher learning, you might say, that I got through… through hip-hop.
442
01:01:16.590 --> 01:01:19.370
Hong Lieu: Shout out to the cousins out there. Shout out to all the cousins.
443
01:01:20.420 --> 01:01:29.059
Hong Lieu: Blood or not, blood or not blood, because I… I remember I had a cousin at my fifth birthday party that let me listen to Two Live Crew for the first time.
444
01:01:29.530 --> 01:01:39.850
Hong Lieu: And then when I was in high school, I went to the Bay Area and visited my cousins, and they got me into all the, like, the Bay Area hyphie stuff before it was, you know, because we had… in LA, we were just strictly… it was G-Funk.
445
01:01:39.860 --> 01:01:55.309
Hong Lieu: G-Funk all day, but in terms of that hyphy sound, you know, three times crazy, you know, like, first time I heard Notorious Thugs was up there, and he had, you know, like, the I Got 500 remix, so yeah, but… definitely a good way to go. It's got… if the cousins gets you on the good stuff.
446
01:01:55.690 --> 01:02:03.430
Akil Hill: Hey, shout out to Mob Deep on that, too. I saw Mob Deep in concert here in Santa Barbara, up on State Street, in the 90s.
447
01:02:03.860 --> 01:02:04.290
Tino Garcia: in the U.
448
01:02:04.290 --> 01:02:05.820
Akil Hill: At the Yucatan.
449
01:02:06.200 --> 01:02:07.450
Akil Hill: Yeah.
450
01:02:07.780 --> 01:02:09.360
Tino Garcia: What's the Yucatan?
451
01:02:09.830 --> 01:02:16.970
Akil Hill: Yucatan is actually… there was a club in Santa Barbara, on Upper State. Well, not Upper State, but it's kind of like…
452
01:02:16.970 --> 01:02:33.359
Akil Hill: it's actually… I'm thinking, I think it was… you know where Long's drugstore is on State Street? Kind of over by the library, by Old Navy? The same block that Old Navy and Anthropology's on. There was a club called the Yucatan, that was there back in the…
453
01:02:33.360 --> 01:02:49.289
Akil Hill: in the mid-90s, and I caught Mob Deep there and stuff, I'll never forget that. I was like, what is Mob Deep doing in Santa Barbara? But, hey, I went, man, I pulled up, but it was… it was just funny, to think about Mob Deep in Santa Barbara, playing on stage.
454
01:02:49.350 --> 01:02:52.030
Akil Hill: On State Street, you know, but…
455
01:02:52.030 --> 01:02:52.920
Tino Garcia: Yeah, yeah.
456
01:02:52.920 --> 01:03:06.710
Akil Hill: I think they were just being artists at the time, they weren't super… I mean, everyone knew them as Mob D, they played, you know, their first album was out, but it was just seeing people on their grind, you know, like, what city? Okay, yeah, we'll perform there. One of those type things, you know?
457
01:03:06.710 --> 01:03:13.809
Hong Lieu: Depending on… depending on the itinerary, you either take the 5 or the 101, but the 101, you get Santa Cruz, and then anywhere else you want to stop, so yeah, so that's…
458
01:03:14.110 --> 01:03:30.759
Hong Lieu: Pretty cool. Yeah, and Mob Deep, speaking of Mob Deep and Nas, because Nas is doing with this, he has his mass appeal, doing some releases, they just put out a Mob Deep album, you know, with some posthumous Prodigy verses. Havoc and Alchemist are both lighting up the production on that. It was a… it was actually a really good album.
459
01:03:30.760 --> 01:03:36.020
Hong Lieu: And it's good to just get that… get that on people's radar again, because, yeah, they definitely…
460
01:03:36.020 --> 01:03:40.759
Hong Lieu: When you talk about the… some of the great hip-hop duos of all time, they definitely need to be up there.
461
01:03:41.090 --> 01:03:58.830
Hong Lieu: Which is funny, funny enough, that… you talk about that time, like, 96, 97, my sister, my older sister, oldest sister, she's, you know, she works doing her thing now, but she was doing a lot of internships to get into entertainment. She did a summer interning at Loud Records the year Wu-Tang dropped Wu-Tang Forever.
462
01:03:58.830 --> 01:03:59.600
Tino Garcia: I'm deep.
463
01:03:59.600 --> 01:04:15.869
Hong Lieu: dropped Hell on Earth, exhibit was on loud, only built for Cuban Lynx. I'm like, my oldest sister is not… I mean, she got me into, like, the Smiths, like, she's a new wave kid, so for her to be, like, bringing me, like, exhibits… Exhibit Mob Deep to Alcoholics, if you remember Liquid Nation, I was like, I was like.
464
01:04:15.870 --> 01:04:16.560
Akil Hill: Dude, yeah.
465
01:04:16.560 --> 01:04:36.350
Hong Lieu: on here! She had, like, a Wu-Tang photo from Wu-Tang for Everyone, they all signed it. I was like, this is crazy, but I mean, it's whatever it takes, right? It comes to you in all different ways, and that's… it's just really cool that the stuff that really resonates with you will find you, as long as you're open to it, as long as you don't, you know, stay open to new experiences and new kind of… new kind of vibes.
466
01:04:36.630 --> 01:04:38.179
Hong Lieu: Shifting your worldview.
467
01:04:38.480 --> 01:04:47.259
Hong Lieu: Quick question in terms of… you talked about a last meal. Is there just a few records in terms of someone asking, oh, you know what?
468
01:04:47.390 --> 01:04:59.289
Hong Lieu: I want to learn a little… I don't know much about hip-hop, or I don't know much about, you know, anything, any of this kind of music at all. What would you kind of get me to… you know, what do you recommend to just kind of hit me to the sound?
469
01:05:00.120 --> 01:05:00.730
Tino Garcia: Oof.
470
01:05:01.090 --> 01:05:07.200
Tino Garcia: A few records, I mean, Southern Playlist at Cadillac Music, I'd say…
471
01:05:07.200 --> 01:05:07.870
Akil Hill: Gotta get…
472
01:05:07.870 --> 01:05:13.219
Tino Garcia: Outcast in there, I'd say maybe most deaf, Black on both sides.
473
01:05:13.510 --> 01:05:19.189
Tino Garcia: I'd say something about Black Thought, it could be a whole…
474
01:05:19.190 --> 01:05:32.430
Hong Lieu: It's hard to pick a Roots album, because the Roots albums are a different era, and even Black Thought now, with his… the mixtapes that he's done with various producers, I mean, you know, he did… Yeah. He does a couple with Danger Mouse, he's done, you know, like… yeah. But…
475
01:05:32.740 --> 01:05:37.580
Tino Garcia: put that freestyle that he did, I don't know how many years ago, Flex, yeah.
476
01:05:37.580 --> 01:05:38.360
Akil Hill: Oh, I'm flat.
477
01:05:38.360 --> 01:05:39.860
Tino Garcia: I'll give him that freestyle.
478
01:05:39.860 --> 01:05:41.239
Hong Lieu: 10-minute funk flex, that's how.
479
01:05:41.240 --> 01:05:42.819
Akil Hill: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
480
01:05:43.100 --> 01:05:47.670
Hong Lieu: Because that's just a straight… the beat is just as, like, the boom bap, and you're just like, yeah, just going. Oh, yeah.
481
01:05:47.670 --> 01:05:49.360
Tino Garcia: Yeah.
482
01:05:49.360 --> 01:05:52.980
Akil Hill: I'm gonna have to watch that again today. That was… that's so epic.
483
01:05:52.980 --> 01:05:54.489
Hong Lieu: It's so epic.
484
01:05:54.490 --> 01:06:02.939
Tino Garcia: I'll never forget when I saw that. Yeah, yeah. It's mind-boggling. Like, I don't know how that dude does it. I mean, he… he's…
485
01:06:02.940 --> 01:06:17.659
Tino Garcia: he's doing… y'all familiar with Michael Eric Dyson? He's like Michael Eric Dyson on the mic. Now, Michael Eric Dyson has talked about putting out an album in his 60s, and he hasn't done it, to my knowledge.
486
01:06:17.710 --> 01:06:24.040
Tino Garcia: But Black Thaw is putting out that type of intellectual fire
487
01:06:24.040 --> 01:06:39.639
Tino Garcia: on the regular, because he practices every day, but the illusions, the references that are baked into that, it is… it's astonishing. He's a public intellectual, you know, we don't think of him like that, but, like.
488
01:06:40.170 --> 01:06:45.679
Tino Garcia: you know, the stuff he did for Between the World and Me. I don't know if you guys saw that HBO series? Yeah, yeah.
489
01:06:46.080 --> 01:06:54.019
Tino Garcia: you know, he's doing music for that, he's just… he's so prodigious that it's… I don't… I can't explain it.
490
01:06:54.200 --> 01:06:54.750
Akil Hill: Yeah.
491
01:06:54.750 --> 01:07:10.679
Hong Lieu: And in the freestyle, as, you know, as freestyles go, there's like a, there's like a game to it, right? Where some of it really is off the dome, but some of it's written, and you can tell with folks, like, they'll have a freestyle, then it'll be on an album track, like, six months later. Oh, that wasn't a freestyle, it was something you've written.
492
01:07:10.900 --> 01:07:30.599
Hong Lieu: Black thought, either you can't tell, or he really is off the dome, because it's just really, like, it's… he's, like, if the free association, that… those kind of, like, the spoken word element of it, it's really kind of, like, yeah, he just, yeah, he's… he's definitely one of the best, if not the best, honestly, to ever do it, for real. Yeah. Especially with the body of work.
493
01:07:30.630 --> 01:07:45.779
Akil Hill: I saw, Common once, when he came out to UCSB, and, one of my good friends, we had it in because he was campus security, out of UCSB at the time. But, so, it was really interesting, because he had a…
494
01:07:45.780 --> 01:07:57.449
Akil Hill: an area… he took, like, 5 minutes to just go freestyle, right? But the crazy thing that he did was he was asking people to throw out words, right? So, people were throwing out words, and he was just…
495
01:07:57.450 --> 01:08:07.370
Akil Hill: going, like… and so, it's kind of… I just think a little bit, because one of my coworkers and I were talking a little bit about this today, you know, we're talking about the World Series.
496
01:08:07.370 --> 01:08:17.300
Akil Hill: And we were talking about, like, we all get to witness the end result, right? We see the guy hitting the home run to tie it up.
497
01:08:17.300 --> 01:08:33.630
Akil Hill: in the 9th, or to give you the lead in the 10th, but what we don't see, and this is speaking to Tino's point about Black thought, we don't see the thousands of hours of them behind the scenes putting in just for us to witness that one moment, right?
498
01:08:33.630 --> 01:08:56.599
Akil Hill: And so, I just think about Black Thought and some of these giants and legends of all the time behind, away from the camera has prepared them for that one particular moment, which is… and we just get to see a sliver of that if we're fortunate, you know? But yeah, I mean, I just think… I think Black Thought was definitely at the top. Common's one of…
499
01:08:56.700 --> 01:08:58.510
Akil Hill: I'm an OG head, so common was.
500
01:08:58.510 --> 01:08:59.219
Hong Lieu: Even picking…
501
01:08:59.229 --> 01:09:00.609
Akil Hill: The Resurrection album was, like.
502
01:09:01.929 --> 01:09:04.419
Hong Lieu: Picking a common record… Oh, that was like…
503
01:09:04.600 --> 01:09:08.269
Hong Lieu: You want, one day it all makes sense? You want, like, water for chocolate? Water for chocolate?
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01:09:08.279 --> 01:09:11.049
Tino Garcia: One day it don't make sense. One day it don't make sense.
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01:09:11.050 --> 01:09:14.290
Hong Lieu: You want OG come and get one… can I borrow a dollar? I still got.
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01:09:14.290 --> 01:09:19.810
Akil Hill: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Resurrection was life… life… it was a game changer.
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01:09:19.819 --> 01:09:20.279
Hong Lieu: Oh, yeah.
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01:09:20.279 --> 01:09:24.139
Akil Hill: I was away in college, and I was just like, what? I just felt like…
509
01:09:24.249 --> 01:09:26.979
Akil Hill: I used to love her, it was like…
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01:09:27.450 --> 01:09:34.639
Hong Lieu: And… and if… unless in case you forget that he can't bring his battle wrapper, he was beefing with Ice Cube when Resurrection… around the time Resurrection came out.
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01:09:34.649 --> 01:09:42.299
Akil Hill: He buried Ice Cube! He actually… remember, he buried Drake. He was buried Drake before the whole… the Kendrick thing.
512
01:09:42.300 --> 01:09:43.220
Hong Lieu: The cannabis.
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01:09:43.229 --> 01:09:44.659
Akil Hill: Forget about that, right? People don't talk.
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01:09:44.660 --> 01:09:45.729
Hong Lieu: Well, yeah.
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01:09:46.180 --> 01:09:50.870
Tino Garcia: Well, the dope thing about Common, too, is that you had all that Ahmaj Jamal jazz lacing that.
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01:09:50.870 --> 01:09:51.380
Akil Hill: Yo.
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01:09:51.380 --> 01:09:57.499
Tino Garcia: You know, and so he had that Chicago sound deep in the bones of the music, like…
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01:09:57.500 --> 01:10:00.710
Akil Hill: Yeah. I'll never forget the line, he's… He says… Go ahead.
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01:10:00.710 --> 01:10:01.160
Hong Lieu: Good God.
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01:10:01.160 --> 01:10:18.409
Akil Hill: He's a, he said, get on gong, you punk MC, step into me with those dirty feet, you get defeated by Kutikinte. I was like, dude, this brilliant dude, just gone! Just the whole metaphor, like, just in the rap is amazing.
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01:10:18.410 --> 01:10:29.569
Hong Lieu: And in terms of artistic left turns, that move when you went to the electric circus, and he totally just embraced, like, electric guitars, and he was doing a lot of increase, you know, like, that… that Soul Aquarian stuff is so… not just really…
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01:10:29.790 --> 01:10:32.970
Hong Lieu: Amazing artistry, but just as an eclectic…
523
01:10:33.030 --> 01:10:47.229
Hong Lieu: kind of trying to hip you to new sounds, you know, trying to get that… that, like, yeah, that sly stone, just bring it back in and get more of that Parliament Funkadelic, that, you know, the touchstones, and just… but reinterpreting them, and really just… it was, like, just totally out there.
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01:10:47.230 --> 01:11:00.440
Hong Lieu: Oh, man, yeah. Common… Common deserves his flowers as well. So, all those names… I'll have to slow down… I'll see if I can pull down a slowed-down version of your intro, so I can put it in the show notes as well, so people can actually break down a lot of the names that you dropped.
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01:11:00.470 --> 01:11:10.309
Hong Lieu: In your list of MCs, because they all got, you know, they all got hits, but they all got really dope records, too, in terms of, we want to embrace individual songs.
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Hong Lieu: but the album format, in terms of people having, like, a, you know, like, a statement, you know, like you're… like, the great American novel, like, the great American hip, or the great world, because you've got some real international artists in there, too.
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01:11:21.650 --> 01:11:37.249
Hong Lieu: But the great hip-hop records deserve to be kind of listened in that respect of, like, putting on the headphones and just, like, getting in there. That was, I mean, that was me with punk at the start, I mean, but with all the records, like, those albums, like, they do speak and have that message, yeah.
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01:11:37.940 --> 01:11:43.890
Akil Hill: One artist I'll… this is the last thing I'll say. One artist I don't know if I heard you say was in there, or…
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01:11:44.140 --> 01:11:47.739
Akil Hill: Is there… if they are in there. Did you see Eminem?
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01:11:48.560 --> 01:11:53.159
Tino Garcia: I did not. Okay, okay. I did not.
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01:11:53.160 --> 01:12:00.739
Akil Hill: I just had to throw that out there, because I'm not saying I… I… I'm, like, pro or for, but I'm just saying, like, okay, yeah.
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01:12:01.240 --> 01:12:05.579
Tino Garcia: I… I dig Eminem, and, you know, he's…
533
01:12:06.060 --> 01:12:13.080
Tino Garcia: I think part of it is that sometimes I feel like the virtuoso complex
534
01:12:13.570 --> 01:12:22.939
Tino Garcia: gets in the way of things. He's trying to have so many multisyllabic rhymes on so many multisyllabic rhymes and stuff, and…
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01:12:23.110 --> 01:12:30.710
Tino Garcia: And the shock fact… I mean, he's… he's a genius in his own right. It just… for my tastes.
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01:12:30.810 --> 01:12:37.469
Tino Garcia: he's not in the pantheon. I would just… I would take other cats before him, I don't know.
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01:12:38.960 --> 01:12:41.000
Akil Hill: Yeah, I don't disagree.
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01:12:41.340 --> 01:12:53.099
Hong Lieu: I throw… I throw him in mine. I'm not saying that I bump M&M in the whip, like, he's not… he's not the one to rattle the speakers, but in terms of… like, he did come up, like, he was doing freestyles on Sway and Tech in the morning.
539
01:12:53.100 --> 01:13:03.979
Hong Lieu: He was, you know, battling at Scribble Jam, Rap Olympics, so he… I mean, he was definitely embracing the four elements of the culture, so I got… I throw him in there, too. I mean, I'm not saying he's my top
540
01:13:04.310 --> 01:13:10.640
Hong Lieu: top 3 or 5, top 10, but to say he's not one of the greatest… the best to ever do it? Yeah, I definitely throw him in there, but…
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Akil Hill: But do you have Drake in yours?
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01:13:16.540 --> 01:13:25.679
Hong Lieu: I mean, as a hit maker, I probably… but as an LA dude, I cannot, so…
543
01:13:25.680 --> 01:13:29.829
Akil Hill: With our boy… with our boy Yasin Vese say? Shopping with an edge?
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01:13:29.830 --> 01:13:32.870
Tino Garcia: Oh, yup, yup.
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01:13:33.430 --> 01:13:33.780
Tino Garcia: Yeah.
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01:13:33.780 --> 01:13:39.509
Hong Lieu: I mean, he definitely makes hitting records, but yeah, no, as a LA dude, I can't co-sign it right now, so…
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01:13:40.740 --> 01:13:44.559
Hong Lieu: Thank you for that, Tino. Enlightening conversation, I mean, yeah.
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01:13:44.740 --> 01:13:45.660
Hong Lieu: Bum.
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01:13:46.360 --> 01:13:48.030
Hong Lieu: Thank you for taking the time.
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01:13:48.380 --> 01:14:04.100
Hong Lieu: You ran through our gauntlet, you made it, we're all good. Before we say goodbye to you, any final words? And also, if anyone needs to get in touch for more information about the Multimodal Lab or anything you're doing, what's the best way? Just email, chat, office hours?
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01:14:04.470 --> 01:14:14.709
Tino Garcia: While there's the Student Resource Finder that, that SBCC has that we are now on, thank you to Hong for, for that.
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01:14:14.860 --> 01:14:17.409
Tino Garcia: Yeah, our multimodal,
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01:14:18.080 --> 01:14:27.609
Tino Garcia: website, which is linked, on that resource finder. You can check us out there. We're also, on Instagram.
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01:14:27.850 --> 01:14:38.369
Tino Garcia: And, it's multimodal, ABSBCC, so Multimodal Lab SBCC.
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01:14:38.620 --> 01:14:39.760
Tino Garcia: And…
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01:14:40.290 --> 01:14:49.199
Tino Garcia: We also are on YouTube. We don't have as much stuff up yet. We're sort of in the process of getting some of that stuff up, but
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01:14:50.050 --> 01:14:59.140
Tino Garcia: Yeah, in terms of the lab, that's the best way to get in touch with us. Yeah, if anybody has any questions, they can also email me.
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01:14:59.660 --> 01:15:06.280
Tino Garcia: or Michelle DeTorie, who's our amazing LTA, yeah.
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Hong Lieu: I'll get all that info in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time.
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01:15:11.470 --> 01:15:12.940
Akil Hill: Thank you so much, Tino.
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01:15:13.900 --> 01:15:17.479
Hong Lieu: back in the saddle. It's been a little while for us, so this is a good kind of… yeah.
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01:15:18.090 --> 01:15:18.480
Hong Lieu: It's a minute.
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01:15:18.810 --> 01:15:19.930
Hong Lieu: Yeah, but…
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01:15:19.930 --> 01:15:30.910
Tino Garcia: This was fun. It's a dope show. Thank you guys for providing this for our community. I'm gonna go… I'm gonna go listen to some other ones, too, to get to know folks better, and yeah, I really enjoyed it.
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Hong Lieu: Thank you, Tino. Thank you, Akil. Until next time, this was Vaquero Voices. Take care, y'all.
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Tino Garcia: Peace.