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As a University of Colorado freshman in the 1970s, I often had to explain to fellow students that, yes, New Mexico was a state and, no, we in Albuquerque did not use horse and mule to get around.

"There's nothing there beyond sand," I recall one guy from New Jersey smirking, and I might have dissed him back had he not been so cute and his misconception of my homeland not so commonplace.

No one knew New Mexico then.

Even fewer knew much about Albuquerque. They surmised, based on what they had gathered from old TV shows, that my city must be some Wild West town of dust and donkeys and the curious destination in the Partridge Family pop classic "Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque-e-e-e."

To those New Mexico neophytes, our image was based not on first hand knowledge but on how we were portrayed by the mass media.

Since the '70s, though, those portrayals have become somewhat wilder than the Wild West.

Take Fox TV's popular "Cops" reality series, for instance. Albuquerque segments were considered so bizarrely entertaining that they were often saved for sweeps week.

Mayor Marty eventually rolled up that welcome mat, apparently fearing that Albuquerque's image was being tainted by transvestite scofflaws and bereaved women with giant attack parrots, both featured in Albuquerque "Cops" segments.

Better instead, he must have thought, to welcome far more salacious film fare as Steven Seagal's god-awful gang retaliatory goop "Urban Justice," shot in Albuquerque in 2006, or the crude and boob-baring "Beerfest," which filmed here earlier that same year.

"This is a clean industry that provides good jobs with higher wages for New Mexicans," the mayor explained back then.

Which is to say, image schmimage, show us the money.

And so it has gone, the film and television productions parading regularly into our midst to capture, sometimes inadvertently, their version of our face to the general public, whether we like it or not.

We are "In Plain Sight" and "In the Valley of Elah," "Wildfire" and "Wild Hogs." We are "Buried Alive" but "Dinosaurs Alive." We are "No Country for Old Men" but "Kid Nation."

Is it any wonder, then, that outsiders are even more befuddled than before as to what it's really like out here?

Our latest cinematic visage is the controversial AMC cable channel series "Breaking Bad," which debuted Sunday.

The show centers on a dying and downtrodden chemistry teacher in, yup, Albuquerque who decides to sock away big money quickly for his family's future by stripping down to his tighty whities before making methamphetamine in a Winnebago he parks in the desert.

Last Sunday's episode featured the prefab neighborhoods of Rio Rancho, an Octopus Car Wash and two vicious but dense Hispanic-looking druggies who fancy rap music and guns.

Sure. That says Albuquerque to me.

Hollywood has also portrayed us thusly as:

The land of cute kids. As in the adorably quirky "Little Miss Sunshine" and impossibly pretty teen idols Troy and Gabriella from Disney's "High School Musical" juggernaut. Curiously, though, both supposedly take place in Albuquerque but neither was filmed here.

Beyond Thunderdome. Envision New Mexico as a pile of smoldering futuristic ruins in "The Game," a film about the violent reality TV we can expect to see in the future. Albuquerque also looked rather trashed in "Transformers" and "Living Hell."

Bad boys. Beyond "Cops," parts of "Natural Born Killers" were filmed here as were "Suspect Zero" and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles."

The same old, same old. Albuquerque and New Mexico, by and large, still take on a dusty air in many film productions, including "3:10 to Yuma" and "Brokeback Mountain."

None of this is to say that the film industry should be shooed away from the Land of Enchantment or that the Chamber of Commerce should begin screening prospective productions.

We've been explaining ourselves to the outside world for years, so why stop now? Besides, having more mass confusion to deal with beats the same old dust and donkey any day.

Take that, New Jersey.