COMIC SAENZ
A 1985 A-Ha award-winning music video gets cumbia-nated and lucha-fied in this just-released re-make from hometown heroes El Conjunto Nueva Ola. It’s not Take On Me, they say. It’s Taco Me. Look for the Spanglish captions! 😉
Here’s the A-Ha video:
Mas…El Conjunto Nueva Ola vs. A-Ha: ‘Take On Me’ (music videos)
Attention assorted Latinos and gringos: Are you stuck in Buenos Aires far away from home when you’d rather be watching the World Cup with your amigos? Come on down to La Fábrica del Taco (LFDT) at either Gorriti 5062 Palermo or Baez 246 Cañitas for comida, cerveza and futbol! Maybe you’ll miss home a little less. [“La Fábrica del Taco,” they write on their SoundCloud page, “es una taqueria bien chingona en Buenos Aires, Argentina. La única y autentica taqueria al sur de la frontera. Invitamos a todos los melo.”]
Does your Argentinan taqueria have a SoundCloud page? The Taco Factory does:
Mas…Latinos y gringos in Buenos Aires? Eat tacos, watch futbol here (video)
Two summers ago, MR. POCHO’s European vacation took him to Gay Paree, where he snapped this selfie on the Love Locks Bridge [click to enlarge.] Those were the best of times, he told friends.
Now, he feels, the worst of times are upon us.
Agence France-Presse has the sad news:
Mas…MR. POCHO has the sad – Paris ‘Love Locks’ bridge evacuated
Jesus “Chucho” Perales, a founding member and guitarist with Mando & the Chili Peppers, a band considered to be among the very first of the Chicano rock ‘n’ rollers in the mid-1950s, died Sunday. He was 78.
The Chili Peppers were the first Mexican-American group to appear on American Bandstand. The group toured the country, played Las Vegas and performed with Ritchie Valens, the Champs and Duane Eddy. The band’s album, On the Road with Rock N Roll, recorded in 1958, is a collector’s item.
He received his first guitar, a Gene Autry model, when he was 8 from Alfred Flores Sr., owner of Alamo Music. By 14, Perales was playing rough joints with pioneering conjunto musician Valerio Longoria.
Jesus “Chucho” Perales was born on Christmas Day 1935.
Mas…RIP Jesus ‘Chucho’ Perales, Chicano rock pioneer (video)
It’s Not My Fault is an original song and music video created by a group of 11th grade students at Venice High School. Their goal was to raise awareness and prevent physical, mental and emotional abuse against women. [Video project via My Purpose Party.]
It was just another day, another dump in a stall in the bathroom at the office, and then THIS happened!
Mas…Video: He just wanted to take a sh*t, then THIS happened!
Seniors at Santa Barbara High School won this week’s Best Mariachis on the Internets award when they hired a four-piece band to follow the principal through the halls.
The band played for over an hour and everything ended up copacetic — this video was uploaded by the hella cool official SBHS web person and the school district supplied this photo.
Mas…Santa Barbara H.S. seniors hire mariachis to troll principal (video)
POCHO amigo Ramiro Gomez, a SoCal guerrilla artist who we first met when he started placing cardboard cut-outs of previously-invisible immigrant workers around Beverly Hills and Hollywood, now has his work in art museums (as well as in the homes of private art collectors.)
Recently, he visited to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) where he saw more immigrant laborers toiling tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the museum clean and tidy.
Gomez snapped some photos of the museum custodians and then painted their images onto postcards from the LACMA gift shop, like this postcard of the Urban Light sculpture/assemblage.
He described the image this way on Facebook:
I am greatly inspired by the way The Impressionists saw a scene, and by the Social Realists who wanted to draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working class. The figures I paint are my impressions of people I’ve seen working. In places like LACMA, the art on the walls is not what captures my full attention, but rather, my eye is also drawn to the people walking around maintaining the space. If there is anything I’ve learned from art history, is that my job as an artist is to capture what life is like in my time period, and scenes like this, I feel, best represent what I see. [Custodians near Urban Light, LACMA 4″ x 6″ acrylic on postcard]
Can you match the laborers on the postcards with the janitors in the photos?
Mas…Behind the scenes at the L.A. County Museum of Art (photos)
Mystery of the ages! You won’t believe what this actress and flamenco guitarist said! The one weird phrase that turned a Spanish ingenue into a superstar! I never expected I’d react like this when watching a video from Oprah! When this blonde chica began playing, the audience gasped!
Charo fans: You know you’ve been waiting for this. Was it worth the wait?
Mas…Shameless! Charo finally reveals the meaning of ‘Cuchi-Cuchi’ (videos)
POCHO amigo Gustavo ¡Ask A Mexican! Arellano maintains in his book Taco USA that the tiny tortilla-wrapped bundles of delicioso are American food now.
We’ve concluded that tacos are American as wontons, at least at Applebee’s, where this all-American appetizer costs $6.99.
Mas…Tacos are American as Applebee’s chicken wontons (photos)
The act of throwing a pie in someone’s face is not a mission to be undertaken lightly, and it’s a mission we certainly do not recommend, advocate nor encourage, according to our attorneys.
A poorly thought-out pieing plan can backfire, leaving the pie thrower to deal with unintended consequences (see video, above.) Helpful, illustrated hypertext pie throwing manuals are why Al Gore invented the Internets, and this introduction, we hope, might be of some use to you. Not you with the YOLO T-shirt. Those calmer looking people with the NO FRACKING WAY hoodies.
According to online anarchists and pie-throwing experts, there is a proven two-step approach to an effective pie throw, and also several do’s and don’t’s in considering the pie per se. Peep this info graphic:
Mas…Do it right or don’t do it at all! How to throw a pie in the face (videos)
Reading is hard. That’s why we’re happy to feature our MiJA, Elise Roedenbeck (she’s @Buttronica on the Twitter), reading customer reviews of Amazon.com products. Now you can sit back, chillax, watch and listen instead of trying to pick out the words, with all those darn letters. Today’s selection includes a dramatic reading of a review shared by the Starship Enterprise’ most festive officer, George Takei.
PREVIOUSLY ON READING REVIEWS ALOUD:
Mas…Elise @Buttronica Roedenbeck reads Amazon product reviews (video)
In Rosarita, Baja Mexico, every day is taco Tuesday at Tacos El Yaqui Perrones, where the specialty of the house is wood-grilled flank steak piled on melted cheesy flour tortillas. These are not just tacos WITH cheese. The cheese is not an afterthought, not a garnish. Melted cheese on a flour tortilla (are we not talking a grilled cheese sammich here aka quesadilla?) is the critical taste and texture infrastructure upon which the oak wood flame-broiled carne is arrayed. These are cheese + steak tacos. On white.
IMHO, these tacos are the Philadelphia cheesesteaks of Mexico. I’m originally from South Philly so that’s a compliment!
The only thing that could make the tacos in this video more appetizing would be Smell-O-Vison, or, maybe, Cheese-Whiz:
Mas…Taco Tuesday Video: Tacos El Yaqui Perrones, Rosarito, Baja
Seriously. Dragons Love Tacos. They love chicken tacos, beef tacos, great big tacos, and teeny tiny tacos. We wanted to make sure you knew, if you didn’t already.
Here’s the bestseller read by Daniel Perrine from the band All My Sins Remembered:
Mas…Watch: ‘Dragons Love Tacos’ (Doh! Well of course they do!)
It’s new, it’s cool and it’s been designed and crafted with the attention to detail that has made Apple one of the world’s most admired brands. Introducing…the iWatch.
The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac reveals a dark (skinned) secret about the casting of background extras for the Hobbit movies.
PREVIOUSLY ON CASTNG:
Mas…Wyatt Cenac : Sorry, brown-skinned actors can’t be Hobbits (video)
Chemistry Cat knows how to make good guac. Add to his knowledge base here.
PREVIOUSLY ON GUACAMOLE:
Yojani Pérez Rivera aka Mamerto and his 23yG crew are on the skating edge of the new Cuba. This just-released documentary short is part of a fundraising effort to get the kids some gear and upgrade the skate park in Havana. [Video via Cuba Skate.]
PREVIOUSLY ON CUBA:
A year-long study has shown that potential buyers were less likely to contact Craigslist sellers with brown skin and/or tattoos.
And when contact was made, according to the research, the prices offered for identical items were less.
Sociological Images has the story:
Mas…Study shows brown skin, tattoos will cost you money on Craigslist
These days in Aztlan — and across lots of the United Estates — most immigrants come from Mexico, but it wasn’t always that way. A hundred years ago or so they were from Germany.
The Pew Research Center reports:
Mas…Where do immigrants come from? These days, the answer is ‘Mexico’
In my family, they say that Abuelo Abraham Saenz, wearing his WWI U.S. Army uniform, “smuggled” one of his sisters (photo, above) into the country via the Port of Philadelphia, wrapping the girl up in a fur coat so she looked like a rich lady.
The scheme was “dress to impress” so the MIGRA wouldn’t think to question her bonafides. She was illiterate, the story goes, and that wasn’t kosher for poor Jewish would-be immigrants from Ukraine in the early 1900s. The rich bitch trick worked, my great aunt got through immigration and everyone lived happily ever after.
Our family story, it turns out, isn’t unique. There were poor Jews who sneaked across the Mexican border near El Paso, and families smuggled in the cargo holds of ships packed with illegal Cuban rum during Prohibition.
Mas…American Jews: Maybe your grandparents were ‘illegals’ too (audio)
You know that thing about Chipotle Mexican Grill and how they couldn’t find any Mexican or Latino writers to decorate their bags?
POCHO amigo Gustavo ¡Ask A Mexican! Arellano explains:
Americans love Mexican foods, he says, but hate Mexicans. In other words, they love the beans but hate the beaners.
She only has one wish, Sandra Bullock told George Lopez in 2009: She wants to be “more Latina.” Sympathetic Lopez gets Bullock a chola makeover.
PREVIOUSLY ON CHOLAS:
Mas…George Lopez helps Sandra Bullock be ‘more Latina’ (video)
Being brown, growing old, living as a short person — Johnny Sanchez shares TMI about the intimate secrets of Mexican-American men.
Honey, please stop by the panaderia on your way home and pick up some pastries for dessert, OK? [Video by Diario.]
On News Channel 8, right before the 5-Day Forecast, there was an impassioned plea for real news. Not that fake news about Miley Cyrus. Or Ñews. Call it an exploration of the through-the-looking-glass world of media making media mocking media, where everything you know is wrong. There’s a signpost up ahead, in the POCHO Zone.
PREVIOUSLY ON TV NEWS:
Mas…Hey, News Channel 8 dude: Where is the REAL news? (video)
Daniel Hernandez tells you where to go when you’re hungry in Oaxaca. [Video by Munchies TV]
The YouTube explains:
POCHO amiga Elise Roedenbeck (who is sill on our masthead as NYC Bureau Chief Emeritus the fact of which we are periodically required to remind you of as a result of the settlement order, without admitting or denying guilt and/or culpability) explores the steamy sexy world of Dino Porn. These big hunks o’ meat are horny and your scent is just perfect. Elise is @buttronica on the Twitter. Don’t tell T-Rex we were sexting!
Now that the reconquista is complete and Latinos actually run the Hollywood they’ve built, cleaned, gardened, babysat and fed all these the years, the Movie Mogulistas are prepping Latino X-Men. Johnny Sanchez, a reporter for The Flama, was at the auditions. [NSFW adult language.]
Pat Cordes, one of the mujeres chingonas responsible for the Mexico Guru website, demonstrates the proper pronunciation of chingadera, and then she uses it correctly in a sentence. [NSFW adult language.]
PREVIOUSLY ON CHINGA:
Mas…Today’s Word: Pronunciation, definition of ‘chingadera’ (NSFW video)
Who will be the new owner of the L.A. Clippers basketball team when disgraced racist owner Donald Sterling is finally forced out? We sent a camera crew to ask passersby on the streets in Peru.
PREVIOUSLY ON RACISM:
Mas…Peru Cam: Sure, we’re mestizo, but we still hate blacks (video)
Nachos are exotic foreign fare in Merrye Olde Inglaterra, so you need someone to explain how they work. We think “trash food” is British for “junk food,” but these people also call cookies “biscuits” so who knows what they mean.
Anyhow, our Limey expert’s first step to acceptable nacho eating is the purchase of Doritos. Ruh roh.
Mas…Brit paper explains how to eat nachos — the exotic ‘titans of trash food’