COMIC SAENZ 
POCHO Migrant Editor Al Madrigal (he commutes coast-to-coast so he can work nights as Senior Latino Correspondent for The Daily Show) went to Tucson AZ to find out why students there aren’t allowed to take classes in Mexican-American history.
Cameras running, Al interviewed a school board official who was apparently high on ignorance, stupidity and hate.
These are the POCHO stories that broke the ñews this week:
Mas…Ñewsweek: Tucson school board’s exercise in ignorance and hate
The crew of the USS Chocstromo really should have seen this coming.
Yo what is up with all this Mayan Doomsday 2012 stuff? We need some disinformation and we need it now, and that’s why we turned to the Disinformation Company for this video. Like check it:
Disinformation Company producer Gary Baddeley, director Nimrod Erez and the Disinformation team contacted and arranged interviews with multiple experts, often obtaining speedy access due to more than ten years of working with them or colleagues in their fields!
Mas…Disinformation Company: Doomsday 2012 Science or Superstition?
Don’t judge! She was young and she needed the money. Salma Hayek stars in a musical commercial for the now-defunct Mexican fast food chain BurgerBoy.
Tajo Abierto by Decertor. Festival Latir Latino, realizado en las calles de Miraflores, Lima 2012. In other words, OK, like in Peru? It was this Latino Beat Festival. Right, yeah. Lima, Peru. And this dude painted this massive other dude all sideways and stuff on a wall. OK and he like video’d it. Sweet.
Citing Malcom X, MLK and Michael Jackson, rapper Coldrank‘s Black Man explores, shall we say, discrepancies in society’s treatment of blacks killing blacks, blacks killing whites and whites killing blacks. And those that don’t learn from history, he reminds us, are doomed to repeat it. Directed by Joe Mexican.
It’s no secret that Mitt “Self Deportation” Romney is not Latinos’ favorite presidential hopeful. Stephen Colbert explains the political realities and introduces a new Mitt Romney TV commercial.
POCHO has a Mexican Mitt Romney commercial too — and it’s a music video (below).
Mas…Colbert to Romney: Run this commercial to get Latino votes
“The mysterious Dudley Dorito UFO has been spotted for the fourth time in five years flying through a cloudless sky over woodland in Yorkshire,” reports Britain’s The Sun:
The object, which looks like an extra-terrestrial tortilla chip, was captured by an amateur cameraman who posted the footage on YouTube. He can be heard saying “I don’t know what that is” as the triangular aircraft glides silently across the frame above a forest in the north of England.
The UFO was dubbed the Dudley Dorito after its first sighting over the Midlands in 2007 but it is unclear whether the YouTube footage is real or a hoax.
NBCLatino asked POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz whether he’s a Chicano or Latino or Mexican or Hispanic.
Lalo was commenting on the Pew Hispanic Center survey everybody is talking about:
Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label.
Mas…Chicano? Mexican? Cuban? Boricuan? Latino? Hispanic? What are you?
POCHO amigo Gustavo Arellano, the ¡Ask A Mexican! guy who writes columns and books and edits OCWeekly.com, has a new book coming out soon: Taco USA — How Mexican Food Conquered America.
Despite his adamant refusal to bribe us for coverage, we still want to present Pocho Ocho reasons he should win a pinche Pulitzer:
8. The use of the inverted exclamation point in ¡Ask A Mexican! has forced gabachos across America to learn special key combinations to send him hateful email.
7. Consistently employing “SantAna” when referring to the Orange County City of Santa Ana has moved Carlos Santana out of the old-age home and into a long-term gig at the House of Blues on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip.
Mas…Pocho Ocho reasons Gustavo Arellano should win a Pulitzer Prize
Tucson public school students are no longer taught Mexican-American history, and POCHO Migrant Editor Al Madrigal (who also moonlights as Senior Latino Correspondent for The Daily Show) went to the Hate State to find out why.
Founded on Passover 1799 by a youthful colony of Spanish Jews fleeing the persecution of their parents, at its height the mission comprised a thriving community of several hundred souls along the Los Angeles River, near present-day Boyle Heights.
Often overshadowed by its overachieving Catholic neighbors in San Gabriel and San Fernando, Mission Santa Zipporah was founded by the storied ‘Father’ Shmuel, the Jewish missionary sometimes known by his nickname, “Father Sarah.”
Mas…The California Mission lost to history: Santa Zipporah de la Culpa
Omar Torrez sure can play! That’s why he toured with Tom Waits and played with others like the Buena Vista Social Club and Jethro Tull. The Los Angeles Times wrote: “Dare we dub him the Latin Hendrix?! The fastest fingers in the West, a massive talent poised to break out and kiss the sky.”
Omar Torrez describes his music as “equal parts rock, Latin, delta blues, atonal classical, and performance art.” His heritage is as diverse as his music, ranging from Spanish and Basque (via Mexico) to Norwegian, Native American and Russian roots.
We especially like his new release — a happy-go-lucky smile of a tune called Marina (play this loud!) which will have you chair-dancing in no time at all. Srsly.
Tony Diaz’s Librotraficante crew smuggled banned Mexican-American Studies books — AKA wetbooks — into Tucson. These three videos tell the story.
Diaz’s own video picks up the story below:
Mas…Videos: Librotraficante caravan smuggles banned books into Tucson
Ladies: Does this song describe anyone you know? Or shall we ask again after tonight’s big game? Gary P. Nunn is a Texas singer/songwriter with a good eye for detail and a pointed wit.
[NSFW. This is totally not safe for work. F word, N word etc.] We were very surprised to see it online and don’t know how long it will be available. Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin is
… a subversive and satirical re-imagining of Disney’s Song Of The South with an urban spin, Ralph Bakshi’s incendiary masterpiece Coonskin exploits and eviscerates grotesque American racial stereotypes with a politically incorrect, profane and vicious sense of humor. — Dangerous Minds
These were the big stories (plus Zimmerman’s 911 call, below) this week on POCHO:
Mas…Ñewsweek: @Astro_Jose is A-OK, Zimmerman’s ‘Latinidad’ revoked
The Adventures of Paleta Man is the story of an ice cream man who becomes a superhero. And this video — hold on now — is an adaptation of a coloring book based on the Paleta Man screenplay by independent writer/filmmaker Paul Ramirez of Austin, TX. The video is best when played fullscreen. The plot:
Esteban Ruiz makes a living by selling ice cream. A good and hardworking man, Esteban enjoys his job, especially when it brings him closer to Margarita Morales, the woman he loves. But being a modest man makes Esteban an easy target. He has been bullied, and becomes frustrated by his inability to defend himself. His fate suddenly changes when he purchases an antique wooden box. The box contains a magical medallion that gives Esteban special abilities. With his newly acquired strength, he decides to help those in need and punish criminals. He calls himself Paleta Man. When a villain captures Margarita, Esteban will need all of his super powers.
Part 2 — Secret of the Gold Medallion — is below.
Mas…Superhero Video: The Adventures of Paleta Man (Parts 1 & 2)
It’s easy being green when you Take the Red Line. Rock metal skaters It’s Casual recommend public transportation.
Gov. Jerry Brown has sworn in UC Riverside professor Juan Felipe Herrera as California’s Poet Laureate — the first Chicano to get the honor. In this video, Herrera reads his poem 187 reasons Mexicanos can’t cross the border. The poem illustrates the difference between Jerry Brown’s California and Jan Brewer’s Hate State of Arizona, where Mexican-American Studies are outlawed. Cali isn’t perfect, but at least we know where we came from.
Is Will Ferrell — currently starring in Casa de Mi Padre — the first Anglo comic actor to make a Spanish-language comedy without knowing a word of Spanish?
No guey! As you can see in this old movie clip, black and white jailbirds Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel AKA El Gordo y El Flaco visited the Dentista and delivered their lines phonetically from a script 60 or more years ago. If you don’t know about Ferrell’s movie, you can peep the trailer below — it’s in Spanish AND color!
Mas…Laurel and Hardy are El Gordo y El Flaco in ‘El Flaco Va Al Dentista’
(PNS reporting from ROUTE 66) Area resident Bobby Figueroa is “so totally sick and tired” of the effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that he plans to fight the entropy, friends report.
People close to the situation say Figueroa began complaining about the universal tendency of elements in a closed system to flow to an increasingly disordered or entropic state last Thursday, the day he endured a flat tire, a broken tooth and repeated loss-of-signal during a hot game of “Words With Friends.”
“This shit is getting old,” Figueroa, 38, told his dinner companions at Babosa’s Route 66 Diner in Barstow after an evening of bowling in which he broke a nail and tore a shoelace.
Mas…Local man ‘sick and tired of sh*t breaking down and falling apart’
*(SACRAMENTO) A judge ruled Thursday afternoon that Democratic candidate José Hernández can indeed call himself an “astronaut” on the official ballots for U.S. Congress, according to a late report from the California state capital.
(SACRAMENTO March 26) He’s a NASA veteran who has been to the International Space Station and back and here we have a photo of him in his pinche space suit, but GOP lawyers who oppose Democrat José Hernández’s bid for seat in the U.S. Congress are demanding he stop calling himself an “astronaut.”
Unless Californian Hernandez can prove he is still an astronaut, the lawyers say, he has to stop referring to himself using that title.
“Astronaut is not a title one carries for life,” Republican operatives asserted in a lawsuit filed in Sacramento County last week.
The suit notes that Hernandez did not make any money from NASA last year. From the Fresno Bee:
Mas…GOP to José Hernández: Where’s your space certificate? *Updated
Hi. Is Tia Lencha here. Sorry I haven been on the blogue. I don’t like to complains, but I have a son, and varicose veins. But I have to tell you about when I was making a pot of beans and I remember the time when I help my hijo make his dream come true.
It was summer and I was still with mijo’s father. Mijo and I stayed at home during the vacations from school. Mijo say he was bore being at the house, so I say, “why don’t we make a project?”
Mijo, who was six year old, say, “Can we make something?”
Oh! So cute! I say, “Yes, mijo, what do you want to make?”
He thought for a little bit and say, “I want to make the perfect pedo.”
 |
 |
Alicia Velasquez AKA “Alice Bag” — music scene pioneer in first-wave L.A. punk band The Bags — went on the road this winter to promote her autobiography Violence Girl. After a record store appearance, she answered a few questions for Punk Globe magazine.
Here’s the interview and the “trailer” for her book. Yes, books have trailers. And check out The Bags performance video and the vintage gurl-punk Cholitas footage — all below.
Mas…Punk pioneer Alice ‘Bag’ Velasquez tells all in ‘Violence Girl’ (videos)
There’s a fine line between an honest expression of one’s feelings and being a pendejo. Does YouTube rant-meister Skweezy Jibbs cross the line? Skweezy’s description of his homeboy Jose as “a crazy Mexican” offends a party-goer and sets Skweezy off on a three-minute rant. (Totally NSFW rude language and rude ideas.)
So what do you think? Are people today just way too gosh darn sensitive?
Tell it like it is in the comments below!
Just around the time actual Latino astronaut José Hernández was born, actor and comic Bill Dana (not a Latino) got famous playing José Jiménez, a sweet but dimwitted astronaut with a thick Latino accent.
It was the beginning of the Space Race and astronauts were America’s new heroes, but the very idea of a Chicano in space was a joke.
Mas…Meet America’s first Latino astronaut: José Jiménez (audio video)
Almost three dozen sheep lie dead in a corral in Michoacan and one witness blames a creature with fangs and wings. From Britain’s Daily Mail:
When farmers in Mexico found 35 of their sheep slaughtered with significant claw and tooth marks around their necks, they had one creature to blame – the legendary chupacabra. One man tending to the sheep overnight in the small Mexican town of Paracuaro said he saw animals with sharp fangs and wings kill the livestock. Dubbed the ‘Bigfoot of Latin culture,’ the chupacabra is a legendary four-legged creature that many think is responsible for attacking and killing livestock.
But how does a flying chupacabra compare with a flying purple people eater? And who wants to actually SEE a flying saucer? Two music videos below provide the answers
Mas…Flying chupacabra kills 35 sheep in Michoacan (three videos)
This POCHO ñewsweek is brought to you in living — and dying — color.
In the Southwest, New Mexico’s tourist board is casting a commercial to promote visits to the state. Who do they want to play the tourists in their commercial? “Caucasians and light-skinned Hispanics.”
And in the Southeast, Florida cowers in the Spotlight o’ Shame as the country asks why an unarmed teenager was killed by a self-styled neighborhood watch vigilante.
These are the stories that made the ñews this week:
Mas…Ñewsweek: New Mexico wants tourists — light-skinned tourists
Here’s a novel idea: Why not ask some Mayans about the impending apocalypse? Undercurrents Alternative News did just that in 2012 The Mayan Word. In Spanish and English with English subtitles, this hour-long documentary takes a look at the impending death and obliteration of the world as we know it and beginning of our glorious metamorphosis into luminous beings of light in the Singularity to come. Or maybe not. The official writeup is below.
Artist Ramiro Gomez, Jr. makes the invisible visible as he inserts cardboard images of hardworking Latinos into the landscape of Los Angeles and documents his installation art with photos. At half-past midnight he emailed POCHO:
I went up to Hollywood Blvd. this afternoon and put up my newest cardboard installation. It is on the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Curson Ave. I went back tonight and it has not been taken down yet, hopefully, the location I chose allows it to ride for a while.
The big versions of Gomez’ photos are below.
Shoutout to Hollywood peeps: Is the paletero still there? Please share your updates in the Comments section below. Gracias!
Two years ago, POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz (San Diego State University 1987) told folks at his alma mater how college days during the Reagan era led to his split personality. The two halves of his brain are now the two main characters in his syndicated daily comic La Cucaracha.
Mas…Lalo Alcaraz draws his split personality in ‘La Cucaracha’ (video)