Cultura
It’s Not News to Us
Always look for the union label: Music vids for Labor Day
Happy Labor Day!
Sing along with the music that celebrates the ordinary working people who keep this country — and the world — in business: Look for the Union Label, Workin’ in a Coal Mine, This Land Is Your Land, and Solidarity Forever.
Mas…Always look for the union label: Music vids for Labor Day
Long Weekend: Blow up your TV, throw away your paper (toons, video)
Sometimes you’ve just got to turn off the TV and walk away — and a long Labor Day weekend is the perfect excuse!
Mas…Long Weekend: Blow up your TV, throw away your paper (toons, video)
White weddings vs Mexican weddings: You be the judge
By ERIC M. RUIZ
It was very interesting growing up in a Mexican household yet being educated in predominantly “white” schools.
For example, a sleepover is almost like a rite of passage for young children.
But my Mexican parents could never understand why I’d want to sleep at someone else’s house when I had a perfectly good bed at home. Needless to say, I never had many sleepovers growing up.
But the biggest difference between the two cultures I grew up in wouldn’t arise until my early 20’s.
Weddings:
The phony foundation of Trump’s proposed border wall (photos,video)
When Donald Trump meets with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto today, one topic of discussion is sure to be the orange man’s proposed wall on the US-Mexico border.
There will never be a pinche border wall.
“Donald Trump is not a builder,” according to an actual engineer who studied this BS idea.
“Donald Trump could not build a doghouse. Donald Trump is a developer who pays what he would call ‘very, very smart people’ to build things on his behalf,” he notes.
“…The challenge of Trump’s border wall is not technical, but logistical. The leap in complexity between ‘building a wall’ and ‘building a 2,000-mile-long continuous border wall in the desert’ is about equal to the gap between ‘killing a guy’ and ‘waging a protracted land war’…. human beings have built a 2,000-mile-long frontier wall exactly one time. Once. And it was accomplished only through a centuries-long building campaign that necessitated the forced labor of millions of Chinese peasants.”
The engineer goes by Ali F. Rhuzkan — it’s a pen name. Sounds foreign, doesn’t it?
Ali F. even drew up some plans:
Mas…The phony foundation of Trump’s proposed border wall (photos,video)
TIFO: Why do ‘Mexican jumping beans’ jump? (video)
I had ’em, you had ’em, everybody had ’em at least once. The Today I Found Out YouTube channel’s Simon Whistler explains why those so-called “Mexican jumping beans” jump. SPOILER: They’re not beans. Also, they sorta twitch rather than jump.
Looks legit! When in Warsaw, Poland, check out Taco Libre (video)
Any sane tourist in Warsaw would want to try pierogi, keilbasa, galompkis, kasha, borscht, and a local wodka, but the Poles want more than that. Thankfully, The Taco Libre food truck looks totally legit.
These darn kids today! From NYC, the Julio Diaz story (video)
On his way home from work, Julio Diaz was robbed at knifepoint. You won’t believe what happened next!
Juanga: ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ (videos)
Juan Gabriel recorded this emotional performance of the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic Have You Ever Seen the Rain earlier this year. QEDP.
Lowriders to the Center of the Earth! (graphic novel video trailer)
Cathy Camper of PDX writes:
OK, I confess, I’m Lebanese American often mistaken for Latina, Native American, Jewish, terrorist…no one in the US knows who anyone is!
I wrote 2 graphic novels with Raúl III (Raúl Gonzalez) called Lowriders in Space (2014) and Lowriders to the Center of the Earth (just came out this summer, July 2016). Raúl illustrated them all in Bic pen, because that’s what kids draw with in school, right? The books are aimed at kids, but adults are loving them too.
Mas…Lowriders to the Center of the Earth! (graphic novel video trailer)
Rita Alexander is ‘Mama a Go Go’: ‘Hot Thrills Warm Chills’ (videos)
In Hot Thrills Warm Chills, a 1967 movie advertised as “Wild Madness That Will Make Your Innards Sizzle,” Rita Alexander shimmies to Mama a Go Go by Perez Prado (credited as Dario De Mexico.)
Then there’s this 60s surf guitar mashup version:
Mas…Rita Alexander is ‘Mama a Go Go’: ‘Hot Thrills Warm Chills’ (videos)
Al Madrigal and the ‘Cholo Soccer Dad’ (#TBT 2010 video)
POCHO Migrant Editor Al Madrigal – who admits to not being a very good Mexican – will never forget the parents he met when he took his kid to the park.
PREVIOUSLY ON AL MADRIGAL:
Mas…Al Madrigal and the ‘Cholo Soccer Dad’ (#TBT 2010 video)
They say this is a recipe for ‘Mexican Chicken Steak’ (video)
Food Fix host Zakir shows how to prepare “Mexican Chicken Steak,” at least that’s what he says. Brought to you by the Malaysian Palm Oil of Pakistan people, which is why there is a lot of environmentally-suspect palm oil in the recipe:
Mas…They say this is a recipe for ‘Mexican Chicken Steak’ (video)
Too manly for Sleepytime® Tea? Try the Sleepytime® Burrito! (video)
Yo, dude. Yes, you, Mr. Hard-Working Macho Guy! Have trouble getting to sleep after a hard day in the coal mines? None of that Sleepytime® tea for you. You’re not a professor or a poet. You need a real man’s sleep aid — the new Sleepytime® Burrito.
Bang Data: It ain’t me, I ain’t no Fortunate Son (Fortunate Hijo) [video]
Oakland’s Bang Data puts a contemporary political spin on this remake of Creedence Clearwater’s Fortunate Son.
“Some folks are born made to wave the flag,” they sing. “Ooh, they’re red, white and blue. And when the band plays Hail to the Chief, ooh, they point the cannon at you.”
Bang Data wants you to register to vote.
POCHO does too.
Creeper, home from San Quentin, shares his ‘Cholofit Workout’ (video)
Creeper is back in the barrio — home from la pinta — and wants to share his workout tips with the neighborhood. [Video by POCHO amigo Frankie Quiñones via Funny Drop.]
PREVIOUSLY ON FRANKIE QUIÑONES:
Mas…Creeper, home from San Quentin, shares his ‘Cholofit Workout’ (video)
LA restaurant’s horchata cocktail has a very special garnish (video)
When you get a horchata cocktail at Salazar Los Angeles, a little chapulin tops off your drink with special sabor.
PREVIOUSLY ON CHAPULINES:
It’s Taco Bell Tuesday in Japan with Yuka Kinoshita (video)
Kawaii cutie Yuka Kinoshita, or Kinoshita Yuka, (it depends) taste tests a Taco Bell “quesarito” and a 12-taco party pack. Taco Bell? It’s a popular American restaurant chain that specializes in Mexican food, according to her smart phone. Click on [CC] to see the English subtitles.
Cristina Martinez: Don’t mess with this Chicana! (NSFW poetry video)
This Latinx does not want your stereotyping BS. Cristina Martinez performing Chicana at the Cherokee Man and the Mockingbird graffiti mural at Decatur Station in Decatur, Georgia. [NSFW F-bomb.]
Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D: The day my Mexican father met Cesar Chavez
Long live the farmworkers!
My late father, Salomón Chavez Huerta, first arrived in this country as an agricultural guest worker in the mid-1900s, during the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program represented a guest worker program between the United States and Mexico. From 1942 to 1964, the Mexican government exported an estimated 4.6 million Mexicans to meet this country’s labor shortage not only in the agricultural fields during two major wars (WWII and Korean War), but also in the railroad and mining sectors.
Like many braceros of his generation from rural Mexico, my father didn’t speak too much about the horrible working / housing conditions he endured while toiling in el norte. This included low pay, overcrowded housing, terrible food, limited legal rights, lack of freedom outside of the labor camps, racism, verbal / physical abuse and price gauging from company landlords / stores.
Mas…Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D: The day my Mexican father met Cesar Chavez
Ruben Pardo has been an elevator operator for 40 years (video)
Ruben Pardo, 75, is the oldest manual elevator operator in Los Angeles. Six days a week for 40 years, Pardo has helped the patrons of the Art Deco Wilshire Tower building “up and down” while sharing his positive musings on the simple joys of life.
In Tijuana, Javier is el super taquero recargado! (video)
In Tijuana, Chef Javier of Tacos El Poblano on Boulevard Diaz Ordaz las Huertas serves up tacos with style and flair. [Recargado (“recharged”) is slang for “kick-ass” or “awesome”.]
Beck vs Mexican Institute of Sound: ‘WOW/GUAU’ (YouTube audio)
The cumbia-flavored remix of Beck’s WOW aka GUAU by Mexican Institute of Sound is now on YouTube and we’re sharing here so you don’t have to deal with pinche Spotify. You’re guelcome. 🙂
POCHO MEXCLUSIVE PHOTO:
Mas…Beck vs Mexican Institute of Sound: ‘WOW/GUAU’ (YouTube audio)
This is how you do it! Kid cleans nopales like a boss (video)
This kid scraping the spines from nopales (cactus paddles) knows what’s up!
PREVIOUSLY ON NOPALES:
Mas…This is how you do it! Kid cleans nopales like a boss (video)
Wall of Voodoo: ‘Mexican Radio’ (music video)
Three and a half million viewers can’t be wrong, right? Wall of Voodoo released Mexican Radio in 1982.
We Are One: Preschoolers know more than Trump voters
In the lobby of the school where I work, there is a huge image of Earth taped onto the wall. It is made of kraft paper and crisscrossed with colorful broad strokes of tempera paint.
Circling the perimeter of the planet are cutout drawings of children holding hands. No two children are the same, partly because of the way the preschoolers scribbled and colored them in.
Above the planet are the words “WE ARE ONE.”
Renee Goust live music video: ‘La Cumbia Feminazi’
Brooklyn-based Mexican singer-songwriter Renee Goust wrote La Cumbia Feminazi in response to online abuse suffered by women.
“I’ve considered myself a feminist ever since I learned the actual meaning of the word,” she says: