It’s Not News to Us
The Los Angeles homie born Ezekiel Christopher Montanez became known worldwide as Chris Montez when his Monarch Records 45 RPM single Let’s Dance became an international hit in 1962.
Mas…[Pocho Stars of Classic Rock] Chris Montez: ‘Let’s Dance’ (video)
In a world where chivalry and chemistry collide, Popeye the Sailor Man’s quest for true love with Olive Oyl faces an enemy even stronger than Bluto.
Millennials — this means you! Whether you need a fitness regime for your swiping fingers, interval training for Instagram, improved low-impact Twitter technique or advanced aerobic Facebook, you need to be @ #TheGym. Ask about February special prices for Mega-Gigabyte Torrent Training™, Skiing with Skype™, and Building Better Abs with Bitcoin™.
What exactly is life like for white Americans in America? Eddie Murphy went undercover to find out.
PREVIOUSLY ON WHITE LIFE:
Mas…Happy Black History Month: Eddie Murphy is ‘Mr. White’ (video)
“Goo goo goo joob,” you say? “I am the Walrus?”
Then you gotta dance to La Bamba, Marinero!
Today marks the sad anniversary of “the day the music died,” the February 3, 1959 airplane crash that took the lives of rock stars Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.
Valens, from the L.A. suburb of Pacoima, was born Richard Steven Valenzuela and some consider him the father of Chicano rock. Pocho Valens didn’t espeak Espanish, so he sang the lyrics to La Bamba from a phonetic cheat sheet.
Click for music videos of Chantilly Lace from the Bopper, Peggy Sue by Holly and the actual Valens La Bamba recording sessions, plus a Don McLean performance of The Day the Music Died.
There are some Spanish words English-speakers can’t wrap their tongues around.
PREVIOUSLY ON SPANISH WORDS:
La Vida Del Taco starts as the Santa Apolonia truck pulls up to its usual spot in New Haven, Connecticut and the work day begins.
You can get tacos de lengua and cabeza here, not just pollo and carnitas. Watch as the truck is turned from a vehicle into an assembly line as the cooks chop cilantro and piñas (!) and pickle chiles and cebollas. And what else? What is the deal with the pineapple? Where did the radishes come from?
Here comes a customer! Wow two nice thick tortillas per taco and whoa that is a lot of pollo! Next dude is hard core and goes for the lengua. Oh man, it looks like every order comes with fries.
God Bless America.
This is your MIGRA on Brazil.
This process was a long one. At first it was about me saying fuck your DACA. Then finding out ways to help my sister pay for hers. Then having my dad call me out on my bullshit because he could have benefited from one. Then me trying to get a green card instead. Then that not following thru cos shit happens. Then trying to get my shit together. Then finding out that my parents could potentially benefit. Then finding out that they didn’t. This thing right here. This thing that wasn’t given to us. This piece of document that many fought thru sleepless nights and courageous actions. This thing right here. Love you mom. Love you dad. Love you sister. Peace.
PREVIOUSLY ON JULIO SALGADO:
He’s Mr. Selfie. He lives in London and apparently sleeps alone. Does he resemble anyone you know?
Chicago cartoon star Scott Stantis, creator of Prickly City, had changing demographics (and gentrification?) on his mind when he drew and wrote this two years ago:
For those of you who may not recognize the characters with Winslow and Carmen, they are from the comic strip La Cucaracha by my friend, Lalo Alcaraz.
They’re young, they’re determined and they’re not about the cookies. Meet the newly-organized Radical Brownies of Oakland, CA.
FUSION’s Jorge Rivas explains:
Mas…Not your Auntie’s Girl Scouts: Meet Oakland’s Radical Brownies (video)
Contra is just trying to get through his day, ya know, and it’s hard enough without pinche Tetris blocks dropping from the sky. What’s a poor action hero to do? [2010 video from those rock-n-roll Rooski revolutionaries @ Red Medusa Studios. Don’t stare at the Medusa, whatever you do.]
“You shoulda told me you was married, baby,” she said. Those were the last words he ever heard. Flaco Jimenez and Ry Cooder explain: That’s the way the girls are in Texas! If not, we’ve got lyrics:
Mas…Flaco Jimenez, Ry Cooder: That’s the way the girls are from Texas!
The Atlantic analyzed the stats and guess what!? Some professions in the United Estates are positively teeming with white people — jobs like veterinarian, espeech sangwich pathologist and meelrye (chart excerpt, above).
Hurm, we said, perhaps we can fabricate a similar list of America’s brownest jobs.
“So let it be written, so let it be done!” said Pharoah, another white dude. And we did. Here’s our list of America’s Pocho Ocho Top Brownest Jobs:
8. Piñata Fluffer
7. Chief Cleavage Officer for Spanish Language TV Network News Division
6. Tia Guadalupe Gutierrez Santa Maria de Los Angeles y Zacatecas
MiJA Elise Roedenbeck, formerly a professional geek*, wonders if computers make our brains less creative. Since half of Elise’ cabeza is exposed to Mutant Moon Rays from Outer Espace synergistically multiplied by the Reality Distortion Field generated by her MacBook Pro, it was urgent she get an answer as quickly as possible. In this case, it took her only 3:03.
PRO TIP: Elise’s high tech screen name on the Twitter is @buttronica, so you know she’s right, especially when POCHO Migrant Editor Al Madrigal shows up on her list as #1 most creative comedian. 🙂
Here’s Buttronica’s video:
Mas…Elise @Buttronica Roedenbeck: Do computers zap our creativity? (video)
Auf Deutschland, thrill-seekers experience authentic pre-Columbian Mexico with every Talocan thrill ride at Phantasialand, the gigantor theme park in Brühl, North Rhine-Westphalia. [Beer and wurst slightly wurstier east of the Seine. Fire and water included. Earth and wind available at extra charge. Ask your cartel liason about extra-judicial disappearances and Aztec sacrifices.]
Peruvian-born percussionist and wannabe record producer Tony Succar heard a dream that included a salsa-style big band fronted by Boricua singer Jean Valdez performing Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal, a dream you could help him realize if you would only please please CLICK HERE TO DONATE $10,000 on his crowdfunding website. And you did, so here you go! People who like this kind of thing will probably like this kind of thing.
Over at FUSION, Rafa Fernandez De Castro curated a nice photo gallery of street art in Mexico DF — beautiful and haunting and angry. Here are some of the photos she found that we especially liked.
Mas…Mexico City street art is full of anger, longing, regret (photos)
Fed up with ignorant cat-calls, lewd, rude and suggestive remarks from sexist men on the street, women in Lima set up hidden cameras and — dressed up as “MILFs” — went for a stroll down the calle…walking right by their ignorant, lewd, rude and suggestive…WAIT FOR IT…sons.
“What are you doing?” I asked the teenage boy who was gleefully tagging a repainted space at Santiago Park in Santa Ana. Alarmed, he jumped down the small ledge to look up at the bridge where I was standing.
Others emerged from beneath the bridge to see where the stranger’s voice was coming from. There were probably five or ten of them altogether.
They looked so fresh-faced, ranging in age from perhaps 15 to the early 20s. A young adult with shoulder-length crimped hair appeared to be a leader. He wore a wide grin on his face.
A wave of sadness and great disappointment washed over me. These kids belonged in a boy band, or on a soccer team, or part of a visionary group that would put a person on Mars. Instead they were misusing their talents and potential to deface public property.
Mas…What are you doing? What am I doing? Be careful out there!
In 2004, an Arizona high school team beat the odds by topping M.I.T in an underwater robotics competition. The undocumented team members’ stories inspired a book, a documentary, and now a feature film produced by and starring George Lopez. Spare Parts (trailer, above) is in theaters now.
This interview with two original team members by Antonia Cereijido for LatinoUSA explains what REALLY happened before and after the events dramatized in the film. Is it our imagination, or does one of the guys almost break into tears at the end?
POCHO Migrant Editor Al Madrigal’s new docu-comedy Half Like Me went live on FUSION Thursday night. In this clip, Al meets up at the US-Mexican border with a patriotic member of the Minutemen. Also, Borderlandia looks familiar somehow.
PREVIOUSLY ON HALF LIKE ME:
Mas…Watch! Al Madrigal: ‘Half Like Me’ (Al meets with a Minuteman)
In between the Mexican curse words, Gustavo Arellano has a modest proposal: Learn to love your local hipster and/or chipster. We’re still trying to figure out what and who ¡Asked A Mexican! That cartoon, though! [NSFW adult language.]
CHIPSTERS?
Are you a Chipster (Chicano + hipster)? There are Pocho Ocho ways to tell. You might be a Chipster if…
Mas…Ask A Mexican: Here’s an idea – Learn to love hipsters (NSFW video)
Why are imported bananas so cheap while apples grown next door are expensive? I’m Chiquita Banana and I’m here to say: I’ve got your answer and it’s CIA.
Mas…Bananas! How Uncle Sam raped Latin America for cheap fruit (video)
ESTRANGE BUT TRUE:
It was the tail end of the 1960s and Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention was making Public Service Announcements for “underground radio.” Few examples survive, but this short audio segment warns impressionable young people about a popular Chicano-themed cartoon that had not even been invented yet — a subversive cartoon that could “rot your mind!” Let’s listen in to see what Zappa has to say…
