It’s that Gustavo ¡Ask A Mexican! Arellano guy again, this time explaining why Mexican-American soccer (futbol) fans root for the Mexican team even if the game is against Los United Estates. Arellano, looking a little green, claims it’s one of the cultural peculiarities gabachos hate most about Mexicanos.
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Mas…¡Ask A Mexican! Why do Chicanos root for the Mexican soccer team?
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)
(PNS reporting from NORMAL, ILL) Demographers at Pocho Asian American Policy Institute (PAAPI) here have just released a new map detailing the most common Asian languages spoken in the U.S., broken out on a state by state basis, in English and Spanish. [Click on image to enlarge.]
Mas…Breaking Ñews: Map shows common Asian languages by state
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)
You can search the Interwebs for days, but you won’t find a better rapping bananas, butter sticks and hotdog roll stop motion music video than Butter Ya’Self, featuring Butter Krust and Nana Splitz.
[NSFW adult lyrics.] Video by Julian Petschek.
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)
If you’re gonna quit your shitty insurance company job, why not make it a fiesta? All you need is a banana suit and some mariachis….
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Mas…Video: Guy dresses as banana, hires mariachis, quits job
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.
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Mas…Elise @Buttronica Roedenbeck reads Amazon product reviews (video)
(PNS reporting from TUCSON) Cesar Chavez — noted American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist — is back from the dead and running for the congressional seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Ed Pastor (D-AZ).
“I will do just about anything to win in Arizona’s heavily Hispanic 7th Congressional District,” Chavez said in a press release, “including rising from the grave if that’s what it takes.”
A Chavez spokesman said the newly-registered Democratic candidate (until recently a two-time Republican loser) had been “flooded with calls” and was no longer speaking to the press, but if he did decide to answer questions, he would not discuss how he came back from the dead or what the afterlife is like.
Mas…Back from the dead and running for Congress, it’s Cesar Chavez!
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.
Chinese and Mexican immigrants to the U.S. have a lot in common. And in the Los Angeles area, they live next door to each other. A Chinese-Mexican-American Angeleno explains it all to your official Voice of America (VOA.)
Mas…Your VOA Reports: Chinos + Mexicanos = The new Americanos (video)
Love in the hood? He’s only 41 miles away and comes equipped with sombrero, maracas and is a big fan of soft-shell tacos. TGIF from all the Pochodores and good luck.
The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac reveals a dark (skinned) secret about the casting of background extras for the Hobbit movies.
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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.
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(PNS reporting from CHIAPAS, MX) Subcommandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista rebels (EZLN) in southern Mexico, has announced that he is leaving the group’s leadership.
He said he no longer spoke on behalf of EZLN but will instead focus on his restaurant empire in Chicago.
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.]
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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’
Like many American songs ostensibly about Old Mexico, this song is really about America. San Francisco’s eclectic The Waybacks, like all smart outlaws, cross the Rio Grande to hook up with like-minded Compadres in the Sierra Madre. Swinging arrangement, cowboy lyrics? Could this be Western Swing?
Here are the lyrics and chords in case you want to swing along:
Mas…Outlaw on the run? You’ve got ‘Compadres in the Sierra Madre’ (video)
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.
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Mas…George Lopez helps Sandra Bullock be ‘more Latina’ (video)
