Sara Inés Calderón (@SaraChicaD on the Twitter) does not look Mexican. But even if she doesn’t have a nopal on her forehead, she has nopales in the frying pan. [With these Vine videos you need to click on the speaker icon in the top left of the image to hear Sara Inés squee.]
NOPAL EN LA FRENTE ROUNDUP:
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I’m back in my hometown — however briefly — for the San Diego Comic-Con, SDCC, where I had a chance to talk with and take photos with two of my heroes, Montgomery Burns and Alfred E. Neuman.
Alcaraz. Lalo Alcaraz. I’ve got a license to toon:
Photographers here are always happy to snap pix of hot chicas in super hero garb. Click on the gigantor image to enlarge:
Mas…Release the hounds? What, me worry? I’m @ #SDCC (photos)
Our MiJA, Elise @buttronica Roedenbeck, doesn’t want much. She just wants additional followers on the Twitter as part of her plan for worldwide social media domination. Follow Elise to win a small box lunch with individual carafe of wine plus other cool incentives like scribbled notes and video winks (must be over legal drinking age and legal box-eating age in your jurisdiction.) Vegans — ask about the kale-quinoa bowls!
And then comes along Pope Francis (his handle is @pontifex) who is offering PAPAL INDULGENCES on Twitter. Not PayPal, you geeks, but Papal Indulgences from the Holy Father that shorten your stay in the limbo of Purgatory. What’s our MiJA to do?
[What can we say about Elise Roedenbeck, POCHO’s New Jack City Burro Jefe Emeritus, that hasn’t been ruled out by the terms of the negotiated settlement and mutual release of all claims? Just this: She sure likes butter, and it’s “butt-ronica” not “but-tronica.”]
(PNS reporting from EL PASO) Fabian Ramirez expressed deep disappointment Wednesday night as he left the 7PM showing of Pacific Rim at the Premiere Cinema 18 at Bassett Place Mall.
The 42-year-old father of three teenagers told PNS he heard the “movie was about MEChA” and “wanted to expose my kids to a movie about Chicanos.” Ramirez, a former chair of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano(a) de Aztlan (MEChA) at the University of Texas campus here, gathered his children Vladimir, Xochitl and Emiliano for what he hoped would be a big family night out: Seeing “Chicanos fighting against the power structure of AmeriKKKa.”
Instead, Ramirez found the “the movie was about these big robots piloted by military shooting monsters.”
“Pacific Rim,” he sadly concluded, “is not about my MEChAs.”
Mas…Chicano concludes ‘Pacific Rim’ is not a movie about his MEChAs
Of course we are sensitive to the complaints from Beantown (they’re beaners after all) about Rolling Stone’s decision to make controversial Caucasian-American Dzhokhar Tsarnaev their glamorous cover boy.
But as recovering ñewspeeps ourselves, we have to point out that the accused terrorist isn’t the first villain to make it to the cover of a slick zine:
And there was no outrage when Oprah Winfrey put these two masterdeporters on the cover of O magazine in March of 2012.
We have to confess, though. POCHO’s biggest dream is to get banned in Boston.
Nopal and eggs and what? That’s what POCHO’s Subcommandanta del Ñews Sara Inés Calderón — @SaraChicaD on the Twitter — was making herself for dinner while she Skyped with the Pochodores Tuesday night. She came up with this video to explain. [With these Vine vids, you need to click on the top left corner of the image to hear the audio.]
This classic Jack Benny routine with Mel Blanc from the 1960s make for major LULz. But is this vintage comedy sketch racist, just old school or both? Mel Blanc talks in a “Mexican” accent but does his portrayal demean Mexicans? How about his wardrobe? What do you think?
Mas…Racist? Jack Benny meets a ‘Mexican’ at the airport (video)
Run! Black men in hoodies! These Howard University undergrads and grads are not the gangsters you were looking for.
(PNS reporting from LOS ANGELES) Repercussions from the Zimmerman acquittal — which officially confirmed suspicions that nighttime walks to the store by brown and black children are risky, potentially fatal excursions — are already hurting area youngsters, according Avian-American activists.
“Trayvon Martin was just a kid walking home from the local store with Tribbles and a drink, and he ended up dead. That’s troubling,” said Southern California Birds of A Feather (BOAF) regional director The Rev. Al Pigeon (photo) in carrier email to PNS. “Now Moms are afraid to let their kids go out and my flock is having a hard time making a living.”
“Where do you think our food comes from?” he wrote. “Berries? Minnows in the Los Angeles River? Delivery from Urban Spoon? Don’t be a bird brain! Our loaves and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish are out on the street. If it wasn’t for Spittles and Flamin’ Hot Dingoes crumbs on the well-trod path between home and the 7-Eleven we’d have shit to eat. Now that’s what we call a ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death!’ And what about the children?”
East Los BOAF chapter head Popocatepetl Paloma agreed.
Mas…Breaking: Activists say Zimmerman verdict hurts the babies
ZOMG! Comic Saenz’s girlfriend Hope Sandoval is back fronting Mazzy Star in this day-old video-less video California from an upcoming (September) release Seasons of Your Day. Saenz loves her immediately-recognizable smokey voice and encourages Ms. Sandoval to please forgive him for that one time at the Dal Rae in Pico Rivera.
“White Hispanic” is one of mainstream media’s hottest new buzzwords, a term that has leaped off of old census forms and job applications to join the ranks of “twerking,” “3-D printing,” and “Death to Edward Snowden!”
The mainstream media needs to distinguish between different colors of Latinos because it was too polite to ask “Why is Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, so… DARK for his name? And isn’t Aaron Hernandez, that allegedly trigger-happy New England Patriots player, a little… LIGHT for his?”
I guess I could be called a “White Hispanic,” as my dad’s from Colombia and my Yiddishe momme reps Brooklyn. I really wish it didn’t take two high-profile killings to bring Latino-and-white people into the public eye, but Linda Ronstadt (photo) and Joan Baez aren’t making new albums and Little Ricky’s been off TV for a while.
Mas…White Hispanics: ‘Hey! We’re not ALL murderous douchebags’
It comes with the territory — when you tackle controversial issues you attract controversial responses. Or, as I like to call it, Crackpot Racist Hate Mail From Right Wing Nut Jobs (CRHMFRWNJ for short.)
Some of the messages scrawled on paper bags in crayon (and blood?) are mailed to various newspapers around the country that publish La Cucaracha and/or my editorial cartoons. Some post comments here on POCHO and assorted loons follow me from Twitter to Facebook to my blog to leave me droppings from their thought processes. No one follows them around with pooper escoopers, so I’m stuck with what they call in the sewage industry “solid waste” — mierda for you pochos.
I spent maybe 10 or 20 minutes going through the folder on my Mac desktop named Love_Letters, and came up with this list of my Pocho Ocho favorite insults:
8. Go back to Africa!
Mas…The Pocho Ocho top favorite ways racists try to tell me off
“The horse knows the routine, you say?” “Si.” “And all I have to do is sit in the saddle and hold the reins and he’ll dance to the music?” “Si.” “What happened to the last contract cowboy you hired for the parade?” “Sigh.”
(PNS reporting from SANFORD, FLA) George Zimmerman is back in jail here tonight, arrested after a bizarre attempt to pinch his pistola from the police evidence room.
Zimmerman, 29, got away with murder Saturday night in the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin. Under Florida law, he is entitled to the return of his child-killing semi-automatic, a Kel-Tec 9mm handgun.
But the law apparently wasn’t moving fast enough for Zimmerman, who took matters into his own hands (sound familiar?) and attempted to sneak into the Sanford Police Department evidence room and retrieve his roscoe (photo, below.)
The Z-man tripped a security beam and cameras spotted the semi-disguised Zimmerman (photo) before he could go on the lam with his swag. The Zimster was formally arrested at 7:30PM Monday night on suspicion of burglary.
(PNS reporting from AUSTIN) The Republican-controlled Texas legislature (photo) has wasted no time in exploiting last month’s Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act:
The lawmakers have passed a draconian redistricting scheme and enacted new voter registration requirements that many liken to a poll tax.
SB17, nicknamed “The Liberty Forever Bill,” mandates a laundry list of voter registration requirements “to ensure that only Texans are allowed to vote.” It passed Saturday and awaits GOP Gov. Rick Perry’s signature.
Among the measure’s exacting requirements:
Mas…Texas lawmakers focus on Latinos with poll tax, redistricting
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A few weeks ago we featured some astounding videos of actors’ (dramatic) readings of Yelp customer reviews — customer reviews of US-Mexico border crossings.
NPR’s Latino USA with Maria Hinjosa snagged Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz last week to find out if he had anything to add to the discussion.
Listen here to learn if he did! 😉
Mas…POCHO Jefe Lalo Alcaraz Yelps about the border on NPR (audio)
“We set out on an adventure on foot together with a young man to find out more about the native flora and fauna of different Latin-American landscapes,” Argentinian band Poncho writes. “On the way, this young man discovers new plants and animals and becomes one with them, and meets a sexy Mother Earth goddess (Pachamama) with whom he falls in love.”
And from the other side of the moon, comes Chilean actress and singer Celine Raymond:
Mas…Argentine band Poncho explores Mother Earth in ‘Tiki Tiki’ (video)
(PNS reporting from BERKELEY) Department of Homeland Security Secretary (and former Arizona Governor) Janet Napolitano has accepted an offer to head up the University of California system.
Napolitano promised to do the same for the UC system that she did for the border during her time at DHS:
“I kept out and quashed as many Mexicans as any DHS Secretary could during my tenure, and now that Latinos are overtaking whites in California, I promise to do the same at the UC system,” she said in a statement.
Mas…Breaking: Napolitano brings harsh border enforcement to UC
POCHO Subcommandanta del Ñews Sara Inés Calderón (@SaraChicaD on Twitter) is all about the TGIF! [Hover and click on the loudspeaker icon in the top left corner to hear the audio.]
I disagree with Dennis Leoni.
In the POCHO article, he says this: “One more time, what do we need to do? BUILD OUR OWN MARKETPLACE!”
Here’s my take: It won’t work. It simply will not work. Why? Because the so-called “Latino” experience cannot be compared to the African-American experience in the United States. The “Latino” experience is different for each of us.
Latinos are culturally diverse. Yawn. Haven’t we heard this a million times already? Yet, it probably hasn’t really sunk in. A Mexican-American story will be different from a Puerto-Rican story, a Dominican story, a Colombian story, etc. It will also be different from a Mexican immigrant story, a Nuyorican story, an Ecuadorian/Irish story. Assimilation changes who we are. Migration changes who we are.
Mas…Latinos in Hollywood? First of all, who are these so-called ‘Latinos?’
(PNS reporting from ALAMEDA) If the Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell are not satisfying your diarrheal needs, don’t worry!
The chain is introducing a chef Rick Bayless-inspired burrito that features Flamin’ Hot Fritos corn chips as a summer-only item until early August.
The burrito, which will retail for 99 cents, has rice, warm nacho cheese, beef, sour cream, and Flamin’ Hot Fritos corn chips cultivated by Bayless himself, deep in the villages of Oaxaca.
Mas…Breaking: Taco Bell unveils new Rick Bayless-inspired burritos
Dave Letterman sure knows how to bring out the best in a girl!
Will this new patriotic video become more popular on POCHO than this musical BurgerBoy hamburguesas commercial Hayek did when she was young and needed the money?
Mas…Chest bursting in air, Salma Hayek sings national anthem (video)
Mijo:
I’m proud of you. This home is very big with hardwood floors, even in the kitchen! As you know, I prefer tile with a rosy color, como la cathedral in Zacatecas. The country kitchen is very impressive. It’s not like any country kitchen como en mi rancho, but these are new times and a new country; And the abundance of wood paneling does look impressive. It is cedro? Still, how can you reclantar tortillas on an electric stove? Your ama is already confused by it. Y eso? To store wine? Pero tambien to store some Herradura? Esta cocina has windows everywhere! Have you thought about putting fierro on them?
Mas…Mijo: I like your new home, pero no fierro on the windows?
National Geographic reports:
Less than 40 miles outside of Mexico City, the volcano Popocatépetl is erupting, sending ash plumes roughly two miles into the atmosphere. Over the weekend, airlines took the precaution of cancelling flights out of Mexico City, even though the airport itself remained open.
Authorities have upgraded the threat status of the volcano from Yellow-Phase 2 to Yellow-Phase 3.
This news report from Canal Estrella TV (video, above) offers an aerial perspective you don’t often get to see.
Here’s the PopoCam video:
Mas…Popocatépetl erupts again, threat level raised, and we’ve got videos
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Television producer Marc Cherry is developing a new series called Desperate Tontos, which is about four white actors donning even whiter makeup to play Native Americans. The series is seen as a comeback attempt following Cherry’s floundering Devious Maids series, which was a disastrous attempt to portray Latinas.
Cherry admits Maids took him a little out of his comfort zone as a writer. “I’m a white guy, and I should write what I know,” said Cherry. “And what I know is how to be a white man pimping other people’s cultures.”
Mas…Breaking: ‘Devious Maids’ producer preps ‘Desperate Tontos’
