60 Years Ago Today: President sends Army to enforce Civil Rights (video)


On this Day in History, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the U. S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to ensure that black kids weren’t denied access to “white” Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

As an extra ironic bonus, here’s a photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., taking the knee in Selma, Alabama in 1965. (Liberated from the Washington Post):

Mas…60 Years Ago Today: President sends Army to enforce Civil Rights (video)

The sad true story behind ‘Spare Parts’ (videos, audio)


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?

Mas…The sad true story behind ‘Spare Parts’ (videos, audio)

Santa Barbara H.S. seniors hire mariachis to troll principal (video)

seniorprankSeniors 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.

The N.Y. Daily News reports:

Mas…Santa Barbara H.S. seniors hire mariachis to troll principal (video)

Speaking bad Spanish makes Silverlake artist look like douche

(PNS reporting from SILVERLAKE) It was a shocker when encaustic and collage mixed-media artist Ben Brown found out.

Even though he spent two years of high school learning Español, his habit of dropping a word or two in Spanish into day-to-day English conversations has not increased his “street cred” even un poquito.

The self-proclaimed free-spirit, a three-year resident of this trendy “East Hollywood-adjacent” neighborhood, said he had to face the fact that others did not perceive him as special or cool merely because said “hermano” or “comprende” at the end of his sentences, and they weren’t impressed by the pains he took to pronounce the double R in words like “burrito” or “ferrocarril.”

Mas…Speaking bad Spanish makes Silverlake artist look like douche

New ‘East Los High’ web series exposes sexrification of East L.A. (video)


(PNS reporting from EAST LOS) A new web series on Hulu is poised to blow the lid off the unprecedented rise of sexy Latinos currently overrunning East Los Angeles.  The series, East Los High, is a riveting expose of the rapid “sexrification” of the historically low-and-slow Chicano community.

“The kids at East Los High are hot, they’re ripped, and they can dance,” said Garfield High School alum Alberto “Sleepy” Gonzalez.  “When I drop my kid off at school, it looks like he’s stepping into another country, like Puerto Rico.”

Mas…New ‘East Los High’ web series exposes sexrification of East L.A. (video)

First Person: My moment with Marco Rubio and his big Cuban butt


I remember the high school student version of Marco Rubio, with his neatly-pressed shirts always tucked in, his toothy smile and his bleached white socks. But most of all, I remember his butt.

The Cuban man butt holds a special place in my heart — it’s a thing of wonder and mystery. Why Cuban men have big butts I may never know. However, there are some gifts you just don’t question. You don’t look a gift butt in the mouth.

We only had one brief encounter, Marco and me. For months I had watched him from the other end of the cafeteria at South Miami Senior High School. He’d drink 7-Up and laugh with his friends about Michael Dukakis. I never had the nerve to say much of anything. Until that day.

Mas…First Person: My moment with Marco Rubio and his big Cuban butt

The City of Anaheim is a theme park where the theme is racism

In the land of make believe, the home of the Magic Kingdom, right where Disneyland sits, there is another theme park that has been around for decades.

This park is not called California Adventure, and its newest attraction is not “Cars.”

The amusement park is called simply “Anaheim.” Here, in various themed areas, you can have a magical time!

In Barriotown you can corral cast members, (AKA Mexicans) and watch them squirm in their low-income housing and run about their underserved public facilities. The best part is the Mexicans have no say in this! And the park management has no plans to do anything drastic to revamp or update this themed area by changing to City Council districts where the Mexicans may get to complain.

Mas…The City of Anaheim is a theme park where the theme is racism