Soft Opening Part 1

Many things significant and Latino have occurred since I last blogged on a regular basis. And while the fate of Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo is chief among my many Brown concerns this week (I hope they sideline the sad sack vato), what's primary right now is this blog's transition to a new blog. It starts today. On a Wednesday. Why not? In the immortal words of Jesus Jones, "right here, right now." But some quick backstory on why it's taken so long.

I applied earlier this year for a grant to a Professional Latino Arts Agency to upgrade my site. It was a modest amount. More than JLo spends on a pair of shoes (perhaps), but less than you’d spend on a pair of used leaf blowers.

Three goals were outlined in the grant request: migrate my 1000 plus entries intact from my dorky Typepad account to a more robust Wordpress page hosted on my own domain; redesign and rebrand the new site with a name change (more on that later) and a one-time marketing outreach (because who's going to care about all things Latino and pop if I don't tell folks about the site); and, lastly, incorporate some originally-produced short video segments to make the blog more multimedia and dynamic. In my day job I am a filmmaker. I've been working a lot this past year on short-form web-based documentaries and wanted to see how these kinds of stories could work on my blog.

Long story short, I didn't get the grant. Apparently Latino projects dealing with folkloric dancers exploring "the power of love" and muli-media extravaganzas utilizing sculpture and something called "social practice" to foster "community building" trumps my obsessions with Wet Burritos, Manny from Modern Family, Spurs Forward Tim Duncan as honorary chicano, and Newt Gingrich speaking bad Spanish. At least that’s the thinking made by the Professional Latino Art Gatekeepers from this certain Professional Latino Arts Agency.

Fair enough. Still, two things nag me: maybe if I hadn’t used the word "robust" in my application it would have read less pretentious; and second, perhaps I should have made the obligatory yet unprovable argument that blog posts on all thing Latino and Pop do in fact serve the highly coveted -- yet conveniently ambiguous -- "Latino community." Ni modo. Maybe next time. But I’m not holding my breath.

If it proved virtually impossible to get one of the aforementioned Professional Latinos from the aforementioned Professional Latino Arts Agency to actually respond to one of my phone calls and emails in a timely manner how can I expect them to expand their notion of contemporary Brown culture?

But I digress. Not to mention risk sounding like a whining Chicano. What this all this means for loyal KenBurns readers is stay tuned. Changes are coming.

Comments

[Caro]

Dude, so glad to hear you're back. I've been making half-ass moves to come back myself all year -- I even now need to rescue my archives from oblivion! -- so it's really encouraging to have my fellow traveler back.

Palante!