They keep NOT letting me post in the comment section of Huffington Post. I try putting 'em up, their censor moderator keeps deleting 'em. Just trying to politely point out the fact that their list lacks Raza. I'm starting to get annoyed.
I'm giving my fellow progressives the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it's my typos that's preventing me from participating in the grand discourse. We'll see. If they don't watch it someone's in line for a Wet Burrito Award.
Will keep trying...
As Think Progress reports, never mind the fact that Newt Gingrich hates Mexicans, has called Spanish a "ghetto language," and called Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a "racist," homeboy is now Twittering in Espanol.
Last year Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, and the man many consider one of the intellectuals of the Republican party, saw how the country's growing Brown demographics would quickly spell doom for the GOP, and so he set out to learn the language of Cervantes, Marquez and Chingo Bling. As Newt's PR flack put it...
Mr. DeSantis says that Mr. Gingrich has studied 100 hours of a 280-hour Spanish course offered by the institute. In the first 120 hours, he is focusing mostly on vocabulary development and structure. After that, he'll focus on pronunciation, speech flow, and advanced structure. "When he finishes the course," Mr. DeSantis wrote in an e-mail, "Bilingual America projects him to communicate at a professonal level of Spanish or at the advanced-plus to superior level as rated by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages."
And for those of you wondering, here's the full quote where Newt somehow conflates living in the ghetto with his opposition to bilingual education.
Still unclear if Newt''s going to translate the above "thoughts" for his next ghetto Tweet.
While this bit of sad news is actually a week old, it's important
nonetheless, if for no other reason than a lament for things gone...
The very badass Los Angeles radio station Indie 103.1 went off the air last Friday. The station's eclectic mix of alt rock, old school punk, listener faves by Morrissey and L.A.'s own hometown band X, the always entertaining blatherings of Steve Jones and his afternoon show Jonesy's Jukebox (where the ex-Sex Pistol once spent a day playing showtunes and another with an insightful two hour interview with Tony Bennett), a station where you could listen to Dave Navarro hitting on girls who called into his late night music show, and, of course, hear the Modern Lover's sublime single Roadrunner played at least once a day...all of this contributed to a true L.A. sound: modern, nostalgic, absurd, unpretentious, vaguely Chicano, knowledgeable, pretty and vacant.
One of the best shows on the station was Joe Escalante's morning show, "The Last of the Famous International Morning Shows," (a very funny title if you're a Morrissey fan). Escalante was a lawyer, record label owner, amateur matador, and bassist for the So Cal punk band the Vandals and member of the best Smith's tribute band in the world, the Sweet and Tender Hooligans (YouTube here and here). Escalante's smart and funny morning show featured great music as well as daily weather reports by David Lynch, sports reports by Deadwood TV actor Timothy Olyphant, and a tone of ironic DJ detachment that never annoyed. (Call me a reverse racist, but irony from the mouths of Brown people somehow doesn't grate on my nerves as it does when I hear it spouted by white hipsters.) Escalante's show abruptly ended last November. Should have read the writing on the wall.
Indie 103 was one of the last unique and independent voices in a corporate-dominated American sound scape. DJs picked the songs they wanted to play, not from a list of over-produced, soulless, Top 40 so-called hits by Britney, Coldplay, Rascal Flatts and their ilk. I mean, who do you know who actually buys a Nickelback CD? And who wants to hear it?
Rolling Stone has the sad story on Indie 103's demise here, and a link to an earlier story calling the station "the best radio station" in the U.S. is here. The station was a favorite of recent settled L.A. resident Prince, who debuted four of his new songs on Indie 103 last December. There is an informative interview with the station's now ex-musical director Mark Sovel here. Recommended.
What's not so well known is that the owners of the hippest, coolest,
independent alt radio station in the entire United States was Spanish
language broadcasting chain Entravision Communication, owners of many Univision TV stations nationwide. The fact that a parent company making their money broadcasting Spanish language telenovelas subsidizing a radio station that gave valuable air time two hours a day, five times a week to a guy who played guitar for Sid Vicious used to delight me to no end.
Well, the party's over. Latest word is that Indie 103.1 is now going to be known as El Gato 103.1, and will be playing "contemporary Mexican regional music." Corporate radio sucks no matter what language it's speaking.
March 31. Cesar Chavez' birthday. He was a Aries. So am I. Very cool cool series of pictures of Cesar, the UFW, and farmworkers over at Slate.com.
Of interest for that small subset of "Those Latinos Who Care About Such Things" (meaning that subset of raza who also care about box office numbers...perhaps all five of us) the numbers for the new immigrant movie La Misma Luna ("Under the Same Moon") has broken a record. Apparently someone's been keeping track of "three day opening weekend grosses for Spanish language films" and La Misma Luna's $2.8 million shattered the previous benchmark.
This category of "three day opening weekend grosses of Spanish language films" is, of course, not to be confused with "films that feature evil one-dimensional gringo characters" or even "films which feature assimilated Chicano characters who don't speak Spanish and act like idiots." Both categories of movies which La Misma Luna would certainly qualify. Not to say I didn't like the movie -- I did -- let's just say the film never met a convenient and coincidental plot point it didn't like.
Two weeks ago I attended the conference of the National Association of Independent Latino Filmmakers. A membership group of U.S. Latino filmmakers from across the country. Highlights of this year's annual event featured a special screening of La Misma Luna on Friday night; an opening plenary session with a lone U.S. Latino among four Mexicans discussing "Creating a Pan-Latino Cinema With Global Appeal," and two special luncheon conversations sponsored by HBO with the makers of the joint Mexico/Spain co-production Pan's Labyrinth on Saturday, and on Sunday Carlos Cuaron discussing his upcoming soccer movie starring the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck of the Latino world, Diego Luna and Gail Garcia Bernal.
If you're detecting a non-U.S. Latino theme in these signature events in a conference dedicated to the efforts of U.S. Latino filmmakers striving for cultural self-expression you're not the only one to notice. And while this isn't so much a critique of the organizers of the NALIP conference -- after all, you can only reflect what's out there in the marketplace -- what's happening is that more and more the notion of what defines a "Latino" film, especially to studios and/or white producers, is that a Latino movie has to be about immigrants and has to be in Spanish. Absent from this narrow view of contemporary Brown life is anything deviating from the stories of humble maids and busboys, intrepid border crossings, the dreaded migra, and "lessons to be learned from it all."
From a must read post on writer Alisa Valdez-Rodriguez's blog:
In 2007, Touchstone Pictures pulls the plug on "Deep in the Heart of Texas," a feature film starring Eva Longoria, about a fully assimilated Mexican American woman, saying there is nothing particularly "Latina" about an educated, professional shopaholic from Texas; meaning, the character is "too American" for audiences to believe as "Latina". (Meanwhile, Texas is no longer a majority-white state, and most Latinos there speak English…)
While Eva Longoria wouldn't be my first choice to articulate the complexity of raza life circa 2008, you get the picture. Hollywood's probably the only place in America where an illegal immigration status is beneficial for career advancement. As my friend filmmaker Alex Rivera (The Sleep Dealer -- see NYT mention here) says, we're in a crisis here. By my admittedly off the top of my head reckoning there has only been one indie and/or major studio release by a U.S. Latino filmmaker in the last five years -- and that's only if you're generous and count Kenny Ortega's High School Muscial 2. (Which I actually did, in this earlier post.)
In any case here's the La Misma Luna trailer. I saw the film at the $14 a seat Arclight Theater in Hollywood. Never saw so many Latinos in the hoity toity place. There's no question a market exists. And judging by the positive audience reaction the movie succeeds on an emotional level, despite the clumsy and on the nose storytelling. And the acting's not bad. Especially Mexican comic actor Eugenio Derbez. Even the kid was ok -- at intervals. Like with most child actors, you alternate between wanting to throttle the cloying brat or chuckle at his precociousness. Me, it was hard getting past the kid's neatly combed hair. Kept reminded me of a midget Mitt Romney. Anyway, judge for yourself. And go buy a ticket. Who knows? Maybe some enlightened studio exec will be motivated by the box office numbers and greenlight something more interesting. If so, I got a couple of scripts to show him or her. Until then...