Juan of Words

The BIG Announcement

¡Estamos de Fiesta en Juan of Words!

¡¡Fiestonon!!

So…I am very excited to finally share some pretty big news about my blog with all of you…hence the title of this post.  Beginning today, Juanofwords.com will be joining the community of bloggers supported by the Houston Chronicle and their Spanish-language publication, La Voz de Houston!

The details are in the video below, but let me just say this here as well.  This website will continue being the home of all Juan of Words content and WILL NOT cease to exist.  Instead, a sub-blog titled
Juan of Words – A blog by a Latino for Latinos…y Más will offer a little more variety of content and information for everyone to enjoy.  Think things I might have not included in this blog in the past, but that are equally fun and entertaining to write about.  As always, my blogs are live, breathing animals and your input and suggestions are very much welcome.

To visit Juan of Words – A blog by a Latino for Latinos…y Más just click on the banner to the right with the words “Más Juan at Chron.com”

Comadre y Comadreando, La Juanita y El 409, 409, 409!!!

La Vecina

Speaking-over-a-mile-a-minute-all-the-time-and-constantly-throwing-the-number-409-409-409-in-multiples-of-three-was-literally-her-signature.  Like she was in a race to get out what she needed to say before anybody stopped paying attention or  she forgot what it was she was trying to say – one or the other – our vecina Juanita spoke faster than anyone we’d ever met.

And just as fast, she was a part of our life.  One minute we were moving into our first house, a small little three bedroom-one bathroom place in a lower middle class neighborhood of mostly black and Mexican families, and the next, there she was on the other side of our screen door going on and on about something or other we just assumed my mother understood.  All it sounded like to us was ¡409! ¡409! ¡¡409!!‘  Juanita swore by it.  According to her, 409 the cleaning product could take care of anything, no matter what it was.

¿O se le tapo el baño? ¡¡409, 409, 409!!

¡Estos-huercos-no-hacen-caso-fijese-que-a-mi-también-me-mancharon-la-carpeta-ayer-si-nomás-me-descuide-un-ratito-iluego-iluego-ya-estaba-toda-manchada-de-puro-chocolate-pero-luego-luego-le-heche-409-y-el-409-fijese-que-es-bien-bueno-que-luego-luego-el-409-409-409-la-dejo-como-nueva! ¿Tiene 409?

¡409! ¡409! ¡¡409!!

Of course her 409 was more like for-ou-nain.

In all honesty we were all quite mean to poor Juanita.  The fact she weighed all of 130 pounds, had crazy frizzy hair, wore half-inch thick bifocals, drove a town car-sized sedan, liked wearing teeshirts with kitty cat designs, flowers and the likes with spandex pants and stretchy blue jeans really didn’t help her any either, in our eyes.  Even my dad would join in on the arremedadera sometimes.  ¡Esa vieja fastidiosa!, he’d yell out of nowhere in that tone of voice we all knew meant he was enjoying what we were saying even if he wasn’t laughing with us.

My mom was the only one that most of the time would refrain from saying anything about her dear friend and vecina Juanita.  She was after all her confidant and compañera. When we were all gone to school or work, in my dad’s case, Juanita was the one that would keep her company, that would give her advice, that would cry with her, that would chismear with her, and who really showed my mother the true value of a friendship.  Which was why it was so funny when after scolding us for making fun of la pobre de Juanita – ¿ella que les hace? - mom would start imitating her herself almost to the tee, pace of words and mannerisms impeccably Juanita’s.

The odd thing was, after we left that neighborhood we all actually missed Juanita.  Life just wasn’t the same without her showing up unannounced at our front door, sending all us kids running through the house trying to get away from her and her high-pitched voice as fast as we could, but never any faster than her lightning-speed flow of words.

We didn’t have anyone to hide from or pretend we weren’t home for anymore in the new house.  Juanita, if you’re out there, sorry for all the chistes at your expense…and by the way 409 is actually pretty good for almost anything.

Thanks for the tip.

The Art Of ‘La Pisteada’

¡El Borrachote!

The formula is pretty simple.  You take one person, two, or as many as you want, add beer, or the alcoholic beverage of your choice, mix in some conversation, a little music of course, and voila: ¡estas pisteando!

Well actually a lot of the variables are extra.  The main ingredient is the drinking.

Even by the Urban Dictionary’s standards – since Merriam Webster does not include this social behavior in their library of terms – the definition of pistear is almost identical to what you just read here.  This is what they say: mexican slang/a verb/to hang out with yourself, another person, or as many people as you want and drink beer or any other alcoholic beverage. Pretty funny if you ask me.

Almost as comical as the sentence they use for an example:

Dude, we should go to SickBoy’s house and invite him to pistear some cawamas!!!

Who the hell is SickBoy!?  Anybody out there with that actual nickname…my apologies, but I have to say, I’ve never heard anybody say: yeah…you can call me SickBoy, that’s what everybody calls me. Not that there is anything wrong with that nickname…it’s perfectly fine, LOL, there are probably hundreds of guys out there who like to be called SickBoy instead of their real names!  Let’s hope not.

Anyway, the invitations I’m used to receiving go a little bit more like this:

¿Ey, on tan las cheves?

¿Qué, vamos por un doce?

Te ‘tamos esperando.  ¿Vas a venir o no?

And while it may all be in good fun – the drinking, the bullshit talking, the music, the company, even the nicknames – the main thing to remember is that ‘to pistear right’ can really be an art form.  No, not drinking as much as you can as fast as you can, but instead knowing exactly what your limitations are and trying to keep within them as much as possible.  Yes, we’ve all gotten wasted before – some of us more than others – and the truth is we all eventually learn that getting ‘shit-faced’ all of the time, or some of the time, is really just not worth it.  Nada más think about the crudota the next day!

So si vas a pistear, do it right.  And kiddos, wait until your old enough to drink!  

*Consider this my public service announcement for the week.

Café Con Chocolate: Somewhat Of An Inheritance, I Guess

El Cáfe de Mamatule

Intoxicating was its smell.  Deep and fragrant, black and sweet, a color rich, dark enough to see myself in its reflection, lazily rubbing at my eyes, entire palms, in upward motion, over my face, across my hair, meeting once again at the back of my neck, then all over again.  That coffee was strong.  It literally possessed the ability to wake me from my sleep no matter how few hours I might have been in bed.

¡Y no era para más! This wasn’t Nescafé or any of the other instant coffees we were used to.  This coffee was roasted over an open flame, ground by hand on the molino, simmered over an open flame, brought to a boil in an old clay pot, toda chamusqueada de abajo from being used so many times,  and served with love in even older tin can mugs.  It’s one of those memories that’s stuck with me.  Literally, stood the test of time.

This Sunday when I was making coffee in a regular boiling cup at my parents house, because their coffee machine is broken and they haven’t bought a new one yet, el chocolate La Abuelita caught my eye.

There I was once again descalzo y todo chorreado, standing at the entrance of Mamatule’s sticks and mud kitchen, waiting for her to wave me in, ¿tienes hambre mijo?   ¿quieres una tasita de café? And for just one second it felt real.  I wanted to walk inside and sit down, listen to the back and forth between her and my grandfather, my mother telling her she shouldn’t work so hard, my grandfather asking us if we were del otro lado, you know, americanos.  Just to sit there one more time.

Then Edgar said: what are you doing?  Are you making coffee?

I smiled and put the chocolate into the pot.

This is also my One Shot Wednesday entry for One Stop Poetry this week. Check out more prose and poetry from others too – Click Here.

Good Hit, On The Floor, L’Oreal, And Idol: The Return Of JLo?

Good Hit for JLo?

Of course, a definite disclosure is necessary here.  I am 100 percent biased on anything Jenny-from-the-block-related.  Biased in the sense, that as most of you already know, La Lopez has been a favorite of mine since she first burst onto the scene as the lead role in the movie ‘Selena.’  And of course my infatuation with her has only increased over the years.

That said, I will probably be watching ‘American Idol’ regularly for the first time ever this season, since it began 10 years ago, for no other reason than to watch JLo.  Gag! I know, a lot of you are probably having that very reaction right this second because as has been expressed to me so many times: she’s not that pretty, she’s a bad actress, she’s a bad singer, she doesn’t have a voice, she’s stupid, she’s JHo not JLo!, I don’t like her, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Well…for all of you out there, echoing these same remarks, let me just say EAT YOUR HEARTS OUT!!  There seems to be plenty of new material from La Lopez coming out in the near future.  And it also seems that: ¡Esta boricua va pa rato!

The New Show

New Tracks

Even A New Commercial

Could this be the official comeback of Jennifer Lopez?

William Levy: The Great Divide!

Stud or Dud?

Apparently, unannounced to most of us in the male sex, there is quite a Great Divide taking place right this very second among women everywhere!  It’s not about any moral, ethical, political, or social issues.  Instead, about a Cuban-born Spanish-language television actor who surfaced into the world of entertainment not too long ago.  Just a few years back really.

His name:  William Levy.  And the Great Divide, well at least for the women who know who this guy is, revolves around the issue of whether or not he is HOT!

Last night, while channel surfing, after Modern Family was over (I love Sofia Vergara on this show), I decided to leave it on the last few minutes of Univision’s new telenovela, Triunfo del Amor, which of course stars Levy…and let me just say, the entire last 10 minutes of this show was of nothing more than the blond-haired buff actor running around shirtless to a porn-like music track.  I know because every time I’d look up from my phone to see if they had moved on to the next scene he was STILL running around half naked. He didn’t even utter one word, at all!  Pretty comical.  But, I guess the script didn’t require any dialogue.  RIGHT!?

Anyways, the funniest part was that a few minutes later I found the following wall post on one of my wife’s social media websites.  It made me laugh to myself because she was extremely quiet and still while William was having his little running-on-the-beach-half-naked-without-uttering-a-word moment.  I didn’t even know she had a crush on him!  Or that the rest of the women in my life were partaking in the Great William Levy Divide Of The 21st Century!

This was almost as funny as when my mom burst out in the middle of our living room that she had a crush on Bill Clinton – ¡esta bien bonito Clinton!

Here is the back and forth that cracked me up:

Love hate thing for William levy. Attractive and extremely eye catching. But of course when opens his mouth its something else. So-so acting and bad interviews.

A1: I just don’t like him at all, don’t even think he’s attractive, but the novela is pretty good, lol

A2: He might not be attractive but he sure is FINE!!!! lol J/K

A3: What is wrong with you guys he is fineee! and super attractive!! Lovely voice too!!

A4: Head too small for the steroids body

Ladies out there, what’s your take?