Juan of Words

Tributo A La Reina Del Tex-Mex: Selena Quintanilla Perez

The original tribute magazine.

It’s hard to believe that 16 years have gone by since the one and only Selena Quintanilla Perez passed away.  I still remember finding out the news from my dad.  He picked us up from high school – my younger brother and I – and told us the news as soon as we got in the car: “guess what?  Selena is dead.  Somebody killed her.”

One of my favorite collages of Selena.

“What!?  She was so full of life!” we thought as we drove home in pretty much utter silence.  I remembered her silly interviews on television shows like Onda Max and Johnny Canales, the infamous diez y cuatro confusion on Cristina, her debut acting role in the TVyNovela Dos Mujeres un Camino, how she spoke and sang in Spanish, but spoke English as well as we did at home (something I had not seen in another artist before her), and of course her charisma and electrifying voice.

My own collection of tributory magazines.

Never again would we hear the deejays on the radio announcing Selena y Los Dinos coming to perform in Houston, never would we be able to see her at the Houston Rodeo again.  It was quite a shock.  Even more shocking, the outpouring of emotion and sadness across the country… even the world, at the death of La Reina del Tex-Mex Selena Quintanilla Perez.

Special edition, tribute People magazine.

What I don’t think any of us knew then, or could have imagined, was just how large of an impact her star would actually have on the overall perception of Latinos in America.  Not just Texans or Mexicans, but all of us.  In a way she awakened the rest of the country, especially advertisers, to our existence and strength in numbers.  For better or for worse, her passing left the door and several windows wide open for the rest of us to take advantage of.

Doing what she did best...

In Texas, the anniversary of her passing is always a big deal.  I’m not exactly sure how significant it is in other parts of the country, but I am assuming equally memorable since it usually inspires national tributes on English and Spanish language media.  For us Tejanos, she was and still is our pride and joy, the little girl from Corpus Christi who dreamed big and made it even bigger… before leaving well ahead of her time.

Selena, we miss you!

Here one of my favorite Selena songs, ‘No Me Queda Más’

More on Selena at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selena

Bloopers, ‘Cepillo’ Interview and More Bloopers: Juan & Anjelica

Married people behaving badly.

This video started out as a joke.  My wife and I had been talking about maybe doing a vlog together.  She has the editing system… a little bit more sophisticated than what I have been using, mostly FlipShare and YouTube, and she wanted to show me what Windows Movie Maker could do.

We hadn’t agreed on any subject or concept for the vlog and just decided to go for it.  The interview, with cepillo for a mic and all, is a little difficult to understand because we tried using a cell phone and a laptop to add our own soundtrack, but the Bloopers are well worth the wait, LOL!  Anyhow, I hope you enjoy.

It was all in good fun, and I am now a fan of Windows Movie Maker as well.

My Anti-Presentimiento Remedio-Ritual

Nervous beyond belief...

It’s an awful feeling, right there in the pit of your stomach, twisting and turning, telling you “something is wrong, something bad is about to happen,” although you haven’t a clue what, or two whom.

Nothing is worse!

You want to do something, stop something, or at the very least warn somebody, but can’t do anything but sit there and worry.  You know that if you start calling around asking people if they’re okay, if they are up to anything dangerous or unusual, you are only going to worry them too, and what’s the point of that?  So most times we just suck it up, hope for the best and pray a little, asking that somehow, someway whatever our presentimiento was about doesn’t actually happen.

I generally also try to convince myself that it is little more than silly superstition and that I don’t believe in that stuff… right before repeating my ritual once again: worrying, worrying some more, praying, praying again, and then thinking up everything in the world that “the universe” could be trying to warn me about, before going back to square one all over again.

Maybe it’s because my own mother’s presentimientos always seemed to be so accurate in my memories.  She’d get an “ugly feeling” and all of a sudden, BAM, something was wrong!  It was unnerving to hear her say tengo un presentimiento.  My skin would crawl and I would just start bracing myself.  Then I got to thinking, maybe it was just that whole theory that if you believe something strongly enough it will come true.  I guess that we are channeling negative energy into our lives and that we are really the ones making bad things happen to ourselves.

A little bit too new age, modern thinking for me… so in the years since I’ve adopted my own “Anti-Presentimiento Remedio-Ritual”.  Like when I dream a bad dream, I really do believe that if I repeat it out loud, share it with someone else, I am preventing the dream, or the presentimiento, from actually coming true.  That somehow I’m putting a block on it, stopping it dead in its tracks.

It sounds silly, but it is kind of comforting… some of the time.

Pickles, Calletana And The Coyote

'Retrato de Mujer' de Diego Rivera

My uncle had a friend whose name was Calletana.  She was short and dark with medium length hair, black, with a wave right at the spot where it ran into her shoulders, straight, but kind of crazy at the same time.  The rest of her features, just as feminine and she was petite:  big eyes, curvy lips, like a miniature Barbie doll, except shorter and fuller, with lots of personality, and speaking only in Spanish.

Her clothes weren’t as nice as Barbie’s though.  My uncle was a coyote, what you’d call somebody who crossed mexicanos illegally from one side of the border to the other, and Calletana, I assumed, was his business partner, so whenever they showed up at our house they were dressed down more than anything, like they’d just been nervously driving for hours, because they had.  Warm ups and big tee-shirts, her hair pulled back in a nappy pony tail, my uncle in blue jeans or brown poly-cotton pants, with a dark colored polo shirt, almost always.  He must have been at least 10 or 15 years older than her.

I was 10, and I adored her.

As they’d pull into our driveway she’d yank back the sliding door of that vintage gray van, jumping out to greet me with just as much excitement as I’d jump around with before running into her arms.  Something about her just made me feel special.  Like I was the center of the world when Calletana was around.  She never yelled at me for trying to get my little brother in trouble.  She didn’t tell me I was annoying.  And she never, ever ran around our house and yard trying to hide from me.  Instead, Calletana and I would sit on the floor of my uncle’s van with its sliding door open, just talking about nothing, laughing and carrying on like we were family.  We weren’t.

From the smirk on my father’s face when he told us what a coyote was I knew that word meant danger, doing something you weren’t supposed to, doing a bad thing and getting away with it, like when I had grabbed a handful of candy at the Valley Mart and ate it all up before anyone saw me.  I knew it was wrong, but I felt like such a rebel because I didn’t get caught.

Maybe that’s what it was like for Calletana?

She wasn’t bad.  I liked her, and even if she had done a bad thing on purpose and gotten away with it, why should that matter?

I still wanted her to come around and be my friend.

I definitely didn’t want her to get in trouble.

For years they’d come around like that, just showing up unexpectedly at any random moment, and every time my excitement was just as huge.  My mother and everyone else’s not so much;  yeah they were happy to see them, but they weren’t bursting out of the seams  to have another silly conversation at the footsteps of that beat up old truck with Calletana like I was.

Years later all I’d remember would be the pickles.  Small and crunchy, with just the right amount of sour – the kind you could eat one right after the other without ever getting tired of them.  Like we would.

I didn’t know why she always carried pickles, but she did.

No Seas Malagradecido

Don’t Be Ungrateful

Gracias...de queso, y también de papa

Un malagradecido no reconoce lo que tiene¹.  He takes everyone and everything for granted, like nothing else matters besides himself…or herself.  Numero Uno!  He doesn’t realize how fast time flies, how nada en esta vida es seguro², how every second matters, because we never know if we’re getting another, how people and situations change… nothing ever stays the same, and how oh so very important the Thank yous and I love yous are. 

No, un malagradecido nunca reconoce esto³.

Being ungrateful was the worst thing we could ever be, and probably still is.  It garnered disappointment.  Made us feel ashamed, and more often than not inspired apologies, as well as all sorts of other attempts to rectify our behavior (handwritten notes, drawings, paintings, etc.)   And I guess the lesson is some lessons are just lifelong.  Last night I spent the better part of a couple of hours talking about the people who’ve helped me along the way in one way or another, professionally in this case, and it made me realize that maybe I have been a little malagradecido ⁴myself.

Do those people know how much their guidance and support actually meant to me?  How they opened doors and windows for me just by taking me under their wings?  How they inspired and motivated me in many cases?  I don’t know.

My mother would say: no mijo, eso no está bien…uno debe ser agradecido, humilde, no orgulloso y malagradecido⁵.  So as I retreat to my “corner of shame” to figure out how to rectify my bad behavior, probably spanning over years now – I have a feeling my drawings and hand paintings won’t do much for me here – let me just start by saying a very big Thank You to all the people who’ve ever believed in me…especially to those who did so when I didn’t even believe in myself.

If you’re feeling it, and not afraid of being a little cursi…aca los espero⁶.

Legend: ¹An ungrateful person doesn’t appreciate what he has. ²Nothing in life is guaranteed. ³No, an ungrateful person doesn’t recognize this. ⁴Ungrateful ⁵No son, that’s not right…one should be grateful, humble,not proud and ungrateful.  ⁶a little corny…I’ll wait for you here

Sound The Alarm! No Puedo Ver La Reina Del Sur En Mi Tele

El grito de desesperación...

You can imagine how horrified I was when after clicking my remote control over an over, changing the batteries out, flipping them one way, and then another, slamming the remote against my knees, taking it apart and then putting it back together, it didn’t do anything!  The digital box just sat there, burlandose de mi, I’m sure!  It knew how badly I wanted to watch the new episode of La Reina del Sur on Telemundo and it just would not budge.  For three days now my digital box has been stuck on Univision…

Which is not horrible, but yesterday I had to drive over 30 minutes away to my parents house to catch the repeat episode of La Reina!  Not really.  I had other reasons to visit them, but I sure did take advantage of the fact I was there to catch up on my favorite mexicana’s drama.

So in the last episode I watched, Teresa was in between becoming La Reina we’re all waiting for (smoking a joint and drinking tequila straight from the bottle), and still being torn about the cards life has thrown at her.  She’s got more attitude, yes.  She’s kicked some serious butt, yes.  She’s fallen for the guy all my comadres are gaga over, yes.  She’s lost a lot of her innocence, yes.  Pero todavía no ha llegado a su trono. So in the interim I’m working on getting my digital box to cooperate and I’m wondering what I have been missing????

No sean malos.  Fill me in.  Please!