Juan of Words

Ash Wednesday, Random Acts Of Kindness & Paying It Forward

Ash Wednesday, A New Beginning

So since the last vlog  I’ve obtained a new video camera that my wife purchased at a very good deal.  Something like $20 for it at a major retailer…and it’s HD and everything.  Very cool!  Only I was so impressed by its bells and whistles that I was afraid to use it until now. My mind literally couldn’t think of anything to talk about on a video, lol.

Words are SO much easier!

But since yesterday was Ash Wednesday and we sort of ended up at church inadvertently at the last minute, it gave me inspiration, and more than anything the courage, to actually film myself on this new camera, which by the way has a side panel that makes it very distracting to look straight into the camera only (I’m not used to seeing myself while filming).  Anyhow, the subject matter of this vlog is pretty self-explanatory:  Ash Wednesday, Random Acts of Kindness, and Paying it Forward.

Hope you like it.

¡Hombre! ¡Te Haces Pendejo Para Tragar A Puños!

Battle of the Sexes

In driveways everywhere, front yards, back yards, neighborhoods, bars, clubs, patios, around the world, probably in every language, the principal complaint among buddies, when they get together for a little pisteada, is the same: ¡con las mujeres uno nunca gana! That universal grunt heard round the globe when words just aren’t enough to express our overall frustration with the opposite sex.

The common denominator among all men, in a relationship with a woman, almost our anthem, which we can’t help but chant when we finally come to that rite of passage, the realization that sometimes with our women, ‘we can’t live with them and we can’t live without them.’   Because no matter how common our interests, beliefs and values might be, the truth is ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.’  El Sexo Fuerte, with our general misunderstanding of all things emotional.   El Sexo Débil, with their seeming obsession to explore even the minutest of feelings, to the very core of their existence.

But before the flood of usual suspects – machista, chauvinistic pig – come to mind, or to the lips, consider the female equivalent to this frustration: men are all idiots!

Or as my comadre Juanita pointed out recently, which coincidentally is the reason for this blog post today, us men, a veces nos hacemos pendejos para tragar a puños.  The oldest trick in the book, really.  Playing dumb to avoid responsibility, commitment, conversation, extra chores, or any other tasks we just don’t want to do sometimes…or all of the time, in some cases.  Where no matter how thoroughly or in how many ways our parejas try to get through to us, make us understand, our expression back to them is always blank and blind, completely lost.  And it’s not like it’s any big secret!  Las mujeres a veces nada má s nos tiran al leon.

Often, we return the favor.

The only problem, as my father once pointed out: las mujeres nunca olvidan nada / women never forget anything!

El Que Quiere Puede: The Myth Of Education Only For Some

So boy, don’t you turn back. / Don’t you set down on the steps / ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. / Don’t you fall now — / For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin’, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.   – Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

El Sueño

I discovered this poem at some point during my teenage years and from the very first time I read the words out loud, they spoke to me.  Touched me.  Made me feel things I’d never felt before.  Like they immediately became engraved into who I was supposed to be.  Even though I hadn’t the slightest clue what or who that was.  And how could they not?  My life till then had been nothing more than sacrifice – the sacrifices of my parents, their parents, my siblings, my cousins, my uncles, and everyone else in between.

If you didn’t work hard you’d never get ahead.  That’s just the way it was.  Black and white. No gray area to ponder.  We knew the language.  That meant we’d made it just a step ahead of everyone else – including my parents – and that was good enough.  A high school diploma, as good as any four year degree!  We weren’t the Tanners, the Strattons, the Bradys or even the Winslows from TV.  In all honestly, we were more like the Beverly Hillbillies than anything else…except we didn’t have the millions of dollars they did from all that black gold.

So college was never really a subject matter up for any serious discussion in our home.  My parents wanted us to get an education, they did, but they knew as well as we did that there was no money for a college education, much less for seven of them.

Fast forward just a few years later…and there we were.  Me in a tie and suit, my sister in a black cocktail dress, both of us in our caps and gowns, our yellow tassels to one side, feeling hundreds of emotions all at once, wondering to ourselves how the hell we got here at all?

Right there, with the orchestra playing, our nervous walk into the stadium, the thousands of people cheering from their bleachers, our eyes searching everywhere for our family; in that one instant, all I had were memories.  There was the spanking with the wooden paddle I’d gotten in kindergarten from Ms. Keller for spitting out my water; the blur of our saying goodbye to our elementary school teachers after being deported; the marching to the beat of “mexicanos al grito de guerra” in Mexico; the fear of entering the fifth grade in a brand new city; my only friend Ambrosia that same year; running the halls in middle school to get away from Slim, our school’s security guard, when we were skipping; the warmth of Mrs. Quirk’s encouragement; my English teacher telling me I should be a writer; my art teacher yelling at me for getting gum on her skirt; my counselor at Eisenhower High School telling me I wasn’t going to graduate if I didn’t start coming to class; all of the Tejano dances we had in our cafeteria; and then, the sound of my sister’s high heels running down the hall, always a few minutes late, to the few classes we did take together at the University of Houston.

They called her name.  And then my own.  There!  It was done.  After well over four years of studying and working, staying up late, taking all kinds of crazy shifts, crashing for one exam after another, just like that, we were college graduates.   I didn’t feel any different, but I could see it all in my parents’ eyes.

Langston Hughes came back to me, word for word.

Note from the Author:
This post is dedicated to all of the young people out there, who just like me, have struggled with their higher education dreams at one point or another, and is also part of the Latinos In Social Media (LATISM)-Univision partnership to create awareness about Es El Momento.  Es El Momento is a comprehensive, multi-year national education initiative created by Univision Communications Inc., in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, as well as educators and civic and community leaders from around the country, with the aim to improve academic achievement among K-12 Hispanic students with a specific focus on high school graduation and college readiness.  For more information on Es El Momento visit www.eselmomento.com

Telemundo Lands a Hit with del Castillo in ‘La Reina del Sur’

Kate del Castillo and Rafael Amaya in Telemundo's 'La Reina del Sur'

From the beginning we’re captivated!  We find a docile, yet street smart, hopelessly in love, but never too gullible, Teresa Mendoza.  She’s somewhere in between running for her life, finding out there is no one left in her world that she can trust, and reminiscing through the early years of her relationship with boyfriend and narco, El Guero.  He teaches her how to shoot a gun, who and what to fear, and exactly what to do in case she gets that dreaded call telling her that he’s been killed.

Basically, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE AS FAST AS YOU CAN!!

And we find out from Teresa that her life before Guero really has been no picnic, as she explains to him in one scene.  All the men in her life before him have only mistreated and abused her…so absolutely she’s willing to go in al todo por el todo with her new narcotraficante boyfriend who treats her like a Reina.  Only despite all of his warnings she seems not to have truly grasped the seriousness of their lifestyle until he’s dead and she’s jumping over buildings to avoid getting shot herself.  Definitely no Reina del Sur at this point, Teresa seems more a common rancherilla from Culiacan. Yet the beauty of Kate del Castillo’s acting prowess is that even in Mendoza’s ingenuity we can see that fiera who will later steal the show…as La Reina del Sur, of course.

Del Castillo is excellent as Teresa Mendoza, all at once sweet, innocent, brave and unrelenting.  A perfect match to her tosco but real lovable, and loving Guero of a boyfriend, played impeccably well by Rafael Amaya.  Maybe it’s their undeniably Mexican accents and slang, or just the way the pair make ojitos at each other, but their chemistry is definitely on fire.  Towards the end of the first episode veteran actor Humberto Zurita makes his appearance as El Guero’s only trusted ally and padrino, Epifanio Vargas. The cliffhanger, whether or not he will betray Teresa’s trust by killing her or having her killed by one of his men?

Therein lies my only true complaint about the new Telemundo series.  Can we avoid the obvious cliffhangers?  We all know she’s going to survive, just show us how she does it and give us all the action!

Kudos to Telemundo for snagging La Primera Actriz Kate del Castillo, as well as an all-star cast, including Zurita, Amaya and Camila Sodi.  You can definitely tell this is the network’s most costly original program and their investment seems slated for quite the success.   Univision even added an extra hour of their Triunfo del Amor, starring Cuban heartthrob William Levy, to compete par to par with La Reina del Sur’s Monday night premiere.  Like always, it’s all about the ratings for the networks…but I for one am coming back for more Reina and less Levy running around shirtless for no apparent reason.  ¿Apoco no?