It is actually!  Crayola made it official this past Sunday when they unveiled the new name of the color green suggested by one of their more than one million fans on Facebook.  They’re celebrating their 110th anniversary and Jalapeño happens to be a part of the special Limited Edition Crayon Pack they have unveiled for the occasion.  Some of the other nicknames given to the 8 original crayon colors that have been renamed include Peace, Love & Purple; BeYOUtiful Blue; Sunny Side Up; Freshly Squeezed; and Ladybug.

Talk about fun advertising!

I’ve seen it on TV and heard about it from others… “Once you’re 18, you’re out the door!”  That’s right! It’s time to start your new life, be independent and be your own person.  So when people here in this country learn that this isn’t necessarily the norm in Hispanic families you almost always get a shocked look and a “what?!”

Growing up, my parents never told me, “mija, once you graduate from high school you’re going to have to make it on your own, start your new life and do so under your own roof.”  On the contrary.  From my parents I heard this all the time: “you are not leaving the house until you get married!”  There was no need to, they would say.

Why go off and get your own place when you are fine here at home with your familia? 

Why pay rent? 

Why pay utilities? 

Why all these needless, extra costs?!

Ohhhh! So you feel you need more responsibilities?  Fine!

You can pay bills here.

Wash your own clothes and make your own food.

But until you get married, you don’t need to call another place home.

You heard right!  Why go somewhere else?  They would explain that if you stayed at home and saved money, you’d be able to afford your own house when you got married.  I thought that’s how it was for everyone!  Why would anybody want to leave their home and their parents?

Fortunately, I had a great relationship with my parents and I loved (and still love) spending time with them.  However, I began to understand the need for independence once I started dating.

Yup, living under their roof means you have to live by their rules.  So as long as you don’t mind that, living at home has it’s perks.

How about you?  Did your parents expect you to leave the house as soon as you were 18, or were you more like me and not expected to leave the nest until you had a ring on it?

Sybil Monciváis Sánchez has worked for a local Spanish television station since 2003, in the Community Affairs Department. She is a wife and proud mother of three. You can follow her on Twitter at @sybil_sanchez.

So either there’s more to this recent influx of Latina judges on mainstream television shows or Simon Cowell is just plain losing his touch.  Why else would the “larger than life” and smaller than his ego celebrity producer of X-Factor select Mexico’s very own Chica Dorada to replace pop princess Britney Spears as one of his music reality show’s newest judges?

It wasn’t too long ago that Cowell was cracking jokes about American Idol‘s first Latina judge, Ms. Jennifer Lopez herself.  ¿Qué paso Simon?  How did your own words taste going down your throat?

Coincidentally Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera were the first to make the rounds as musical judges on American Idol and The Voice respectively.  Shakira has since stepped in to replace Christina on The Voice.  La Pau for her part has had her fair share of judging talent in recent years también.  She was on La Voz México with Jenni Rivera before her passing.  Most recently she’s joined the all star cast of La Voz Kids on Telemundo.

Maybe on X-Factor she’ll finally make that crossover we’ve all been waiting for.

As for the television producers of all of these shows, keep pushing the envelope.  There’s plenty more Latina and Latino talent out there for your television shows!

Today, I’m dedicating this post to the tornado survivors in Oklahoma.  I cannot begin to imagine how much pain and suffering is taking place in the areas affected and my thoughts and prayers are definitely with all of those impacted.  The #TXBloggers put together the following list of agencies that are already serving those in need in Oklahoma and I wanted to make sure and share it with you.  If you know of any other agencies that are helping survivors please share their information in the comments section below.  Let’s do whatever we can to show our neighbors in Oklahoma that they are not alone.  Thank you.

• United Way of Oklahoma -  The United Way of Oklahoma is accepting funds that will then be redistributed to the organizations working directly on the ground for this tragedy. You can go here to donate.
• Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief Fund - The Southern Baptist Convention has a disaster relief fund set up to benefit any disasters in Oklahoma. Any funds you give currently will go towards relief of this current disaster. Donate to them here.
• Feed The Children Disaster Relief -  Feed the Children is vowing to help bring people the everyday goods that they need to survive after many of them lost everything. You can help them provide these goods by donating here. 
• Team Rubicon – Team Rubicon consists of military veterans that still want to use the skills they were trained in during their time in the military to help people recover after a disaster. They are already on the ground in Oklahoma helping in the search and recovery efforts. You can donate to them here.

Feel free to share this information with all of your networks.

They’re back y’all!  Not that the dynamic duo had gone anywhere to begin with.  Pero, fijense nada más… as a diehard Jenny from the Block fan (y’all already knew that right) I have to say this is probably my favorite music video from La Diva Del Bronx so far.  JLO and Pitbull should just keep making music together forever.  As a bonus I’m also sharing their live performance at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards.

What do you say – Hit or Miss?

What’s the point of getting nice things if you can’t share them?  So remember the other day I told you about Pepsi Next and their new spokesman – the one and only Mr. William Levy?  Yes, that William Levy.  The telenovela star, the JLO music video star, the Dancing With The Stars contestant, and probably most memorable for many of you… the uh, Cuban heartthrob that’s been taking your breath away for years now.  Well anyway, as part of their campaign together Pepsi Next and William Levy have come up with a kind of new twist to an old game.

Twister.  Think of it as “William Levy Twister” or “Spin The Wheel on The William.”  Pos actually the real name of the game is Wheel of Levy, but the point is the folks at Pepsi Next sent it to me yesterday.  Anjelica was quite giddy with the packaging for most of the evening.  Still, she’s making the sacrifice and we’ve decided we want one of you to have it!

That’s right.  We’re giving it away!  If you want a chance at winning this William Levy prize pack leave a comment on this blog post before Monday, May 20, 2013.  I will announce the winner next week and send you the game in the mail.  Best of luck Levy fans!

Picture by classicimpalas.

So y’all know I don’t know much about lowriders and rims, spinners, spokes, etc.  My brother did have an Impala back in the day that well, pretty much qualified as a lowrider.  Although in those days we kind of stopped seeing eye to eye and I had purposely decided not to ride in the Impala with him and all his friends.  I instead preferred the comfort of the big old yellow school bus that would pick me up and drop me off at home from high school every day.  

¿Qué les puedo decir?  I was socially awkward even back then.

The last couple of weeks though I’ve been noticing that there are more and more cars – not necessarily only lowriders – driving around with hubcap spinners on their rims that look to be at least 12 inches protruded from the actual rim.  They look kind of funny and have really started to bother me really.  The main reason: because I want to know WHAT IS THE PURPOSE of them?  Why do they have to protrude so far away from the rim?  And most importantly, what would possess someone to want hubcap spinners that are so protruded?

Every time I see them I imagine them getting too close next to the car driving beside them and giving them a flat tire.  Pa mi gusto como que están hideous.

I’ve tried my best to find a decent picture of these spinners, but so far I just haven’t been successful.  On this post I opted for a more generic lowrider picture.

Bueno pues keep an eye out for these spinning hubcaps in a barrio near you and send me a pic if you happen to snap one.  I’ll try to remember to do the same when I see these things again.

Until then, just say no to protruded spinning hubcaps!  ¡Por favor!

If you search the word pachanga on your search engine right now you’ll find that this single word can mean several different things.  For some it might mean a genre of Cuban music.  To others an ex-friend or even a traitor.  Es más in some cases the word could also be interpreted to mean a cat… yes, as in a gato.  Some definitions refer to the breed of cat pachanga!  Now there’s a unique breed of cats and a name for your furry friends.  I like cats, so yeah, that was pretty exciting information for me!

The one definition that probably applies best today, however, is also the one we are most familiar with anyway.  I am referring to pachanga defined as “a Spanish slang word meaning to party hard, normally with many people; to rage.”

Yup, I’d say that’s pretty accurate.  Which is also a pretty good explanation of what happened during part of my weekend this past finde.  I attended Pachanga Fest in Austin on behalf of Juan of Words and well, let’s just say there was some pachanga fun had by all!

Pachanga Fest is the brainchild of Austin native Rich Garcia and this year marked the sixth anniversary of the event.  The music festival was headlined by Tejano-Norteño group Intocable.

“The Pachanga lineup includes rock, alternative, Tejano, Mariachi, cumbia, salsa, electronic, funk, hip-hop and indie rock with one singular theme, the sound is brown,” says Garcia.

The sound is brown indeed!

In fact, it wasn’t just the sound that was brown at Pachanga Fest.  The food and art were pretty Latino-centric too.  Here is one example of authentic jewelry from Jalisco.  The designers were on-site displaying their artwork.  Some of these pieces may take as little as 30 minutes or as long as one week to complete.

While surfing through the vendor booths I came across an artist that we are all probably more used to seeing on the stage rather than in the merchant space.  I’m talking about rapper, comedian and actor Chingo Bling of course.  Chingo was there promoting his own clothing line Cancun Life.  He also sold tamales from his very own food truck.  Now that’s an entrepreneur for you!  Chingo has performed at Pachanga Fest in the past.

Rain or Shine, There will be MUSICA!

What was disappointing about Pachanga Fest this year was the weather.  It rained.  And it poured!  At one point, I wasn’t sure if la gente, including myself, were going to stick around.  We did and more Tejanos actually showed up. By the end of the event it was a packed house!  Here are some of my pictures and video from Pachanga Fest:

Byrdie Franco-Rocha AKA @ByrdieFranco is a marketer and entrepreneur and recently launched her personal blog www.BSoFly.com. Follow Bydie on Twitter at @ByrdieFranco.  

Sandia by Carmen Lomas Garza.

Just like any Mexicana, I love family dinners!  Because I’m usually off on Mondays our Sunday dinners happen on Monday.  Today was no different.  What made today extra special was that my grandma and mom were here to spend it with us.  All weekend the guys were bugging me to make lasagna, so what did I make…pues ya sabes.

Mostly I love family dinners because of all the laughs and memories we create.  Today, we were picking on my brother’s best friend Pancho.  We’ve known this guy for about 13 years, and well he’s a big boy, just like my brother.  When he would go to Mexico with us my dad would call him and my brother his guarda espaldas because they’re both about six feet tall.  Anyway Pancho is always the scapegoat for everything bad that happens here at the house.

Even though he doesn’t live with us, he spends about 75 percent of his time here at the house.  So when something happens we blame Pancho.

“Who ate all the rice?”

¡Pancho!

“Who broke the remote?”

¡Pancho!

“Who finished the toilet paper?”

¡Pancho!

Pobre Pancho.  He never catches a break.  Even when he’s not here we still end up blaming him for something.  My grandma, who always looks for the good in people, finally asked us tonight why we were blaming everything on poor Pancho.  He just smirked while stabbing his fork into a giant piece of lasagna and responded: “It’s cause they know me.  And I’m usually the one who does all that.”

So there it was!  He finally confessed!  All it took was my sweet grandma to coax it out of him.  So now you know, if anything ends up missing, or you find an empty quart of juice in the fridge, nomás echale la culpa a Pancho.

Isabel Martinez is getting her Master’s degree in Theology. When she’s not working or studying she loves cooking, and discovering new things to do in Houston. Follow her on Twitter @shilohgirl_mop. 

¡¿Pero para que van a gastar tanto dinero?!

Pero si aquí hay comida.

Acabo de poner un arroz y frijoles.

Nombre van a gastar bastante y a mi ni me gusta la comida en esos restaurantes.  

El arroz siempre esta bien seco.

¿Para que vamos a comer arroz seco?

Para comer arroz seco mejor aqui ponemos una olla de frijoles.

Con unos nopalitos y un hevito.

Yo me voy a echar unos nopalitos bien ricos.

¡Ay! Pero van a gastar mucho dinero.

Bueno… pero yo no voy a comer.

It’s not that my mother doesn’t appreciate the gestures.  She does.  Only that she’s from a generation that was taught modesty is better than arrogance.  That it is always better to give than to receive.  That when there is only one last tortilla left and more than one mouth to feed you always say you’re not hungry no matter how much your tripas may be gruñendo-ing.  That’s what she has always done.  Always putting all of us ahead of her own needs and/or desires.

Eventually though we always convince her.  One other thing you should know about my mother, you see, is that she can’t ever say no to her children… much less to her grandchildren.

So this weekend we got to see the Leyenda Dance Company perform in Houston for Cinco de Mayo.  It was really quite a treat because the whole thing felt more like a production instead of just an expression of culture in dance.  There were high kicks and body movements reminiscent of ballet.  And even more impressive there were humourous story lines built into the plot.  It was all really beautiful.  Which reminded me again why I’m such a huge fan of this style of dance.

They were so memorable I thought you all should meet them too.  Here’s one of their performances I found online:

Pos for me they’re anything but useless, but for some they might as well be trash.  Thrown right in there with all of the other undesirables that we find no use for anymore right before we send them off to massive landfills.  It’s funny actually.  The irony of life is such that when I first moved into my current neighborhood I kept hearing people say “las ragas, las ragas.”

I didn’t know exactly what they were talking about, but my Spanglish was good enough to decipher that it had something to do with rags… tiliches, if you will.  You see just a couple of streets from where I live, a couple of blocks from one of the elementary schools in the barrio, people actually work all day sorting and packing old ugly rags that nobody wanted anymore.  Some of them end up in thrift stores.  Probably at one near you.  The better clothes that is.  The rest are sold across the globe as precisely that – rags.  Tiliches that can be used to clean, to soak, or to do all kinds of other stuff.

It sounds kind of crazy, it’s true.  Pero, you know, for someone who grew up with a mother that used to make quilts out of old shirts, jeans and shorts, this all seems quite logical también.  ¿Apoco no?  For an alternate definition, of course, I consulted the old Urban Dictionary to see what they had to say.

Specially used in Costa Rica (or Central America): an all purpose word which means “unuseful thing.”

Well… that’s another way to look at it.  What’s your definition of Tiliches?

I’m always on the hunt for new mexi-vocabulario.
What other words would you like me to include in the mexi-vocabulario?  If you have one that you would recommend please share it with me here.

Writer’s Disclaimer: When I say mexi-vocabulario I don’t necessarily mean these words are exclusively Mexican, or only used by Mexicans.  This is simply an expression of how they were introduced to me in our Mexican Spanish.

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Actually it’s called a huapango arribeño.  In my neck of the serros in Mexico – El Sauz to be precise – my parents just called it música de vara.  It came back to me this weekend for whatever reason all of the sudden.  I remember my brothers and I used to hate it when the plazita in the middle of the rancho would get full of drunks, muchachos, muchachas, señoras selling chocolate and tacos rojos, more borrachos, kids running around like crazy, and those musicians that sounded more like they were talking instead of singing.

They annoyed me, I’ll admit.  Every single song sounded just like the last one to me in those days.  And there was really no avoiding the sound since their music could be heard throughout the entire serro so that even if you chose not to go to the baile you couldn’t help but listen to the music coming from the center of El Sauz right above the arroyos.  I didn’t understand or care to listen to the lyrics back then.  They didn’t resonate with me the way they do now.

Musica de huapango arribeño you see is music that is almost exclusively heard only in Guanajuato, Queretaro, and San Luis Potosi.  And it really isn’t only music.  It is poetry verses set to music.  The songs usually tell a story, a funny one at that.  Or they are conversations between two people set to music.  I can’t explain it exactly.  You just have to listen.

The irony you see, is that now I would give anything to take a step back in time to one of those live bailes in the middle of the pista, in the middle of El Sauz, in the middle of that serro that taught us so much about ourselves and our cultura.

Rather than go into a lecture about how Cinco de Mayo is not even celebrated in Mexico – it isn’t by the way, for the most part, except for Puebla where the Battle of Puebla actually took place on May 5, 1862 – I’ll instead share a couple of the things that make me proud to be Mexican 365 days out of the year!

The Battle of Puebla, just in case your wondering, was an unlikely victory for the Mexican army against French forces.  Now the occasion is celebrated in the US as a Mexican heritage day of sorts.  We’ll take it!  We don’t get very many of those de este lado.

Mariachis.

Beautiful colors & artistry.

Pan dulce.

Familia!

The fashion!

Cultura.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!

Se los prometo that he made the selection entirely on his own!  En serio.  For reals.  No, but like for reals.  Yesterday when I got home the first thing Edgar told me when I got off the truck was “guess who I picked for my social studies project?”  I was a little confused and wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about.  ”Selena.  Selena Perez!  I picked Selena Perez,” he shouted excitedly smiling and looking directly at me to evaluate my reaction.

“You mean Selena Quintanilla Perez,” I responded slyly.

“I know… I forgot the Quintanilla part when I put her name down on the sheet,” he responded.

I’m not even gonna try to front.  My immediate reaction – ya saben in my panzota - was excitement!  Immediately I thought about how relieved I was that he had not said Selena Gomez instead.  Y’all know what I’m talking about.  There are actually kiddos walking around right now thinking that Selena Gomez is the biggest Selena there ever was.  That’s just wrong!

“Selena was named after Selena Quintanilla Perez, mijito!”  That’s always my reaction to such an offense.  The kids just kind of stare at me blankly like “what?…”

My brain started working, and churning, y dando vueltas y vueltas.  ”I interviewed her widower last year,” I bragged to Edgar.  He didn’t really understand the significance of that.  Later on Anjelica told me too who Edgar had selected for his school project.

“You have that Selena doll,” she says to me.  It’s true I do.  It’s a collector’s item.  Don’t laugh at me!  ”He can take it to school…”

“NOOOOOOO!!!!! Not my Selena doll,” I yell.  Then I kind of embarrassingly retract and explain more calmly and “logically” why there ain’t no chance in hell my Selena doll is walking out of the house and into a school full of curious and careless huercos!  Who knows what those kids would do to my 17 year old Selena doll that’s still neatly stored away in her original box.  I also have tons of magazines from when she first passed away that I collected.

ADM!  I am ridiculous!

Oh well, at least Edgar knows Bidi Bidi Bom Bom has absolutely nothing to do with Selena Gomez!

Now to make his social studies project Reina del Tex-Mex worthy!