All up in the Kool–Aid without even knowing the flavor!

A ver, so… yo por andar de mitotero ¡mira nada más de lo que me enteré!

Mitotero, the only word in that sentence that stood out to me.  Mostly in telenovelas and variety shows is where I’ve heard it before since at our house metiche and chismoso were much more common.  And apparently there are a couple of different definitions of what exactly mitotero means.

El Urban Dictionary says -  being up, or getting mixed up, in business or information that has no relationship to you whatsoever.  Being up in the mix where you DON’T belong.  Prying into the affairs and business of others.

tuBabel says - chismoso, comunicativo.  

While La Real Academia Española offers the following definition - 1. adj. Am.  Que hace mitotes (‖ melindres).  2. adj. Am. Bullanguero, amigo de diversiones.  3. adj. Méx. Que hace mitotes (‖ pendencias).

Though the best explanation, I believe, is in a picture.  I hope mine in this post does a good enough job of illustrating the word mitotero. 

No Spanglish son!

In college I thought my skills in Spanish were above average until I took the Spanish assessment for credit by exam.  They told me I was mediocre and I was shocked.  It wasn’t until I started that first class – Spanish for Native Speakers – that I realized just how bad my Spanish actually was.  All my life pos, esque, troca, parkear, and so many others had been perfectly normal.  Now all of a sudden they were grammatically incorrect!  ¿Cómo qué?  Even worse, I had never even noticed all of those accents over letters and couldn’t have cared less what they meant.  My parents taught us the alfabeto and we knew there was an ll, an ñ, a ch, but that was about it.  I could read, write and speak Spanish.  I just couldn’t tell you where the malditos acentos belonged.

Somehow I managed to learn the basics.

Then, working as a full time Spanish-language print reporter it became perfectly clear to me just how detested Spanglish was among some native español speakers.  There was cringing, head shaking, laughter, even utter shock at some of the words that would come out of my mouth.  I learned what coloquialismos and anglicismos were pretty fast.  Apparently the way I wrote and talked.  A pesar de todo, I decided to persevere and learn as much Spanish as I could… to improve my own skills in the language for myself.  I did and before I knew it I was correcting my own parents in their usage of their own first language.  La camioneta.  Estacionamiento.  Lo que pasa es que…. Yup, it’s safe to say I was full of myself!  Now, thinking about that just makes me feel ashamed.  Who the hell was I to tell them their usage of Spanish was wrong?  

¡Pinche mocoso!  I drank the Kool-Aid and was pretty much a language snob.

Después de eso, going back to work in the English market with my newly honed Spanish skills – not thinking, talking and sleeping in Spanish all of the time – I began to miss my coloquialismos and anglicismos.  I loved my Spanglish dammit!  It felt like home.  Like being in the Valley with my cousins, like hanging with the eses in my neighborhood, like all of the people that I had grown up around who were like me, cómo dice la India María “ni de aquí ni de allá”.  That’s what we were.  Part Mexican.  Part American.  And finally I realized that was okay!  I’ll probably never be as good at Spanish as the native speakers.  I’ll never fully grasp all of the rules about Spanish accents… but you know what, I can maneuver Spanglish like nobody’s business!

Kathleen Connell 'Kit' of East Renfrewshire in Scotland

They say you’re only as young as you feel, and apparently 100 year old Kathleen Connell of East Renfrewshire in Scotland, better known in the gaming world as just ‘Kit’, doesn’t feel a day over 80!  According to her Brain Training Nintendo DS game, her level of skill is that of a 64 year old, something the ‘Nintendo Queen’, as she has been nicknamed now, spends time every evening trying to improve.

Kit, who just turned 100 last week, reportedly began playing video games at the age of 96 and credits consoles like the Nintendo DS with keeping her sharp and healthy.  According to various media reports, Kit’s collection of 10 DS games includes My Word Coach, Left Brain Right Brain 2, Easy Piano and Brain Training.  The 100 year old spends two hours playing her DS every evening before breaking for tea.

“The Nintendo has been a great help to me, it’s absolutely amazing. If there’s any secret to a long life it’s to think positive and keep your mind active,” she told the media.

Watch her talk about her own gaming experience in this video: 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nawe7F8cZ_U

In truth, JLo, La Diva del Bronx, and her now ex-husband Marc Anthony are hoping this new collaboration of theirs will do precisely that for viewers of their new Latin American talent search show on Univision.  Or at the very least, have them tune in to watch.

Q'Viva The Chosen

Now y’all knew I was going to write about this!

After Saturday’s first episode, and after so many weeks of constant promotion about Jennifer and Marc’s reunion for the show, it turns out the former Latino First Couple of entertainment might be on to something.  From the Brazilian Capoeira dancers, to the Puerto Rican twins that captivated Marc, a very steamy Argentinian tango, and a lovable pair of Mexican Quebradita dancing siblings, ‘Q’Viva’ is all about celebrating the best of Latino culture and entertainment straight from each country.

Contestants submitted videos of their respective talents to the show’s producers, these entries were reviewed, the best of the bunch were presented to JLo, Marc and their third wheel, producer Jamie King, who then selected performers to assess in person.  Jennifer and Marc then travel to the various countries where the performers live, surprise them with an impromptu visit, the performers audition before the super stars, and if they are impressed with what they see the talent gets airplane tickets to Los Angeles.  There they will compete with the rest of the Latin American talent sent to California and ultimately the top tier of performers will all be a part of “the biggest Latin American entertainment show in history” in Las Vegas, Nevada.

An advertisers dream no doubt.

My favorite part about Q’Viva, however, outside of the tremendous talent being showcased, is just how much more access we get to Jennifer herself, in Spanish no less.  The American Idol judge has certainly improved her bilingual skills since Selena - anyone remember that Cristina interview from the 90s? – and in way, this feels like JLo connecting to her Latin American roots like she’s never done before.

Jennifer Lopez in Peru.

“It’s probably going to be the biggest thing I’ve been involved in yet,” Lopez reflected at one point.

Ms. Lopez, I think you might be right.

¡No me vaya decir que no, porque me voy a sentir mal!

The air feels fresher.  The water looks cleaner.  It’s like you’re literally one with mother nature there! Por lo menos, in the serros of El Sauz it still feels like that.  We’ve gone back to Mexico a few times over the last couple of years, and after talking about “the old country” over lunch today, I couldn’t help but want to share these pictures with all of you.  They always just put a smile on my face!

cielitolindo.mp3 (you have to play this track before reading) 

Entrance to El Sauz

This is the entrance to our ranchito in the serros - quite literally the mountains of Cerritos, San Luis Potosi.  Until a couple of years ago all the roads were dirt and rock.  Those paved streets are brand new!

Now with the brand new streets. No more dirt roads here.

As you drive in you start seeing houses on either side, but everyone has at least one third of an acre of land for their houses.  Electricity and running water are still pretty iffy, though, going out sporadically for hours at a time.

La casa de mis padres en El Sauz.

Here is our family home, which our parents have had since they began their lives together over four decades ago.  We used to have a stick kitchen in the front of the bloque rooms, but we tore it down after we got a propane-powered stove.  The room on the right is the new addition.

Massive nopalera in our plat of land.

Had my mom had the opportunity to live longer periods of time in Mexico as an adult I know for a fact we would have all kinds of fruit and vegetable trees in our terreno – lemon, oranges, aguacate, etc.  Since she hasn’t… we do have lots of matotas de nopales like this one.

Trucks like this one, de mi hermano, are obviously 'del norte'.

Anyone that comes to El Sauz from el norte can easily be spotted if they’re driving around in trucks like this one.  I will say, though, that a lot of people have much nicer trucks now than they did when we were growing up.

El Guey con El Maguey!

Downside to only visiting Mexico every couple of months or years: your property starts to look like this.  As a kid this is what I hated most… having to help my dad clear the brushes from the land with talaches and machetes.

Clearing the brushes from the terreno.

It’s still not my favorite thing to do, but I can make myself enjoy it now… and it’s easier now to handle those tools.  That’s me in the gray sweater and the cap.  Those fires in the early morning smell so good.

Ahhh... I can smell the clean air and smokey wood in those serros.

Well, it’s not like they have dumpsters or dump sites for this stuff in El Sauz.

Told you we have to heat up water for baths.

Heating up cold water for your bath is still regular practice in El Sauz.  At our place we use a water tank at the top of the house to run the shower, but there is no water heater connected to it so the water is cold.  I learned the hard way why taking a bath with only the shower is a bad idea.  Uuyy, I still get shivers thinking about that cold shower I took in record time.

After a long day's work.

Once night falls it’s all about hanging out with family and getting ready to sleep by relaxing.  Some of my fondest memories of Mexico are of staying up late with my cousins, sitting around a fire, and telling each other tall tales and scary stories.

And the next morning... las botas de mi pá, with somebody's nail polish, LOL!

Boots are probably a good idea for El Sauz.  While we do now have some paved roads, most of the rancho is still nothing but dirt roads and walkways.  I can’t tell you how many brand new pairs of shoes I ruined over the years as a kid.

I promise we were actually working.

I hope my brother doesn’t kill me for sharing this picture.  It’s one of my favorites of us together because you can really tell how well we have always gotten along.  Though it doesn’t seem like it, we were actually working, digging a hole to make barbacoa before heading back to Texas.

My mom and my uncle getting the cabrito ready.

My mother, on the left here (notice the rebozo), recruited the help of my uncle to prepare the cabrito.  She obviously didn’t trust any of us to prepare it.  ¿Porqué sera?  Notice the serros in the background off in the distance.  Ahh!

My brother's creation. I love this picture!

Last, but certainly not least, this is one of the tanques de agua in El Sauz.  The one that used to be right next to our house was dried out when we went for this trip.  That’s my oldest nephew laying on the ground with the shades.  My brother added the cool yellow graphics.  ¿Apoco no les gusta la foto? 

We should definitely make this into a post card!

Now it’s you’re turn.  Share your stories and/or memories of Mexico, or your own country.  I would really like to hear them!

The other day we found this panadería called El Boillo Bakery about 20 minutes from our house.  We’d seen it before, but had never stopped.  This time, though, our appetite got the better of us.  It must have been cold or raining.  That is the perfect weather for Mexican sweet bread.  Either way, here’s what ja-pen!

El Bolillo Bakery

El Bolillo Bakery is pretty intimate.  I don’t know if it’s a major chain, but they do have a couple of different locations here in town.  They’re always busy, but never crowded… at least the few times we’ve been to this particular location it’s always been pretty painless.

That's how I like it! ¡Pan bien mexicano!

¡Miren nomás!  Just what the doctor ordered… or in this case, the Juan!

Y acá... so much goodness in there!

We haven’t tried those cakes yet, but don’t they look good?  ¡Qué bueno que ya vienen los cumpleaños de febrero!

Ya que estabamos ahí, ¿pos qué más?

So, of course, before you know it there I am greedily stocking my platter with as much bread as it can carry.  ¡No me disrtraigas, Anjelica!  I’m a little busy here!

Personal size tres leches cake.

Nom… personal-sized tres leches cakes!  Scratch waiting for the birthdays.

Tell me those cookies don't look good!

Cookies like these are too sweet for my taste, but perfect for the kids.  Girl Scout cookies, who needs them?  These are much cheaper too!

La Abuelita Chocolate Machine - Score!!!

Okei… a little confession here.  When I saw this Chocolate La Abuelita machine – yes, I said machine, like automated y toda la cosa – I literally gasped!

“Look!  It’s an Abuelita hot chocolate machine!!”

For Valentine's Day too, eh!

These heart cookies are a little early, but they did catch our eye.  ¡Qué romantic!

Gracias por su preferencia.

I can’t remember the last last time somebody thanked me for my preferencia.

Calling this one the Ballet Folklorico Mural.

Anjelica really liked all of the murals on the ceilings.  I hadn’t even noticed them.  Les digo, siempre ando bien distraido. 

Chocolate covered strawberries and wedding cake!

Finally, this one is just for your enjoyment.  I don’t know about you, but I’ll take pan dulce and La Abuelita hot chocolate over anything they sell at Starbucks any day!

This is not a sponsored post.  I did not receive any compensation for the content of this entry.  All of the opinions are my own.

Forget those chips you can't hold like a spoon!

Bostandzic must be a huge fan of the nacho because it looks like he went through a whole lot of trouble to dream up this edible design.

How ingenious is simplicity?

Looking at this picture, the idea seems so simple it’s almost ingenious.

Nombre, who would have thought so much planning goes into a nacho?

A couple of people, though, have already pointed out – “now we need edible forks and knifes too!”  ¡Calmados!  Let the man think.

¡Iralo! That sucker looks like it can hold a lot of food.

Yet others have cried foul, saying Frito Lay already has Scoops!

This guy thought about everything, jajaja!

En lo personal, I’m more impressed with the concept of actually designing such a chip than the chip itself.  That in it of itself seems to require a lot of mad skills!

Oh yeah, the project is for sale so if you know anyone who’s in the business of buying new chip designs let Denis know

¡La Lowrider Bici!

Gotta say, never in all my life had I heard this term before.  ¡Rasquachismo!  Maybe I have and just don’t remember.  That’s very possible given my short attention span and even shorter memory for random things.  In any event, when I came across this video, courtesy of the folks at Latinopia, all the way from LA,  I couldn’t help but fall in love with the word.

¡Rasquachismo!  It’s been at the tip of my tongue ever since.

So what does it mean?   Well according to quite literally el maestro, el Dr. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, a renowned art and literary critic, rasquachismo is “a Chicano sensibility… an understanding of a particular aesthetic code in any particular community, and it comes out of the experience of living in that community… it starts for me with a saying, hacer de tripas corazón… meaning you make do with what you have.”  ¡Eso sí que lo entendemos!  

Anything from houses to cars, even covers, made out of bits and pieces that don’t necessarily go together could be described as rasquachismos.  Quite literally, items that are created out of necessity.  Nombre quién iba pensar that the colchas my mother used to make out of old rags for us were rasquachismos, jajaja!

“Rasquachismo is like all the movidas that you use to put together your car so it will run more, or to add harina to the frijoles to make it expand so that more people can eat.  All the movidas are what rasquache is all about,” el profe adds.

I love it!  Watch him elaborate in his own words in the video below.

Consuela from 'Family Guy'

Honestly!  I’m not sure whether I should be offended or just plain tickled with the increasing popularity of this crazy little cartoon character named Consuela I’ve only recently discovered.

According to her creators on Family Guy, she is the leader of the Quahog Maids’ Union and Consuela is every bit the typical stereotype of a Latina housemaid… of Mexican descent according to the undercurrent of mostly young people who’ve taken her on as a “champion” of sorts for housemaids everywhere.

On the one hand, she’s definitely got the sarcasm and sass of many an abuelita down packed!  Her broken English – she calls everyone Misser regardless of their gender - and seemingly on purpose way of getting out of everything by saying “NOOOOOO!!” - her signature line by the way – is pretty hilarious and seems all too familiar to me for some reason.

También es medio cabrona La Consuela

On the other hand, though, her appearance on episodes like Are You Smarter Than a Hispanic Maid? just make me cringe.

Episode: Are You Smarter Than a Hispanic Maid?

Outside of the show there’s also an info-graphic circulating the web calling her the “grown up” version of Dora the Explorer, or what Dora will look like in a few decades.

Is this really Dora's future?

Come on people!  We Mexicans are capable of so much more than just cleaning houses – and NO, Dorita is not going to be a housemaid when she grows up!  She’s into science people!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZP7or7hMS0

While Consuela has become more than just another character on Family Guy - she’s one of the few that was created as a one time character and turned into a regular part of the show - the question for me is do we really need Consuela in the world?  It’s bad enough the Urban Dictionary already defines Consuela as “the universal name for a hotel maid.”  Really!?

I don’t know, what do you think?

The responsibilities that come along with it, even more reason to spend countless nights tossing and turning wondering just how badly I could screw up a kid.  I mean by all accounts my childhood was pretty normal, and yeah my youngest siblings were so much younger than me that at times it was easy to forget they weren’t my own kids, but being a very involved older brother was very different from being completely responsible for another human being.  What if I just wasn’t ready?

Taking things one step at a time.

Coming to terms with the expectations

I’ve never been much of a sports fan, my skills as both a handyman and a mechanic are pretty slim – I know just enough to get by – and while my brute strength is exactly what you’d expect it to be for a man my size, there was always that question in the back of my mind – what if it’s not enough?

What I started realizing a couple of years ago, though, probably since Edgar could talk in full sentences, is that all of that stuff really doesn’t matter.  Sure it’s important for his social development, especially as he gets older and things like baseball and football become more important among his friends, but those aren’t the things he’s been depending on me for, up until now.

Embracing and accepting things as they are right now

I was the one that taught him how to use the restroom standing up.  I was the one who showed him how to spit.  I was the one who told him it was okay to sing as loud as he wanted to in the car… yes, even to the songs sung by female artists, just as long as he didn’t do it in front of his friends.  I’m the one who pushed him in the water and told him to start swimming.  His mother yelled at me for that one.  I’m the one that tells him “Stop crying!  Do it again!  Keep practicing.  That’s how you learn.”

He looks up to me for things I never even imagined he would.

Every time I spit, he spits right after me.  If we’re going to bed and I take of my shirt he does the same.  If I take off my tennis shoes and put on a pair of sandals, he does the same.  I have a wallet.  He wants one too.  He wants to pump gas, he wants to spray down the truck at the car wash, he wants to go to work with me, and one day work in the same office building “so that we can go to lunch together everyday.”  I can’t imagine what it is to see myself through those eyes.

And hey, who knows how long this phase will last – kids are also pretty unpredictable – but for the moment I am completely okay with the way things are.

So in love...

Only one problem, this person has no idea you exist!  They’ve seen you around.  They might even know your name, but they haven’t a clue about all of those feelings that little heart of yours has been harboring inside for them.

Here’s where a good piropo could be just the icebreaker you’ve been searching for.  On the other hand, and I’m just throwing it out there, it could also be the kiss of death for your platonic relationship.  El chiste es that you have to selectively choose which piropo would be the most appropriate for your crush.  If you’ve been observing this person closely enough to notice their smile, their laugh, and all sorts of other little detallitos - and you know you have – then this definitely should be pretty easy for you.  I’m not calling you out.  I’m just saying.

Now a little history.  There’s no clear actual origin to the piropo, at least not that I was able to track down, which if you’ve been wondering what the hell I’m talking about could best be described as a compliment or come-on intended to flatter a person your interested in – think of it as “putting your game face on” in Spanish.  Nevertheless, most sources online place the beginning of piropeadas either in the Middle Ages or in early Rome as an evolution of our early languages.  Whatever the actual origin, what is true is that piropos are truly most popular in Latin America and among Latinos in general.  So rather than go on and on, let me just share a couple of the most amusing piropos I ran across online in this video.  Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE-nABNuFjc

I’m not going dark today - prieto ya estoy - but I am supporting the Blackout Day against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) by abstaining from posting anything new today.

If you haven’t heard about SOPA & PIPA and why they are a bad decision for America, check out this explanation by Google.

Me and Edgar a couple of years ago. He was so small.

Today, Edgar’s science project was due.  It was on Albert Einstein and his contributions to the field of science.  Titillating, I know!  Hear me out though, real quick.  As we were making our way up the stairs of the school, he wrestling with the display board about twice his size and me trailing behind trying not to tangle the stand alone kinetic energy model Anjelica had built for him the night before, all of the sights and sounds of elementary school took me back a couple of decades to my own grade school experiences.  Memorable, to say the least!

Wow!  This is what it feels like for him everyday at school.  Usually once I drop him off and leave for my office I rarely give his day-to-day activities any thought.  He’s at school learning.  That’s it.   At least in my mind that’s the rationale.  This morning, though, seeing all of those other kids and teachers in the hallways, in the classrooms, in the main lobby areas, and then hearing his classmates greet him “Edgar!” it really made me realize just how much of a part of his life school really is.  Yes, I realize that might make me sound like a crappy parent, but I’m just being honest.

It’s easy to forget that these little people are also living their own daily lives that feel just as important as our own adult lives everyday.  Even easier to forget that in the blink of an eye they can be all grown up and living their own lives, not needing us to finish or carry their science projects for them anymore.

Cherish the moments with your little ones folks!

Always the dreamer, me in the Rio Grande Valley...

My parents like to tell the story of when we went to church in the Valley.  It was an Anglo-Mexican mixed community and services for all of us were at the same time.  According to mamá and papá, and my two older sisters for that matter, as soon as we’d walk into the building I’d walk away from them and head to the front of the church where I’d sit next to the little girls with the blue eyes and blonde hair.  No matter how much my mother would signal me with her hands to come back, worry in her face, they say I’d only turn back at them and turn away, as if taunting them with my disobedience.  I was in grade school back then and don’t even remember these occurrences with any clarity, but every time I’m told about them it is with great laughter and pride, especially from my mother.  In the way only a parent can, she took these actions to mean something deeper about me and who I might one day become.  She tells me it was a sign that I was restless and curious, aching to push beyond the definition of what I should be and how I should act, what my place as a child of Mexican immigrants should be.  I don’t know that I agree with her assessment – those are big shoes to fill and I am definitely not sure that I am the one best suited to fill them – but today, as an adult and a parent myself, I understand the hope of wanting the next generation to push beyond the boundaries of our own limitations.  I understand what her hope for me and the rest of her children was.

I understand because, today, I have hopes and dreams of my own.

Burrada – dicho o acción torpe, brutal.

They’re called burradas because they are things we all do without thinking.  Things that might embarrass us or even make us feel pretty clueless for a couple of seconds.  Sort of like blonde moments – we all have them regardless of what color our roots might actually be, and they’re just pretty hilarious.  So take a look at some of our best blonde moments caught on video.

I still say I make/have fewer burradas!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw6QIJmZfhE