Category — General

One of the first TV shows I ever watched in the US was In Living Color. Classic sketch comedy with comedians before they hit their prime (Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson, Damon Wayans, Jamie Foxx, even Jennifer Lopez with the Fly Girls). In Living Color wasn’t necessarily a kids show, but even a kid could appreciate the physical comedy and the sketches were short enough for the limited attention span.

One of my favorite characters was Homey D. Clown. What made Homey special was that he kept it real at all times. He made you face the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about. He represented the elephant in the room embodied in the form of a clown just to show you how foolish YOU were. He was like a mirror reflecting your absurdity. Then, after dragging you out of your fantasy land and back to reality, he sealed the lesson into your long term memory with a smack on the head with his stuffed sock. Society is need of more people like Homey. I’m desperately waiting for his comeback…

In case you forgot or were never acquainted with Homey D. Clown, I have included one of my favorite sketches. Enjoy!

May 10th, el día de las madres. A special day for all of Mexico. Today we celebrate the important women that impacted our lives for the better. If you had a mami like mine growing up, she rubbed your tummy when you got sick and if you ever fell and hurt yourself she would say “sana, sana, colita de rana”. There could be blood gushing everywhere, but it didn’t matter because the blessings of some mysterious frog’s ass somehow made everything better.

I am thankful to have a mother like the one I have. I owe my sense of humor to her. She’s always joking, laughing and is blessed with a great smile. My dad is a lot more serious and if I had emulated him more while growing up, I’d definitely be an introvert, polite, and a soon-to-be pastor.

Mother’s day is more important to my mom than her birthday, and even then, she never expects any gifts or attention. Every mother’s day she would always tell us (her kids), “just wash the dishes that is all I ask of you…” If you know me, like she does, then you know that’s a lot to ask. Dirty dishes are my nemesis. Though I am not at home with you, mom, I dedicate to you the hour or so worth of dirty dishes that await me when I get home. I let them pile up just for this occasion. I will do them wearing the same genuine and beautiful smile you have shared with me throughout my life.

Unfortunately for me, we live in a chocolate biased world. From an early age, I can remember family stuffing my face with chocolate cake, candy, shakes, ice-cream and any other chocolate goody that I could possibly imagine. For me though, it never hit the spot. Yes, my taste buds appreciated the sweet flavor of chocolate and the sugars that seem to possess the rest of the chocolate loving majority, but if chocolate were to become extinct and no more, well so what? Life goes on…

Vanilla, on the other hand, just makes me wanna sing that Shaggy song… “She call me Mr. Boombastic say me fantastic, touch me in me back she say I’m Mr. Ro…mantic…” You see, chocolate lovers out there talk about how they love chocolate and eat it with everything and would marry it if they could and yatty yatty yatta. For those people, I hand them an electronic slap (with a vanilla aroma scented glove) and challenge them to a duel. Chocolate is good, but not great. Chocolate prides itself in quantity, not quality. If this were a popularity contest, of course chocolate would win, but check the ballots and you will see the judges fingerprints smeared with chocolate.

Chocolate lovers don’t go to Baskin-Robbins and choose pure chocolate. They stab it in the back and go for rocky road or some other fruity flavor. Or they try to cover chocolate’s flaws with sprinkles and other toppings. Lame. I’m a loyal vanilla lover. Vanilla all the way. To be frank, all the other flavors fall short of the divine and magical sensation that vanilla provides for my taste buds. If I could, I’d have the server place the vanilla ice cream scoops on my bare hand but the intensity of my Latino heat would melt it all away before I get to my second lick.

Fellas, when have you seen a girl wear chocolate perfume or get turned on by chocolate candles? All it’s gonna do is get her hungry and take the attention away from you. If she doesn’t eat the candle, then she’ll figure out a way to get chocolate in her hands somehow. I’ve seen desperate women and their freaky chocolate cravings. Not cool. Then they blame their acne on the chocolate they ate. So much for chocolate being your friend! You’ll never hear anybody say, “Oh no, I shouldn’t have eaten vanilla now I got pimples all over my face!” Vanilla perfume and candles, on the other hand, facilitate a smooth transition in the romantic scene–pimple free.

The fact that vanilla is native to Mexico is a coincidence. I’m all for things that are brown like…well I don’t know…CHOCOLATE! But this is one where brown comes in second. Despite the abundance of chocolate lovers out there in the world, it’s OK, I’m used to being the minority in all senses of the word. To my vanilla aficionados out there, there is hope. Even though I like to polarize issues with very juicy debates, this happens to be one I’m really passionate about. So I dare any you chocolate lovers out there to comment on why you’re foolish enough to believe chocolate is better than vanilla. Go ahead, I’m waiting…

Do you take pictures of yourself in the bathroom? Seriously? how conceited! Do you not have any friends to take a picture of you? Or do you play dress up, get yourself all dolled-up, take a picture of yourself and then get back into your jammies? Maybe you were so marveled by that figure of yours staring back at you in the mirror that you forgot to turn off the flash. Don’t be boring is a motto I take seriously. OK, fine, maybe you aren’t being boring (it’s certainly entertaining for me). But you most definitely were bored to take that picture. Some of you are even making weird facial expressions. Don’t know if you’re in pain or half-way to an orgasm. Sexy can’t be forced. Real sexy is candid.

Now this girl though, I think she’s more confused than I am. I don’t know whether to be sad or concerned for her. Girl, if you don’t know what to think please don’t leave it up to me. You’re not even looking at the mirror which is definitely 100 times bigger and with better resolution than that phone camera you’re holding. But I guess that’s the world we live in right now. Real life looks much better in a electronic device.

I have never seen an ugly flight attendant or pilot. They always look so tidy, well groomed, presentable, perky, and handsome. Their robotic posture gives the impression that they were programmed to please you and make all your dreams come true. OK, maybe not all your dreams, but they definitely use their looks to distract you from the long flight that lies ahead.

I wonder how HR screens aspiring flight attendant applicants. There must be a check box for “pretty” that is weighed heavily during the interview. There’s no way it can be a coincidence that all the applicants were good looking, but then again, maybe evolution is taking its course and leaving all the ugly people behind and unable to reproduce. That can’t be it because there’s always more ugly people in sight in the real world.

I have yet to see a female pilot on my flight. All the male pilots I have encountered standing at the plane entrance always look like models. Maybe it’s their cute little cap, clean shaven look and sparkly white teeth. They even build up their glamor pre-flight time as they chat it up with the rest of their pretty pilot colleagues and entourage of flight attendants surrounding them.

Don’t get me wrong, they definitely walk the walk. The moment the flight attendant offers me something to drink, I accept it even if I’m not thirsty. I would hate to disappoint them and make them feel like their cheesy smile was in vain.

As the plane is about to land you can feel the pilot’s good looks and perfect smile filter through his voice as he reminds you that the weather out there is hot as hell or an ice-box, but it doesn’t matter because his soothing voice is reassuring, chipper and optimistic. And we believe him, because after all, he is good looking.

I thought it was just random but I was wrong. Every once in a while I get an itch on my back and scratch away. Sometimes, on the same spot where the itch came from, I find what I thought to be a loose and fallen hair from my head. I slowly brushed it a couple of times with my fingers and all I did was change the direction it was pointing. Upon closer look, I realized it was actually connected to my back! Very uncharacteristic of a true Latino lover. No biggie right? But then I get an itch on the other side of my back and stumble onto another lonely hair begging to be yanked. What the hell? Is this the precursor to a mid-life crisis? Are these random hairs a result of unwarranted stress? Am I still undergoing the last stages of puberty? Have I pissed off a random Aztec god I don’t know about?

I don’t find it a coincidence that I recently celebrated a birthday. Is this what happens when you age? If so, ladies beware, I hear it happens to you too. I can handle a few random hairs on a woman’s back, but once the mustache starts kicking in, that settles her birthday or X-mas present (whichever comes first).

I have lived without health insurance for most of my life so I’ve become accustomed to walking “it” off. “It” can be a biotch sometimes when “it” doesn’t go away or when “it” really needs medical attention. Fortunately, I had health insurance the few times I needed stitches and that pleasurable root-canal (never again Mrs. Dentist!).

When it comes to the common cold or flu, I think the whole idea of “mind over matter” works to a certain extent. Too many people get accustomed to seeking medical advice when in reality they just want the drugs. Didn’t they pay attention during D.A.R.E. classes in elementary school? Just because medical drugs are legal doesn’t mean you should put them in your body.

Getting babied by your mother or that special someone in your life can also prolong whatever the hell is wrong with you. Yes it’s wonderful to get pampered with homemade chicken soup and even having your belly rubbed until you fall asleep. But what happens when you live alone or live with someone who would rather not get near you? “It” is no longer a common cold. “It” is a tragedy. Everything feels worse, the restroom couldn’t be further away, and the idea of an adult diaper never sounded better. When you live alone (like me) you learn to deal with “it” over time like a hangover that lasts several days.

I guess I have become desensitized and learned to deal with the common cold and flu like left over pizza that’s been in the fridge for a questionable amount of days but still choosing to eat it. I was that guy who showed up to social events with a fever and endless sniffles. What can I say, I like to live on the wild side. Then one day someone said to me, “maybe you can deal with it like a champ, but do you realize you could be getting other people sick?” Damn. You. Way to put society’s health concerns on my shoulders.

That person is right though. You really shouldn’t be out mingling with people when you could still be contagious. It all comes back full circle. Alone at home with no one to rub my tummy   Walking it off alone was never part of the plan! Good thing I already made arrangements to travel this week.

I’ve never met a kid that did not posses imagination. You can see it when they’re playing with toys, cow pies, empty boxes and anything else we adults throw into the trash. They really do remind us that one person’s trash is another kid’s never-ending fun and entertainment. I especially enjoy when kids go on with their random and playful behavior as though no one were watching. Well, I watch (in the non-creepy kind of way). Even introverted and antisocial kids hold much creativity and imagination behind those sealed lips. The moment you get them talking you begin to realize that picking their brain can be quite entertaining and inspirational.

The cool thing about imagination is that we can personalize it any way we want. Some color their imagination with scary monsters, while others dream of the prettiest unicorn and bilingual walking humpback whales. Me, well, I dreamed of flavored ice cream falling from the sky.

The idea didn’t just randomly appear in my head. I was misled to believe that by my US-born cousins. They had come down to Mexico for vacation and eventually came over to my house to visit.  As I started to get to know them, the conversation of snow came up. They began telling me about the cold winters in the US and how sometimes it gets cold enough for snow to form and fall from the sky. I was 6 years old and had never been outside of Mexico. With the daily tropical heat I was used to seeing, I thought it was impossible. I was intrigued. You see, the English word “snow” literally translates as “nieve” in Spanish. Well, “nieve” just happened to be one of my favorite words because it is synonymous with ice-cream (the others being “helado,” “raspado,” “sorbete” and “hielito”). Obviously, kids aren’t the best story tellers, but a story from one kid to another is as real as the oxygen we breathe.

To make a long story short, the day I did go to the US, I was very disappointed. Not only did the snow not taste like vanilla or chocolate, it was flavorless. There must have been acidic rain a few hours before it started snowing. I was devastated. Probably one of the harshest realities I’ve had to face in my entire life   Way to let a kid down mother nature!

I think everyone has a way they eat M&Ms. Some grab a handful and stuff them all in their mouth at once, others first let them melt in their hands or eat them one by one.

I had no idea my “method” of eating this delicious candy would get me in trouble with my now fiancée. You see I eat M&Ms by pouring them all out on the table. I eat all the brown M&Ms first and then proceed to eat whichever color there are the most of until all colors have an equal amount. Then I will eat them in groups, well, I eat certain colors within the groups first – red, then orange, and then blue, yellow and green however I grab them first.

My fiancée asked why in the world I do this. Specifically he asked, “why do I eat all the brown ones first?” Instead of saying something like “because they look the most like real chocolate,” or “because they are my favorites,” I proceed to tell him “the brown ones are the ugly ones.” A perfectly innocent response until I looked up into his big brown eyes and tanned skin… Whoops… I mean… Uh… Um… Uh… Shoot!!

He burst into laughter after making a comment about why I had to racialize my M&M consumption… At least I was off the hook from my seemingly OCD behavior. Needless to say, I still eat the brown ones first, but now because they are the sexy ones

I’ve never considered myself a tree-hugger (but I might literally try it one day just for fun). However, I am socially aware of the damage we cause to our dear mother earth and it does bother me. With all the media coverage on large oil spills, natural disasters, corporate greed and their neglect of toxic waste and contamination, and even the societies that have to cleanup the mess and aftermath of war, we somehow think that our empty bag of tasty potato chips was meant to decorate the beach, the sidewalk, parks, and any other public space.

One of my all-time favorite highway signs in the US is the one that says “Litter and it will hurt”. I never knew if it was meant to be a threat to me personally, or to point out the consequences on the environment. Perhaps the government intentionally made it vague and left it open to interpretation for a reason…to make us think. With all these green movements picking up momentum, I won’t be surprised if one day a “Green Gestapo” with a large police stick will be ready to pound you the moment you throw your gum wrapper out the car window.

I have made an effort to hold people accountable for their reckless disposal of garbage in my presence. Sometimes it’s the stink eye, the cara de fuchi, and when I feel talkative, a question or two to let the person know someone is always watching. I can create awkward moments really well You can’t just throw your beverage can out the public bus window and act like nothing happened! In the words of Ice Cube, “you better check yo self before you break yo self.”… suckafish!