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Marketers just don’t seem to stop in their quest for innovation. The turn is now for Converse Shoes, which has launched a limited edition of Frida Kahlo-themed sneakers, according to Mexico City-based blog Compradicción.
(Do these people know the woman ended up her days unable to walk and tied to a wheel-chair?) Just wondering…
Watching the so-called “Spanish-language” Republican forum last night on Univision was like déja vu all over again.
The format (in which candidates were asked questions in Spanish, which then were translated into English and then back into Spanish) was hard enough to follow; but on top of that, bilingual viewers like myself were were additionally confused by the simultaneous translation and the Spanish-language closed captions.
Just as happened during the September Democratic forum, yesterday’s debate turned out to be another arroz con mango, with interpreters making up words and phrases, such as compulsorio, Hispánicos, Estados Unidos de Norteamérica or oficina ovalada.
In addition, I still don’t know if some of the grammatical horrors displayed by the closed captions were a result of a really tired typist or the candidates’ plain ignorance on foreign affairs. At some point, when Giuliani was answering a question about how to handle Mr. Hugo Chávez, the closed captions showed the following hilarious sentence: “Yo trataría a Chávez de la misma forma en que lo trató el Príncipe Carlos.” (I would handle Chávez the way Prince Charles handled him) … Did Mr. Giuliani mean the King of Spain (not Prince Charles)? was it the translator or merely the closed caption?
That we might never know. What is sure though, judging from the English-language transcript is that the King of Spain was downgraded to Prince by Mr. John McCain:
“First of all, could I again congratulate the people of Venezuela for rejecting this dictator’s attempt to become a president for life? And I also would like to echo the words of Prince Juan Carlos, “Por qué no te callas?”
Ay, ay, ay!
Taken during a recent venture into Jackson Heights. Somewhere along ‘La Roosevelt’ in Queens.
Have a wonderful weekend, hopefully filled with tacos and tortas from Chespirito.
According to recent press reports, Philadelphia’s IronPigs’ baseball league has been forced to change the name of its mascot, PorkChop, simply because a group of Hispanics in the area claimed the moniker was offensive, outrageous, preposterous and ultimately unacceptable.
The team’s mascot is a large, furry pig, so I really thought PorkChop was an accurate (if not original) name. The creature is now called Ferrous. Whatever.
I still don’t quite understand how Pork Chop is offensive. To Muslims, maybe… but Hispanics? Can somebody help?
First it was the Urban Beach, now the Mayor of Mexico City is treating my paisanos to a true novelty: the world’s largest ice-rink has opened its doors right in the middle of the damn Zócalo!
And it’s no joke. The rink was inaugurated this weekend with a fiesta of laser beams accompanied by a group of professional Mexican ice skaters (where the hell did they come from?)…
It is all part of the Mayor’s plan to keep my people entertained in a Pan y Circo-type of fashion, if you know what I mean. I have put the Zócalo megapista in my list of must-see sites for my upcoming Christmas vacation in Mexico.
¡A patinar se ha dicho!
Foto: Grupo Reforma
This week McDonald’s triumphantly announced the launch of a half-pound, culturally-relevant burrito: the McSkillet, which the media is tauting as as the McLatinization of the breakfast menu, mainly due to its “Mexican influence.”
I beg to differ. I am as Mexican as it gets, and though my mother sometimes fed us with some weird concoctions, I don’t ever recall having a rolled flour tortilla stuffed with Jack cheese, red, green peppers and onions mixed with scrambled eggs and hash browns for breakfast (I don’t even think my mom or my abuela know what the hell hash browns are.)
According to Advertising Age, the sausage McSkillet has 610 calories and 36 grams of fat, making it McDonald’s third-most-fattening breakfast, behind the Big Breakfast and the Big Breakfast Deluxe.
William Lamar, CMO McDonald’s USA, told AdAge that “it was important for McDonald’s to have more burrito-based options as Mexican food becomes increasingly popular and schedules get tighter.”
Yeah, right. People are getting fatter and time-pressed, so blame it on the Mexicans!
Some woman called Deborah Frisch has come up with an English language method weirdly named ¡Binglés! La lotería para aprender inglés. And it’s no joke. According to a company’s press release, this “revolutionary and cost-effective method” uses our beloved juego de lotería to teach us, monolingual Latinos, how to pronounce things in English with lots and lots of accents: Watermelon, for instance, is Guá-ter-mélon; La Sirena is the mér-med; The musician is the myu-zí-shan, and so on. You get the picture (and it’s not pretty!)
In her Web site, Ms. Frisch tells us about her career as an accomplished language teacher, but most importantly informs us about the importance of the lotería in the daily lives of us, lazy Mexicans.
Wherever there are Mexicans and people of Mexican descent, while the parents take siestas after dinner, the kids find shady spots to play la Lotería.
And I thought I had seen it all… Good Lord!
I’d like to thank my friend Diego for sending this bizarre, yet fascinating, story about my home country. It turns out that the indigenous zoque language (one of 350 native languages spoken in Mexico) is about to disappear simply because its last two speakers have stopped talking to one another.
According to the Mexico-based Instituto Nacional Indigenista, two men in their 70s are the only fluent speakers of the language, but they just “drifted apart” and just won’t talk to eachother.
“We know they are not to say enemies, but we know they are apart. We know they are two people with little in common,” the head of the agency told the BBC. Damn! If they only were to mimic Mr. Chávez and start blabbering about something, whatever… maybe we’ll be able to keep zoque around for a longer while.
¡¡¿Por qué se callaron?!!!
You can say -and think- whatever you want about Venezuela and its president, but one thing is undeniable: Venezuelans are truly creative people. Take Coromoto, an ice-cream vendor in the province of Merida, which is pitching a ‘Viagra’ ice-cream for the sexually challenged.
Coromoto, who has even made it to the Guiness World Records, offers 840 flavors, including garlic, beer, corn, black beans and… Viagra. But don’t get too excited (pun is intended): Coromoto’s Viagra ice-cream is not made with the famous blue pill, but is a mysterious mix of honey and plants. Oh… if we only knew the recipe!
Thanks to AP and Grupo Reforma for the sneak preview into probably the luckiest [Latina] girl alive. The daughter of Salma Hayek and French archi-rich Francois Henri Pinault was born Sept. 21
After the three-day food and wine smogasbord a.k.a. Thanksgiving, we were too broke to keep spending precious dollars in fine Bordeaux and Burgundy so decided to finish the weekend supporting the patria with this 2005 Jubileo Meritage, from the wine-rich area of Ensenada, Baja California.
Despite its creative tagline —¡Viva el Vino! ¡Viva México!— Jubileo looks better in the bottle than feels in the stomach. However, we tip our hats to the wine’s creators for the festive logo and the jubilant, barefoot Mexican dancer who raises to the jubileo occasion in pure emotion. ¡Ajúa!
To celebrate this year’s Thanksgiving, some 150 Hispanics in Morristown, N.J. are getting together to cook. But instead of the traditional stuffed turkey, pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce, they are cooking up something much more interesting: an immigrant-themed full menu.
According to New York City’s El Diario La Prensa, this year’s delicious menu includes pasta “visa-da” de chorizo; “La Hazaña” [de cruzar la frontera], arroz mixto “fronterizo,” papás chorriados por la Migra and sangría de-portada. (Sorry, you gotta be positively bilingual to get the joke!)
So in the spirit of the holidays, I decided to join the residents of Morristown and share with them my own menu for Thursday night:
Para empezar: Muros con Cristianos
Main course: Tortas ahogadas en el Río Grande
De postre: Pay de Nuez … legal
¡Feliz ‘Sansgivin’!
I love, love these guys.
Peruvian reggaetón trio Los Kalibre is making the Japanese shake their butts with catchy songs and lyrics mixing Spanish and Japanese in what the media is already calling Japoñol. The Peru-born recent Japan immigrants are convinced the Japanese will embrace their music and dump the salsa rhythms, simply because reggaetón it’s easier to dance… and to sing. (Really, how difficult is it to learn the lyrics of Gasolina?)
According to Lando, Dando and Nani, their music gets an inspiration from Rafael, Celia Cruz, Nino Bravo and José Feliciano; the trick, they say, is to mix both languages (Spanish and Japanese) and inventing new forms and verbs. ¡Que Viva el Japoñol!
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