In the parlance of the intertubewebnets: “Kewl! WOOT! All your racists are belong to us.”

In honor of the ghoulishly hateful Republican debate on Tuesday, the videos featured on YouTube’s main page yesterday were all politically themed. Little did any of us realize that among the videos chosen to be featured was the LCP’s very own “Mex vs BC (Born Citizen) Pt. 2 - JOBS”.

It’s gotten over a quarter million views in just the couple of days since being on the main page. Happily, the suddenly heavy viewership of this one video seems to have spilled over to the rest of the videos in the “Mex vs. BC” series. The rapidly multiplying viewer comments are, as always, colorful.

The LCP is glad we could be of some relevance in elevating the ongoing immigration “discourse”…

“I’d strangle a brown person in their sleep!” “Well, I’d slowly torture them until they begged for death!” “Would not!” “Would too!” “Nuh-UH!”

If my car were KITT (which it is sooo not), it would be crying right now and cursing the name, “Ricardo.” “Ricardo” is the name of the man who unloaded a porcelain sink and bathtub on the highway I was driving to work on the other day. I know he didn’t do it on purpose; but, do you know how much damage driving over a sink will do to your car? A lot. I thought it was funny when my co-worker asked me if the sink came off of a big trailer driven by a Mexican guy. Had he met Ricardo? Not exactly– but lots of people have met many like him.

This is not just a Mexican phenomenon.

Having driven over the sink rendered my car undriveable which forced me to pull over in the emergency lane. Upon exiting my car, I had the pleasure of meeting Ricardo for the first time (unlike the rest of the world who had apparently already made his acquaintance.) I approached him as semis were whizzing by and the first words out of his mouth were, “They fell off another truck that drove off.” Then the Chola Abogada within me was waiting to burst out. “Why you lying!?” is what I wanted to say but instead, asked, “Did your vehicle get damaged?” He replied, “No.” So, I’m thinking, and I ask him, “Then why did you pull over?” Do you know what he said? If you’ve met him before, you probably do. But, if not, I’ll tell you. He said he pulled over to go get that other person’s stuff out of the four-lane 70mph highway. I’m soooo sure.Is there a Patron Saint of Road Debris Collection? If not, there should be; because this guy would have had to do a lot of praying to get that bathtub out of the highway without dying. And to do so knowing that it wasn’t his booty would make him a saint.

No need to handle litter and debris with our sturdy Trash Pick-Up Stick! With this handy tool there’s no repetitive bending and stretching, it speeds up your cleanup process and safely picks up litter and debris and reaches into difficult places like four-lane highways and dragon’s mouths! If only…

So, I go to my cell phone to call the non-emergency line to alert them about the hazards in the road and when I turn around and see a cop. Never before have I been so happy to see a police man.

Okay, well, maybe once…(but I don’t think he was a real cop.) Ahem.

Anyway, they assisted me in escorting Ricardo and me off the highway into a hotel parking lot where they (there were now three cops on motorcycles) waited with me for the tow truck to arrive. The police were trying to convince me I just had a flat tire and I wanted to say, “Why you lying!?” because I knew it was much, much worse than that. (Always get a second opinion.) The police were nice, though; they didn’t give me a hard time about my expired inspection sticker or my unloading the contraband from my trunk before my car was hauled off.

My inclination is to always go into situations knowing you catch more flies with honey- except, apparently, when it comes to insurance agencies. I called Ricardo’s company minutes after the accident. The person assigned to my claim, Marcos, was out of the office, days later he calls to tell me the driver wasn’t the owner of the vehicle and there might be a third party insurance company that may take liability, that he’d get back to me. blah, blah, blah. A week and several messages left later, I finally get him on the phone and call him out like some scrub that never returned my phone calls; well, because that’s exactly what he was. The entire thing was resolved within hours after I called him out on his poor performance.On the up side, I’ve been driving a rental car that is a change of pace from my normal, conservative car. The guy at Enterprise showed me my options and I said, “I want the clown car.”

Freak-Mobile

I have to say, other than the loads of blind spots the car has, I am really enjoying it- even the color! Orange is a very controversial color for vehicles (I have been informed.) Most people I know aren’t so hip to it but it’s grown on me.I still can’t help but get a little anxious when I cross that same stretch of road on my commute everyday. So, my driving habits have changed pretty dramatically. Now, I am officially an old woman- or, I at least drive like one.

Me

The thing is, I couldn’t justify paying $30 a day for the rental car company’s insurance. Now, I have something in common with Ricardo. Stop crying KITT; it’s going to be okay…eventually.

The LCP gets a mention today at lapolitica.com in an article about Latino polticial videos online (apparently, there aren’t enough). You can read the entire fascinating article by Luis Clemens here, but below is the snippet mentioning the LCP’s work, along with a partial quote of a sentence I uttered:

“The single-most popular Latino political video online is a parody of the trailer for the movie ‘300.’ The 65 second long video clip amusingly makes the point that immigration from Mexico is unstoppable. It was produced by the Austin-based Latino Comedy Project whose artistic director, Adrian Villegas, says ‘we didn’t specifically push it in any way.’ And yet, the video has been viewed more than one million times in three months on YouTube alone.”

Interesting. I thought “the single-most popular Latino political video online” was the exciting Hillary Clinton-Bill Richardson one-on-one debate “re-enactment” over at the website “8th Street Latinas”.

8th Street Latinas: For all your election update needs.

Their vigorous debate “re-enactment” was so riveting, I’ve watched it eleven times already (as one must, to divine policy distinctions). However, there are some staging inaccuracies which I can’t quite explain. For example, I don’t recall Hillary being a long-haired brunette who repeatedly screams “Papi!” in a near-unintelligible Honduran accent. Nor has Bill Richardson ever been, to my recollection, thin (although he has been sweaty).

*WARNING: SHAMELESSLY LOWBROW CAPTION HUMOR AHEAD!!!*

in 3…2…1…

“Hilaria” Vs. “Guillermo”: Master Debaters Pumping Democracy Into The Body Politic.

*BOO-YAH!*

Anyway…

They’re calling their election coverage “Insertion ‘08″. I don’t get it. And I don’t understand why all their debate match-ups have to feature Hillary in some way either. She may be the front-runner, but other candidates deserve to be heard too. Our democracy thrives on the marketplace of ideas. Do we really need another debate segment featuring Hillary and a physically abusive Dennis Kucinich midget lookalike who requires the use of a foot stool to get the job done? “Nay,” I say. Nay.

I know the presidential election still awaits, as it always does, on that fateful Wednesday in February, but…

Should I consider getting my political news elsewhere?

THE Cucuy

The Boogeyman

The insect-like “Boogeymantis”

Dad Stumbling Around at Night, Drunk

Adolf Hitlurker

Baron Cu von Cuy

La Llorona, Pre-Op

Genghis Khancuy

The Demon of Cuy High Harmony

Emperor Hirojoto

Cucuy Ka Joo

Richard B. Cheney

Jaime the Ripper

El Abueladaños

Sir Lancelobo

The Chupacabrones

Yahtzee the Nazi

Goblin Dick

Q’xctldactyl

Hey, mijo! I finally got this computer chingona to work.

Oye, this Internet is purty good. I saw a picture of a goat doing it with a señora from Germany. Pues, I think it was a goat.

Anyway, mijo, I know you don’t have time to visit me and your Tia on Thanksgivings. I know you’re busy with your blackberries and your Warcrafts y todo eso fregado.

Pero, don’t forgot — your Tio has a lot of good advice. I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen a lot of pendejo shit. Like this one time, your dad and I went to Boystown and we met a hairless, toothless puta named Conchita. And your dad didn’t think she was worth the $10, but it was getting late and we were pretty drunk, so we… oye, your mom doesn’t know how to get on los blogs, right? Pues, chingado, I can’t even check because este pinche dial up takes for ever.

Toothless, Hairless. Close enough

What I was trying to tell you, mijo, is that even though you’re not coming over to eat your Tía’s Tecate Stuffing or to come watch los Cowboys aquí, we’ll be thinking about you. También when that Tony Romo throws como five touchdowns and I jump up and down y screaming y calling your papá to tell him que Troy Aikman sucks y que he’s gay. You’re gonna miss it, niño.

There’s gonna be a lot of Tecate.

Hey, are you still dating that girl that had the tattoo down close to her nalga crack? Of ese dolphin? Ay, mijo — I told her to help your Tía get all the pots and pans out of the cabinets because of my arthritises, pero it was so I could see her stretch her asscrack. Remember when I went to the bathroom right after that for a while? I had to take care of business, like esos Bachman Turner Overdrives. Are you still con esa girl? You should bring her over to the house again.

Pues, mijo, I just wanted to drop you un blog aquí. We’ll save you some turkey y can de cranberries for after Día del Turkey. Maybe you can show me how to use estos Facebooks y Myspaces. This guy at work told me there’s lots of girls with their chi-chis all over los webcams on those webs.

Girls like this! ¡Dios mío!

Hasta Chreesmas, mijo. See you at the barbecue. How do I print this so you can read it?

There’s a saying,”Nothing in life is free,” and I’m saying, “nothing exemplifies that more than a trip to the circus.” It all started when my co-worker’s girlfriend asked me to go with her to the Shriner Circus for free. Of course, I said yes; I even offered to drive. I rolled up to her house wearing my “normal clown attire”- funny hat, striped socks, clown nose - nothing overboard by any means. It wasn’t like I was wearing clown shoes.

So, we were pumped- we could almost feel the sugar that was about to be running through our veins. We were giddy thinking about the man that gets shot out of a cannon and how cool it would be to be a cannon-man’s groupies. Awesome, riiight?

My friend had received a stack of free tickets at work. Her mission was to give away the fourteen free children’s tickets to families. So, we are in the never-ending parking line and I am leaning out the window of my car asking, “Do you have any children?” when I realize I must seem like a weird pedophile or black-market merchant and that it’d be better to wait until we were out of the car.

To my amazement, everybody already had free passes. I started to smell a scam, or animal poop, I couldn’t tell which, yet. We got up to the ticket booth and my friend had failed to read the passes- you had to purchase one full-priced adult ticket to get an adult in for free. The tickets were only $14, though- not nearly as expensive as other circuses- and I was all dressed up so we gave them our money.

Inside was amazing. Not the circus, but the demographic- there were maybe three Anglo families in the whole place; the rest were “my people!” It was like a secret society– WAIT, it was a secret society. There were colorful lighted images being projected on the ceiling in a hypnotic swirling motion. I look more closely and realize they are the symbols for the Freemasons and the Shriners.

Suddenly I was afraid–VERY afraid. Was this just a huge machine to brainwash and recruit future generations of Latinos to their groups? It sure seemed like it. Adding to my nervousness were all the children walking up to me and saying, “hello!” I was like, “why are they all talking to me?” and then my friend reminded me that I was dressed like a clown. Oh, yeah…

Speaking of clowns, they all had names like Touchy and Feely and Spanky and Splatter and Jizzy- I’m not even making this up. No wonder we grow up to fear clowns…

I guess it comes as no surprise to anyone but me that at every turn was a money-making opportunity- for the circus, not me. Parking - $5, Sneaky Admission - $14, Hot Dog - $5, Drink - $5, Cotton Candy - $3, Light Sabers - $?, Coloring Books - $?, Pony Rides - $?, Elephant Rides - $?, My Shame - Priceless. And, most of the families there had a least five kids in tow. Those Shriners are a smart lot.

My theory that this was all some “master plan” was re-enforced by the programming of the show. Since when are there Flamenco dancers at the circus? Since when is the emcee a Latino transvestite? And to top it all off they closed the show with a touching tribute to America in which they played Neil Diamond’s “They’re coming to America- today!” Have truer words ever been sung at a circus? I think not.

If you love your children- or yourself, for that matter- avoid the chance of brain-washing (or worse, molestation by Jizzy) at events like the Shriner Circus. Instead, get out your striped socks, put on a funny hat and make your own circus right in your own backyard.

Your kids will thank you for it.

Why are you wasting your time reading this blog? Well, if you insist, then let me tell you a little about myself. I’m Mexican-American, morena, and a self-described hot Latina. Don’t hate, learn from this.

Oh yes, I’m one of the lucky ones that didn’t grow up hating my skin color and thinking I was ugly b/c I was dark. You see, growing up in South Texas a few decades ago and being morena/prieta was not a good combo. I’m from the Rio Grande Valley, which borders Mexico, where people were too busy trying to separate themselves from the ‘mojados’ - including some relatives who were, funny enough, from Mexico. Now don’t think this affliction is limited to border towns, because if history has taught us anything, it’s that the darker your skin, the more unwanted you are.

So I heard it all, from Blackie in middle school, to ‘hurraca negra’ (translation = black crow) from some pendejo a few years ago whose wife I represented when I practiced family law in the Valley. And yes, that pendejo was darker than me, and as delusional as the rest of ‘em, but that’s for another time and another blog.

So how the hell did I become so damn confident? Well, I was always smart in school, had my own little clique in elementary and was a fast runner, so I got praised for those things. The irony of all this? When I moved to different states I always got a lot of praise from white teachers who probably didn’t expect this from a ’Mexican’ migrant farmworker, so in expecting less of me and expressing their surprise in the form of praise, they created a monster! But enough about me, let’s get to the topic at hand.

So I was really excited b/c I had this audition for Friday Night Lights today for a microscopic role that you’ll miss if you blink! It’s a mere two lines as a hospital receptionist and chances are slim to none that I’ll get it, so ask me why I’m so excited? Because I don’t have to speak it with an accent and I get to be American - I think it’s called art imitating life ;)! So why does a receptionist role thrill me when I’m a professional in ‘real life’ and many would regard this as a step down?

Because they didn’t want me to audition as a stereotype, just as a regular person - no accent required. I have auditioned for two really popular shows airing on national television and one big budget movie starring Drew Barrymore, all of which have required me to either have an accent or be a prostitute. Now don’t get me wrong, practicing my accent and flashing some skin helps me hone my craft, but enough already! BTW, I almost landed the Panamanian prostitute role, and was thrilled at the thought. Hilarious, huh?

Speaking of…today I was chatting with an actor who was auditioning for FNL as well, and got yet another dose of reality. He starts complaining about auditioning for a dad role, as opposed to the usual lawyer/doctor roles he reads for, and is embarrassed to admit he’s not up for the CEO role. So I tell him that at least he doesn’t have to audition as a prostitute or with an accent for a role.  His response?   ‘Well, it is what it is’…what the F*&% is that!?!

Does anyone see the humor in all this? I couldn’t stop smiling and couldn’t wait to get out of there so I could make fun of this idiot out loud. Did I mention he’s an airline flight attendant who later wanted me to give him advice about his 18 yr-old-son who had a ‘hard’ life?

What do I say to that? Well, it is what it is.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, national pundits like immigration-obsessed CNN host Lou Dobbs disingenuously pretend there is no racial aspect to the current immigration policy “discussion”.

Dobbs: “Mention of Mexicans’ filthy brown skin has no place in a proper immigration debate.”

One of the most fascinating developments of the Latino Comedy Project’s “300″ video’s far-flung international exposure (over ONE MILLION VIEWS on YouTube, bitches!) has been the intense response it’s provoked in the comments section. Specifically, the video’s ironic and exaggerated use of immigration”invasion” imagery seems to have provoked an endless stream of comments that can most charitably be categorized as “Vintage Retro-Racist Harangue Chic.”

Vintage Racist.

Our nation’s closet racists are often unfairly stereotyped as a monolithic group, but in fact, I’ve discovered that their prolific writings represent an intellectually diverse strain of thought. So I’ve organized their “300″ comments into categories accurately reflecting both the content of the comments and the character of their authors (my own running observations are in bold italics).

Are these comments “monolithic”? Hardly. “Unsettling”? Perhaps. “Fucking stupid as shit and richly deserving of a merciless Mexican beatdown the likes of which haven’t been seen since the infamous Latin Kings Involuntary Beat-In Massacre of ‘89″?

Let’s not rush to judgment.

Coming Soon to White Suburbia: The Latin Kings “Bridges To Tolerance” Tour.

A single blog entry isn’t nearly enough to adequately explore all facets of this subculture, so it will be divided into several parts. Keep in mind: this is not a parody of racist comments. These are actual comments by actual persons somewhere in the United States who took the time to actually type these words.

Let’s begin with the more basic psychological deficits and work our way down, shall we…?

THE IRONICALLY CHALLENGED

HVPinc: “…It was like watching a documentary.”

jcc6767: “This [video] was a very well done piece of historical fact.”

Historically accurate Mexican orange-slinging.

THE MILITARY PORN FANTASIST

        Never let it be said these people aren’t “solution-oriented…”- A.

Hpeviscerate: “OK, I think I got it…. Suffice it to say, we need a giant mionefield (sic) across the border and if that dont work mines, pungee pits, motion-sensitive, fully-automatic sentry guns, and border dogs. then maybe a wall…”

ar15expert : “Two .50 Cal. M2 BMG crews and some land mines. Problem solved.”

boozehound420: “1 gattling gun wielding texan and there (sic) all gone.”

Lean, mean comment-postin’ machine.

camilleinchicago: “Notice how the only weapons they use (brooms, pregnant bellies) are things that don’t require a brain to operate. Bring in a couple AC-130’s and we’ll be in business.”

My money’s on the belly.

jcc6767 : “A Sniper every 1000 yds is only three per mile…..or a total of 5,100 snipers in 8 hr shifts for a grand total of 15,300 troops for the entire border….It’s very workable and should be implemented….. The amount of money our country would save would pay for the deployment 100 times over annually.”

        Psychotic, yet fiscally responsible. I like!- A.

“jcc6767 weporting for supah-dupah deadly elite ninja-samuwai-astwonaut-Jedi-sniper duty, sir! Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

THE AMATEUR ETHNOLOGISTS

SourBreastMilk: “Mexicans are just the mutt offspring of the noble Spanish and the filthy heart eating natives.”

YoungRoy: “What culture? Your country has garbage fields, pregnant girls and drunken men. Oh, yeah. I’d hate to leave that behind. :/ ”

“Despite the illusion of communicating through an oral orifice, the Amateur Ethnologist is actually speaking out his asshole.”

AmazonChitlin: “Best at making anchor babies, yes. Best at making a taco, yes. Best at blowing leaves off my porch, yes. Best people? No.”

        Was this commenter’s conception the best use of human DNA? No. -A.

Cribster: “This reflects the true nature of the invaders, not that ‘just here to work’ BS.”

Ooga001: “you filthy beaner. STFU. go back to your sombrero touting beaner country you pinche putta. lol. Don’t you dare compare Gandhi to you strawberry-picking wetbacks! you worthless beaners just steal, commit other crimes, fuck all day and make children, and fuck up the whole place.”

        Commit crimes and fuck all day? Shit, I WISH. - A

AllStar182: “i wouldn’t mind so much if they came here LEGALLY, and if 80% of them weren’t slobs who litter and play their crappy music ridiculously loud.”

        “Rollin’ in my Six-Fo, bumpin’ Los Tigres Del Norte, fuck tha mundo!” - A.

“But this accordion goes to eleven - Del Norte SIIIIDE!”

matthewdoodledog: “As a white person I am not offended by this video. Although it is a 100% accurate description of how mexicans and brazilians enter the country, like the freeloading child rearing wetbacks they are”

        Ha ha, see? No need for anyone to be offended…No, wait. -A.

ThunderNoTube: “Only the mestizo could approach the nappiness of the lowly negro. These short, squat, brown, dim-witted caricatures of earliest Humanity are appalling to all that are unfortunate enough to observe them. They have no value in this or any other nation. NO war for Israel!”

        Webster’s Dictionary defines a “non sequitur” as “a statement that appears logically unrelated to the preceding Israeli cyborg assassins walk among us.” -A.

“Prime Directive 4: Mazeltov!”

This concludes Part 1. You’ve been warned: The surface has yet nary a scratch.
Future installments coming soon!

Mical’s wild hair (in his last blog, which you should read) has become the thorn in my side. I think about Austin’s changes every day; but, not until Mical (unknowingly, I’m sure,) posted a picture of someone I know in his blog did it really get me thinking.

Austin is an ever-growing popular town. I moved here during the Summer Olympics of 1984. Watching those games on a tiny TV, in a living room with no furniture was liberating and foreshadowed the lessons I would learn from the city of Austin that, frankly, I don’t think I could have ever learned from Brownsville, Texas. There’s a song by Erykah Badu- a fellow Texan- that reminds me of these simpler, younger times, called, “Puff”- “Back in the day when things were cool all we needed was bop ba ba ba ba ba da.”

The contrast of being the darkest person in my neighborhood in Austin, as opposed to the lightest in my neighborhood in Brownsville, would prove to be enlightening. The comparison of what I might have been, maturing in Brownsville, as opposed to growing up in Austin, from age 7 on, is as stark a contrast as what Austin was as to what it has become.

I remember when we could watch the fireworks in Zilker Park from my bedroom window. Now there is a large development of apartments that stretches above all the tree-tops in the way.

I remember when you could stay in a cheap motel on South Congress where the full-sized fridge would be full of beer from the couple before you and you wouldn’t be surprised to find a dead body under your mattress. Now there’s this stylish new-school renovation.

The picture of the man that Mical posted was this guy

that used to hang out on Sixth Street and frequented an all-ages club I used to go to called “Black Cat,”- which has since burned down. He was homeless, I’m pretty sure, and made jewelry to sell Downtown and, one night, gave me a necklace made with a shark’s tooth. He just wanted me to have it. I haven’t thought about that guy in forever until I saw that picture on Mical’s blog.

I remember going to “Raves” in the woods or at Chuck E. Cheese or at the Peter Pan Putt Putt Golf place. There are no “Raves” anymore…it’s even difficult to find a glowstick. And, I remember going to see Nirvana at Liberty Lunch- now there are just high-rise office buildings there instead. And, somewhere along the way, people quit dancing at concerts. You can barely get them to bob their heads. I’m thinking all the people that have moved here in the last decade are too cool to dance.
Like the Goodie Mob says, “People don’t dance no mo’- all they do is diss.”

And I can’t even tell you how many works of art- intricate, colorful murals that have been around since I was a kid- that have been painted over in the name of gentrification- not painted over with different murals, just sad, beige walls. It seriously breaks my heart. At least a small portion of the famed artist, Daniel Johnston’s history, still remains here.

I had a conversation with one of my neighbors yesterday who also has lived in Austin for the last twenty years and he, too, has noticed a change- not with just the landscape but with an over-all attitude that has prevailed in the last several years. You know what his theory was? That people have become less considerate since Bush has been in the White House. Now, I don’t have any scientific correlations; but the truth is, he’s right. I have noticed it, too.

I love quotes:

As Dylan Thomas put it…
“We who are young are old. It is the oldest cry.
Age sours before youth’s tasted in the mouth
And any sweetness that it has
Is sucked away.”

Charlie Louvin:
“I want to die young,
At a very old age.”

Joe Jackson:
“We are young but getting old before our time
We’ll leave the TV and the radio behind
Don’t you wonder what we’ll find
Steppin’ out tonight?”

And Harvey Milk:
“Let’s stop being dicks, at least for a little bit. Say, now through the New Year.”

I know it’s idealistic, but what if we could stop being dicks for a little bit? What if we let each other get in front of us in traffic, or actually waved when someone did let us in or what if we smiled at people walking by or held the elevator or just gave thanks a little more often? What if we gave that thanks out loud every chance we got?

Maybe the world would be a little more like the ’90’s…

Next week I’ll tell you about my visit to the “Mexican Circus” sponsored by the Shriners and Freemasons!

Always,
Danu

If you’re white, you may not have heard, but among Latinos, the news traveled swiftly last week, via e-mail, pre-paid phone call and carrier mosquito: the Chupacabra, at long last, was dead.

In fact, it wasn’t even a mythical creature. It was a hairless coyote. Not even a real coyote: this was just a kind of dog, not the guy in the big truck who brought your cousins across the border for a fee.

Suddenly, it was safe to let your goats play outside again. Goats could take walks at night in the park. Goats parking at a romantic, dark cove on a Saturday night, no longer had to worry about a hook-bearing goat-sucker killing them both.

Would that I could be so happy.

Since the news broke, I’ve felt sick and guilty, ashamed and afraid. But I think I’m ready to come forward. I think it’s time I was honest.

Before I met my wife, in the wild, debauched time after I moved to Austin… I dated a hairless coyote.

I never suspected. I never knew. When I heard that she was a “Wild goatsucker,” I just thought she was just a freak in bed. And you know what? She totally was.

When I started seeing the news stories, I wondered if it was my hairless coyote. Sheila? Is that you? Could it be? After all this time?

Sadly, it’s her. That dried up, curled tongue is unmistakable. I can never forget all those times we made out, listening to Enigma.

I never got to say goodbye. I never got to learn what made her go out and kill all those goats.

All those angry farmers, all those frightened goats. They never knew my girl.

RIP, Sheila.