New stamp honors Profe Jaime Escalante (‘Stand and Deliver’)

escalantestampThe United States Postal Service picked the 87th conference of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Wednesday in Washington, D.C. to premiere its stamp honoring Jaime Escalante, the East Los high school math teacher who was the hero of the film Stand and Deliver.

Edward J. Olmos played Escalante in the film (video below).

From the USPS website:

Mas…New stamp honors Profe Jaime Escalante (‘Stand and Deliver’)

WTF? ‘Latina’ magazine picks 30 ‘most iconic’ Latinos on TV

Boy, these are fun times, huh? Everyone wants to either be Latino or market Latino things. Let’s all Hispanicize!

I mean, just look around! The GOP is embracing Latinos (har, har) and there are products everywhere like Tide Latino, Ford Latino, Clorox Latino, Latino socks, Latino water, Latino sunlight. Hell, there’s even a PETA Latino now! These Hispanic marketeers know no bounds!

Recently, Latina.com named the “30 most iconic Latino TV characters of the past 60 years.”

My only problem with that is their elastic definition of “Latino.” Many of their icon choices are either stereotypes or just plain questionable. They could have named their article “We’re reaching here, so bear with us, and buy some Latino Tide!”

I’ll run down a few of the more questionable picks and let you decide who makes the cut. Are they iconic? Are they Latino? Are they iconic Latinos?? Gasp! You be the judge. And for the love of Latino Jesus, make sure you buy some corporate Latino products while you’re at it.

Mas…WTF? ‘Latina’ magazine picks 30 ‘most iconic’ Latinos on TV

Scanning for Mexicans? How about puro pocho ringtones! (audio)

Our amigos at Latino Rebels tipped us off to a brewing controversy about a South Park audio clip being used as a ringtone. On South Park they were “scanning for Mexicans.”

We decided cellphones needed some puro pocho ringtones, so we made four ringtones — dare we call them POCHOTONES? — starring Cheech Marin, Edward J. Olmos, Alfonso Bedoya and George Lopez.

Download and share (.mp3 format):

Mas…Scanning for Mexicans? How about puro pocho ringtones! (audio)

‘Prometheus’ exhibits subtle (and not-so-subtle) Hollywood racism


First things first – Ridley Scott is an asshole.

OK. Now that that’s out of the way, I recently rented the film Prometheus and boy did it suck. I had to check the credits and make sure David Duke wasn’t executive producer.

There are a ton of sites that discuss why this film sucks so I won’t go into those here. There are also a ton of sites that get into why film snobs like me just don’t “get it” and that’s fine – I was actually disappointed to find that Roger Ebert not only liked this film but thought it was “magnificent.” Four stars? Pfft.

This film, while visually stunning at times, is just another notch in the belt for the subtle and not-so-subtle racism that spews out of the Hollywood machine. I Googled “Prometheus racist” and found one thread that had people mocking the very notion:

Racist?! Give me a break!

Mas…‘Prometheus’ exhibits subtle (and not-so-subtle) Hollywood racism

Toke the Vote urges big turnout for Tuesday Presidential election

(PNS reporting from OAKLAND) “Are you planning on voting Tuesday, brah?” Dale Mendoza scrunched his eyes shut behind his dark sunglasses as he concentrated on his phone call with a potential voter in Arkansas.

“This election is critical, OK, and we totally need your vote.” Mendoza (photo, left) was the team leader of two dozen phone bank volunteers in a basement office in this Northern California city, possible the country’s most pot-friendly municipality.

The smoke-filled room is a California outpost of Toke the Vote, a coalition of pro-marijuana political activists backed by the Zig-Zag cigarette papers company and ConAgra’s Screaming Yellow Zonkers snack products.

Mas…Toke the Vote urges big turnout for Tuesday Presidential election