What is the deal on Day of the Dead? EddieG explains.
PREVIOUSLY ON DAY OF THE DEAD:
Mas…Que es El Dia De Los Muertos? What is the Day of the Dead? (video)
tradition
Mom puts cross on son’s front lawn to mark another failed relationship
(PNS reporting from HOUSTON) Sara Maestas placed a two-foot-high cruz on her only son’s lawn early this morning — a cross in remembrance of his latest failed relationship.
The 32-year-old transactional lawyer got dumped Saturday night by his novia, less than 20 minutes after he blew off a dinner date. And now his mother’s white polystyrene cross, adorned with flowers, sits front and center on Benjamin Maestas’ lawn in Montrose.
Just before a scheduled 6 PM Saturday rendezvous at Hugo’s Regional Mexican Cuisine, girlfriend Vicki Gardea got a text from Maestas saying he couldn’t meet due to “a short deadline to close on a shopping center for a multinational client.”
Mas…Mom puts cross on son’s front lawn to mark another failed relationship
Street tacos in Mexico City — guisado for pinches borrachos (video)
Polanco, they say, is the Beverly Hills of Mexico DF, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t illegal taco carts on the street. They serve trendy tacos de guisados to area workers during the day, Daniel Hernandez reports, and to partying pinches borrachos at night.
Walt Disney, Inc. wants to trademark ‘Dia de los Muertos’ (toon)
The Walt Disney Company filed several trademark applications last week with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO.GOV) to secure the name “Dia de Los Muertos” as a service mark.
Mas…Walt Disney, Inc. wants to trademark ‘Dia de los Muertos’ (toon)
@Chicano_Soul’s photographs ride lower and slower
I don’t consider myself a photographer but I do enjoy walking through car shows, up and down the aisles admiring the bombs, lowriders and classics and snapping a few pix while I’m there.
I photograph the rides and sometimes their owners standing beside them. I started off using the camera on my Samsung phone but it’s 3.15 megapixels proved to fall way short when I decided to try to print the images.
Compliments from friends family and Instagram followers convinced me it was time to upgrade to a real camera and take my hobby to the next level.
I began dragging my wife and kids to as many car shows as I could find and then getting home, going through the camera roll to see that day’s catch.
Backstage at lucha libre in Bolivia with Landshapes’ ‘In Limbo’ (video)
British synth-pop band Landshapes shot the music video for their new song In Limbo backstage at lucha libre in Bolivia. There’s a great writeup of the shoot here.
Meanwhile, what’s up with those cholitas all dressed up in Bolivan bowler hats? This video explains:
Mas…Backstage at lucha libre in Bolivia with Landshapes’ ‘In Limbo’ (video)
OK tablets are cool, but sometimes you just need paper (video)
Self-consciously cool French dudes sure love their iPads, but sometimes, as the mademoiselles know, one must squeeze Le Charmin, or Le Trefle, as they say in France. D’accord, Monsieur Whipple? Or do we have to mansplain it to you?
- RELATED: Yes, we have another video with a toilet scene: Don Cheto totally does it ‘Puro Gangnam Style’ (video)
Inca round-up of vicuña to gather ‘The Gold of the Andes’ (video)
In the high desert of the Peruvian Andes, the descendants of the Inca form a human chain to perform the Chaccu, the ritual round-up and shearing of the wild vicuña.
Back from Baja vacay, local man laments Cabo’s lack of Mexican food
(PNS reporting from PHILADELPHIA) Bobby Mueller doesn’t want to be unkind, really. “My mother taught me that if you don’t have something nice to say, it’s better to say nothing at all,” he explains. “But the so-called Mexican food in Cabo San Lucas bites the big one.”
The University City marketing rep, who returned Sunday night from a week-long vacation on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, was complaining to friends at a local brew-pub-salumeria.
“I spent an entire week looking for decent quinoa taquitos with pesto guacamole,” the self-described ‘foodie’ said, “and do you think I found them anywhere? No dice, dude. Zilch. Nada!”
Mas…Back from Baja vacay, local man laments Cabo’s lack of Mexican food
The Pocho Ocho cosas I found in my Rosca de Reyes
Sunday is Three Kings Day, Dia de Los Reyes Magos, AKA Epiphany, the day when Los Tres Reyes dropped by the manger to gift up the original Anchor Baby, El Baby Jesus.
Check out the pocho ocho things we found in the Rosca de Reyes here at the POCHO world headquarters:
8. Plastic Baby Jesus
7. One long black hair
6. Homies action figure “Cholo Priest”
The Pope’s on Twitter and Vatican nuns stage a fashion show (video)
The Pope is on Twitter and the Sisters of the Vatican have a new fashion show! Thank God the world is ending in three weeks!
Tía Chita: ‘It’s final! I’ve absolutely, positively made my last tamal!’
(PNS reporting from LAREDO) Tia Chita will not be hosting the annual holiday season tamalada at her house this year, she revealed to her family last night. As a matter of fact, she told stunned participants at her niece’s baby shower, she never wants to make another tamal in her life.
“First of all, I’m sick of all the gossip!” she shouted, pacing around the room quicker and quicker the more excited she became.
“I know the tamaladas are where all the comadres are supposed to catch up on ‘family news’ and everything, but did you ever think that I really don’t care who’s sleeping with whom and who’s going to have a baby? Ya estoy vieja, I’ve been a million weddings already!”
Chita is sick of everyone coming over to eat her food and then leaving dirty napkins everywhere, staining her nice couches with tamal grease, she said. Sometimes the bathroom gets stopped up, and she has to have the neighbor come over with the plumber’s snake. “He’s not a smell-good plumber,” she grimaced.
Mas…Tía Chita: ‘It’s final! I’ve absolutely, positively made my last tamal!’
Eye of the beholder: A day in the life of an Eames chair (video)
DIEZ tells the story of a molded plywood Eames chair and its journey over the course of a few days in San Francisco, a journey that starts when the chair is momentarily left in front of an upscale gallery, and an older Mexican woman takes the chair, mistaking the modern design icon for trash. This random event sets in motion the chair’s journey and surprising transformation.
DIEZ deconstructs; literally and figuratively – an Eames chair. The story illustrates in a whimsical fashion how the value of material objects can have different, but no less important, meaning to different people. DIEZ shows the many different realities that exist in the same neighborhood and the contrasting values that accompany them. Ultimately DIEZ asks the question; when divided into its DIEZ (ten) basic components, what value does an Eames chair really have?
Pocho Ocho Top Old-School Abuelita-Style Remedios (cures)
Abuela knows best, amirite?
She recommends these old-fashioned remedios for whatever ails you:
8. Chile
Does it matter that you don’t eat chile? Or that this special hot sauce will burn a hole in your ulcer? No, eat it, you’ll see how much better you feel.
7. Nopal or linaza (cactus or flax seed)
If there’s something wrong with you, let’s flush it out. Sure, you will be spending the next week in the bathroom, but by the time you come out, whatever was ailing you will be long gone.
6. Rubbing an egg all over you while saying a prayer. (Una limpia con huevo)
Did your abuelita learn this ritual in church? Hell no, but for whatever reason, when she’s rubbing a cold egg all over you saying a Catholic prayer, it somehow makes you feel better. By the time that egg sucks up whatever evil eye someone gave you, the idea that this ritual is strange and old world will have slipped your mind.
Mas…Pocho Ocho Top Old-School Abuelita-Style Remedios (cures)
Protestors target Monsanto’s plans for soy ‘chicharrones’ (updated)
(PNS reporting from MISSOURI) Busloads of pro-pig activists from Texas converged on Monsanto’s St. Louis headquarters here today to protest the chemical/agricultural mega-corporation’s plans to produce extruded soy flaps meant to replace natural chicharrones.
Bearing signs that read “NO PORK NO PEACE,” “WE WANT LARD FOR OUR MONEY” and “SAY NO TO SOY CHICHARRONES,” the so-called Occupy Monsanto movement plans to shut down traffic around the corporate campus until they get a response from Monsanto. [UPDATE: MONSANTO STATEMENT BELOW.]
The group was confronted by counter demonstrators from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) who carried signs proclaiming “PIGS ARE PEOPLE TOO.” Some scantily-clad female PETA protestors threatened a sex strike to protest actual pig parts consumption. “WANT BOINK? NO OINK!” read one sign.
Mas…Protestors target Monsanto’s plans for soy ‘chicharrones’ (updated)
Women beware: You might be guilty of ‘walking with ovaries’
Several years ago, I was driving through the backwoods of central Florida trying to find the home of a distant cousin. Desperately lost, I called my mother, but my abuela answered the phone.
I asked her, “Hey, do you know Annita’s phone number? I’m trying to find her house.”
My grandmother’s response: “Go home. A woman shouldn’t be driving alone.”
I can’t help but feel my grandmother’s Old World values have a residual grasp on modern society — the notion that a woman’s role is in the private sphere, that she should not be out in public.
Often while walking the streets of Manhattan I’m subjected to stares that deem me guilty of a crime: guilty of walking with ovaries.
Mas…Women beware: You might be guilty of ‘walking with ovaries’
Flying chupacabra kills 35 sheep in Michoacan (three videos)
Almost three dozen sheep lie dead in a corral in Michoacan and one witness blames a creature with fangs and wings. From Britain’s Daily Mail:
When farmers in Mexico found 35 of their sheep slaughtered with significant claw and tooth marks around their necks, they had one creature to blame – the legendary chupacabra. One man tending to the sheep overnight in the small Mexican town of Paracuaro said he saw animals with sharp fangs and wings kill the livestock. Dubbed the ‘Bigfoot of Latin culture,’ the chupacabra is a legendary four-legged creature that many think is responsible for attacking and killing livestock.
But how does a flying chupacabra compare with a flying purple people eater? And who wants to actually SEE a flying saucer? Two music videos below provide the answers
Mas…Flying chupacabra kills 35 sheep in Michoacan (three videos)
Mayan Doomsday (the video): ‘2012 The Mayan Word’
Here’s a novel idea: Why not ask some Mayans about the impending apocalypse? Undercurrents Alternative News did just that in 2012 The Mayan Word. In Spanish and English with English subtitles, this hour-long documentary takes a look at the impending death and obliteration of the world as we know it and beginning of our glorious metamorphosis into luminous beings of light in the Singularity to come. Or maybe not. The official writeup is below.
Scientists ID Chicana who hasn’t seen ‘Blood In Blood Out’ (video)
(PNS reporting from ALTA CALIFORNIA) Ethnic anthropologists recently discovered the last living Chicana who has never seen the coming-of-age movie Blood In Blood Out.
The woman, not named in the report, was spotted and identified last summer in the Los Angeles suburb of Cudahy, according to a study published in the prestigious journal Science.
The subject, 32, had no explanation for not seeing the film that is “required viewing” for a true Chicano or Chicana, according to the paper, although scientists have been analyzing her brain for abnormalities in her “cholo receptors:”
Mas…Scientists ID Chicana who hasn’t seen ‘Blood In Blood Out’ (video)
Politics of chonies: What I learned when I sent my laundry out
I might be renting out a room this summer to a friend. She made a phone appointment with me and asked a list of questions about living in my place in Brooklyn. How far is it from Manhattan? What trains do you take? Do you have Internet? Can I use the kitchen? Then she asked about laundry.
“I heard you take your laundry on the bus!” she said like it was some sort of urban myth. I took one of those prolonged intakes of breath.
Laundry is complicated.
Mas…Politics of chonies: What I learned when I sent my laundry out
Pocho Ocho cosas I found in my Rosca de Reyes
Happy Three Kings Day, Dia de Los Reyes Magos, AKA Epiphany, the day when Los Tres Reyes dropped by the manger to gift up the original Anchor Baby, El Baby Jesus.
In Mexico and now all across Pocholandia, some celebrate with the Rosca de Reyes, a tasty and yeasty treat topped with butter and sugar.
Sometimes it is soaked in rum, like Tio Frankie. Baked inside is a plastic Baby Jesus figurine, which, if you get it in your slice of pan, symbolizes great fortune. And it also means you are stuck with the bill for yet another Catholic drinkfest one month later.
Below are the top eight things we have found in the Rosca de Reyes here at the POCHO world headquarters! Enjoy!
8. Plastic Baby Jesus
7. One long black hair
6. Homies Doll, “Cholo Priest”
