A big tip of the sombrero and an abrazo for gustavo arellano!

Gustavo Arellano, he/el of ASK-A-MEXICAN fame, appears in the March 2, 2007 edition of the Los Angeles Times; therein the sure-to-be-damned, wicked Chicano columnist holds forth on recent racist college party trends--namely, all-the-rage Latino-themed bacchanals wherein costumed gringos y gringas (other human flavors no doubt attend as well) don sombreros and fake mustaches, while siphoning barrels of tequila and beer down their gullets--this, as a means (but of course!) of channeling our intrinsically Dionysian inner Chicana/o Dasein. It turns out simulating barrio Mexicans might be the NEXT big story since Paris Hilton's storage locker turned up on Ebay. Our African-American hermanos y hermanas have put up with these shenanigans (2) for over a century, so we may be in for one hell of a ride:

That Arrellano elects to anoint Tex[t]-Mex with a mention at the end of his piece means I have to buy him a beeg beeg regalito/regalote this coming navidad! Abrazos Gustavo! Abrazos!

Carmen Mesta | The Young and the Restless | Tex[t]-Mex

Cultural Studies maven and SDSU graduate student Jim Ricker has been watching The Young and the Restless lately (God help him!) and has run across a character, Carmen Mesta, whose intrigues evoke the contours of our Tex[t]-Mex adventures. Click here for the full scoop!

Matt Damon, wanna-be Chicano spymaster!

In the last couple of days, two beloved, anonymous spies sent me startling tidings that Matt Damon had recently and nonchalantly pushed another Mexican American actor out of a plum Hollywood role when he was selected by Robert De Niro* to play a version of Mexican-American CIA operative James Jesus (that's Jesús as in "the moose," not Jesus as in "Rhesus") Angleton in The Good Shepherd--in the movie, Angleton's character's name is Edward Bell Wilson. Tom Manggold, in the British Mail on Sunday, holds forth on this miscasting eloquently, with his swarthy-detector tongue sharply in cheek: "Jim Angleton was a 6ft 1in, half-Mexican, sallow-faced, brown-eyed, wide-mouthed, stooping, secretive, ghostly figure who always wore dark clothes and a black homburg. I didn't add that Damon is to Angleton what Peter Pan would have been to Marlon Brando."

*The casting directors for The Good Shepherd (as noted at imdb.com) were Sig De Miguel, Amanda Mackey Johnson, Cathy Sandrich and Wendy Weidman, so wise guy De Niro can't take the whole rap for the movie's anti-chicanegans!