Mexican Swimmers! The Elite!

Oy Gevalt!

Julie Myers, Blackface-lovin', Immigration-shillin', and Stupidity-bein' Diva!

This is an old story, but seems worth archiving here at the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog, a site that seeks to chronicle the evolution of American stereotypes of all stripes and flavors. Julie Myers, Bush-designated immigration go-to gal and Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement head, has peculiar taste when it comes to judging Halloween party costumes! As such, she has earned the right to join our growing panoply of portraits in something I am calling the Pantheon of American Stereotypes!

Congratulations Julie! And please, pretty please, invite me to your next Halloween party--I've got the perfect costume.

¡Sas!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, Alfonso Bedoya, Mexicano extraordinaire from Treasure of the Sierra Madre and, right below, Jewish-American comic genius, Mel Brooks's riff off the same from Blazing Saddles--here, curiously, Brooks anticipates Dave Chappelle's vision by three decades.





I have written about Chappelle's work here (January 19, 2007), and designed a class around some of his choice antics here.

Salma Hayek: Pondering 21st Century Latina Bombshells

I am in debt to reader and correspondent David O. García for the embedded video below from Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn featuring the acting and dancing talents of Salma Hayek. I will add a comment to it shortly, but will note here briefly in the interim that the director Rodriguez's warped syncretism, blending indigenous Mexica/Aztec semiotic elements with a down-home 'Merican strip club is curious to say the least!

High Tech Aztec, er, Rodent or Next-Gen Speedy Gonzaleses

A quick link to a story about genetic engineering with a cameo headline featuring the "fastest mouse in all Mexico." Andale, andale, arriba, arriba!

To your left? Speedy's new nemesis! Sorry Sylvester.

Watching Frida Kahlo Through Nickolas Muray's Camera

A traveling gallery of Nickolas Muray photographs of Frida Kahlo, her posse, and some of her paintings is making the rounds these days. Muray's evocative photos match Gilbert Hernandez's pen and india ink when it comes to revealing the inner life of oil painting's 20th century Mexican diva.

Meanwhile, Kahlo-loving gossip mongers may want to peruse the sassy palabras of Diego Rivera's daughter--the behemoth Lothario's female issue holds no punches.

The fifth chapter of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America studies the way Kahlo's biography shaped the eccentric eye of Chicano comic book genius Hernandez.

Ask-A-Mexican Agitprop Hijinks!

Just a quick link to my cool, Mexican, cultural studies partner-in-crime, Gustavo Arellano, caught recently, here on the elementary school lecture trails!

Órale!

Arellano visits and reads at SDSU 2pm on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 in the Love Library (LA 2203), or, as I call it, the Library of Love owing to all the voyeurs wankers that used to hang out there. Arellano appears courtesy of the Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series and, of course, the mothership, literature.sdsu.edu.

Breaking News!

More on Arellano here--replete with huge, Norma Desmond style close-up picture!