Craig McCracken, The Powerpuff Girls, Collect Her, and Object/Ephemera Addictions

One of my best graduate students ever, Jonny Holt, stopped by the office today to catch up and chat; since leaving academe, he's enmeshed himself in the world of publishing and bookselling. In any event, Holt reminded me of a presentation he did on comic book and comic artifact collecting. It was a lecture that folded together Holt's readings of Chris Ware and Craig McCracken and focused on the obsessional pathologies that can arise from books, toys, etc. when a passion for collecting goes awry--or, in the eyes of the collectors, when passion turns to obsession. Here's that episode of the The Powerpuff Girls, "Collect Her/Supper Villain"(1999)--a classic!

Tex[t]-Mex Versus the Sleeping Mexican

No offense to the turf of my wonderful blogger-mate Maribel Alvarez, but I have to share a story of irony. My book Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America is about stereotypes--"Mexican" stereotypes that propogate like bunnies in American pop culture. So look what I see every morning as I look out over my breakfast. No, really, here, look:


My neighbor and colleague [!], a Brit and a friend, has a window adorned with a glass sleeping "Mexican." It is an artifact, a glass monstrosity, that cries out to the world and me with eye-bourn tales of Latino woe. Daily, my Cheerios and migas are soured, my psyche harassed, by a stained glass tchotchke that mocks this Mexican with its pithy semiotic "funnyness."

Get this... I have not told him a thing; have not even made a joke about it, can't bring it up!

I am speechless--me!

Somehow, I have to bring it up.... Maybe a gift of the book for X-mas????? In the meantime, I will try to sit in a chair that does not face that window!

Here are some other items I have meant to post and have not found the time--let me throw them up here now and get back to them soon.... The first is an artifact from a store here in San Diego on India Street that specializes in the sale of sleeping "Mexicans" and "Spaniards"--they who wisely siesta at the hottest time of the day:


What I LOVE about this bank is that this "Mexican," or whatever "he" is, is NOT sleeping, and is, in fact, emblematic of industry--he's a BANK!



More on this soon!

Lastly, a photo from US Weekly outing celebrity tackyness but throwing a link into Mexicans in the process:



More to come--remember: almost ALL the images in the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog are clickable and enlargeable! Hence the name "gallery-blog." Thanks to Moises in Chicago for asking.


update

Regarding the comment below from a former graduate student and future professor: GRACIAS!

What Else Would Speedy Gonzales Be Chasing?

Every time I relent and decide to reconsider the value of the criticism I have received for "outing" Speedy Gonzales as a handy purveyor of "Mexican"-ness in the Americas, I run into something like the bumper sticker below. The thesis of Tex[t]-Mex is pathetically simple: that the more you study it, the more you realize the semiotic history (and, unfortunately, destiny) of "Mexicans" in the Americas--"Mexican" are nothing more and nothing less that the choice U.S.A. synecdoche (part for whole, as in "all 'hands' [sailors] on deck") for criminality and sexuality.



Still and all, I love the little bugger and this bank does not totally suck!

More on the Sleeping Mexican

Last week I gave you the headsup about the sleepingmex blog being curated by folklorist extraordinaire Maribel Alvarez out of the University of Arizona and the Borderlore project. I did a little spelunking of my own a few weeks ago and stumbled upon a treasure-trove of my sleepy, be-sombreroed ilk! Here is a picture from that shoot.