Hispanic Fanatic

Here’s a quick shout out to Frankie, Ankhesen, Ulises, and Chris for their comments on my recent posts. Thank you all, and thanks to everyone who shares his or her thoughts here.

But now let me backtrack a little.

Recently, I used my cyber bully pulpit to disparage comedian George Lopez and, by extension, anyone who thinks that he’s funny. I’m not backing down on my criticism, but I need to qualify it.

You see, I’ve written much about the positive aspects of Latino culture, such as our strong familial ties and powerful work ethic and openness to share emotions and many other good and true characteristics.

But I’ve also written about some less uplifting traits. And to that list, I have to add one more item:

We’re not particularly funny people.

I realize this is a gross generalization. I’m sure that plenty of Latinos are hilarious. It’s just that I haven’t met them or seen them on television or watched their stand-up routines.

We have to be honest and say that no Hispanic has ever really made America laugh, except maybe Cheech Marin, and he put the low in low-brow.

Indeed, the first Hispanic sitcom, back in the 1980s, was “Aka Pablo,” starring Paul Rodriguez. It was such a monumental flop that Latinos have been rare on comedies ever since (by the way, my hatred for this short-lived show is so intense that it demands a full post sometime).

The first Hispanic comedian to receive any kind of mainstream success in America was Cantinflas, a star from the 1950s. You are forgiven if you don’t know who he is. The guy seems to be more of poor man’s Charlie Chaplin than anything else.

One could argue that Latino culture’s history of death, destruction, and poverty does not lend itself to big laughs. That may be true, but then what do we make of the fact that some of the most insightful and cutting comedians of the last few decades have been black? Think of the line from Richard Pryor to Chris Rock and beyond. African Americans, of course, have just as much, if not more, misery in their collective backgrounds. They have apparently been better able to mine this history to create cutting-edge observations.

As a result, black people have Dave Chappelle. We have Carlos Mencia. That contrast is just depressing.

Similarly, a look at Jewish comedy reveals such heavy hitters as Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Judd Apatow, and others too numerous to mention. We’re talking about decades of mainstream success across a wide range of styles. And of course, Jews have endured one or two negative developments over the course of their cultural history. It hasn’t stopped them from coming up with a witty line now and then.

So why aren’t we funnier? I haven’t the slightest idea. But with this blog, I’ve tried to avoid becoming a writer who is, in the words of the great humorist Spalding Gray, so very “earnest, earnest, earnest.” That seems to be the default setting for many Latinos (and many bloggers, while we’re at it). By the way, Spalding Gray was a white guy.

In any case, the situation for Latino humor is grim… hey, I guess that was a joke, given the subject matter.

Yes, as you can see, you don’t want me to accept the challenge to be the comedic Latino. I’m just not that funny.

Like many people, I check out PostSecret weekly to see what kind of freaks, weirdoes, and social deviants are out there. For those of you who don’t know, PostSecret is a wildly successful website where people send in postcards detailing their dark secrets, obsessive thoughts, and big regrets.

The site is designed to bring us together, an online therapeutic effort to help people see that others share their fears and hopes. I’m sure it does that for many readers. But I imagine that for many others, it just provokes a voyeuristic “Wow, that guy is nuts” reaction.

Every now and then, I read a submission that resonates with me. For example, the following was in this week’s batch of new secrets:

I must admit that I’m annoyed. Sure, it’s offensive that somebody believes that a violent act is representative of Latino culture. And yes, it’s an odd and pathetic response for a victim to dwell on the mugger’s race (to the point of becoming “obsessed”).

But what really pisses me off is this: I’ve spent a lot of time writing about Latino culture, trying to express the nuances and intricacies of Hispanic thinking, when all I really had to do in order to get someone’s attention was to punch him and steal his wallet. That would have been substantially easier (and while we’re at, much more profitable).

So I’m sure you understand why I will refrain from any further efforts to publicize this blog via social media, google analytics, keywords, SEO marketing, word of mouth, or other techniques that are oh so inside-the-box thinking. I will also pay substantially less attention to quality writing and original insights, because that clearly doesn’t matter much.

Instead, you will find me wandering the alleys and badly lit streets of America, ready to pop someone on the head and then mention, while I’m counting their cash, that I’m Latino. That should get them good and interested in Hispanic culture.

By the way, one interesting thing about PostSecret is that the site doesn’t accept advertising. They’re actually a little smug about it. Of course, this blog has been ad-free from the beginning, so who could blame me if I finally wised up and added a couple of revenue enhancers? That’s just conjecture, of course, because any ads you see here will just be figments of your imagination…

First, let me thank everyone who has commented on my recent posts. I’m extending a big shout out to Pipil, Jeremy, Emma, AnaRC, Bugys, Jose, and Macon D. Keep those cards and letters coming!

Second, at the risk of trying your patience, I have one more thought about my recent move to Los Angeles. As I wrote, the movers who took our stuff to California were Latino. I wrote about how they arrived late at every stage of the process, but I didn’t say why.

Well, the reason is simple: They were on Hispanic time. As such, they were incapable of being punctual.

It is a cultural trademark of Latinos that we run late, or flake on deadlines, or just wander in at some point during the party. I’ve heard many reasons for this. Perhaps it is the laidback culture of the siesta that carried over to America. Maybe we don’t sweat the small stuff, and therefore refuse to obsess about what the clock says. Or perhaps we’re prone to some kind of time-space dyslexia that causes us to proclaim, “It’s only two minutes away” when the destination is in another city.

All I know is that every clock in my mother’s house is set fast. I am not exaggerating. My mom claims that this forces her to pick up the pace, because it tricks into thinking that she’s even later than she actually is. It works to some degree, because she tends to run less behind schedule than she did in the past.

For example, when I was in high school (and before I got my drivers license), I racked up myriad detentions because I had to rely on my mom to get me there. Every morning we rushed out the door as if the starting time for school had been cruelly moved up without notice. I protested to my teachers that arriving late was out of my control, but they insisted that I was consistently tardy because of adolescent belligerence rather than cultural norm. Then I got slapped with another detention.

In my family, I developed a reputation for being the only one who is ever on time. Perhaps it’s because I’m half-white. More likely, I just got frustrated at everyone always being late and tried to make up for it singlehandedly. My efforts have served only to increase my blood pressure.

Look no further than the Christmas Eve celebrations at my mom’s house, which start promptly at 4:00… or 5:00… or 6:00… or whenever everyone shows up. But my family always arrives, and we have a great time. Being late is difficult when nobody has bothered to set a time to meet in the first place, but we manage it.

I know other cultures claim that they have this affliction. I’ve heard of Arab time and Greek time. I’m sure they’re telling the truth. But honestly, I doubt they’re much competition when it comes to the utter lack of temporal awareness. Hispanic time is another animal altogether.

Still, if we must have some cultural issue with punctuality, we should try to make it more interesting. If we were exactly forty-three minutes and nineteen seconds late for everything, then we’d have something quirky. Instead, we’re just the tardy ones.

But again, why are we so perpetually behind schedule? What possible reason can there be for the fact that we Latinos take time so frivolously?

Well, I have the answer, and I plan to go ahead and tell you. But I’m running a little late right now. So just give me a minute or two… five tops.

Don’t worry, I’ll catch up to you.

One of the amazing things about living in a city like Los Angeles is its sheer scope. I lived here for five years in the 1990s, and yet there are whole neighborhoods that I’m only seeing now that I’ve moved back.

Recently, I was running errands and, as usual in this town, driving from one part of the city to the other. I drove beneath an underpass that’s part of a labyrinthine alcove of freeways and bridges. All the concrete and cars blotted out the very sun (ok, that’s a little hyperbole, but not too much).

I had never been to this part of LA before, and my attention was fixed on reading street signs and searching for landmarks. Still, I couldn’t miss the encampment as I drove past it – no one could have.

There most of been a hundred of them, there beneath the intersection of multiple bridges. They were trabajadores, the immigrant workers who gather in places like that to beg, cajole, and hustle jobs.

Some of them were gathered around a pickup, shouting or gesturing in what I presumed was an attempt to communicate to the driver (their day’s potential employer) that they were the strongest and hardest-working of the lot. Others were sitting on the gravel, talking among themselves or playing some card game that was hidden to me. Others lay spread out with cowboy hats over their eyes, trying to catch a nap. At least one small group was cooking something on a portable-stove type thing.

I saw all this while stopped at the light. And then traffic surged forward, and I continued on my task.

As I drove away, I realized that I had never witnessed that before. Despite seeing trabajadores hard at work myriad times, and writing about them at length, I had never viewed the genesis of the process: a swarming in their shanty town where they jostle one another for the chance to labor for a pittance.

For some reason, I abruptly remembered when I lived in New York City, and I saw my first drug deal take place on the street (for the record, I was neither buyer nor seller; just a passing bystander). I had seen plenty of college kids buy pot, but this was different. It was what people really did when they wanted heroin or crack or the mythologized “hard drugs.” The transaction was much sloppier and less dramatic than television makes it out to be. Still, it was an authentic moment – not a fictionalized reference point.

It was like that when I saw the trabajadores. This was an authentic part of our culture, officially underground yet instantly recognizable to just about everyone. But like the drug deal, few people had actually seen it in the real world. We adopt images from movies and news stories, and assume that this counts as experience. But no editor or voiceover or carefully studied camera angle got between me and the crowd in the immigrant camp.

It was real. But of course, for me, it’s fodder. For the trabajadores, it’s their lives.

I admit that I’ve been so caught up planning my holiday schedule/ reveling in my own brilliance/ wallowing in my angst (or some combination of those) that I neglected to write a Christmas-specific post this week. For that matter, I have nothing particular to say about the upcoming New Year.

This is most embarrassing.

All I can offer is this link to an interesting – and at times, disturbing – discussion over whether parents should lie to their children about the existence of Santa Claus.

My comment is that it’s often harder to pull a fast one on Latino children when it comes to the truth about the fat guy. This is because we tend to celebrate on Christmas Eve. Hispanic kids are often up all night and don’t see him arrive. In such cases, parents are reduced to saying he’ll stop by their house while everybody is at Midnight Mass (which, by the way, is another method for ensuring that Latino kids go to Mass). Even the least mathematically gifted Hispanic child grasps the odds of Santa hitting everybody’s casa in the hour or two that they’re in church.

Kids who open their presents on Christmas Day, in contrast, give Santa all night to show up. And when the presents are magically there in the morning, it’s pretty easy to buy the parents’ explanation that some jolly senior citizen broke in and dropped them off while everybody was asleep.

Regardless of your opinion of Santa, however, let me say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and good vibes all around – yes.

I don’t text much. I’ve never understood the appeal of frantically typing out garbled syntax when I’m supposed to be driving, working, or having dinner with someone. Texts have neither the intimacy of a phone call nor the coherence of an email.

Clearly, I’m not a Luddite. After all, I created this blog, I twitter regularly, and I’ve been known to hang out on FaceBook for uncomfortably long periods of time. That’s not someone who is hostile to technology.

Still, I’m behind the curve when it comes to my Latino brethren. According to the Pew Center, Hispanics (especially young ones) are more likely than blacks or whites to text. That’s part of a larger trend, which is that ethnic minorities are more likely to rely on mobile devices than white people are.

On the surface, this is surprising. After all, while those iPhone commercials feature young people of every color gyrating in ecstasy to the device, I have yet to see a non-white person using one. The cultural stereotype, in fact, is that smartphones exist solely for upper-class whites to coordinate which sushi bar they’re meeting at.

However, plenty of minority teens and twentysomethings live on their phones. The difference is that, because they tend not to have the economic power of their white peers, they text and surf on cheaper models.

In fact, this financial aspect is one reason why young Hispanics and blacks are constantly plugged in. A cell phone with a decent internet connection is simply less expensive and more convenient than a laptop.

In short, accessing the internet via computer (as I tend to) is so very Anglo. But logging on with your cell is much more Latino.

We’ve heard a lot about the digital divide. This holds that minorities aren’t getting online as much as white people. Well, that gap narrows, and arguably disappears, when mobile devices are included.

This is doubly good news. First, it means that young Hispanics will not be left behind as technology rumbles forward. Second, it increases the odds that the Fanatic will soon make an appearance on a cell phone near you.

Recently, one of the greatest television shows of all time celebrated its fortieth anniversary. Of course, I’m talking about “Sesame Street,” that funky slice of 1970s America that continues to teach and inspire children today.

I’m sure most of us can recall the songs, characters, and lessons that the show imprinted on us. I was lucky enough to watch the show pre-Elmo, so I got the real deal:

“Sesame Street” was the first, and for a number of years, the only show where I saw people who looked like my family. I mean, who can forget Luis and Maria?

It wasn’t until years later that I realized how revolutionary Jim Henson’s approach was. The guy didn’t just throw in a few minor characters who were different races, which still would have been considered groundbreaking for the time. He made Latinos and blacks key members of the community, even if the block on which they all congregated was strangely free of sunlight every day of the year (maybe they lived in Seattle).

“Sesame Street” was also one of the first programs on which I heard Spanish. And it wasn’t just flavoring. The show went out of its way to teach basic Spanish words and phrases. I have to assume that if the show debuted today, it would be criticized for teaching the invaders’ language, and funding would be threatened unless all on-air business was conducted in English.

Indeed, I’ve heard of some parents who forbid their children to watch “Sesame Street” because of its perceived liberal agenda. I truly hope that this is an urban myth. Otherwise, someone is going to have to explain to me what is so “liberal” about racial tolerance and basic literacy.

But for the most part, “Sesame Street” has been grandfathered from the culture wars. MSNBC points out that the show “modeled the kind of racial idealism we should continually strive for” but that it “wasn’t just some idyllic land where no one ever disagreed…. It was a place where everyone always talked and continued talking.”

That wouldn’t be such a bad place to live.

In my last post, I wrote about my move to California. I wondered if my tendency to take off for new adventures has anything to do with my family’s recent history as immigrants.

Now, I’ve spent some time in the corporate world, and as such, I despise phrases like “paradigm shift” or “new dynamic.” Still, it seems clear that something is up.

Americans are moving less than ever before, a result of the cataclysm we jokingly call our economy. It’s been almost half a century since so few of us changed addresses. Just over one percent of us moved to a new state, which as the New York Times points out, “suggests that Americans were unable or unwilling to follow any job opportunities that may have existed around the country, as they have in the past. And the lack of movement… could have an impact on the economy, reducing the economic activity generated by moves.”

I’ve done my part by selling my house (yes, in this market) packing up, and road-tripping two thousand miles. Granted, my previous employer’s decision to downsize me made this choice easier (thanks for the catalyst, guys!). However, it seemed clear to my wife and me that that we needed to shake things up. So we moved.

You’ll have to ask me in a few years whether this was the right call or not. But I’m optimistic.

Many Americans are not similarly upbeat, of course, or they lack the resources to hit the road. Still, many of us who could move – and in some cases, should move – are staying put. According to the Times, this shows that “the U.S. population, often thought of as the most mobile in the developed world, seems to have been stopped dead in its tracks due a confluence of constraints posed by a tough economic spell.”

I don’t want to extol Thomas Friedman as some kind of wise soothsayer (I’ve got some issues with the guy), but much of his “world is flat” thesis sounds like the simple acknowledgement that Americans whose families go back generations still have to be willing to adapt, because everyone else – whether Mexican immigrants, first-generation Indians, or some other demographic – is willing to do so.

It’s true that immigration is at its lowest point in a decade, another sign of economic meltdown. Still, immigrants (by their very nature) are more willing to ditch their old life and tackle the newest challenge, and they will be the first ones to do it again when the economy picks up.

Meanwhile, we may be exiting the period of history when Americans had the luxury of saying, “This is where I grew up, and this is where my family is, so I’m not budging.” That will no longer be the intrinsic justification it once was.

Americans obviously have the capability to change. People rolled west in the Great Depression. And California didn’t become the most populous state just because of Mexican immigrants (although in the right-wing mind, that’s the sole reason the state has any problems whatsoever).

Even if we stay put, however, we have to accept that our hometowns are inevitably changing in front of us, proving once more that we live in not only a place but a time. Acknowledging this fact makes it less scary to consider going where the jobs and experiences and challenges are.

One thing I love about moving to California is that – despite the crowded cities and governmental bankruptcy and earthquakes and shallowness – the place represents change. But I had to come here to discover that.

My return to California has been the recurrent theme of many of my recent posts. Packing up my life has me thinking about the many times I’ve relocated. As I close in on forty, I’ve just completed my sixth major move (the first was when I was an infant). Counting all the minor moves within cities, I’m probably well past twenty zip codes.

Looking at it another way, my wife and I have been together for eighteen years, and we figure we’ve spent about three of those getting ready for, or recovering from, a move. And let me tell you, living among boxes and making appointments to get cable hooked up never loses its exotic luster.

So why do I do it?

Perhaps, among the restlessness and need for change, there is a more basic reason. I think it might have something to do with my family’s recent history as immigrants. There’s a willingness to strike out and explore that many people who are fifth or sixth generation don’t seem to have.

I’m not saying this is either good or bad. It’s just a different mindset.

For example, when I graduated from college, I moved to New York City. Many of my friends were aghast that I would just pack up and leave without a job, bound for such a huge and insane place.

But I knew that my mother had also moved to New York City in her twenties. The difference was that she understood very little English and was on her own. In contrast, I was a natural-born citizen, fluent in the ways of the culture, with a fresh college degree and the companionship of my girlfriend (now wife). I correctly saw it as a no big deal in comparison.

This attitude seems to permeate my family. I recently wrote about Cousin #5, who recently moved to Hawaii. She did it because she wanted to live there, which is a good enough reason in my family (it’s working out well for her, by the way).

The cousins and I all grew up in one city in America’s heartland. Only three of us remain in that hometown. The other five are spread out from California to Texas to North Carolina to Hawaii. One of us actually went back to El Salvador. As such, over half my family’s current generation has said, “Let’s hit the road.”

I compare this to my wife’s family, many of whom still live in the same small Midwestern town in which their original ancestors settled. Most of my friends live in or near to their respective hometowns, be that quant suburb or sprawling metropolis.

Again, that doesn’t make my family oh-so-cool. It’s just different.

So will this tendency to keep moving die down as we age? Will the next generation (my cousins’ children) say, “No thanks, I’m staying here”?

Well, I’d love to discuss that with you, but I can’t right now. You wouldn’t believe how many boxes I have to unpack yet.

I’m still not back to a 100% focus on the blog… actually, I doubt I ever had that level of commitment. But you get my point. I’m coming out of mega-distraction mode now that our move to California is complete and the last box has been unpacked. All I need to do now is address that pesky question of how I’m going to bring in money…

Don’t worry, I’m not turning this into one of those pathetic “please support my blog” pledge drives where I ask for donations. But I am going to cop out on the updates a few more times and issue short posts about news items until I can devote proper energy to being insightful, or least fanatical.

So that’s why I’m just going to pass along this information, courtesy of CNN: “Openly gay Latino public figures… are rare.”

Yes, that’s pretty fast-breaking stuff. To be fair, the gist of CNN’s article is that the virulent homophobia prevalent in Hispanic culture may be dying out.

I wrote about this a few months ago, when Proposition 8 passed here in California. As I pointed out then, much of the support for denying gays their basic civil rights came from Latinos. That’s because homosexuality doesn’t fit easily within a Catholic-dominated culture that invented machismo.

Still, gay Hispanics have always seemed to find some way to subtly express themselves:

In any case, CNN claims that straight Latinos are finally catching on and becoming ever so tolerant. The article points out that “El Diario La Prensa, one of the oldest and largest Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S., recently endorsed the rights of same-sex couples to marry.” And it goes on to say that “while harassment in schools for Latino gay students remains high… these students have more support than in past generations.”

So maybe someday it won’t just be white, upper-class teens with hip parents who get to come out. Maybe the tortured, conflicted Pedros of America will finally be able to explain to their parents why they’d rather design a spring ensemble than work on the low-rider.

Of course, the CNN article loses credibility for me because they laud Perez Hilton as a role model. I mean, what could be more ridiculous that praising a blogger?