Weekly Movie Podcast – Nov. 24, 2009 16 mins (7.4 MB)
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• Jamie Gore and Chris Karpyszyn
• Chris really hates Twilight: New Moon. I mean he, REALLY hates it.
• We gush over how good (500) Days of Summer is. Go watch it if it still in a theatre near you.
• With the upcoming release of Funny People, we talk a little bit about Spanglish which is also another Adam Sandler movie that’s about an hour too long.
• All box office info come from http://www.the-numbers.com
• Click more to see the top 5 movies from this past weekend as well as a listing of the movies coming out this week both in theatres and on DVD.

 Top 5 films for the weekend ending November 22, 2009

Theatrical Releases This Week (click where available for trailer)

The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ninja Assassin
Old Dogs

Me and Orson Welles
Precious
The Princess and the Frog
The Road

DVD Releases This Week (click where available for trailer)

Angels and Demons
Four Christmases
Funny People (click here to read my review) 
Shorts
Les Grandes chaleurs

An American in China
David and Layla
The Indian
Janky Promoters
The Maiden Heist
Megafault
Santa Buddies
Silent Screams
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Taking Chances

A film I watch repeatedly on VCD is Spanglish, which stars Adam Sandler as chef John Clasky, and Paz Vega as Flor Moreno, the new housekeeper hired by John’s wife Deborah (played by Téa Leoni). It’s a film that explores the themes of family, self-identity, and communication.

One of the scenes that really made my mouth water was when John was preparing a sandwich for a late-night snack. Thomas Keller was the one who created this amazing snack and also trained Adam Sandler to make it. It has since been dubbed as the “World’s Greatest Sandwich.”

I’d like to try making this one of these days. I don’t know yet if I’ll eat this with a cold, tall glass of soda or with beer (the ever-elusive Cerveza Negra is my personal preference). I’m still deciding.

The recipe is after the jump.

Late Night BLT Sandwich with Fried Egg and Cheese

Ingredients:

• 3-4 thick slices of bacon
• 2 slices Monterey Jack cheeses
• 2 slices Pain de Campagne (rustic country loaf), toasted
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 4 slices tomato
• 2 leaves butter lettuce
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 1 egg

Directions:

1. Cook the bacon until crisp, drain on paper towels and set aside.
2. Place the slices of cheese on one slice of the toasted bread and place in a toaster oven or under a broiler to melt the cheese.
3. Spread the other slice of toast with the mayonnaise, top with the cooked bacon, the sliced tomato and the lettuce.
4. In a nonstick skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Fry the egg, turning over briefly when the bottom is set (Keep the yolk runny!).
5. Slide the finished egg on top of the lettuce. Top with the other slice of toast, melted cheese side down. Place the sandwich on a plate and slice in half, letting the yolk run down the sandwich.

Makes one late night sandwich.

I cannot deal with tragedy, so people please do not bring it this way. This week hasn’t been the best one: friend’s dad, random guy that me and a friend saw having a seizure, etc. I just can’t react under pressure of something bad happening. I just CAN’T. And I hate it because I feel so unnecessary. Also, I realize how much of a perfectionist I am and it sucks because am an extra perfectionist and my kinda people do not react under pressure.

This coming week, voy a tratar de ser mas optimista y menos perfectionist. I’ll do my best, I promise.

One of the things that I want to say just aren’t coming out right – [Lifehouse]

para Lupe Ontiveros

Now that she is a vieja

with dyed blonde hair

and not a threat to any gringa’s

beauty when she steps into

the frame of someone else’s fame,

you get to know her nombre, hombre.

Lupe Ontiveros

does not roll off your tongue

and she paints no picture

in your mind because

you never knew she

was acting like a star.

You never went to a matinee

looking for her name

or waiting for Lupe to say,

the only lines she always had,

after knocking on the door

and peeking in, “Excuse me,

senior, do you need room service?”

She was a minority detail

in the mise en scene of

the movies we all went to see.

While the stars of film and life

carried on in the foreground

of our attention, in soft light and

perfect make up, with witty

lines and music for the moment,

Lupe was in the background, like us.

But she had a master key

to Hollywood, a back door entrance

that service people used to bring in

the catered lunches and distilled agua;

and when no one was looking,

she was letting otros enter,

making room for dreamers named

Lopez, Alba, Rodriguez, Dawson,

del Toro, Hayek, Mendes,

y para ti tambien.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved

“A pesar del sonido apestar,
este vidrio te va a encantar.”

HE DICHO.

It's hard to beat starting your day with a sight like this.

We were just admiring the magnificent view of Mount Teide from the putting green outside our gate this morning when José and Glenn came wandering past. There followed a short conversation during which each showed due deference to the other’s native tongue.  So Glenn, Jack and I spoke in Spanish and José answered in English.

It made me smile.

The conversation ended with us all  agreeing that we were living “en paraíso”.

And indeed we are.

There are any number of great reasons to get interested in a foreign language.

For me, of course, it was a Chicana named Lesley. We were both working at Brentano’s (imagine a snootier Waldenbooks) on the top floor of the Beverly Center.

"What are your favourite books," I asked, inevitably. It was the second time we’d seen each other. She had skin the colour of beach sand in the afternoon, and eyes like smooth, dark stones. She would always joke that she looked like Lilo (this one, not the Mean Girl). That evening it was near closing time and she walked me around the store, showing me her "staff picks," books scattered around the store with a small blurb written by one of my fellow booksellers. One of hers was Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief.

"What are you reading right now?" She walked me to a display at the front of the store and started telling me about The Lovely Bones.

I’d heard about the book before and had even recently read a critical essay on Salon, but something about hearing Lesley say it out loud stuck with me.

Latinas have this special way of saying their Ls when they’re speaking English. I’d heard it before countless times (growing up in Los Angeles and later working in Miami), but by this age I was feeling super-writerey and had long been in the habit of writing down things that happened to strike my ear a certain way. This one thing drove me wild, the way her “lovely” Ls bled into the syllables around them, softening and smoothing out the phrase like gloss. I asked her to say "the lovely bones" again. She got embarrassed and told me to shut up. A week later we went bowling.

Sometimes while we were out together, of course, she’d explain certain elements of Latino culture to me and sometimes, of course, she would code-switch and then backtrack, telling me what that word or phrase meant, what sense it carried, how her friends used it. I’d respond en español figuring it would impress her and assure her I was following along.

"Huh?" she replied, the first time I tried that.

I repeated myself otra vez, mas despacio, making sure to lisp those esses like I’d heard in Miami (not too difficult; apparently I lisp them anyway). She laughed at my "schoolboy Spanish." I was deeply moved. "Teach me more," I beseeched.

Naturally, however, she was in love with someone else.

One night we got all dressed up and couldn’t find anything to do. I drove her around in my beat-up blue Mazda, playing chick rock on a cassette tape while she talked about the history of Abbot Kinney Road, one of her favourite haunts. She said she knew of an Italian place on Melrose where we could stop and eat.

We sat out on the terrace, out on dark wood under a dark sky but set off by candlelight. All Italian food is basically the same so I asked her to order something good for me. We ate and had some glasses of red wine and talked some more. Before we left I took a picture of her. She’s tilting her head to the right just a bit; on the other side of her face, a petal of hair — her hair always smelled of austere Herbal-Essencing –- anyway, a petal of hair droops and curls down to her cheek. She’s wearing shiny black shoes and a black dress. Sleeveless, but garnished with a black shawl.

For years I would remember that as the best date of my life, even long after a later girlfriend made me discard the photo. I never went back to that restaurant, either; last time I looked it up, it was long gone. And I will probably never read The Lovely Bones. But once in a while I will hear a girl make her "L"s glide just so and I will think about how much I wanted to be fluent in Spanish. And maybe there would be some sort of knowing look — googly ojos? — and maybe then an introduction and some conversation. If only.

Which is all to say, yes Beth Mendenhall, we can definitely overcome “xenophobia” by learning additional languages. We can even "diffuse both domestic and international conflict," if we’re the type to get all utilitarian about it. I, for one, am not. But if you want to take away anything from this schlocky personal essay, it ought to be this: my sole purpose for learning Spanish has always been, and will always be, to hit on “exotic” chicks, and this is really the best reason to ever do anything, especially if you’re a romantic like I am.

[K-State Collegian]

Can’t touch this.

When I was young, my father thought it was important for his children to speak Spanish. Growing up in Southern California, I can see why he thought this would be a good thing. I remember sitting at our favorite Mexican restaurant while dad taught us the Spanish words for spoon, fork, chips, etc… This information would help me later in life when I became a manager at a restaurant and I was required to communicate with some of the employees. Thanks to my dad I was able to state such valuable phrases such as “No lechuga in the sink” or “Clean the baño, por favor”.

Years later I was easily able to speak with my mother-in-law who lapses from English to Spanish in the blink of an eye. I would find myself translating her “Spanglish”  for my husband and my children nearly every conversation. I began to see the wisdom of teaching my children basic Spanish vocabulary if only so that they could understand their grandmother better.

I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and each night at dinner I would teach them basic Spanish words. I am a writer however, I take inspiration from real life, so I wrote a simple story about a boy who loses his ball in his grandmother’s pear tree and tries to get it out. This book “Grandma’s Pear Tree” was picked up by Raven Tree Press and according to Amazon.com will be released on March 31, 2010.

It is my hope that this story will help children in the future so that when they have to communicate they can say in true “Spanglish” style; “Throw el gato into the tree” or “Use la escoba to get your things down”.

Suzanne Santillan

Writing on the Sidewalk

An ay mija blogito in Spanglish

Cuando el rio suena, agua trae…  Darn those veijotos and their sabiduria!  Should I have heard, more clearly, the gurgling ominous rushing of a river, bringing the water that would knock my flat of my tukus? Of course I should… I knew what was coming. I heard the sounds, the symptoms of the inevitable… and here I am to’ moj’a, shivering in a cruel wind of consequence.

Seras esclava de lo que dices, y dueño de lo que guardas… Slaves to what we share? Ay mija… what do we do then? Do we hide our dreams and plans in the pleats of our faldas? Or, do we hold ourselves accountable… enslave ourselves to what we intend to do? Do I create a mastery of the unseen? Become a reina in my sparkling court of mysteries? Or humble myself down to a lonely servent to intent?

There are days like today, where what I should do crawls underneath the top layer of my skin like pica pica. Where not even a perfect cup of cafe con leche can give me the energy to take a first step. Where in the laberinto  of my heart’s secret world, I am queen of a kingdom that will be swept away under the river’s cleansing rush. Where an ay mija hides behind every sigh. Where one language isn’t enough to paint the picture of frustration and discontent.

In un placete de La Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivía, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase. A cazuela with más beef than mutón, carne choppeada para la dinner, un omelet pa’ los Sábados, lentil pa’ los Viernes, y algún pigeon como delicacy especial pa’ los Domingos, consumían tres cuarers de su income. El resto lo employaba en una coat de broadcloth y en soketes de velvetín pa’ los holidays, with sus slippers pa’ combinar, while los otros días de la semana él cut a figura de los más finos cloths. Livin with él eran una housekeeper en sus forties, una sobrina not yet twenty y un ladino del field y la marketa que le saddleaba el caballo al gentleman y wieldeaba un hookete pa’ podear. El gentleman andaba por allí por los fifty. Era de complexión robusta pero un poco fresco en los bones y una cara leaneada y gaunteada. La gente sabía that él era un early riser y que gustaba mucho huntear. La gente say que su apellido was Quijada or Quesada -hay diferencia de opinión entre aquellos que han escrito sobre el sujeto- but acordando with las muchas conjecturas se entiende que era really Quejada. But all this no tiene mucha importancia pa’ nuestro cuento, providiendo que al cuentarlo no nos separemos pa’ nada de las verdá.

Oh, cómo se revolotió en este espich nuestro good gentleman, y más than nunca él pensaba en el nombre that él should oferear a su lady! Como dice el cuento, there was una very good-lookin jovencita de rancho who vivía cerca, with whom él had been enamorado una vez, although ella never se dio por enterada. Su nombre era Aldonza Lorenzo y decidió that it was ella the one que debía to have el título de lady de sus pensamientos. Wisheó pa’ ella un nombre tan good como his own y que conveyera la sugestión que era princeza or great lady; y, entonces, resolvió llamarla Dulcinea del Toboso, porque ella era nativa d’ese placete. El nombre era musical to his óidos, fuera de lo ordinario y significante, like los otros que seleccionó pa’ himself y sus things

Traducción de Ilán Stavans, publicada en Cuadernos Cervantes