No lesser evil possible - Part One: Lets talk Obama...

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Lets revisit the political arena.

Lets look at things with unblinking eyes and open minds.

Lets talk Obama!

A remarkable career, the stuff American dreams are made of.

Black, raised by a single mother, poor and hard working, and on the verge of attaining the highest office in the nation, to become the undisputed leader of the FREE WORLD...

Such an inspirational story, beautifully American, wholesome.

Yes, America, out of nowhere comes Obama, catapulted to instant celebrity status (the darling creature of the reality-TV phenomenon) thanks to the booty-shaking virtues of the Obama Girl and her catchy tune, a youtube favorite.

All of the sudden, America hungers for the cool demeanor of the young senator and his darling wife, sparking impossible comparisons to the mythical Camelot of yesteryear.

But wait just a gosh darn minute!

Black, poor, just arrived in the political arena yesterday evening, and now he is running for President?!

Not only that, check out that bunch of dinero hurled his way, paving a rosy road for our fine new candidate, a healthy campaign trail all the way.

He jumps in private jets, his soulfully foreign-sounding name emblazoned to the sides , and chills out with other world leaders as if he was already a head of state.

How awesome, but....

...there is a big BUT that makes me suspicious of all this Obama broo-haha.

First, there is the dinero... Where does it come from? Hey, we all know that people don't just go around giving money away by the handful, unless there is the hope of a future payback. Find out who's money it is and you will know whose agenda Barack is going to follow once he is elected. And believe me, is not going to be the Joe-Six-Pack or Juan-Del Pueblo's agenda... That's for sure.

Lets move on...

When his pastor for many years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, stood in front of his congregation and preached truth in the loud, abrasive and scathing way all preachers inspired by the Spirit of God do (which does not diminishes the truth contained within the yelled speech) and then he was attacked and shamelessly quoted out of context by the media, what does Barack Obama do?

Instead of showing a manly nerve, promote real CHANGE and take a strong stance in favor of his spiritual mentor, he does the oh-so-convenient little sidestep and plays the political game.

He preaches CHANGE, he fills his mouth with those six capital letters as if he was bringing down a slab of rock engraved by God itself, yet is willing to mow everything in his way with the metaphors of misinformation and covert, he is willing to fail to serve the truth in order to retain his political edge.

That turns Obama into what every politician is: a professional liar, a master of the rhetoric of convenience, the tired beauty of the political slogans, those jewels of poetry and deceit.

Barack Obama is a product, casing, label and promotional package all neatly wrapped in one.

Sorry you, my dear in law, Melvin, Obama's humble subject.

His words are carefully studied, programed, scientifically designed to please, to convince, to obtain results.

He preaches CHANGE, yet indulges in the political game of winning-is-the-ultimate-goal, the Machiavellian theory that the end justifies the means. He threads thru the dark alleyways of the precise strategies, hidden agendas and formulaic behavior, the land of the PR masters, political strategists, marketing gurus and spin doctors (not tha DJ-ing kind either).

It is funny, but just today in Extra!, a celebrity-based TV magazine, the narrator refers to females voters as fans, expected to react more promptly and base their decision swayed by features showing the candidates and their respective spouses fashion sense. Girls, you are not smart enough to make your decision taking into account a real, sensible and attainable social agenda or any other sensible political goal, sorry girls... Not on this watch.

We are left to decide between two evils. (McCain is no better, will blog about that soon.)

Damn... I feel like in that episode of "South Park" were the foul-mouthed eight-year-olds are urged to decide between a douche bag and a turd sandwich as their school mascot: without the possibility of a lesser evil.

What do you all think? Get back to me with your thoughts.

Will keep you posted.

A big herd!

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Yes, we are destined, according to those that know, to be a majority in this nation in a bit over four decades.

Now a whooping 15% of the general US population, experts predict and the press highlights recently that Latinos, Hispanos and other Americanos will be all over and in greater numbers.

"Among the changes expected are that by 2050, the number of Latinos in the country is expected to double to account for nearly one in three U.S. residents," writes Tony Castro of www.redorbit.com.

That's a big freaking herd of people!!!!!

According to the information published in several media outlets last week, the Latino population is projected to nearly triple. The data establishes that from 46.7 million today the Latino population will rise to 132.8 million, going from 15 percent to a quite outstanding 30 percent of the U.S. population.

And you know what?

The clock is ticking!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is time for the Latinos to get down and dirty, manos a la obra, and start grooming carefully that new generation destined to take the reigns of this great land of ours. We need leaders. REAL LEADERS, darn it!

We need responsible leaders sworn to protect THE people, the land, the nation. Leaders capable of sparking and promoting real change, and with the ability to steer the nation towards peace, prosperity, general well being and all that pretty crap every political candidate promises so vehemently, and always fails to deliver (given the current turn of events).

I know is a lot to ask.

What we don't need is the all-too-common arm flaying, loud voiced, slick opportunist that pops up every time a poor wretch gets beat down to a pulp by the cops or any similar situation of blatant injustice.

Pointing fingers, lamenting the infamies of the past and the insistence of always trying to find who to blame, instead of procuring the solutions, do not put into perspective the prospects of real, long lasting, positive change. It only stalls evolution in a puddle of controversy and mud slinging, quite amusing on a half hour transmission of Entertainment Tonight, not so when we realize that our future is oftentimes decided by these headline-seeking bozzos.

So, what the heck are you all waiting for?

Lets shape a nation, educate correctly our people and not just allow for the Latinos, Hispanos and other Americanos to lazily grow into a big headless herd.

Lets get ready! The clock is ticking, yet there is still time.

Bounce that one around yourselves and get back to me. I would like to know what you all think.

Will keep you posted.

Heath Ledger: all we lost along the way, and missing the point, too!

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This is a great meditation about fame, truth and consequences.

enjoy!

ERIC P. LUCAS: Perspective on Heath Ledger

By Eric P. Lucas
08/04/08 00:00:00

It's time to stop the canonization of Heath Ledger. He's not a tragic hero. He's not a beautiful martyr.
He's just a pretty good actor who did away with himself and broke the hearts of his family and friends, and he shouldn't get an Academy Award to memorialize his death.
Ledger's brief career culminated in his portrayal of the Joker in "The Dark Knight," a role that at first seems compelling ("mesmerizing," critics have fawned) but ultimately devolves into a can-can dance of snuffling pseudo-psychopathia. It has all the subtlety of a hangover — exactly what I'd expect from someone who headed home every night to a pill party.
Still, "The Dark Knight" has soared to unprecedented success, and Ledger's name is mentioned incessantly for an Oscar.
The current mania joins Ledger to a long line of creative figures who committed the ultimate failure and are, unfortunately, all the more famous for it: Dylan Thomas, Hank Williams, Jackson Pollock, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, Janis Joplin. Some drank themselves to death, some overdosed, some ran their cars off the road.
As the saying goes in AA, the stories are the same, only the details are different.
"I want to live fast, love hard, die young and leave a beautiful memory," Faron Young sang in a 1955 hit, unwittingly encapsulating this fatal phenomenon.
People of every walk of life die from drugs and alcohol, but only a celebrity's death gets so heated in a devil's crucible of public sentiment that it is transformed into posthumous glory. And such adulation begets a mass social hysteria that continues the cycle.
The pre-eminent example is the deification of Hendrix. How many young men pick up a guitar to emulate him, and wind up under a bridge with a bottle of Colt .45 picking out a wobbly solo on a tinny set of strings? I see them every day in downtown Seattle.
Hendrix worship inspired billionaire Paul Allen to build a museum: Seattle's Experience Music Project. An exhibit there explains how Hendrix created his unique sound but equivocates his death in an utterly irresponsible fashion: "Hendrix's creative journey was cut short by an accidental overdose of sleeping pills." (Nine sleeping pills, accompanied by barrels of wine; he choked to death in his own vomit.)
The Hendrix monument at a cemetery south of Seattle says nothing at all about his death. It's as if the angels just took him away to the big amplifier pile in the sky.
In all the posthumous swooning over Ledger, I read repeatedly how his death, too, was "accidental." But the medical examiner's toxicology report listed a bucket of addictive, mood-altering substances in his body, from antihistamines to Xanax. None of them got there by accident.
After Ledger died in January, one distraught fan posted on the Internet that he "will go down alongside James Dean and River Phoenix as great talents who were so cruelly taken away just as they started to show how damn good they were!" But these guys weren't "taken away." Phoenix OD'd on cocaine and heroin. Dean died in a car crash after a short, fast life of drugs and alcohol.
I got help; they could, too
They took themselves away. It's a simple thing to find help for drug and alcohol abuse these days. Millions have done it, including me, and although not easy, it represents the only way to live with the integrity we owe ourselves, our families and the world around us.
Last year, I visited the hamlet in Wales through which poet Dylan Thomas caroused. At an inn from which he was evicted (for stealing beer), I learned that down the street lived an old lady who had known him.
Go knock on her door, I was urged. So I did. Gladys didn't hear so well, but when I finally conveyed the idea that I was curious about Dylan Thomas, she laughed and said, "Well, he was just a common drunk, wasn't he?"
I could say the same of Ledger.
Film critic Ty Burr, trying to untangle this heady mix of big box office and public mourning, wrote, "This is less about hype than about the gentle madness of crowds."
Nothing gentle about it: Each year more than 100,000 Americans die of alcohol or drug abuse. It would be madness to commemorate one such death with the greatest honor in cinema. Please give the Academy Award to someone who's had the courage to stick around. _

Eric P. Lucas, a writer in Seattle, wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

Barack or McCain... Paris and Britney!

Paris For President!

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I think is just about time we get going with the latest news.

Election day is drawing nigh. Still, there is something amiss.

Where is the serious discussion about the real issues? Say, work, education, health care, the important stuff. How about immigration, the economy, war?

Not fine, thank you.

The political campaign up to now has been nothing but an exercise in banality, the highlighting of the purely superficial and puerile.

Fueled by the mainstream media’s insistence on headlining the oops, icks and uffs, the fool, the bad and the ugly, the stupid comments and tart rebuttals, the whole scenario draws the dark profile of the “dumbing down of America” conspiracy theory.

The media seems to avoid any serious, down to earth approach to what should be the core of any campaign: how the candidates plan to lead a nation and it’s people towards prosperity and all the other perks of well-being and civilized living.

Political analysts, with their uninterrupted yadda, yadda, say a lot and overflow with wisdom, but don’t solve any of the problems and I always look with suspicion at the choreographed moves of the baby-kissing, shoulder-patting, hand-shaking-and-waving slick political creature.

So, what is there left for john-six-pack or poor juan-del-pueblo to do?

How to sift through the political blabber, the inflammatory, empty rhetoric of the candidate’s speech, so full of passion, so devoid of content?

This is not a personality contest or a beauty pageant. Is a presidential election, for Christ sake!

It’s about time we strongly demand from the media what we are entitled to: a serious coverage of the issues and all the proposed solutions. I’m sure they are there, hidden somewhere beneath the glittery veil of the moronic arguments about age and experience, the race thang, the turbans, flower dresses, hair do’s or pant suits, the funky fist-knocking and all the other amusing trash that we are fed everyday.

I say, bring here the discussion, a serious, real one that would allow for an educated trip to the polls.

Lets talk, seriously…

I'm back!

Sorry for the prolonged absence. I have been out for some time, but not down for the count.

So, here I’m, back on the saddle and ready to take another ride.

There is a reason for my absence, not an excuse (the primordial ingredient for BS), and I hope you all understand, forgive and forget.

I’m back to this space with renewed interest and refueled enthusiasm. I’m also back here with one amazing project done and successfully over.

My associate and writing partner, Rafael J. Rivera-Viruet, and I just published the Deluxe Limited Edition of a coffee table book, the first of it’s kind, about the presence of Latinos in the movie Mecca of Hollywood.

“Hollywood… Se Habla Español” took over 25 years to put together and it’s finally out telling the story of the Latinos in Hollywood films in an entertaining and informative way.

Their accomplishments, struggles and hardships and their undeniable contribution to the art of filmmaking are detailed here alongside some beautiful vintage prints, several published here for the first time ever.

A collector’s item and a beautiful object of art, I’m proud to be given the opportunity to collaborate in such a project.

If you wish to purchase the book it is available only through the Terramax Entertainment website. For additional information and to view excerpts of the book please visit: www.terramax.biz/tropical.htm

Send the word, tell your friends and enjoy the book...

And I’ll see you all here next time!

Lets see what’s cooking out there and then gather back here to put everything into perspective, that’ll be fun!

I'll keep you posted!

Tchau