May 2009 Archives
Lakers
By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
May 16, 2009
There's no joy in Lakertown. But there's plenty of bliss in Barça-land. Yes, there are some L.A. Kobe Bryant fans who are just as down for Barcelona soccer star Lionel Messi.
I'm sure of this. OK, 99% sure. Last year at around this time, I started tailgating a car on the north Harbor Freeway right around where the L.A. Chamber Orchestra musicians stare at you and hand you their instruments. It was a three or four year-old Honda or Toyota with two large team stickers on the lip of the trunk: a Lakers' purple and gold sticker and a blue and burgundy sticker of the Barcelona soccer team. If I could only talk to the driver, I thought, did Pau Gasol hook you on the Lakers? Does Barcelona stand a chance against Manchester United on May 27th? Where do you and your friends watch the games? What do you think about both teams' unmet potential? (UC Riverside Professor Jennifer Doyle has a sharp take on this question.)
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By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
May 5, 2009
At the blackboard: I will not write about Cinco de Mayo. I will not to write about Drinko de Mayo. I will not write about Stinko de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo is dead! Long live Cinco de Mayo!
As with most things Mexicans there is a myriad of dichotomies - depending on the angle from which you choose to view it - that have crystallized around Cinco de Mayo. It's a Mexican holiday most popular outside of Mexico. It's a holiday that celebrates a victorious battle in a war that was lost. It's a holiday that joins the holidays of other assimilated ethnicities (Oktoberfest, St. Patrick's Day) while Mexicans remain as "outsider" as they were since Mexico gave away the Southwest states after a U.S.-instigated war.
Let's review the facts. In 1862 Texas-born Mexican general Ignacio Zaragoza defeated the powerful French Army outside Puebla, near Mexico City. The French eventually won and installed a monarch to collect the debt Mexico owed. Mexican oligarchs threw out the French but developed a hard-core addiction to French architecture, fashion and pastries.
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