My Daughter’s Wedding, and I didn’t cry…

Al Carlos Hernandez
www.LatinoLA.com

Yesterday I experienced one of the proudest days of my life, a papa’s dream as it were: walking my daughter down the aisle. It was earlier in the week when I had a revelation of the beauty and perfection of the moment that was yet to come. I was holding my two month old granddaughter, my youngest son’s infant daughter in my arms. My heart went back to the days when I held my infant curly haired mija, way back in the day when I was only in my mid 20’s myself. Enamored with the beauty of life, God’s magnificence in tiny Latina form, my eyes became warm with the tears I did not allow to fall, knowing that the day to give my daughter away was looming.


Like many of you dads of the post modern, reckless, irreconcilable situation, ally-ambivalent America of the 70’s, I “weekend parented” my little ones. She was four and my little guy was three when their mom and I contractually agreed to disagree. I never missed a weekend visit or a child support check. I remember the time I walked out on a recording session in Texas with Little Joe Y La Famila in order to board planes, trains and automobiles to make it to the kids Halloween costume parade in Berkeley. I could only wave from the sidelines as she walked by dressed as a first grade princess, my son a preschool superhero. Well, she is a princess and he is a superhero to me. They are the evolved people I always wanted to be but could never get past. My housing projects bred bravado.


She told everyone the wedding would take place at 12, but it was really 12:30. Smiling on the way over, I thought back to her graduation day from SDSU with her BS in event planning. Was her timing an academic consideration, or a result of her sophisticated refined Latina-ness?


I have always prayed for my children to find the love of their lives, like I did. For me it was the second time around with the woman I call “Mi Vida.” My daughter’s wedding was four years to the day of her meeting the man of her destiny. Just like “Officer and a Gentleman” her man has just completed his BS and is going to be a fighter pilot. I could not have scripted this love affair any better. It took divine penmanship.


The nuptials were staged at a regional park, in a cove surrounded by tall dark brown and green roofed trees perched on a hillside, veiled in fauna, girded by rocks, and matted by moss. One by one they came, as the sun’s spotlight bathed famila in their Sunday best. High tech mini media captured every nuance. Friends and family from the mother’s side (many of whom I haven’t seen in 29 years) appear 29 years older. Still the same inside, while touches of gray kind of suited them in many ways. I was no exception.


I looked up a two story flight of stone stairs from the cobbled plain below. There she was, dressed in white, and more beautiful than I ever imagined, flanked by her best friend maids of honor. I remembered the moment she was born. It was as if another eye opened in my being, never knowing what we Christians call “agape love” of God. I never knew love like that before. It was then, at her birth, when my real life began. Sadly for me today is the day to hand her over to her Prince Charming, and I don’t know what say. I just hug her.


We were poised to walk down the tree lined winding cement ramp, to the place where the ceremony was to be held below. I remembered holding her hand at the mall when we used to go to the Hello Kitty store to buy stickers with the money she made helping her mom with chores.


Her jovial and kindhearted step dad took his rightful place on her left arm, while I was on her right, and we walked her down the ramp. She was a little anxious so I told her something ridiculous that Grandma Rose used to say to insult people. She laughed like she did back then. They played Isn’t she lovely by Stevie Wonder, the song that was at the top of the charts on the day she was born, and I still didn’t cry.


Life came full circle as we were asked by my older brother, her Nino, the presiding Superior Court judge who officiated: “Who gives this woman to be betrothed?” Step dad and I said, “We do,” and we did.


Dreams do come true. God always works things out in perfection. And I didn’t cry.


Until now.

Latinos and Valentine’s Day

Living the Vida Amorosa

By Al Carlos Hernandez
Published on LatinoLA: February 11, 2008


Valentines Day is probably the most dangerous holiday for Hispanics in love. Showering your loved one with candy and roses is usually interpreted as cheating with someone from work. Forgetting altogether, or re-gifting a fruitcake is a relationship-ending decision.


There is a very, thin line between guilt and ganas. The problem is a bouquet of contradictions; a lavish show of affection in public for your Lady is applauded, this lavish show in private is viewed as an American Express-fueled aphrodisiac. One can’t miss with diamonds and jewelry. Don’t buy her a puppy because she will immediately like the puppy more than you.


The trick is to be able to turn up the heat just to get things cooking, not so high as to cause suspicion, not too low to demonstrating amoroso ambivalence.


I never know what to get my Lady, She loves chocolates, but I’m trying to make her Gorda. Since she is circumspect about her weight, then buying clothes is out of the question. For young men starting out buying a larger pair of shoes, this means that you will find yourself by yourself. There is no way to live that down unless you buy her a condominium.


Ladies, the Valentine‚s thing works both ways, asking a man what he wants is rhetorical.


If you are Valentine less this year, the good news is that www.QuieroLatino.com has finally launched February 7, 2008, and you can refer to this column next year.


Men have a hard time trying to convey an emotional sentiment, so we often buy the first card (read cheap) we see that looks the best and says something about Love and or religion.


The biggest challenge for Dudes is to decide how to sign it, if we sign it at all. Careful care is given to the chosen salutation, the phrases, With Love, Love, Forever Yours, are given obsessive consideration.


A word to the wise: Signing your card, “Handsomely Yours” can backfire, because if you are ugly and think that you are cute, she is going to think that the card is from someone else. Additionally, when you break up she will show your card to all of her Girlfriends, making fun of the fact that you thought you were fine, they will then sit around the table and talk about how ugly you are, and will provide pictures as proof.


Women, on the other hand, make a special mall trip which usually includes a meal, take quality time and effort to choose the right card with exactly the right words to chronically capture what she perceives to be a summation of the romance in the relationship up to that point, while expressing a heartfelt hope as to where she wishes the relationship to someday go. These cards often reference the term “forever”.


When guys receive these meticulously chosen cards we shake them for a gift card then toss them aside, assuming we got stiffed on a practical present again.


Ladies, it is weird when a guy gets flowers, unless they are edible. If you buy him candy we know it is the kind that you like so you can kill at least half of the box. Don’t buy a man a stuffed animal, they will give it to their dog to play with, or give it to a random niece or nephew. If your man is happy and gets teary eyed to receive a stuffed toy, chances are good he will pass the toy onto his Boyfriend on the side.


On the real, Valentine’s Day is a good day to recognize and celebrate the love of your life. Often times in this hurry up and wait, sensory overloaded world, we don’t take the time to show our appreciation for the one that completes us. Relationships fail when we begin to take each other for granted.


Although trite, we need to celebrate the moments of your life with the one you love, because you never know if you will pass this way again.


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=5237

Kitchen Table Folks

Time to come together as family and help each other to ride out the storm

By Al Carlos Hernandez, Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: June 15, 2008


The economy is getting out of control, working folks can barely fill up the car with gas, and now food prices are getting higher, but it seems to be the middle class people that are the ones losing their marbles. Like some of you, I grew up broke. As long as we had a pot of beans, a pan of rice, chicken, tortillas and good friends in the same boat, we would survive.


I remember that our poverty was communal because most of our relatives and friends were paycheck to paycheck too, but we all used to pool resources and often make up for each other’s lack. It occurred to me that most people don’t really visit anybody anymore without a special occasion and or a RSVP. If you are Latino and expect an RSVP, you need to ask somebody because you ain’t going to get one from Familia, or the folks who knew you “when”.


Don’t know when it happened but I stopped visiting people too. I’ve been told I stopped visiting because I stopped being invited, but being invited and or not being invited somewhere for me never deterred or encouraged me from going anywhere and it still doesn’t.


Back in the day, our folks would pick up some food and drinks. We would visit a friend or a relative, laugh and commeriserate. This somehow made the hard times more bearable. We would share food, resources, fix what needed to be fixed, talked about the idiotadas in life, and encouraged each others to keep on keeping on.


Many of us grew up in a communal society, but now find myself isolated by middle class convention, in a world where you need to Blackberry, a play date for your pooch, and if you roll up acquaintances unannounced, they think you are a stalker with bonding issues.


Los Homies used to drive around on weekends and or Friday nights and just drop in on friends and family members just to say “Hi.” the door was always open, and quite often an impromptu party would ensue, not for a particular purpose but just for the joy of fellowship, secure in the feeling that you matter and people you know accept you for who you are without a scheduled pretense of protocol.


I really miss being able just to drive over to someone’s house, catch them working on their car in the garage or working on the lawn and just hang out. Nowadays you can’t work on a car because they are all computerized, and many of our peers have a lawn service. Well, sabes que, I am still my lawn service.


Tough times require that people pull together as family and help each other out. Many of the huge life crisis in my life have been worked out at a kitchen table with Mom’s, Bro’s Homies, and Homettes putting in their 2 cents and Viejitios who gave life-altering Consejos…life parables.


Whether you know it or not, the financial deck is stacked against working folks who are trying to raise a family in these tough times. It cost me almost 20 bucks to fill up my motorcycle this afternoon. A few years back, 5 bucks would have topped it off. For working class bikers out there, you know when times get really hard, the bike is the first thing to go.


We meet now at Starbucks for a 7 dollar latte, or a restaurant for a bite to eat. I think the real reason we do this is a control issue. If we meet and greet on neutral turf, you can call the get together a wrap, or fake an important phone call, if the conversation gets too heated and personal. It is also a failsafe precaution making sure random visitors won’t stay at your house for another 2 meals.


I think we are reluctant to let people into our lives, behind the curtain, to the place where we sometimes cry and occasionally fear because society has become less intimate, more electronic more clinical, less familial. We live in a world that encourages one to be fake 24-7.


It has been said that tough times don’t last, but tough people do. Times are going to get tougher. We live in a Global economy that player hates our home, the USA. This is the time for us to come together as a family and help each other to ride out the storm.


I get by with a little help from my friends.


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=6567

Cell Phone Spits Salsa

Attempts in clicking over has caused me to speed dial order pizzas, Chinese food, and calling my wife at work

By Al Carlos Hernandez – Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: October 14, 2008


We have call waiting at the house. My wife and I have an ongoing dialogue about it. She always clicks. I am a devout non-clicker. The grown up scion all have their own cell phones, walk around with ear pieces, and holler at their homies because we have phat family time, anytime minutes.


I’ve been issued a cell phone and have had it for several years now. It has become indispensable in my life. I can’t imagine how I ever lived without it. It would be even handier if I had new people to talk to. I have no idea how the minutes, the roaming, the free time works. One of my sons hooked up my ringer to sound like The Fania All Stars and this puts me in a good mood when I answer the Cell-Fizzy.


There was an embarrassing situation last week. The band kicked in when I was waiting for my car in a snobby high end car dealership. A rich woman there was frightened by the timbale solo. I quickly got up, slipped out the door, then smiled and raised my eyebrows at her. She looked away quickly, knowing that if I was single I would be driving her S class that afternoon.


My philosophy on call waiting is simple: if I am talking to someone, it is rude to take an incoming call with the hopes that the interrupter is someone more interesting to talk to. I let the phone beep, check the incoming number, and make them leave a message. Then I forget to call them back.


If someone beeps in on the cell, I’m stumped. It’s like when the teacher used to ask me questions in algebra class. My traditional answer being, “Your question is racially biased, therefore irrelevant to my lifestyle.”


The wife’s philosophy is: “What if it’s an emergency and one of the kids needs to get a hold of us?” I figure that’s why we both have personal cell phones, a land-line house phone, and an answering machine.


The whole thing can be quite Shakespearean in its interpersonal ramifications. To click over, or not to click over? That is the question. Whether it is nobler to stay interested in the conversation at hand, or dump the dork your jawing with, in the hopes of scoring a conversation of material value. Or then, take arms against your spouse. A no-win, low-tech, domestically uncomfortable situation.


OK, it is personal too. I hate it when I’m talking to somebody and they put me on hold because they have an incoming call. If they spend more than a few seconds talking to the other party, I get heated for two reasons:


One, I am almost sure that someone more interesting is calling in, and Two, I forget what I was talking about…


There is another problem. I confess that I have earnestly tried to click over on several occasions. Unfortunately most of the time we receive a call, I don’t have my reading glasses on hand. I have hung up, cut off, and left “on hold” several hundred people.


Once I clicked and it was my brother who was calling. I was talking to a telemarketer who promised to send us to Disneyland or Denmark if we bought some magazines. My brother, who is a really interesting guy, and I talked for about 45 minutes. About 35 minutes into the conversation I heard a click noise on the line.


Apparently, the telemarketer hung on for 35 minutes waiting for me to click back.


We laughed hard about it, as only siblings can. We try to call each other during peak telemarketing times.


Other attempts in clicking over has caused me to speed dial order pizzas, Chinese food, and calling my wife at work. Now I have to force myself to come up with a reason for the call, masking my inability to click over successfully. This has cost me several hundred dollars in impromptu dinner dates, just so I didn’t have to admit that I tried to click over without my glasses on again.


We live in a world where everybody seems to have their own phone number. We are always talking but nothing of substance is really said. Real communication is eye to eye, person to person. Not speakerphone to headset.


If you can’t look into their eyes, you don’t know if they are lying


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=6876

Top 10 Reasons a Latina Won’t Head Homeland Security

Chancletas as a weapon of mass destruction

By Al Carlos Hernandez, Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: November 24, 2008


10. Only gringos in BMWs, Volvos and Saabs would be racially profiled.


9. They may misinterpret the responsibility and try to protect Mexico.


8. Qué borders, qué nada. We were here first, Cara de Caballos.


7. She could explain to ICE agents what the undocumented hermanos are calling them, causing a huge drop in morael, forcing agents to question their parentage.


6. Mayor Villaraigosa would be envidioso.


5. May crack down hard on Canadians, arresting everyone in plaid shirts at hockey games.


4. Agents may only question attractive people with good jobs, then, collect phone numbers for family members who need novios.


3. With a name like Barack Hussein Obama, a Latina would not let him on a plane.


2. With Latinas keeping everyone under surveillance, we couldn’t get away with nothing.


1. Chancletas would be categorized as a deadly weapon.


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=6989

Top 10 Latino Reactions to the Election of Barack Obama

Astute observations by our resident loco

By Al Carlos Hernandez – Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: November 5, 2008


10. ¿Sabes qué? I didn’t even know your Mama was running for office. Homes, you gonna throw a kegger?


9. Ironic: Most highly educated community organizers I know get laid off, not promoted.


8. If he is half black and half white from Hawaii, then socio-genetically he is Puerto Rican.


7. The good news for McCain is that his wife is a beer heiress.


6. Oh man, you need to stop driving Chuy’s Impala. He’s going to be back from the war any day now.


5. Never believed that in my lifetime we would have a President who got lined up and sported a fade.


4. ¡Como eres! There I go and vote for him and he can’t even call to thank me. Como te cambiaste, sangrón.


3. Dude, you are stupid. The Richie Valens oldies song is “Oh Donna”, not “O Bama.”


2. Never knew that this voting thing worked. Thought it was fixed like wrestling. Glad Bush knows how it feels to lose his jale and be unemployable.


1. I guess the Revolution was not televised after all. It was, blogged, emailed and text messaged.


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=6931

Ride It Like You Stole It

Live to ride, ride to live. You never see a motorcycle parked in front of a psychiatrist’s office.

By Al Carlos Hernandez – Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: December 1, 2008


I make it a point to schedule a three-hour time block during the day, once a week, to ride my motorcycle, usually down the coast. I call this process my “Cycle Therapy.”


It is truly liberating to virtually soar like a bird down a windy two-lane road, perched high on a hill, with the green-gray ocean off to the right, white-capped waves crashing onto the rusty tan sand below. The stings of the salty air, brisk breeze and wind currents nudge you back and forth. Pillowly fog blankets, flashing swords of crisp sunlight illuminate a blue sky ceiling, feeling the hum of the warm engine below.


The trip is always perilous and thrilling, like riding a remote controlled two- wheeled roller coaster. Time out-of-mind indeed; it’s an exuberant experience that causes your mind, body and soul to re-boot and defragment.


There is something about riding a motorcycle that allows you to be a participant in the environment you are passing through, rather than being a glass-enclosed observer. On a bike you can smell the scents and feel the temperature changes, all the while knowing that you control your own fate. Biking gives you a cocky rebellious-type demeanor, and whether you maintain a Harley style, you pilot a “rice rocket”, or even sport a BMW, most people who do not ride think that you do not have both oars in the water.


Live to ride, ride to live. You never see a motorcycle parked in front of a psychiatrist’s office.


Motorcycling nowadays is dangerous with folks amped up on Starbucks, jaw jacking on cell phones while driving with their knees. Two- wheeling has become increasing more perilous. The operation of a motorcycle — particularly a high powered one — requires multitasking. You have to balance speed with gravity, sound and sight, while maintaining a Zen-like focus on the road. Anything less and you are a potential organ donor.


A word of caution: Do not ride when angry or emotionally upset. If the stock market is taking your IRA for a ride, don’t go on one.


Motorcycling, like politics, gives you a false illusion of power and road superiority. All you have to do is take a turn a little too fast, causing the back wheel to slide out just a little, and… it’s a sobering experience.


Bikers are literally run off the road. People open the doors while you are splitting lanes. Hitting the ground at any speed hurts. That is why people were leather. Riders are encouraged to wear what you want to be wearing if you fall off. A thick jacket, strong boots, two pairs of jeans, (instead of leathers), gloves, a good helmet, and eyewear are necessary.


Come to think of it, this attire also comes in handy if you are a contemporary Latino columnist with a proclivity to insult attorneys and write Whack TOP Ten lists.


There are two major adages when it comes to motorcycling. The first is that there are two kinds of riders: Those who have fallen off and those who will fall off. The other is that there are two kinds of police officers: bike cops, and those who want to be bike cops.


I ride what is called a sport bike street fighter, a lightweight, high powered 1000cc Japanese bike that causes one to slightly stoop over the gas tank. The riding posture is very much like the one adopted when riding old-fashioned ten speed bicycles with the handlebars that curved down.


These types of bikes are capable of producing incredible horsepower. Some can do three times the speed limit, but if you need to go that fast you need psychotherapy. There should be a law here like in Europe that licenses people to motorcycles based on the bike’s size and one’s level of riding experience.


Although these Ninja-styled bikes are in vogue and can walk any car on the street, I am finding that after a long ride and being bent forward for miles at a time, my neck, back and wrists cause me some serious pain. I end up walking around the house like Fred Sanford, having a hard time straightening out. My Highway 1 therapy, albeit good for the soul, has wreaked havoc on my Baby Boomer body.


During my quiet times of canyon carving, I have come to a realization that I no longer need to own the fastest, baddest bike on the block. At this point in my life, it’s more practical to be comfortable then cool.


I do however still have my fat baggers, Harley full dress bike that I use during the days I feel like mean mugging people and setting off a few Volvo car alarms downtown.


Motorcycling is simple: Keep the rubber side down and the painted side up. Not riding — or writing — for me, is not an option.


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=7008

Bowling for Ballers

Don’t try it in Stacy Adams shoes

By Al Carlos Hernandez, Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: January 23, 2009


Last week, once again, I tried to get the hang, the gusto, of bowling. I went to a local alley with a group of friends, two of whom had never bowled. We had a fairly good time, but I am not ready to join a Moose Lodge. The whole experience seemed weirdly mid-American-subcultural for me. I felt like buying a van conversion.


I have three or four buster-bust bowling experiences under my belt and was in no position to give any advice, such as:


“Rent the whack shoes, don’t try it in Stacy Adams.”


and


“Try to knock them all down the first time so no one from another lane tries to coach you.”


Some families have a tradition of bowling as a culturally honored activity. Many have the hubris to tout that fact that their uncle had two 300 games, or their dad/mom/whoever was a member of 9 teams at once. Although serious to some, bowling is never a job, unless, of course, you are a compulsive gambler. If so, you have bigger problems anyway.


You hear disjointed, inane, often pointless stories about some step-cousin who angled a split, then picked up a spare in the last frame which gave him a pin up to win the tourney.


There was a guy next to us bowling all alone. He had major equipment. A friend said, “That guy has four balls.” I replied, “Maybe he lives next to a nuclear power plant.” Another guy said, “My ball is green.” I told him to take antibiotics.


A word to bowling-aholics: It is virtually impossible to impress an urbanite with bowling lingo. It’s like wearing a pair of overalls with a bow tie.


Where I come from, any public display of math skills was avoided like the plague. It’s a good thing that all of the scoring is done by computer; this is done so the scorekeeper doesn’t get sucker punched.


Bowling is now family friendly. This alley (which looked like a wooden parking lot) had a mug shot of Rodney Dangerfield in a red Vegas tuxedo. It was up on a TV screen mugging you if you rolled a gutter ball. I saw his face more than once. “Our high school football team was so tough, after they sacked the quarterback, they went after his family…” “Nice hat. What? They couldn’t guess your weight?” “Nice tie. Did you get a bowl of soup with it?”


During college, my friends and I hated bowling because it was one of Richard Nixon’s favorite pasttimes. He even had an alley built in the White House. Tricky Dick was wrong about Viet Nam but may be right about bowling. I saw lots of folks my age trying to get their roll on. That being said, Obama is ditching the White House bowling alley for a basketball court.


Lifelong bowlers assume a smug, often nerd-like, bravado as soon as they put on their pastel paneled shirts and lace up their special education-looking, Ringling Brothers-styled shoes.


I do, however, like those Silver Lake chic bowling shirts. The kind you can buy at the segunda (thrift store). The ones with the names like “Buddy,” “Lucky” and “Ace” embroidered over the left front pocket.


There should be some standard bowling rule that docks someone who owns their own ball, bag, and shoes, a few dozen pins per game.


Bowling to me is very much like golf. In my opinion, any competitive activity that can be accomplished in everyday street clothes cannot be considered a real sport.


It seems reasonable that any sport that you can play in church clothes and cannot cause grave injury couldn’t be that physically challenging, and should be categorized as para-sport.


What is great about bowling is that it is the most multi-ethic activity I have ever seen. Every race represents, and bowling is no respecter of ethnicity. There is no racial dominance in this para-athletic endeavor. Bowling teams represent churches, businesses, social organizations, political organizations, and are irrespective of gender.


If you can bowl, know how to work the shirt and the shoes, someone will want you on a team. I have been given no offers at this time.


It would also be helpful if the pins could be painted to look like, maybe, ex-girl friends, the boss, political figures, DMV clerks, IRS agents and insurance salespeople.


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=7143

Papa Al and Miss Sally

What a long strange trip it has been…

By Al Carlos Hernandez, Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: March 14, 2009


Part of my responsibility as a “pet parent” is to take Miss Sally, our puppy, for a daily walk. Everyday around 5pm, I bundle myself up, negotiate with Miss Thing in securing her collar, putting on her leash, then hitting the road.


We have lived in the same neighborhood for 26 years. It is sobering to realize that it has been only during the last three years that I literally took the time and walked around the block of our middle class housing development.


As adults, we see life though the windshield of a car or through the dark shield of a motorcycle helmet. Local architecture seems like movie props. Trusted visual friends are seen everyday, like Lucy and Desi’s living room. The houses could all be facades for all we know. We don’t see life, we see the illusion of life and only speculate as to what goes on behind the curtains.


I, like many of you, make it a point to look inside as many houses as possible as I drive by so I can judge other people’s whack concepts of interior design. We have seen the same house fronts for years, albeit different paint schemes, different cars, and different neighbors, but we never get to know any but a handful of localities.


As a kid I can remember every house, every crack in the sidewalk, places where every crackpot lived, who had a dog, who was in the dog house, and what most cribs smelled like. Dostoyevsky often wrote about his town, that he knew the awnings, shutters, window panes, ornate doors and door knobs as friends. They were comforting sight visuals that convey the warmth and security of home.


While walking La Mama at a leisurely pace, I experience the houses up close and personal. Player hating the perfect lawns. I smugly glide past yards that looks worse than mine. Each home has a story, a life. If those walls could talk in my neighborhood it would be probably be Tagalog. That reminds me to find a lumpia and adobo hook up for the holidays later this year.


As we walk I can smell the change of seasons in the air as winter is making the way for spring. And, given the dismal state of our economy, this may have been the winter of our discontent. Nature has a way of renewing itself, oblivious to the stock market. It doesn’t appreciate us. We, like grass, will grow, wither and pass away. Life cycles will no doubt continue without us; others are poised to take our places.


How many sons and daughters of warm homes past will not be home this time? Those who rode razor scooters and in-line skates while I whipped around town in my two-tone Monte Carlo or the crush velvet pillowed van back in the day?


Sally, who is more enthusiastic than I, takes the daily trek to a strip mall about five blocks away. My job is make sure she is safe and teach her how to walk on a leash. Her job is to bite the leash and growl at me when people I don’t know are milling around and admiring her.


To add insult to injury, I have to bring a plastic bag to scoop up and retrieve her “processed lunch” should she have the inclination. She does so regularly in peoples’ driveways while whole families come to the window to admire the cute white fluffy dog with the Michael McDonald looking owner who has hair to match.


I start the walk bundled up for the cold, collar turned up towards the fog. Sally starts out thin and matted but, as she walks, the cold fluffs her out to almost double her size. She leaves the house an adolescent Bichon Frises. I come lumbering back from the other direction herding a sheep.


We walk the neighborhood in relative anonymity. I’m embarrassed to say we only know a few next door neighbors. Those we don’t know grew suspicious when, a few years back, some teenagers spray painted lines on everybody’s cars up our block but ours. I forgot to mention all of my sons grew up here. We live in a society where reputations still matter.


There will be a time, when those who sneak glances at us out the windows will see a bent over old man and a fat white dog shuffling down the street, not knowing, never knowing who we were or what we mean to our families.


Sally and I hope to be in shape to join the parade when the homies come marching home from Iraq and Afghanistan again. Freedom after all, isn’t free.


“What a long strange trip it’s been.”
-Jerry Garcia


Al Carlos Hernandez, Contributing Editor
Edited by Susan Aceves


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=7285

Qué Cribs, Qué Nada

Don ‘t buy the hype

By Al Carlos Hernandez-Contributing editor
Published on LatinoLA: June 1, 2008


We have this 150 channel cable hook up and sometimes I get lost in the jump-cut shuffle for hours. The big screen takes me on a visceral trip around the world which is a long way from the 12-inch, black and white, 3-channel box with the aluminum antenna we shared in the projects, back in the day.


On MTV2 was the program Cribs, and I couldn’t believe this young rapper boasting about the stereo which cost Twenty thousand dollars in the back of his Humvee. It was a two-hour special and I was glued to the conspicuous consumption and the petulance of the pop elite. The array was almost Biblical, steeped in idolatrous superficial material values. His stereo cost more than most working folks everyday vehicles.


Even the most liberal of Democrats will agree that this country was founded on the traditional values of hard work, a good education and an obligation to give back to the community, but this one cat was driving a $300,000 Lambo, wearing a $12 Fruit of the loom T shirt, and Payless house shoes.


What was eerie to me was, and no doubt not politically correct, I like that the Hip Hop community could care less what the body politic may think. Read in the Book of Timothy 3: 2-5 talking about the last days, “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them”.


Now is it just me or does that read like a TV Guide log line for Cribs?


Irrespective of your religious prejudice or proclivity, truly educated people throughout history have read the Bible, just because some preachers are whack, the prophecy’s which have been proven true, are not.


As a parent it is hard to become a role model for the little ones trying to compete with this level of media fueled, label conspicuous consumption. This generation is becoming a cult of personality. We know more about Tom Kat, Brangelina, Lindsey and Britney then we do about or own family members. Media is somehow convinced us that famous people matter … but they don’t.


It is almost impossible now a days for working parents to impress upon adolescents the values of hard work, paying dues and study. Everyone wants to get their’s now. Many teenagers have an incredibly misplaced sense of entitlement. The music and video images touts the importance of flossing Bentleys, getting rich or die trying, the misogyny of women as objects, and for 99% of them that is never ever going to happen and if it does, they will probably end up in rehab, then back to the parent’s home to start all over again.


Maybe my adversity to over-the-top Hip Hop culture is rooted in my social activism back in the day, when we gave speeches about taking the University back to the community, brick-by-brick if we had to, our demands for racial equality and affirmative action. Many brothers and sisters went to jail and took police beat downs just so the next generation could attend High School and college without ethic stigma, with culturally relevant curriculum.


Big respect and a debt of gratitude should be paid to those who fought/fight bravely for the freedom to wear a diamond studded grill and 15 thousand dollar 26-inch-rims on a BMW while living at their Mama’s house.


Don’t get me wrong, I like nice things drive nice cars and player hate big timers just like everyone else. What we should be concerned about is that the value system that is being imposed on all of us is not based on dependable convictions such as study and hard work, rather a live for today, spend all your money, hope to win the lotto mentality. This mind set in the end may cause our society to crumble.


Like Chuck D., used to say before his boy Flavor Flav became a VH1 freak show, “Don’t believe the hype”.


Other countries are way ahead of us when it comes to education and dedication to family and the work ethic. American personal consumer debt is now in the Trillions.


Don’t let the cribs fool you. Sometimes they are rented. So are the cars, bling-bling and often times the babes.


“Every non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies”.
-Francis P. Yockey


About Al Carlos Hernandez-Contributing editor
Al Carlos is a professor who rides choppers.


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=6502

Dancing with a Dweeb: A Love Story

My body simply does not multi-task when it comes to physically expressing myself to music

By Al Carlos Hernandez, Contributing Editor
Published on LatinoLA: April 10, 2009

Embarrassingly, I am so inspired by the TV show Dancing with the Stars that I have to tell my own story about tripping the light fantastic.


I am one of the few full-blooded Latino males who cannot dance. It’s not for lack of trying or the lack of resources to hire professional trainers. My problem isn’t genetic and has nothing to do with race. My parents, especially Mom, were great dancers.


We grew up raised on radio, nurtured in a music filled environment as my dad was a weekend musician. My sisters dance. I’m not sure how well, since I’ve never danced with them. Maybe if I had, they would have told me, in no uncertain terms, how much I sucked. This could have saved me years of humiliation.


My brothers, one a Harley biker, the other a successful Porsche-driving attorney, are somehow socially bound not to express themselves in a festive and physical manner in public. That leaves me to distinguish myself as the Dork of the Dance.


In the early years I was successful in doing the slow strut vato loco two-step. It didn’t matter what song was being played. The girls thought I was a brooding, troubled romantic. However when disco came along I had no shame in my game and took to virtually running in place while snapping my fingers in the air. I’ve been told I looked like a commercial for the Cholo Special Olympics.


Then there was the time I was strutting my raggedy stuff down a Soul Train line at a house party in Oakland and almost took a beat down because my moves were so stiff and lame. Luckily, I faked a platform shoe ankle injury and escaped with my permed Afro intact.


When salsa music hit hard, I was a program director for a Spanish radio station in San Francisco. We would co-sponsor the biggest and baddest salsa concerts the West Coast had ever seen. Women would drag me to the dance floor only to try to lose me during the timbale solo because my moves were so spastic and whack. After a lady would dance with me, her girl friends would hit her with their purses after she got back to the table.


Believe it or not I thought I had it going on. I thought that by amending my aerobic disco-jog by kicking my feet off to the side, then flapping my elbows like a rooster getting ready to jump over a barn, it was salsa. It wasn’t salsa. It was sorry. Friends and family, through an intervention, convinced me to limit my club participation to buying people drinks and court-supervised slow dancing.


Ironically, I met my wife, a great dancer, at a salsa club. It was during a radio station sponsored Halloween party. I spent the whole night trying to convince this gorgeous conservative Latina business executive that I was not the convict-looking, pinto vato loco my costume made me out to be. But my headband kept slipping down and blinding me to the point where I felt like smashing a piñata.


I growled at dudes who asked her to dance, scaring them away. I then took courage and asked her to dance myself. The room got quiet as I limited my movements to very subtle rhythmic steps while keeping my arms near my waist, avoiding flight. As confidence grew I began walking around in circles while moving my shoulders to the music. The radio staff was no help. Soon everyone in the club knew that I was trying to dance again. All eyes were on me, waiting to bust a gut at my murdering of this traditional art form.


Mi vida quickly read the situation, discerning the glee that my free-loading entourage was getting at my painful attempt to salsa dance. She took pity on me and led me back to our table. This gorgeous, intelligent woman realized that I endured public scorn by trying to make her happy. We have been together ever since. 25 years married in May.


Enamored, I confessed to her that I was not a dancer and, although I can play some conga and bass guitar, rhythm somehow has no way of getting to my feet. My body simply does not multi-task when it comes to physically expressing myself to music.


We agreed to do all of the slow dances together. Then it would be my job to commandeer the best and usually most effeminate male staff members to dance with her during the up tempo tunes.


It has been years since we have danced in public. The whole experience falls under the “been there, done that” category. If we got to a club nowadays we’d see that what passes for dancing used to be considered a misdemeanor fondling morals charge.


I have learned through trial and error how to accept my social limitations. I am happy to have had such good friends who cared enough to tell me how much I blew at dancing. My inability to dance never cost me any money. It did teach me a certain humility and probably qualified me to run for public office.


About Al Carlos Hernandez, Contributing Editor:
Al Carlos is somehow now really famous in Paris, France
Edited By Susan Aceves


http://www.latinola.com/story.php?story=7370