St. Louis Riverfront Times

Tag: Columns

  • Ask a Mexican: Dumping Grounds: Do Mexican workers poop in fields?

    Ask a Mexican: Dumping Grounds: Do Mexican workers poop in fields?

    Dear Mexican: You seem like a smart guy and your input regarding an ethnic phenomenon I’ve observed would be of interest. I live in a tiny, gated neighborhood that I would describe as solidly middle- to upper middle-class. On each side of me live Vietnamese small business owners whose kids attend prestigious universities; across the street is a Filipino medical technologist, and four doors down is the Korean engineer. On the next block over is the Sikh Indian family and a family from Nigeria. They are all recent immigrants and except for the Indians, none of them speaks English fluently. What is conspicuously missing is even one single Mexican immigrant family, with the exception of the rich Mexican nationals from Saltillo — but they only visit on Christmas, Easter and shopping holidays. How come immigrants from south of the border stay stuck on the bottom rungs of the proverbial ladder of success for generations? By contrast, other recent immigrant groups, particularly Asians, are kicking whitey’s ass, economically speaking, by the second generation.
    Puzzled in San Antonio

    Dear Gabacho: “First of all, the children of immigrants from south of the border make steady intergenerational progress. In other words, each generation is doing better than the one before it in terms of socioeconomic indicators. DUH!” says Jody Agius Vallejo, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California and a scholar who specializes in the study of the Mexican-immigrant y Mexican-American middle class. “Latino immigration is generally a low-skilled, low-wage labor migration; how can you even compare that to your Korean engineer and Filipino med tech neighbors who migrate to the U.S. with college degrees and who start off in the middle class?” Vallejo also points out that more than a few non-Latino immigrants get resettlement assistance or initially qualify for welfare, “which greatly facilitates their upward mobility.” The Mexican will only add the reality of middle-class suburbs like Whittier, California where Mexis moved into a generation ago once they made money, only to have their gabacho neighbors white-flight it out of town — you can look it up!

    Dear Mexican: Is it true that women migrant workers who work in the fields wear skirts or dresses over their pants so that when they have to use the bathroom in the fields, their private parts will be covered?
    Screw Latrinos

    Dear Gabacha: No, but I see where you’re getting at. One of the great Know Nothing conspiracies is the fundamentally fecal nature of Mexicans — essentially, that we’re shit and proof is in the periodic E. coli outbreaks that sicken and even kill Americans. They blame the disease on illegals not washing their hands properly or cagando next to tomorrow’s grilled asparagus, not bothering to blame the farm owners who push workers to skip bathroom breaks under threat of a lesser wage, or ridiculous regulations that allow farmers to have restrooms as far away as a quarter mile from work sites (let’s see you march five minutes under a sweltering sun, with the pennies in your paycheck slipping away, just to take a piss) per Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards. Even more telling, incidents of E. coli entering the public have increased in los Estados Unidos even as sanitation standards are higher than ever before, suggesting something other than shitting migrant workers is amiss in our nation’s food chain — but why bother with reasoning when it’s always easier to blame Mexicans? By the way, the only report the Mexican was able to find on defecating farm workers was in a 1995 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, which showed 15 percent of them did the deed — 15 percent too many, but hardly a sea of brown.

    GOOD MEXICAN OF THE WEEK! Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader is a collection of essays that’s a literate chinga tu madre to the heteronormativity that’s still endemic in Mexican (and Latino) society. Remember, gentle raza readers: we can’t be homophobes and whine about Mexi discrimination in the same breath. Help eradicate H8 by buying this libro.

    Ask the Mexican at [email protected], be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!

  • Ask a Mexican: Why can’t we all call the Rio Grande the same thing?

    Ask a Mexican: Why can’t we all call the Rio Grande the same thing?

    Dear Mexican: Why can’t the United States and Mexico agree on one only name for the Rio Bravo-Grande river? And I don t understand why the Americans lo dice in español?
    Marfa Maven

    Dear Wabette: The Mexican is a Californian by the grace of God so doesn’t dare tread the intellectual waters of the Lone Star State unless absolutely necessary—recently, he declared Dallas as more influential in the course of Mexican food in this country than Houston, and got holy hell from it by Houstonians while folks in El Paso and San Antoni snickered! Gotta love those locos…anyhoo, I forwarded the question to Joshua S. Treviño, vice-president of communications for the Texas Public Policy Foundation and one of the few conservative Mexis that doesn’t give the Mexican Montezuma’s Revenge. “This question is near and dear to my heart: though the Mexican who usually answers your queries is born and bred in sunny Orange County, California, my family is from the Texas-Mexico borderland along the Rio Grande,” Joshua writes. “My Treviño grandfather would swim in the river between his childhood home of Roma, Texas, and Ciudad Aleman, Mexico, on the opposite bank. Thankfully, he married a Laredo gal and lived the rest of his life in Texas — else my Treviños might have ended up like the most (in)famous Treviños today: senior enforcers in the Los Zetas narco-cartel.

    “That’s right, I wrote ‘Rio Grande’ above,” Treviño continues. “That’s what we call it here en los Estados Unidos—and it’s just as proper to call it Rio Bravo del Norte when you’re in Mexico. The dual name stems from colonial-era confusion about whether the upper and lower courses of the river were connected. In 1840, Mexican revolutionaries in Laredo established the short-lived República del Rio Grande; the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the U.S.-Mexican War refers to the river demarcating the new boundary as ‘the Rio Grande, otherwise called Rio Bravo del Norte.’ In time, Anglo settlers in Texas adopted one, and Mexicans — perhaps inspired by the connotations of bravo en español signifying ‘wild’ or ‘turbulent,’ which aptly describe the region— adopted the other. Rest assured, this is the source of absolutely no confusion here. As for why we Americans say Rio Grande in Spanish, that must remain a mystery, unsolvable until we discern why we say California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and San Francisco en español tambien.“

    Gracias, Joshua! The next breakfast taco at Torchy’s in Austin is on me…

    Dear Mexican: What’s up with the trucks full of mattresses and other junk on the freeways? Mexicans get a bad rap for being lowly laborers, but I think they’re secretly engineers. It’s the only explanation for the ridiculous loads they fit into their 1995 Chevrolet Dually pick-up trucks. Where the heck are they going and what are they doing with all of our junk and old mattresses — taking it to TJ? Driving the old gas hogs they are, how can they make any money? I have asked other Mexicans I work with, but they said they don’t know…they might not really be Mexican.
    A Confused White Commuter

    Dear Gabacho: Of course we’re engineers! How else do you explain how we stuff thirteen kids, four uncles, the abuelita and a hell of a lot of clothes in a truck for a trip to Mexico? Or how we stuff ourselves into car engines when we sneak back into the United States?

    Ask the Mexican at [email protected], be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!

  • Ask a Mexican: Why is it that people from Chihuahua and Monterrey are such jackasses?

    Ask a Mexican: Why is it that people from Chihuahua and Monterrey are such jackasses?

    Dear Mexican: Why is it that people from Chihuahua and Monterrey are such jackasses? They come from pinches ranchitos and talk about their haciendas, They cross the border and act as if their cagada does not stink. Why do pinches chihuahuenses act as if they are better than us American citizens? They eat at all-you-can-eat $6.99 buffets and still want to take a plate to go for their abuela and primos and try to feed the whole familia. They stay at our hotels and treat the maids like rats, as if they were conquistadores. They speak loud as if every one wanted to hear what they have to say — they are not E.F. Hutton. They think that their putos pesos can buy anything, When you ask them where do they come from, they start by telling you that their abuelos are Spaniards and most of their familia are Spaniards as if they are ashamed to be called mexicanos. The women wear their pantalones so tight that when they walk, they go up their puto culo, with their fake blond hair. Please tell those cabrones chihuahuenses and putos monterreyes que cool down, they are just as Mexicans as the rest of us, that they still smell like frijoles and are not Spaniards.
    Hernan Cortez

    Dear Gachupín: Nothing like some intra-Mexican hatred to prove that the idea of a Mexican nation united for Reconquista is as realistic as a Mexican government free of narco money! Your specific insults toward people from the Mexican state of Chihuahua (or, as they’re known in El Paso, fronchis) and city of Monterrey (their nickname is regiomontanos) marks you as someone from Texas, as that’s where the majority of immigrants from northern Mexico have landed. And the reason they act so uppity isn’t so much because of where they’re from but what they are: ricos who have fled the chaos of their home states for the safety of Texas, where pompous, ostentatious pendejos are not only welcomed, they become governors and presidents.

    Dear Mexican: I’m a gabacha…kind of. I was born here but my padres are mexicanos. So I’m a gabachacana. Anyway my question is in regards to fixing my authentic mexicano’s papeles. He’s 23, and I heard that once you’re past 18, it’s harder to do it. He’s never been in trouble with the law, he pays taxes and he’s a hard worker. But I heard that even all that would do him no good and if I go through trying to fix his papers, he would need to spend like 10 years in Mexico. Now, I’m a patient person, but que chingado man? I’m not gonna risk him meeting some paisana hoochie over there and having me wait 10 years for him. So, what steps can I take to prevent such an atrocity? What would you suggest be the best way to go about in fixing his papers without the risk of having him meet some skeezer down south?
    Gabachacana

    Dear Wabette: While I’m all for people making up ethnic labels to describe themselves, gabachacana makes you sound like an apricot. The easy answer is marrying the chavo — you’re still going to face a long process, but it’s faster than waiting for the Obama administration to make Dios-knows-how-many deals with labor, the Mexican government, and Republicans to offer a “comprehensive immigration reform” that’s as comprehensive as a tortilla chip covering a bowl of birria. Better yet, why not just move to Mexico with him? As I’ve said before, Mexico is the true land of liberty now, a libertarian paradise that becomes more and more appealing as technocrats up here try to game the system for themselves and make los Estados Unidos into just another Mexico–oh, wait…

    Ask the Mexican at [email protected], be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!

  • Ask a Mexican: Why are Mexicans such mama’s boys?

    Ask a Mexican: Why are Mexicans such mama’s boys?

    BUY TACO USA! Gentle cabrones, my much-promised Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America has finally hit bookstores! Place your order with your favorite local bookstore, your finer online retailers, your craftier piratas, but place it. My libro editor has already promised to deport me from the publishing industry if we don’t sell enough copies!

    Dear Mexican: I’m getting sick and tired of all these dirty, stupid Mexicans running around. The first part is easy: As Mr. Dix says in David Copperfield, when asked what to do with David, “Why, bathe him.” The second part could be just as easy: Pay them to learn English. There is no damn crime in knowing two languages. If they are kids brought here illegally by their parents, pay the parents to learn English also. And don’t ever, ever tell me that there’s no money. I HATE MEXICANS EXCEPT FOR THE GIRLS!
    Wrote My Question Via Snail Mail

    Dear Gabacho: And as Dickens wrote in Martin Chuzzlewitz, “What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another.” I agree it’s no damn crime to know two languages, so please tell your gaba raza it’s OK to learn Spanish — shit, Mexicans learned English long ago!

    Dear Mexican: Why are Mexican men so attached to their mommies? My boyfriend is an only child, and his mom is loca for him. When he goes out to dinner with his parents, she never has anything to say. But if I am around, she will talk to him forever. I tried to be friends with her, but she looks like she just want to have a civil relationship with me, not a “mother-daughter” relationship. He isn’t crazy in love with his mom because he has stopped speaking to her for ten days because of su novia and had arguments with her because of things she did against me in the past, but he is still kind of…blind. How can I take him away from her? Somebody told that the food will. I already know how to make three Mexican dishes and he loved! What else can I do besides cook and have sex (which he enjoys a lot!)?
    Confused Nuera

    Dear Daughter-in-Law Confundida: It’s not so much a Mexican thing as it is a Catholic culture cosa. One of my favorite cross-cultural moments happened in The Godfather 2, where the young Vito Corleone (as played by Robert DeNiro) saw an opera in Little Italy in which the protagonist, upon learning about the death of his saintly mother, proceeded to sing that he was going to kill his…was it a wife? Lover? Don’t have my Netflix right now. Anyhoo, Catholic culture teaches the male worship of moms and the dismissal of all other woman as inadequate — it’s the whole Madonna/whore complex, and it’s a cycle that not even the best panocha on Earth can break. And as the eldest son of a wonderful mami, I say let this benevolent tyranny reign FOREVER.

    Ask the Mexican at [email protected], be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!

  • Ask a Mexican: Why do Mexicans call people with curly hair chinos?

    Ask a Mexican: Why do Mexicans call people with curly hair chinos?

    Dear Readers: The Mexican is currently dealing with deportation issues but will return next week once he builds his fifteen-foot escalera to climb over that pesky fourteen-foot wall. In the meanwhile, here’s some oldies-but-goodies to tide you by like yesterday’s menudo. Enjoy!

    Dear Mexican: It seems that whenever Chicano professors want to show off their mexicanidad, they wear a guayabera. In fact, I saw a picture of you in the Los Angeles Times donning the shirt, along with Dickies pants and Converse All Stars. How trite and bourgeois! You go to a café or bar in any university town in Mexico, and the students will think you’re totally naco. I stopped wearing the guayabera when a friend said I looked like a waiter in a Mexican restaurant. Do certain clothes determine your Mexicanness?
    Sexy Mexy

    Dear Wab: Abso-pinche-lutely. “The bigger the sombrero, the wabbier the man,” is a commandment all Mexicans learn from the Virgin of Guadalupe. But seriously, Mexican clothes correspond to social and economic status — sweaty T-shirt indicates laborer, calf-length skirt means a proper Mexican woman, and if a cobbler used the hide of an endangered reptile to fashion your cowboy boots, you’re probably a drug dealer or a Texan. The guayabera (a loose-fitting, pleated shirt common in the Mexican coastal state of Veracruz and other tropical regions of Latin America) also announces something about its owner: the güey is feeling hot and wants to look sharp. Why the hate, Sexy? Remember what Andy Warhol said: “Nothing is more bourgeois than to be afraid to look bourgeois.” Who cares if people mistake you for a waiter if you sport a guayabera? Just spit in their soup. And who cares if Mexican university students call me, you or any guayabera wearer a naco (Mexico City slang for bumpkin)? They can’t be that smart if they’re still in Mexico.

    Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans call people with curly hair chinos? Most chinos I know have very straight, hard-to-curl hair.
    China Confundida

    Dear Confused Chinita: The Mexican has discussed the word chino before, as in why Mexicans call all Asians chinos (same reason gabachos call all Latinos “Mexican”). Chinos is one of the more fascinating homographs (words with the same spelling but different meanings) in Spanish. Its Old World meaning specifically refers to a person of Chinese descent, but in his Dictionary of Latin American Racial and Ethnic Terminology, Rutgers linguist Thomas M. Stephens documents how chino assumed different connotations once the conquistadors pillaged the Americas — and none of those connotations was positive. Stephens’ book devotes an incredible seven pages to chino; some of its more peculiar Latin American definitions include “female servant,” “slave from Mozambique,” “concubine,” “young Indian female who served in a convent,” and, yes, “curly-haired.” Chino also was the category in the Spanish Empire’s Byzantine castas (caste) system designated for the offspring of parents with varying degrees of African and Amerindian blood. Stephens’ only sin is that he doesn’t explain why chino took on so many non-Chinese connotations, though he did write that china in Quechua signifies “female servant or animal,” while Nahuatl speakers used chinoa (“toasted”) to describe dark-skinned people. And he offers no insight into the chino-curly connection.

    But it doesn’t take a Ph-pinche-D to identify the common threads in chino’s various meanings: African blood and servitude. Many blacks, of course, have naturally kinky hair, so at some point over the centuries, chino became an ethnicon (a term meant to comment on an ethnic group’s prominent cultural characteristic that become popular shorthand for said characteristic) for both “black person” and “curly.” Mexicans then went on to drop the black denotation and kept the curly connection. Such linguistic amnesia isn’t unprecedented in Mexican Spanish: marrano, which many Mexicans use to call someone a “pig” or “filthy,” comes from the Inquisition-era slur used against Jews who converted to Christianity. All this wordplay is further proof that Mexico is a country with a racial problem that makes America seem like Sesame Street. The proper Spanish word for “curly,” by the way, is rizado.

    Ask the Mexican at [email protected], be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!

  • Ask a Mexican: How did tamarind make its way to Mexico?

    Ask a Mexican: How did tamarind make its way to Mexico?

    Dear Mexican: What do we need to do to make the güeros understand we come in peace As Mexicans, we are from this great American continent as well, but in the average close-minded English-speaking folks’ definition of “American,” it’s amusing to see they don’t understand what it really means, as in: unless you are from one of the few nature-communing groups of people now dubbed “Native Americans,” then you cannot say you are American; being that either yourself, your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents (you get the point) came from the Old World and hence have been in this land “illegally” for much much longer than us bean lovers. So I repeat my question: how can we make these green-gos understand we come in peace? That we are here to live a good life in peace and to take it or leave it: we are here TO STAY! Help me make these McDonalders understand already so we can all learn from each other and live in peace!

    El Frijolero

    Dear Beaner: Gracias for showing American that Mexis can be as meandering as gabachos. As to your question: shit, we’ve tried everything to Hispander to gabachos over the years. We gave them half of Mexico, we called ourselves “Spanish,” we considered ourselves white, we made amazing dishes that other gabachos turned into multi-million-dollar empires — and, still, they hate us. What to do? Not a single pinche thing: Mexicans in this country are no longer at a place where we have to grovel to anyone. If gabachos don’t want to accept that aquí estamos and we ain’t vamos, then they deserve the beautiful brown grandkids that are coming their way.

    Dear Mexican: I noticed that my favorite candies are primarily made out of chile and tamarindo. I understand that chile is indigenous to the Americas, but tamarindo is not. I found that tamarindo originates from the Middle East and Africa. And through the slave trade and the dreadful European expansion, tamarindo found its delicious way to the Americas. What I don’t get is how and why tamarindo became so popular amongst nuestra gente? We consume mega-tons of it! We drink it, we make candy out it, I sometimes have dreams about it…¿que onda?

    Pocho De Ocho

    Dear Pocho: Actually, tamarind came to Mexico through the Manila galleons and has no Middle Eastern connection whatsoever — the Levantine’s contribution to Mexico’s fruit culture is granada (pomegranates) via the Spaniards via the Moors. But it was only by a brain pedo of God that tamarind isn’t native to Mexico, as no other culture save certain Hindoos loves it the way we do. It’s not much of a mystery: Mexicans love sweets with tropical verve and fleshiness, whether it’s mamey, mangoes, papayas, guanábana, tunas (the prickly pear) or boring-ass pineapple. But tamarind is the king of the jungle, because — as you pointed out — we can turn it into so many things: ice cream, fruit leather, salads, salsas, on chocolate, paletas, and so much more. And when we pare it with chile (which we always do), it’s the greatest product of foreign-yet-similar cultures since the leprecano.

    Ask the Mexican at [email protected], be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!

  • ¡Ask A Mexican! Well, pinche me and call me gabacho: A Mexican Spanish vulgarity may not be so vulgar.

    ¡Ask A Mexican! Well, pinche me and call me gabacho: A Mexican Spanish vulgarity may not be so vulgar.

    Dear readers: Before we move on to your spicy preguntas, a bit of housecleaning. Primeramente, gracias to all the Know Nothings who responded to my 100-word-essay challenge asking them to justify loving legal Mexicans but not the illegal ones; I will publish the best entries on the Mexican’s April Fools’ edición.

    On a more important note: pinche. Many of ustedes offered alternate meanings to this Mexican Spanish vulgarity beyond “cooking assistant” and “fucking in the adverbial sense.” From our Puerto Rican brothers:

    In Puerto Rico, pinche is simply the term used for a wooden clothespin. There is no negative connotation of the word on the island.

    From a gabacho married to a Colombian chica:

    When my in-laws were in recently, my cuñada saw us drinking margaritas from a margarita glass. “Eso es muy pinche,” she said, and our mouths dropped. But according to my mother-in-law, pinche in Colombia just means that one is putting on airs.

    Next is my pal Tigrillo, a proud Mexi grad of Princeton University, voicing something echoed by many other tejanos who wrote in:

    In south Texas, they use pinche to refer to people being tight with their money. Kind of weird, since so many folk in south Texas have roots in Monterrey, the supposed land of the codos. I think that meaning of pinche is Tex-Mex, and I have never heard it used similarly elsewhere.

    Something for the Spanish-speaking readers of this column. Oh, my god: the Reconquista has even hit ¡Ask a Mexican!

    Soy un nostálgico ex-neoyorquino que ahora vive en Chilangolandia. Leyendo la respuesta que diste al uso de pinche, pienso que no puedes decir “¡Pinche!” a secas, porque además de adverbio es un adjetivo que necesita calificar a un nombre (adverbios se convierten en adjetivos, es mi punto). Tienes que decir, como le explicaste al gabacho: “¡Pinche gringo culero!,” o “¡Pinche güey!” como decimos mucho aquí en Mexico City. También decimos mucho: “Eso está muy pinche,” para determinar la mala calidad o mal gusto de cualquier cosa. ¿Y qué tal el superlativo pinchísimo? También se debe incluir como adjetivo, ¿no?: “¡Esa película estuvo pinchísima!” es una gran palabra y por supuesto es muy buena traducción para fucking. Me gusta particularmente: “Fucking bitch!” Pero no por misógino, sino porque suena tan bien como “¡Pinche puta!”

    The final word goes to a gabacho living in Mexico:

    Actually, Mexican: here in Sinaloa, pinche is a pretty mild word, more like your (and mine for years) definition, “worthless.” Commonly used by la gente educada y religiosa, pinche just doesn’t have that connotation of “fucking” that it seems to have gained from you pinche wabs y Chicanos in the borderlands and in the U.S.

    One qualifier to the Mexicanized gabacho: he lives in Sinaloa, a Pacific coastal state notorious for its tough, vulgar residents. Need proof? This is where most of Mexico’s drugs lords originate — and now, I shut up.

    Dear Mexican: Have you seen the Simpsons figurines from Kid Robot? The Bumblebee Man is the hardest to get, therefore the most valuable of the bunch. I’ve seen it on eBay going for $75 when they cost seven bucks in the store. You think Matt Groening did this on purpose ’cause he really does love the Mexicans, or you think it was just a funny character and a funny coincidence?
    Señora Ding Dong

    Dear Wabette: Of course Groening loves Mexicans, and not just because he freely admits that the legendary Mexican superhero El Chapulín Colorado (The Red Grasshopper) inspired Bumblebee Man. As I argue in an essay included in my ¡Ask a Mexican! compilation, The Simpsons is the most Latino show ever to appear on English-language television, one so wabby it makes The George Lopez Show seem as gabacho as Friends. Want a full explanation? Buy my book, because I’m over my word count that the gabachos give me!

    Ask the Mexican at [email protected], myspace.com/ocwab, find him on Facebook, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!

  • Katrina Elam

    Katrina Elam

    As a beautiful blond young-country charmer with a knack for soaring choruses, Katrina Elam shares superficial similarities with the soulless Faith Hill, last seen in an overapt role as a Stepford wife. But Elam’s pop-damaged peers can’t match her passionate delivery and pristine phrasing. Her debut disc showcases not only her rich, expressive voice but also her surprisingly subtle songwriting. Elam’s nuanced takes on relationship issues are a welcome change from the genre’s usual frying-pan-to-head slapstick sass, and her slow songs, delicately decorated with piano and strings, never become bloated ballads. Elam isn’t too pensive to party; she serenades the yee-haw crowd with the fiddle-fueled “I Want a Cowboy,” and she gallops through most tracks at a perky-pony pace that should keep her set list lively.

  • Is There a Hidden Meaning to Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” or Is He Just Singing about Dandruff?

    Is There a Hidden Meaning to Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” or Is He Just Singing about Dandruff?

    Brandon D. Richardson

    Director, Rich Kid Marketing and Promotions

    “It’s a very good song, big in clubs and big on radio, and there is a meaning: It’s like when you’re clean and you’re kinda pimpish, you wipe yourself off. You’re wipin’ away the haters, the ones that’s hatin’ on your game or tryin’ to step on your toes. That’s what it’s about. There’s nothing more behind it — no dandruff, no nothin’.”

    Barbie Besse-Morris

    Housewife

    “There’s probably a hidden meaning to that song, and I’m not sure I even want to go there. It could be a woman that he’s trying to get off his back, and he’s calling [her] ‘dirt.’ That’s usually what men are talking about anyway when they do that kind of song.”

    Tom Agustino

    Trainee, Buckingham Palace Guard Academy

    “It’s about being envied. You pull up in a nice car, they see you with a nice girl, and they start talkin’ shit about you and that’s what you need to brush off your shoulders. There’s no reason to talk bad about anybody, no reason to care about what other people think. All that’s important is what you think about yourself.”

    Jay Perry

    Barber/Owner, Nappy Roots Unisex Salon

    “He’s sayin’ if you’re a pimp, go on, brush your shoulders off. You can be a pimp in your job. You can be a pimp when it comes to relationships — ladies are pimps, too. If you’re feelin’ that way, go on and brush your shoulders off. You floss a lot, you got a nice ride, you spend money around town, you’re a big-timer, so you brush your shoulders off, dig? He’s not talkin’ about dandruff, I’m pretty sure.”

    Hope Foster

    Sandwich Maker, Subway in the Loop

    “I don’t like that song, don’t like the beat or the lyrics, and I don’t like Jay-Z. I like Nelly and Chingy.”

    Geoff Oliver

    Massage Therapist

    “Some have speculated that it’s about being a rehabber, working in these old houses with all that falling plaster. But I think it is a dandruff song, a little tune that his mama taught him when he was young to remind him to brush the dandruff and lint off his shoulders when he went to school, and now he’s made it in to a hip-hop song. Some people think of dandruff as ‘dirt.’”

  • Michelob Ultra vs. Guinness Draught in a Bottle

    Michelob Ultra vs. Guinness Draught in a Bottle

    Both come in a bottle and are considered “beer.” The label of each has a brown-and-beige motif, with a shock of red to get you mentally pumped in anticipation of the adventure that lies ahead. The labels of each are made of paper and are affixed to the glass with some sort of sticky goo. Both combine multiple fonts on said label, some blocky, others fancy. Ultra’s bottle is clear; Draught in a Bottle’s is deep, chocolatey brown. Both have a cap on top that covers a hole you’ll soon be wrapping with your lips and angling into your mouth.

    Mich Ultra offers twelve ounces for $2.75, or 22.9 cents per ounce. Guinness Draught in a Bottle costs $3.50 for 11.2 ounces, or 31.25 cents per ounce. The former contains 2.6 grams of carbohydrates; the latter, 9.6 grams. Mich Ultra, however, is packed with 0.6 grams of protein, while Guinness contains only 0.3 grams. The former’s innovation: “Low Carbohydrate Light Beer.” The low-carb thing is sweeping the nation, and the fit wealthies are lapping it up. Guinness’ innovation, not so much, but it’s pretty cool: in the bottle, a clever little invention called the Rocket Widget. When the brew is uncapped, the Widget creates a surge that forms Guinness’ famed creamy head right inside the bottle. Every time you swig, the Widget refreshes the surge.

    Low-carb beer is a funny concept, considering beer is made from grain, and grain makes bread and pasta, which, according to Dr. Atkins, makes you puffy. Mich Ultra has a born-on date, which is dumb; Guinness doesn’t, which isn’t.

    Ultra’s Web site attempts to equate consumption of the light beer with meditation, which is insulting. Guinness Draught in a Bottle is an insult to anyone who has ever enjoyed a pint of true-blue Guinness draught at a pub.

    One tastes like beer-flavored Sprite; the other tastes like flat, watered-down molasses, chocolate and tar. Guess which is which.

    You are correct.

    Guinness is pasteurized stout; Michelob is probably pasteurized, too, but it doesn’t swagger about it. Mich Ultra is a much better-tasting product than we imagined; Guinness Draught in a Bottle is a less better-tasting product than we imagined. Ultra washes down a slice of spinach pizza at Racanelli’s quite well and aids in the removal of excess internal mouth crumbs. Guinness Draught in a Bottle’s foam is apt to gather at the corners of your mouth, which will make you look like a sickly lush. So be careful. Guinness is, however, still Guinness — yummy; and Michelob Ultra is, alas, still Michelob — not so much.

  • Gentry Trotter Gets Burned

    Gentry Trotter Gets Burned

    Gentry Trotter can take care of himself, and usually he can take care of the media, but these last few weeks, things haven’t worked out so well. He was one of the principals mentioned in a page 1 banner-headline article in the Sunday, Jan. 7, Post-Dispatch about the dysfunctional City Living Foundation. He made headlines later that week in regard to threats he allegedly made to KMOX (1120 AM), and then, as a result of all that hubbub, he lost his lucrative public-relations contract with Lambert International Airport.

    A lesser man would crawl off the canvas, retreating somewhere to lick his wounds. But not Gentry. He’s more than willing to strike back at this hamlet’s version of Radio Moscow and Pravda. Mr. Trotter thinks he’s been treated unfairly. He’s only begun to fight. Or sue.

    Trotter’s travail began as more stories percolated into print about the City Living Foundation, the nonprofit corporation formed in 1995, criticized in the media as early as 1999 for not doing anything and disbanded in September 2000. The defunct group was the topic of the most recent Carolyn Tuft-written Post-Dispatch opus, chronicling the long-ineffective history of the foundation, which received $272,000 in city funds but never produced any ads. Trotter received $19,588 of that amount. For starters, Trotter described Tuft’s piece as merely a rehash of previous stories. “It was a regurgitation,” Trotter says. “All it was was a chronology. They could have hired a librarian to type it up in chronological order.”

    A meeting with the Post-Dispatch editorial board that week didn’t help matters. Trotter and Ed Finkelstein — both City Living board members who also did public-relations consulting work for the foundation — sat down with the Post brain trust. According to Trotter, much of the time was spent with Finkelstein and Tuft, arguing, and little or no progress was made. “I felt like I was talking to the Politburo. I’m serious. I thought I was somewhere in old Russia or China now, some Politburo,” says Trotter. “The Post-Dispatch, the “Communist Gazette,’ they decide what’s good for you, who gets the castor oil and who gets the enema. That’s what they do. They make those decisions. In this case, it was “Hey, Gentry’s ass is up next.’”

    But after haggling over interpretations in the article, Trotter figured some perceptions did improve. “We went from being thieves to just being dumb. That’s progress. Dumb people don’t get indicted, just thieves,” he says.

    But things got worse on the airwaves. The story was a topic on KMOX; Morning Meeting hosts Charles Brennan and McGraw Milhaven talked up the story on two days, and Trotter called in to the show on Tuesday, Jan. 9. “So if you were driving down the street listening, you’d think, “That Gentry Trotter’s an asshole, he’s incompetent and he represents all these other people, too,” says Trotter. “I was nailed.” On Thursday, Jan. 11, Trotter and Finkelstein were guests.

    Trotter took offense at how Brennan handled the issue on the first day and called station manager Karen Carroll, who was on vacation. The voice-mail transcript of Trotter’s message to Carroll was read on Thursday’s show and repeated in Friday’s Post. The message included the sentence “I can’t put any money on the air now for the airport,” suggesting that as a result of the on-air discussion of the City Living story, Trotter would not buy KMOX airtime for the airport. Trotter claims this is nonsense because the airport didn’t have any ads on the station and didn’t plan to run any.

    “People pull advertising just for farting,” Trotter says. “Everybody knows in the industry if I were a white advertising agency, I could pick up the phone for whatever reason and cancel ads because it’s done every day with city money, federal money, government money, Mama’s money and anybody’s money. And I didn’t cancel any ads.”

    But by then, it was too late. Politics entered the picture when mayoral candidate and Aldermanic President Francis G. Slay demanded that the airport cancel Trotter’s contract. Slay accused Trotter of using his position with the airport to advance a personal agenda at KMOX. It probably didn’t help that Trotter is a campaign donor and supporter of Mayor Clarence Harmon. “All of a sudden, we got caught up in a political whirlwind. I can understand the whirlwind, but you don’t say somebody’s guilty and hang them without giving them a hearing. You owe people a hearing,” says Trotter, who learned of the cancellation of his airport contract through the media. “We’re asking the Airport Commission to hear our side. What they decided to do was based on what Slay said — “Hang ’em high, and hang ’em often.’”

    The morphing of the City Living fiasco into the dissolution of Trotter’s airport contract took place during the same week as the initial John Ashcroft attorney-general hearings. As a Republican fundraiser who defected from Ashcroft’s camp during the Ronnie White flap, Trotter was getting calls from both sides of the issue. The national media were on the phone, trying to mine data about Ashcroft. “This was going on while I was being lynched about the airport,” says Trotter. “I’m being screwed over by a bunch of Republicans and lynched by Democrats. Boy, what a week. That will drive you to someone like Ross Perot.”

    Trotter plans legal action against KMOX for tampering with his clients, and he’s asked for corrections and clarifications from the Post. He thinks airport director Leonard Griggs violated sunshine laws by calling Airport Commission members to lobby for Trotter’s dismissal, and he hopes to plead his case at the February Airport Commission meeting. Trotter vows to fight on.

    “Everything’s quiet now,” Trotter says. “You don’t hear anything about City Living now. Everybody’s hunky-dory, and the black man got screwed.”

    It’s Ralph Nader! It’s Clarence Darrow! No, it’s Rob Lee! Apparently Lee, whose consumer struggles with Bo Beuckman Ford [“Short Cuts,” RFT, Dec. 6, 2000] got him coverage on KMOV-TV (Channel 4) and two articles in the crusading weekly you are now reading, also has legal skills.

    Beuckman took Lee to court to get a restraining order to keep him from demonstrating in front of the Ford dealership, but the dealership’s expensive Thompson Coburn lawyer was no match for Lee, who defended himself. The court ruled in favor of Lee, allowing him to continue his picketing in front of the West County dealer as long as he stayed off his property and didn’t resort to allegations about Beuckman’s breaking any laws. Saying “BO RIPPED US OFF!” apparently is okeedokee.