I telling you man I am a lucky one. On Wednesday August 26, 2015. I had the good fortune to attend a very emotive and inspirational installment of Rick Najera’s Latino Thought Makers series hosted at Oxnard College. The Latino Thought Makers Series is an important initiative designed to engage, educate and entertain students of Oxnard College, the city of Oxnard and greater Ventura County communities. The successful series has showcased the careers of the most prominent Latinos in Hollywood including actors Edward James Olmos, Esai Morales, the family of Cesar Chavez, the creator and cast of Hulu’s East Los High and more. Award-winning writer-director Rick Najera is Artistic Development Director for the third consecutive season of the Oxnard College Institute for Latino Performing Arts. Rick Najera is a writer-director-producer-speaker and author working in all forms of entertainment. Currently, Najera is a staff writer on Hulu’s hugely popular show, East Los High and director of the CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Showcase for the 11th consecutive year which has developed more breakout television and film stars in the industry than any other network today under his tutelage. Najera also speaks nationwide on a variety of topical issues including themes from his […]
Celebrating Latino Art and Culture via the theme of Lucha Libre. On Saturday April 11, 2015 @ 7:00p Plaza de la Raza Los Angeles, CA Antonio Pelayo brings us La Bulla. La Bulla is Antonio’s latest installment of art and cultural events. For more then five years Antonio has been responsible for bringing to fruition El Velorio A Day of the Dead art event at L.A.’s renowned cultural arts center Plaza De La Raza. Continually evolving his perspective and community involvement as well as his commitment to sharing his love of culture and art with the public at large. Antonio manages to marry art, music, lucha libre (Mexican wrestling), food, and the whimsy of camp in this event properly titled La Bulla (loosely translated: BIG FUN FUSS). Participants include event curator Dan Madigan. Madigan’s credits include best selling book “Mondo Lucha A Go-Go”, published by HarperCollins, hailed as THE definitive book covering all aspects of lucha libre. In the world of pro wrestling Madigan has gained international notoriety for writing and directing the shows “RAW” and “Smackdown” for Vince McMahon and the WWE. As writer/director he’s been responsible for creating some of the most memorable and “envelope pushing” […]
The “El Velorio” (funeral wake/vigil) event is being brought to us by award winning artist and Los Angeles native Antonio Pelayo who is also the head of special effects at Disney studios, as founder and director of “El Velorio” Antonio’s vision is to create a space were artist can come together to celebrate and share their art around the central theme of the Day of the Dead whose origins trace back not just to Mexico but to very heart of this continent and its pre-Columbian ancestry. Since its beginnings in 2010, “El Velorio” has gained momentum steadily growing each year. Dedicated to showcasing up and coming artist and talent, “El Velorio” is a multicultural event that celebrates the cultural traditions of Day of the Dead featuring an art exhibition, live music, an altar installation and much more. “El Velorio” @ Plaza De La Raza 3540 N Mission Rd, Los Angeles, Ca. Saturday Nov 8th @ 7p. DON’T MISS IT!!!
What more is there for me to do about missing out on Café Tacvba playing in the 805 this weekends but to brag about my previous exploits. Café Tacvba is celebrating their 25th anniversary as a band this year. I’m proud to say that I ‘ve been in toe with them for most of those years. I even dug deep into my personal archive (pre smart phones mind you) to share some of my most memorable moments here. With a picture being worth a thousand words and all I’ll just fill in the blanks as I go. (P.S. This post is dedicated to Antonio Pelayo for inspiring me to write this post while he poured salt on the wound by rubbing it in that he would be seeing Café Tacvba at the Whiltern in LA tonight adding insult to injury he’s going to the AFTER PARTY W/THEM. Lucky so and so, anyway, moving on…)
Havana Nights… How time does fly. Honestly, It seems to me that it was only yesterday that I posted my last blog. Alas weeks and weeks have gone by since. As I said time is just flying by. Let me tell you a few weeks ago I got an email for a local fundraiser that was happening on a Friday night. Which included Brazilian dancers, live music, Salas dancing, food drinks. Say no more the flyer had me at Brazilian. That weekend also happened to be my good friend Marcio’s birthday week so I decided to take him out dancing. It’s been awhile since Marcio has danced (Marcio happens to be a Flamenco dancer) since he works and travels so much. Anyway it was a hit we both had a blast. There’s one thing I learned that night lady’s and gents KITTEN HEELS are were it’s at with the Salsa aficionado crowd. If you mean to go out and really DANCE leave the mile high stilettos in the closet, Unless you just wanna look cute sitting down all night, But if you REALLY wanna do some damage on the dance floor then break out your feistiest pair of kitten […]
According to my list of blog topics I’m like two months behind. It’s interesting, when I was getting started with the habit of blogging, I didn’t really know what to blog about. So I reached out to others for suggestions on how to grease the wheels in my head so I could get things going. One of the things I started doing was keeping a list of ideas for topics to blog about and at first I got an idea once a week. The pace suited me well enough. Though before I knew it wasn’t the lack of topics to blog about that was keeping me from blogging. I had accumulated plenty of worthwhile topics but now the problem was, it seemed, I lacked the time to type them out. Suddenly there was so much going on and I just must participate. Life was happening and it needed attending to in real time. So the blog topics just kept piling up, and I just kept ignoring them accordingly, like I sometimes do, that ever growing, pile of laundry till I could ignore the mounting stink of GIT R DONE no more. Exactly like when the laundry is just too ripe […]
(Okay so this event was exactly a month ago but whose keeping tabs, right?) The LA Times Festival of books was held Friday April 11th through Sunday the 13th at the UCS campus. I was there it was a book lovers nice dream. The weather leant itself to the event it was bright fresh and breezy. A worthy afternoon of browsing through not only books but stands with various offerings things for sale and much other stuff for free. Books, Art, yummy grub from food trucks, and squirrels too. I could tell you all about it but how about you take a look for yourselves? (Unfortunately I didn’t get her name) This was one of the artist that was there displaying this nifty book sculpture. Art speaks for itself…can’t forget the squirrels
Latino Thought Makers: with Rick Najera & special guest Lisa Vidal & Ernesto Castillo