The Wolfman is opening in theaters this week in the United States and El Papi Chulo to end all papi chulos, Benicio del Toro, has been in full force promoting the movie. This video is from 20minutos, in Spain.

So y'all know he's not just that gruffy voice and killer bedroom eyes, he's got producer credits for this little cinematic beast. From Benicio Del Toro - Wolfman Inspired By Del Toro's Memorabilia Collection - Contactmusic News:

We went to Universal with the idea. That is how you do stuff. You go to the studio."
And Del Toro is convinced his hairy appearance when he went to meet movie bosses persuaded them he was the right man for the lead role.
He adds, "I was in the middle of getting ready to do the Che movie. So I looked pretty much like a Wolfman! I looked either like The Wolfman or a smaller version of (Star Wars character) Chewbacca."

In this video, El Papi Chulo talks about approaching Universal with the Wolfman idea, watching old horror classics in Puerto Rican TV and identifying with the misunderstood monsters more so than their killers.

Awww!

 more this way»

Maegan Ortiz, aka @mamitamala and publisher of Vivir Latino, was here this past Monday and one of the things we were remarking about was the fact we have to write in English on account of our audiences.

I was born in NYC but I was raised in Puerto Rico and lived there until the age of 20. I spent all my formative years in Puerto Rico. In my house we only spoke Spanish. I attended the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras for two years before transferring to New York University to get what I thought would be a better opportunity to continue my studies of Latin American politics, economics and history.

I've written this somewhere in the blog, but let me repeat it here again: Writing, especially in English, didn't click for me until I was well into my 20s. I couldn't write a decent paper during my college and even graduate school years without a lot of gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes.

Essays would leave me emotionally exhausted.

Yes: I couldn't write well, neither in English nor in Spanish, until I hit about 25 years of age. And it wasn't really until I started blogging almost 10 years ago that I actually became insanely prolific to many of my readers.
 more this way»

I watched the Obammercial on Univisión to see what good a job they were going to do in translating the thing. Well, I have to give them a B- in Spanish (and honestly, I really should be harsher but am giving them that for effort) and an A- in English.

But let me start with the actual task at hand.

I think Obama knocked it out of the park for fulfilling the first commandment in Marketing and Advertising : Thou shalt never mention your opponent when you're selling yourself.

The video was an iteration of the a documentary they showed at Denver's Invesco Stadium the day Obama delivered his acceptance speech. In between speakers they would show 2-3 minute clips about his life and his policies much like it was done tonight.

Just as he did in Denver, tonight we saw Davis Guggenheim weave Barack Obama's life with the life of the people he is looking to serve. The working mother with not enough food in the fridge. The elderly couple caught in the hell of chronic illness and disability and dead-end yet necessary job at the local Walmart. The latina teacher with the extra job. The factory worker teetering on the brink of welfare. Obama hit the economy, education and most importantly health care while weaving people's stories to his own vicissitudes and accomplishments.

Nevertheless there's one not so small detail that's going to raise hell for Obama : He says in the video that taxes will be reduced for people making  200K and under. Meanwhile we've been hearing all along, especially after the last debate and in reference to "Joe the Plumber", that the threshold was 250K.

Then we have he 2 big elephants in the room : Gay Marriage and Immigration. He spoke of neither. This threw me off because I thought that he would maybe have a different ad for the Spanish broadcasters. So to see the same ad airing and nothing mentioned about the raids, the wrongful incarceration of people was disappointing.

Overall though, the infomercial was a job well done in trying to make a connection between him and voters.

Yet they proceeded to transliterate instead of translating the video.

Oy.

Here's what I twittered :
 more this way»

Khaled Hosseini is the author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns", and he has some strong opinions about the use of "Hussein" as a dirty word and a call to violence against Barack Obama :
 more this way»

Kyle has compiled a whole collection of images from white supremacist rallies against immigrants. Here's the lede:

The Sanctuary:: 5 English Lessons From the Anti-Immigrant Movement: "Any nativist will tell you that polls show 1,000% of 'Mericans support speaking only English in the United States of America. It doesn't matter if the U.S. can't even understand the languages of the countries it goes to war with (you don't need to understand people to shoot at them). If people can't speak English like they're supposed to, they're not real 'Mericans.

Using this iron-clad logic, I thought I'd compile a list of five English lessons for those that want to learn to how to be a real 'Merican and speak English."

The results are HYSTERICAL. Go see the whole collection, NOW!

(Via The Sanctuary:: 5 English Lessons From the Anti-Immigrant Movement.)

Photo courtesy of Univisión

I am so glad I didn't go to Miami for this :

Reporters who didn't speak Spanish were already anxious about the translation devices that didn't quite fit in our ears. (Porque soy de California, yo hablo un poquito Espanol.)

But 90 seconds before the forum began tonight, the Media Room had no sound - not in Spanish, English or French. Nada.

Spanish- and English-speaking reporters in the room erupted in a panic, sending University of Miami staff scrambling to try and fix the feed. What most reporters heard for the first 16 minutes of the debate was static - both from the closed television feed and from the translation device.

Even Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) seemed to have trouble, yanking the earpiece from his ear mid-way through his answer to a question on Iraq.

Notwithstanding the awe inspiring set and the hard hitting tonality of the questioning, I don't think that Univision did anything groundbreaking. On the contrary, by not allowing Dodd and Richardson to respond in Spanish, they pandered to the Democrats who still treat latinos as a political ghetto from where to get voting servants to work for their "mainstream" agendas.

Richardson complained, and with good reason, about not being able to speak in Spanish. Hillary, Obama, Edwards, they need to get over it. Spanish is the official second language of the United States, thanks in part to that little colony nobody ever mentions in these forums anyway, Puerto Rico. If they couldn't deal with it, then their muscling in the “English-only” requirement for the forum should be used against them at the voting booth.
 more this way»