Gomez is ITMFA - in the mood for acronyms - as you can see by our headline.
Now we shall translate.
Kenny Ortega, who is probably the most famous Latino entertainer unknown to most people older than 25, took home the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award this weekend for best movie for High School Musical 3 - which means we should not have placed this post under TV, except that the musical movie started off as a popular TV show.
Ortega is the Emmy-winning director, producer, choreographer and creator of the incredibly popular HSM franchise. At nearly 60 years of age, Ortega started his career working with Gene Kelly, and later choreographed Dirty Dancing and much more. A news story out of India today says he is currently working with Michael Jackson to get him back in shape. He is nothing if not dedicated.
Gomez thinks Ortega is a genius whose day has arrived, and we welcome the return of the musical to US popular culture. We are tired of driving with our kids in the car and being unable to listen to anything on popular radio because we don't like fielding questions like "why is she licking him like a lollipop?" or "how does he spin her head right round when he goes down, mommmy?" from a seven-year-old.
Ortega is helping bring clean romance and fun back to teen culture, and that can't hurt. Please note Gomez is not prude; we just think children should be sheltered so that they can have something proper to rebel against when they grow up.
Gomez has already expressed our grief about Ugly Betty having been shoved aside by ABC to make room for the latest unfunny all-white female ensemble comedy, in this case In The Motherhood.
Now comes news that In The Motherhood, which starts tonight, is bucking the Hollywood trend to cast Hispanic women only as nannies and never as middle-class mommies...by having the resident nanny on the show played by a Hispanic man, Horatio Sanz. Never mind that Mr. Sanz appears to be channeling New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson for this role; it's just annoying to Gomez that Hollywood couldn't, say, have a professional Latina mom in the cast, and a white male manny. Either way, though, chances are good that the show would flat suck binkie.
Gomez has had a chance to look at the pilot to this show, and while some of the ideas are sorta interesting, the show just basically bores Gomez to tears. It stinks because the writing is mediocre, as is the acting. But for Gomez, the show really sucks because it is the latest in a long line of shows/movies that seem to think:
1. The only interesting women in American are white women.
2. The only way white women can be interesting is to be callous, self-absorbed, dishonest, shallow and stupid.
3. Hispanics were put on this earth to care for the generally unwanted children of shallow white women.
4. It is clever and funny to cast a bearded Hispanic man in the role usually reserved for Latinas.
Gomez is over it already, and we suspect the rest of America will follow suit. We think our new friend Maria, whose blog Confessions of an Eastside Actress chronicles firsthand how frustrating it is to be a Latina in Hollywood, will likely agree that In The Motherhood is a waste of time and money for ABC.
Mexican-American comedian George Lopez has scored a late-night talk show of his own on the TBS network, according to basically a million different sources who were all way more on top of this story than Gomez, who has had a cold but knows that's no excuse.
The network signed Mr. Lopez and ordered 34 weeks of the show, says Entertainment Weekly. Mr. Lopez hopes to differentiate himself from other late-night talk show hosts not only by, oh, being the only non-white male with such a show (in a nation of incredible and increasing diversity) but also by having more interaction with the live studio audience.
Gomez has seen Mr. Lopez live, and knows that he's damn funny; he can sell out tens of thousands of seats; and he keeps the crowd rolling with laughter. We have also seen his sitcom (which should never have been canceled, but whatever) and have long marveled at this brilliant man's versatility. Mostly, we have admired his ability to speak the unspeakable, with great self-deprecation and humility.
Gomez has high hopes for Mr. Gomez's late-night show, and we are doing everything in our power to keep images of Arsenio Hall out of our otherwise pristine mind.
The National Geographic channel has renewed Cesar Millan's excellent reality show, The Dog Whisperer, for 30 more episodes, according to Monsters and Critics.
Gomez finds it interesting, in a bad way, to discover that upon seeking news of the show's renewal with ye olde Google News search we came upon three stories about the show's renewal and more than 100 stories on the fact that the show's host, the comely and gently domineering Mr. Millan, became a U.S. citizen last week.
Yes, Millan was born in Mexico. No, Gomez doesn't care. Gomez does care, in a tired and depressed sort of way that reminds Gomez of a Saint Bernard, that so many mouth-breathers in this country seem to care so much about where people were born. Note to fellow denizens: Mr. Millan is the same talented (and, yes, we'll just say it: sexy) man, regardless of his nationality.
Millan dreamed of coming to the United States to be a dog trainer when he was a young boy watching reruns of Lassie. He is now regarded as the world's foremost expert on dog behavior, and has a talent for reforming dogs (and, more importantly, their owners) that is nothing short of amazing.
We're not sure what it says about our nation or media that they are more focused on Mr. Millan's citizenship than on his outstanding show. Actually, we know what it means, we just don't want to pick it up. Just like we don't want pick up all that chihuahua poop in the back yard.
Gomez has a very bad chihuahua we would like Mr. Millan to rehabilitate, except that we suspect the dog's bad behavior says something about us and nothing about the dog - just like the news media's bad behavior says more about the people they serve than it does about the extinct and noble craft of journalism.
MARCH 21, 2009 - Gomez is in love with Edward James Olmos for what he said at the United Nations this week. He is brilliant, he gets it, and we love him, love him, love him. He is talking about how there is only one race on earth, and that this was the overarching message of his latest TV series, Battlestar Gallactica.
Mr. Olmos' appearance at the UN comes as we near the final episode of the sleeper SciFi channel hit remake of Battlestar Gallactica, starring Edward James Olmos and directed by Felix Enriquez Alcala. The show is a great example of Latino talent creating fantastic work in mainstream TV - just the sort of thing Gomez loves to see.
TV critics across the land are praising the well-written show, suggesting it should get an Emmy and, tragically, begging the network not to cancel it. Canceling Battlestar, for the record, is just the sort of thing Gomez hates to see.
In today's Washington Post/PC World, there is a top 10 list of what business can learn from the show. In the NY Times, there's even a story about how world leaders at the United Nations have been discussing what they can learn from the show. Gomez is not kidding.
Gomez would like to congratulate Mr. Olmos for consistently choosing high-quality projects to align himself with. In particular, we love The Americanos Project documentary and book, which Mr. Olmos did together with the Smithsonian. We loved the film Walkout. Gomez also likes Battlestar Gallactica, and hopes all the recent press will help keep the show on the air.
A Media Life Magazine story today reports that Los Angeles company Liberman Broadcasting is all atwitter over their new Estrella TV network, which Liberman claims will "serve all Hispanics in the US," even though the network will offer programming only in Spanish - a language most Hispanics in the US do not speak. Liberman apparently suffers from the delusion that Hispanics want more of the abomination pictured at right. Hint: We don't.
Reporter Kevin Downy, like so many of his ilk, wrote the story erroneously using "Hispanic" as a synonym for "Spanish-speaker," even though common sense and years of social science studies and statistics prove this equation to be false.
In a study on language dominance among Hispanics by generation, the Pew Hispanic Center found that among first generation Hispanics, only 72 percent spoke mostly Spanish. In the second generation, the number dropped to a stunned 7 percent.
By the third generation, precisely ZERO percent of Hispanics in the US use Spanish as their main language, according to the Pew study (not to be confused with the P-U study on frijole useage among Latinos by generation).
Furthermore, the US census reports that the vast majority of Hispanics in the US are NOT immigrants (aka not first generation), which leads to only one logical conclusion: Most Hispanics here are not watching TV in Spanish. We will repeat this for Liberman's sake: Most Hispanics in the US are not watching TV in Spanish.
Furthermore, Gomez invites Liberman and others to consider, for a moment, that many Spanish-speaking Hispanics in the US might also not be watching TV in Spanish, for the simple fact that much of it is insulting, banal, racist, sexist and mind-numbingly lame. Gomez has no stats on this particular possibility, other than in Gomez's own various and far-flung families, whose antecedents tended to be smart people who left their old countries to come the US because things were supposed to be better here. Hint: Spanish-language TV in the US is not better than it is back home.
Gomez thinks Liberman Broadcasting would be better off starting a rival to SiTV, the only English-language network aimed at Hispanics in the US. SiTV does a very good job of attracting horny adolescent males, and those who wish they still met those criteria, but has not yet established much of a base beyond that. Gomez thinks this is because SiTV believes acculturated Hispanics think only of "knockin' da boots" and "pimpin' da rides" and "clocking da model hos". Gomez is just guessing, of course.
Gomez is consistently amazed by the ghastly mix of gullible greed and goofiness among gringo businessmen who want to get rich off Latinos/Hispanics. Gomez thinks the problem stems from said businessmen not actually knowing any Hispanics other than those who run shady marketing firms aimed at gutting guilty gullible gringos.
Gomez is also disturbed by these sloppy stories because, in the end, most decision makers in the entertainment industry believe them, just like Scientologists believe a big spaceship will one day rescue us all from Tom Cruise; as a result, the mainstream networks don't bother to include Hispanics/Latinos in the English-language programming that most of us actually watch, and we remain all but invisible in our own nation because, as we know, if it doesn't happen on TV, it didn't happen.
MARCH 20, 2009 - This week the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences honored eight programs said to have a social conscience.
Among the eight shows was one of Gomez's favorites, Extreme Home Makeover. Gomez likes this reality show because it helps people who actually need help, and because it features Latino designer Eduardo Xol (pictured at right).
Xol is a native of East LA, and he is not only a phenomenal designer, but also an accomplished musician (scouted by the LA Philharmonic when he was just 10 years old), producer, actor, and all-around strapping hunk of genius.
Did we mention Xol has his own line of Quinceanera paper products? Gomez hopes this means streamers and banners and not, well. It's not polite to mention the possibilities - though that did not stop our much-admired brother in crime, Gustavo Arellano (Ask a Mexican) this week.
We jest, Mr. Xol. We are incredibly proud of you and you paper products, and we're happy to know the Academy has seen the value in the excellent show you are such a big part of. Now, when are you going to get your own show, hmm..?