Los Escalantes Son Excelentes

Are you legally in this country? Do you have a need for tetracycline? Do you love dressing like circa 1993 Selena? Well, then I have a got a place for you! It's called Alvarado Street and it runs through the heart of NacoLAndia.

I have a love-hate relationship with Alvarado. There is so much to see (trannies) and experience (drogas), and they have great bargains (papeles por 50 pesos), but the traffic makes it practically unbearable. That being said, it's the best way to get to Dodger Stadium from my little patch of Section 8.

This is what welcomes you at the Swap Meet on the corner of Wilshire and Alvarado.



Do not try to adjust your monitor; what you are looking at is real. It is a mural of the legendary Garfield High School math profe, Jaime Escalante, being hugged by EJO dressed as him from the movie Stand and Deliver.

FYI, the real Escalante isn't Mexican, but since he was played by one, we'll allow it on this blog. (Also, don't read the wiki entry unless you want to be depressed.)

And now I have a need to watch Lou Diamond Phillips play a Mexican. Should I go for Angel, the Einestein cholo, Ritchie, the cantante pocho, or Chavez, the indio vaquero? Holy crap. This reads like a list of my exes.

"Did you know that neither the Greeks nor the Romans were capable of using the concept of zero? It was your ancestors, the Mayans, who first contemplated the zero. The absence of value. True story. You burros have math in your blood."

That's deep, EJO, that's deep.

Hasta mañana.