Super buena suerte George! El NYT  publica esta nota:
"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Lopez is about to enter a world in turmoil by competing for American TV viewers against the likes of Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien with his own nightly talk show.
In recent months, O'Brien replaced Leno at "The Tonight Show," and Leno launched his own talk series in a 10 p.m. time slot normally reserved for hour-long dramas. Then Letterman made headlines when he was the victim of a blackmail attempt and admitted to having sexual affairs with women co-workers.
Now, Lopez is entering the fray, two years after his sitcom "George Lopez" was canceled. The hour-long "Lopez Tonight" will launch on November 9 on cable network TBS, and the comedian told Reuters the time is ripe for a talk show hosted by a Latino like himself:
Read the whole article: New York Times

Al igual que su colaboración con Carmen Maura por ejemplo, la relación entre director y actriz siempre han sido muy creativa. Las Almas Gemelas del Cine.

Cinematic Soul Mates  by Mark Harris -NYT

 SITTING in an East Side hotel suite in early October, across from the writer-director Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz picked up a glossy, oversized magazine and gazed admiringly at the cover photograph of Uma Thurman. “It’s good,” she said, turning the picture toward Mr. Almodóvar, her eyes seeking his endorsement.

The new musical production of Vargas Llosa's novel is now at Repertorio Español. On stage until Dec. 26, 2009. This is the NYT review:

Officer Gets an Order He Can’t Refuse

The Nobel Peace Prize goes far beyond President Obama. It is a response to the cruciality of the moment that Obama represents for all of Us. It is about all of Us engaging in these renew efforts of change for a better future. We all are the recipients of the Nobel Prize 2009. The New York Times editorial says it well:
THE PEACE PRIZE
President Obama responded to the news of his Nobel Peace Prize the right way. He said he was humbled, acknowledged that the efforts for which he was honored are only beginning and pledged to see them through, not on his own but in concert with other nations.
There cannot have been unbridled joy in the White House early Friday. Mr. Obama’s aides had to expect a barrage of churlish reaction, and they got it. The left denounced the Nobel committee for giving the prize to a wartime president. The right proclaimed that Mr. Obama sold out the United States by engaging in diplomacy. Members of the dwindling band of George W. Bush loyalists also sneered — with absolutely no recognition of their own culpability — that Mr. Obama has not yet ended the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Certainly, the prize is a (barely) implicit condemnation of Mr. Bush’s presidency. But countering the ill will Mr. Bush created around the world is one of Mr. Obama’s great achievements in less than nine months in office. Mr. Obama’s willingness to respect and work with other nations is another.
Mr. Obama has bolstered this country’s global standing by renouncing torture, this time with credibility; by pledging to close the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; by rejoining the effort to combat climate change and to rid the world of nuclear weapons; by recommitting himself to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and by offering to engage Iran while also insisting that it abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Keep reading the article in NYT

We Didn’t Have to Lose Arlen Specter

G.O.P. Debate: A Broader Party or a Purer One?

Che has become an icon. And as Michael Casey writes in his book 'CHE’S AFTERLIFE. The Legacy of an Image" Che is “the quintessential postmodern icon” signifying “anything to anyone and everything to everyone.”
A cold blood murderer for many or a symbol used by Chávez in Venezuela to justify his 'revolution', or in Hong Kong used against China or to immigrants in the US asking for the American Dream. From fashion runways to mugs. Everywhere. Too many things to too many people. Maybe that is what an Icon is....a marketer's dream. A cash cow after all. For a deeper look at this marketer's dream click here

Just wanted to share this New York Times article. A bit of perspective helps. Hopefully, our experience on past outbreaks will help us to avoid it this time. It goes like this: " Influenza viruses are unpredictable because they are able to mutate so rapidly. That capacity enables them to jump easily from species to species, infecting not only pigs and people but also horses, seals, cats, dogs, tigers and so on. An avian virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic jumped first from birds to humans, then from humans to swine (as well as other animals). Now, and not for the first time, pigs have given a virus back to humans....Influenza pandemics have occurred as far back in history as we can look, but the four we know about in detail happened in 1889, 1918, 1957 and 1968. The mildest of these, the so-called Hong Kong flu in 1968, killed about 35,000 people in the United States and 700,000 worldwide. Ordinary seasonal influenza, in comparison, now kills 36,000 Americans a year, because the population has a higher proportion of elderly people and others with weak immune systems. (If a virus like the Hong Kong flu hit today, it would probably kill more people for the same reason.)" Read the whole article.

The plight of so many hardworking people is dire in many parts of the US. Their only crime: to be immigrant without papers. Take, for instance, the case of Benita Velez. I read about her in an article bu Lawrence Downes in the New York Times. Miss Velez has been in Texas since she was 8 years old, and is a great student and hard working person. Now she is 23 and is facing deportation. Should this king of nonsense be happening? By asking Washington to pass The DREAM ACT we will make sure that cases like Miss Velez will not happen again.

The NYT article stars by asking: "How will this country be a better place once we force Benita Veliz to leave it?"

Indeed. How?

The article continues: "Ms. Veliz is an illegal immigrant facing deportation, but she is nobody’s idea of a criminal, social undesirable or drain on the public till. She is a 23-year-old college graduate from San Antonio who works in a church office. She is smart, self-sufficient and hard-working. She is bursting with academic and professional ambitions — dreams that she has set aside because her paths to achieve them have all been closed. Immigration lawyers have told her that she has no hope of avoiding expulsion. She can only postpone it. Ms. Veliz is here illegally, but not by choice. She arrived from Mexico with her parents in 1993 on a tourist visa. She was 8. She had never lived in the United States before but has lived nowhere else since. By all detectable measures, she is an American, a Texan."

Please act now. On March 26, 2009, the "Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act" was introduced in both the House and the Senate. Opponents of the Act are already starting to flood Congress with messages and phone calls, unleashing their unrestrained fury. We can help by telling Washington to pass The Dream Act now!

The NCLA ( National Council of La Raza ) is sponsoring a call to action. Please visit the link below to participate. Write to Congress. Express your opinion.

http://capwiz.com/nclr/issues/alert/?alertid=13019976

Supporting a call made by Move.org I sent a note to the New York Times protesting the usual republican tactics of doing the wrong thing. They are trying now to block as much as possible the confirmation of Hilda Solis for the Department of Labor. They keep on talking and trying to become somehow relevant again. They are not succeeding. What they are doing is just standing in the way, wasting our time and more importantly, preventing the government from doing what we need it to do: economy recovery, green economy, regulations, equality for all.
Here is my message to Republicans and to the NYT:

"What is left of the once called Republican Party keeps doing what has always done best: small thinking, out of touch policies, pandering to his core and only constituency, the right, the nativist, the bigots. Their irrelevance is for all to see and yet we are allowing them to keep pushing us around in the name of bi-partisanship!!! stop it Now! HILDA Now!

You can act today by visiting Move.org and participate. Here