jorgecorona-blog - Tumblr blog

[jorgecorona-blog]

I made this bc i love you, “the people”. This was a real thing! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyONt_ZH_aw

[jorgecorona-blog]

CVS Also Bans Sugars, Cigarrettes, Alcohol, Pharmaceuticals, Other Products

WOONSOCKET, RI– Following increased media scrutiny, CVS Caremark has announced they will also stop the sale of products containing sugar, alcoholic beverages, products "As Seen on TV", and even most pharmaceuticals. This decision comes after last week's announcement that it will stop sales of tobacco products in trying to help customers reach "a path to better health".

        "Ending the sale of sugar, alcohol, As Seen on TV, and most pharmaceutical products at CVS/pharmacy is the right thing for us to do for our customers and our company to help people on their path to better health," Larry J. Merlo, president and CEO of CVS Caremark, said in a statement. "Put simply, the sale of these products is also inconsistent with our purpose."

        Minutes after the announcement, CVS Caremark stock rose rapidly, then it went down again, then it did a little zig zag thing for like an hour before rising a little again, then dropping back to normal, then rising above that.         As far as their reduced sale of pharmaceuticals, Merlo couldn't stress how much this would contribute to the health of millions of CVS customers, citing problems from addiction to misuse.

        "Pharmaceuticals have proved to be a silent foe of the modern era, propelled by smart PR campaigns and careful image handling," Merlo said, "We would be contradicting ourselves to keep fueling this often misleading industry in its entirety."

        "Makes you proud to be an Extra Care card carrier," Lucinda Johnson, a teacher in Cincinnati commented. "Now if only I could find my dang card."

        Merlo said the ceased sale of these products will be in full effect by October 1st, leaving plenty of time for loyal CVS/pharmacy customers to get their favorite products and organize collective smoking and Honey Bun grieving circles.

        "I'm so sad," Austinite James McFerrin said. "Now I'm going to have to walk four more blocks to the gas station to get my cigs. That's messed up."         CVS is also considering cutting the sale of razors, glue, pointy toothbrushes, Sharpies, scissors, and magazines that depict unreal representations of the human body. 

[jorgecorona-blog]

The Best Worst Picture I've Ever Taken

    It was cold. And I didn't have any long johns on. I didn't even have an actual overcoat on, just my Texas jackets and a Paris-St.Germain scarf that my friend Will brought me from France. Honestly, I didn't even have a clue... But that didn't matter. My mission that day was to wait in line for The Colbert Report on their first day back from their winter break before I took off the next day on a train back to San Antonio. It was a golden opportunity, and I wasn't about to let it pass me.     I arrived at the studio on W 54th Street earlier than any other audience member that day, Monday, January 6, 2013. The day's guest was someone moderately cool. I think it may have been the co-founder of Wikipedia. I don't remember. I was there for the head honcho himself, Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA.     I didn't have a ticket to actually go inside and see the show, but the will call line was my best option so I took it. Tickets would be handed out at 3pm. It was 11am. I decided to go around the corner and warm up at a Barnes and Noble, soaking in the neighborhood where Colbert and his cronies gave off their masterful comedic fumes. I got back an hour later and found I was now the third person in line. Screw you, fumes.      We waited. The will call reservation list was taken at 4pm, though to be honest I don't remember the times with precision at this point. The lady writing on the clipboard, doubtless Colbert's own right-hand will call line woman, asked me for my name "Jorge Corona" I said, probably between shivers. My email? "coronanotbudweiser@..." I made her laugh. Wow. I made one of Colbert's people laugh! I was meant to be here, you see, sitting on the cold sidewalk of Hell's Kitchen, losing any sort of feeling on my cold, numb glutes. It was destiny.

    But of course, it wasn't quite so easy. I went and came back from a Dunkin' Donuts with a fellow will call linee (we got coffee and talked about the Lord of the Rings and Colbert's recent Hobbit episodes, of course). We were instructed to arrive back at the studio around 6pm, when the ticket line would be allowed in and when we would know whether we made it in or not. We were so hopeful... Were, indeed. Once we got the sad news, that the audience was full and that there was no room for anyone else inside, I went into a thinking trance. I had scheduled the whole day for Colbert. I had to see him... I would wait for him. Yes, I would wait.

    But that was before the sun set, so two hours later when the audience was exiting with the excitement of having seen one of America's funniest men in person and of having been part of his show, I was freezing. I had seen the night's guest walk in, an older dude in a wool overcoat, and by the time the audience dissipated I was seeing the night's guest walk out. I asked one of the security guards, who appeared to be the head of the team, when Colbert usually left. "I don't know man," I misquote "Sometimes he leaves right after, other times he leaves pretty late. I wouldn't wait for him. He may leave in a rush. He does that." Psychological warfare. Smart move, security leader. But not on my watch. I told him I was from Texas, and that I would wait anyway. He seemed to take compassion on me. Perhaps it was pity.

    An autograph scalper was there with some of his friends. They held some Zero Dark Thirty posters, which waved slowly in the frigid New York air as they waited for director Kathryn Bigelow to sign them. She was apparently supposed to be the guest that night, so that group was also discouraged when they verified that wasn't so (I think she cancelled). Most of the postered people went home, but one marauded around with me. At one point he was talking about celebrities he had met and how some had been nice and some had not. He said he'd heard Colbert was an asshole. "They say he's really mean. He won't say hi or anything." I started having second doubts. Did I really want to meet my comedy hero? What if I was disappointed? What if, just like Santa, the Stephen Colbert in my head didn't exist? Then, a man in round spectacles walked out of the stage door, looking aimless. "Which way is Broadway?" he said in a drawl. I pointed him in the right direction, having studied and memorized the layout of the city in my short time there. The scalper was freaking out. "Dude... Do you know who that was?" I didn't. "You just gave directions to Sean Lennon." Sean Lennon. The son of John. The bespectacled heir of the Beatles frontman was given directions. By me. In his own city. Yes, I would wait for Stephen.

    The magic hour must have been close to 11pm. The ugly yellow lights that illuminated the sides of the building were on now, and the scalper had gone away. He had invited me to follow him to a red carpet he was going to crash. I thought about it, but I decided against it by a hair. I'm glad I did. All of a sudden security started to mobilize. A black Audi was pulled up by one of the dudes onto the street, and it was left running. A guard walked up to the main entrance of the studio, looking at the others and holding a flashlight. He looked in, then at the other guards, and they did a weird thing where they flashed their lights at each other as if to warn that my night was about to turn right and then out of the studio entrance, the same studio entrance I had touched earlier that day, came a tall man, bundled up and carrying a backpack. He wasn't suited up, but he was the real deal. Stephen.

    Then I realized that I actually had not planned what I would do when I met him. I guess I thought i would see him, but it never crossed my mind that I would actually get to interact with the man. The man. I was truly starstruck. Luckily for me, two other people who had actually seen the show inside that day stuck around, and they got to him first, giving me time to think with his voice floating around in the immediate spatial background. I had my camera, so I got it out. Autograph? Nah, what for? I didn't have his book on me... Or at all. And I hadn't brought the DVD of his show's best moments that I bought when I was in the 11th grade. I was a terrible fan. The light wasn't that good here, and my camera was a DSLR, so I-

    "Hi."

Holy shit.

    "...Hi, sir. Good to meet you."

We shook hands.

    "What can I do for you?"

Did you read that? We shook hands.

I had no idea what he could do for me, though. I should have said something like: "Just keep doing the great work you're doing, Stephen, because it's really quite fantastic and, I believe, impactful to the country as a whole. I admire you, Mr. Colbert, and I want to keep admiring you and your work for a long, long time." But it was cold, and what I really said as I feebly lifted my T2i with my cold hands, I will always remember:

    "...Picture?"

He looked at the camera quizzically. Or perhaps something else-ly. Who cares?

    "Sure."

I think he held it himself, and then at one point asked me to take the picture instead. He really was a nice guy. Note to self though: do not plan to take selfies with DSLRs. Second note to self: plan.     Soon he was inside his Audi, taking a left at the cross-street and flying down the New York streets and toward Jersey. And here I was, walking slowly toward the subway in disbelief, running our conversation in my head and cursing myself for not having planned better. I looked at the picture in my camera. The focus was soft, the lighting was terrible, the angle was ridiculous. But the moment was captured, my petrified self with a Colbert who is likely tired after a hard day's work, a moment accentuated by my hand at the bottom of the frame, reaching for my heart in an involuntary gesture of true elation. When I saw that, I felt embarrassed. But it was the truth. 

  I turned my camera off, put it in my bag, and I walked East, mentally playing back the images I didn't capture in the cold.

[jorgecorona-blog]

Hungry? Every time I see this, yes. Menu pictures for Que Taco! in San Antonio, TX, stylized and taken on location November 29-30, 2013. Wonderful food. Tasted like Mexico, though I still can't put my finger on what 'tasting like Mexico' tastes like... Can you?

At least now we know what it looks like.

[jorgecorona-blog]

                                    A Dream Within a Dream

I am lucky that I have these images to show, for my words can make very little justice of the University Leadership Initiative's fantastic counter-protest against the Young Conservatives of Texas's 'Catch an Illegal Immigrant' Game organized at UT this past Wednesday. The amount of supporters there was outstanding; their diversity unifying. The passion with which these people, my immigrant peers, spoke and performed and yelled and shouted and felt and displayed was so empowering that I wondered at one point why I was taking pictures and not yelling with them, calling out the country on their eyes, eyes half-closed on the topic of immigration and of America's undocumented who may be undocumented but are still America's.

The game planned by Lorenzo Garcia, a fellow hispanic by name, and the organization he leads was really quite disgusting. Its mission seemed tacked-on and its tone irreverent for the sake of headlines which, if true, it accomplished. But I was very glad that the response against it was so strong here at UT and around the nation, strong enough to warrant the event's cancellation. It is quite something to have a game like this, but to have it organized under the leadership of a man with the name Lorenzo Garcia is something else. I can ask a million questions about this, but the root of them all will always be a hollow 'why?'. The counter-protest was a tour de force for me as an immigrant, and as a DREAMer, I suppose, for though not active in any organization, I would benefit from the DREAM Act or related legislation. I guess I had never thought about it, but there are many people living with this immigration situation trailing closely behind them at all times, and seeing many of them there being so proud of their collective strength, being so hopeful about their collective future, and being so proactive about their shared, stagnant present was a contagious experience. Why was I not yelling "si se puede"? Why was I not rallying behind the loudspeaker, leading my peers with inspiring words? Why was I not calling Speaker Boehner when everyone picked the phone up? What was I doing?

This.

Maybe this is my loudspeaker.

[jorgecorona-blog]

El Rey de las Networks?

    Two weekends ago I attended a panel at the Austin Film Festival where some of the most important latino filmmakers were present, Robert Rodriguez and Roberto Orci. Rodriguez is best known as the Austin-made director of movies such as those from the Spy Kids franchise, Sin City, and more recently, Machete and its franchise. Orci's later credits include writing Star Trek: Into Darkness and the upcoming sequels to The Amazing Spiderman franchises. The two were there to introduce their upcoming network, an all-new channel dedicated to action and genre programming for the hispanic audience and/or by hispanic filmmakers. The network is called El Rey.

    El Rey will be based out of Austin, and its web presence will be huge as well. From the way it was described, it seems like El Rey will be a hispanic AMC if AMC was on steroids all the time. The network will be working product integration into their original programming and when they're not showing their own stuff, which will decrease as the network rolls on, El Rey will show old programming that Rodriguez and company have come to like over the years.

    I think the idea is superb, and it excites me so. In this chapter we learned that most of the people who go to the movies are hispanic, and tailor-making entertainment for the hispanic audience fills up a huge void where blander programming is right now. El Rey will add an edge to the available hispanic entertainment, and that will, in my opinion, make it successful and hopefully profitable in the long run.

    I'm actually very excited about what opportunities this network may give to aspiring professionals like myself. I do sort of wish that they didn't limit themselves to genre or action films, as I believe that there is a substantial portion of hispanic audiences out there who prefer the more intellectual and artsy kinds of entertainment who are being underserved, but perhaps in the near future I can get a kickstart in my filmmaking career by working with El Rey in some capacity. Austin-based sounds like music to my ears. El Rey is worth keeping an eye on...

[jorgecorona-blog]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jorge Corona (@coronagram)

I liked the ripples, too. A patch of Austin ground.

[jorgecorona-blog]

#vscocam freelancing.

[jorgecorona-blog]

To him, the country was "a frenzy and a dream."€ A trip to see if that vision can still be found.

Read this on the New York Times recently. It awakened me to the literary possibilities of México and its environment. Knowing Kerouac's work, enough context was given to connect the dots– I suggest to you On the Road.

This article reinforced my wish to go back with these US-seasoned eyes and explore my country. Again, the nostalgia reigns.

[jorgecorona-blog]

Baton Rouge, LA

[jorgecorona-blog]

#vscocam nice shot sir

[jorgecorona-blog]

Un día en la pulguita

    I took this Sunday off for a bit to walk through the flea market on Pleasant Valley and Elmont. The pulga was brimming with hispanic people looking for cheap, durable goods. The pulga was also brimming with the beautiful scent of taco trucks, my personal favorite part.     It was in passing the tables of laid out, unwrapped, clearly used toys and the racks of demodé clothing that I was taken over by commandeering flashes of memory. I remembered the one summer, when I was younger, that I spent a week in Mexico City with my grandparents, where there was a pulga or mercadito just three blocks from their house every Tuesday. My grandmother would grab her rolling basket made of aluminum and tweed and we would walk there and buy groceries for the week, and maybe, if I was lucky, which I usually was with my maternal grandparents, eat one or two blue corn huitlacoche quesadillas which were heaven on Earth and elsewhere.     What a strike of nostalgia, hearing the sounds, walking the walks and smelling the smells. Though the setting may be different, the feeling remains. I wonder if I was the only one reminiscing.

[jorgecorona-blog]

Whatever this is.

[jorgecorona-blog]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jorge Corona (@coronagram)

A to Denton.

[jorgecorona-blog]

Working. (at Brookhaven Country Club)

[jorgecorona-blog]

#vscocam Dallas. (at The Grand Hotel)

[jorgecorona-blog]

Flicking you off a la mexicana.

    Hollywood is certainly a known source to Hispanics for film and entertainment. With movies like The Fast and the Furious series, Transformers, and End of Watch, the hispanic market has been proven to respond well to the American film industry's efforts to attract them as consumers. But, even though a film may feature Hispanic names and Hispanic looking and Hispanic sounding characters, I can't help but think that Hollywood's constant interpretations of Latino culture are still very "whitewashed", so to speak.

    But where is the mexicanidad in film? Where can we find films that pull at our nostalgic heartstrings and drag us back into our homeland– Mexico, in my case?

    If you've had these quandaries about film as well, or even if you're just interested in Hispanic culture or film itself, I suggest you watch Enamoradaby famous director Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez (a man who is rumored to have been the model for the Academy Award, the Oscar). The film stars Maria Félix and Pedro Armendariz, and it deals with machismo, the revolution, love in a time of war, religion, family, and the Mexican identity. It's a great film, photographer by the famous cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, a film that was in search to separate itself from the Hollywood conventions of the time in order to create a unique Mexican aesthetic for the medium. Needless to say it succeeded.

    You can watch the film in its entirety on Youtube if you're a Spanish speaker, and if not get your hands on it soon. I really enjoyed watching it, and I teared up at the end, not so much from the plot, which was sort of predictable and classical, but from the pride in my culture's achievements in art. Maybe it will have the same effect on you?