Author Archives: Michael McBride

El Cipitio

Nationality: El Salvadorian, but lives in USA
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

El Cipitio—it’s supposed to be La Sigunaba’s son, but he’s old but he looks like a 10 year old kid. He’s big and fat but he tries to be a ten year old kid. He haunts little children. He’s basically a midget trying to be a little kid- he has a wrinkled face and he pulls it back to have a younger face. He looks like a kid from far away but you can tell when you’re close. His feet are backwards. He was a love child from La Sigunaba and some other thing.

 

Told to little kids to not go out in the fields at night in El Salvador. It keeps them inside.

 

I believe that this was actually about the social taboo of having a baby out of wedlock—told to children so that they would develop negative associations with it. Also, his features are surprisingly close to kids with various deformities. I think the idea is, although this is a gross way of expressing it, ‘don’t have a baby out of wedlock or it will be retarded’.

Blonde on the Run

Nationality: Irish-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: New Jersey
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English

There’s a blonde a brunette and a redhead one the run from the cops so they run into this barn. And there’s these three stables in the barn, so they all run into a different one. And they go and look in the stables, and the brunette is hiding behind the horse, so she goes “neigh”, so they think it’s just a horse. And then the redhead is hiding behind a cow so she got s”moo”. And finally the blonde is hiding behind a sack of potatoes, so she goes “Nothing here but a sack of potatoes.”

It’s funny because blondes are stupid!

This was told to me by a white, upper middle class person. I think that this is a racist joke that is acceptable in our culture, so his conservative attitude would allow him to tell this. Also, there are more fake blondes on the west coast, and he is from Jersey.

Los Peces en el Rio

Nationality: Spanish American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 25
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Pero mira como beben los peces en el rio (But look at how the fish in the river drink)

Pero mira como beben por ver a Dios nacido (But look at how they drink because they saw God’s birth)

Beben y beben y vuelven a beber, (they drink and drink and keep on drinking)

Pero mira como beben por ver a Dios nacer. (But look at how they drink because they saw God be born)

(God=jesus. this is a christmas song)

 

This is a song we sing at Christmas. The birth of God is the birth of Jesus.

 

I think that this is an attempt to justify their religious identity. In actuality, it’s a bit of a logical fallacy, but they are trying to associate something that is not necessarily proven to be true (birth of god) with something that is constant and happens all the time, and they witness (the fish ‘drinking’ in the river). The artist Gipsy Kings recorded this, and were quite successful– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSjqnKNgvo

Guys falls off motorcycle at red light

Nationality: American
Age: 60
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Plano, Texas
Performance Date: April 19
Primary Language: English
Language: French

This a common motorcycle story I’ve heard from several people, especially when I was first learning to ride a motorcycle, and it always happened to someone they knew. Someone was touring on a motorcycle, and when you ride a motorcycle, and you’re on the highway, your feet are on the footrests, because you don’t need your feet to balance when you’re riding fast. This guy was on this long trip, and gets off at the ramp, gets to the bottom of the ramp, puts the brake on, forgets to put his feet down, and the bike falls over to the side. He drove over a hundred miles on the highway to see a Bruce Springsteen concert without a problem. On the way home, he gets all the way back to his hometown, and gets off at the ramp. There’s a red light, so he stops his bike falls and he ends up in the hospital with a broken leg.

 

It’s a warning to not be complacent, ever, no matter how easy it is when you’re driving a motorcycle.

 

Motorcycling is inherently dangerous,a nd so I think that this story is some kind of way to regain control, and more importantly, to imply that tragic things that happen to people on motorcycles happen because of their own stupidity. It is an attempt to take out some of the unknown variables of motorcycling.

Baby in Mirror

Nationality: Salvadorian, Lives in USA
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 25
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Pablo:

 

You shouldn’t put babies in front of the mirror.

 

They would get sick if you put them in front of the mirror.

 

I think that this is a distrust of technology. The same thing occurs in Feng Shui– it’s bad luck to put a mirror at the foot of your bed. I think it is a natural resistance to relatively new things, and the fear associated with seeing one’s reflection in a mirror.