A few weeks ago, Johnny Depp gave a press conference during a junket for his new film Rango, during which he announced that he was no longer in the running to play Pancho Villa in Serbian director Emir Kusturica’s upcoming film about the Mexican revolutionary. “I feel like [he] should be played by a Mexican and not some mutt from Kentucky,” he was quoted as saying. The competition to play Villa (opposite the Lebanese Mexican Salma Hayek) is now said to be between a Mexican actor, Gael García Bernal, and a Puerto Rican, Benicio Del Toro, both of whom have starred previously as the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara.
Read the rest here:
ED MORALES 
The Parakeet and The Parrot, or, Lovebirds in La-La Land
Jennifer Lopez? She’s a picture perfect poster girl for predatory narcissism and rip-off economics.
The critics were right. Her track “Jenny from the Block,” was an amateurish attempt to cash in on her Volkish S. Bronx `roots.’ As noted in Wikipedia, critic J. Caramanica called her out for trying to “fast-talk herself into authenticity.” S.T. Erlewine noted her “laughable lyrics.” J. Poletti, called her triste track “agonizing” y “insulting in its cynical appropriation of hip-hop.” M. Wilkening ranked the rank tune #93 among the 100 Worst Songs Ever. VH1 listed it #33 among “the most awesomely bad tunes of all time.”
To make a bad situation worse, Lopez hi-jacked Light Brigade’s 1975 “Hi-Jack,” by lifting the sample from the Beatnuts 1999 track “Watch Out Now” for which Beatnuts called her out for hip-hop theft in their “Confused Rappers” comeback track. Why doesn’t Lopez simply go into early retirement, roll over with Rover, and let real artists like Beatnuts take over?
Beatnut JUJU to Lopez:
What would possess you to use my records like I’m here for you to abuse.
You know you have not been to the block for a minute..
Beatnut Rahzel:
I know you confused…
but parakeet see you sorta like a bird
and like ta repeat
Now you worried about your credibility on the street.
Unfortunately, she’s not worried enough. Now she’s capitalizing on a giveaway Puerto Rican tax law that takes from the public to pay privateers, while she provides fashion cover for an anti-education Governor who is shifting economic burdens on to students as he mindlessly parrots the avuncular alzheimer President Ronald Reagan. I’m surprised that UPR students haven’t called for a national student consumer boycott of Lopez music and movies. Of course, if University students plagiarize they’re all done, but the predatory narcissists amongst us steal the work of others with abandon and make out like lovebirds. Parakeet and parrot make quite a pair.