spanglish

The hero of Junot D�z� first novel is an overweight Dominican-American man named Oscar, a �hetto nerd?from Paterson, N.J., and a devotee of what he somewhat grandly calls �he more speculative genres.?He means comic books, sword-and-sorcery novels, science fiction, role-playing games ?the pop-literary storehouse of myths and fantasies that sexually frustrated, socially maladjusted guys like him are widely believed to inhabit.

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THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO

By Junot D�z.

340 pp. Riverhead Books. $24.95.
But of course an awful lot of serious young-to-middle-aged novelists (Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon) hang around there as well, lingering over the narratives that fed their childhood imaginations in order to infuse their ambitious, difficult stories with some of the allegorical pixie dust and epic grandiloquence the genres offer. In �he Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,?D�z, the author of a book of sexy, diamond-sharp stories called �rown,?shows impressive high-low dexterity, flashing his geek credentials, his street wisdom and his literary learning with equal panache. A short epigraph from the Fantastic Four is balanced by a longer one from Derek Walcott; allusions to �une,?�he Matrix?and (especially) �he Lord of the Rings?rub up against references to Melville and Garc� M�quez. Oscar� nickname is a Spanglish pronunciation of Oscar Wilde, whom he is said to resemble when dressed up in his Doctor Who costume for Halloween.

�hat more sci-fi than Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles??Oscar wonders. And the question of how to take account of his ancestral homeland ?its folklore, its politics, the diaspora that brought so many of its inhabitants to North Jersey and Upper Manhattan ?is one that explicitly preoccupies Oscar� creator. The way D�z tells it, the Dominican Republic, which occupies the Spanish-

speaking half of the island where Columbus made landfall, is the kind of small country that suffers from a surfeit of history. From the start, it has been a breeding ground for outsize destinies and monstrous passions.

D�z� novel also has a wild, capacious spirit, making it feel much larger than it is. Within its relatively compact span, �he Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?contains an unruly multitude of styles and genres. The tale of Oscar� coming-of-age is in some ways the book� thinnest layer, a young-adult melodrama draped over a multigenerational immigrant family chronicle that dabbles in tropical magic realism, punk-rock feminism, hip-hop machismo, post-postmodern pyrotechnics and enough polymorphous multiculturalism to fill up an Introduction to Cultural Studies syllabus.

Holding all this together ?just barely, but in the end effectively ?is a voice that is profane, lyrical, learned and tireless, a riot of accents and idioms coexisting within a single personality. The voice belongs, for the most part, to Yunior, who only gradually slides from behind the curtain of apparently omniscient narration to reveal himself as a character. He� Oscar� sometime roommate at Rutgers, the would-be boyfriend of Oscar� sister, Lola, and in just about every imaginable way Oscar� opposite. While Oscar favors the stilted, thesaurus-fed diction of the fantasy-nerd autodidact (� think she� orchidaceous?, Yunior affects a bilingual b-boy flow, punctuated by bouts of didacticism. And while Oscar falls madly and chastely in love with a succession of not-quite-attainable women, Yunior is a chronic womanizer. Though Yunior is, like Oscar, an aspiring writer, his preferred genres are more hard-boiled, �ll robberies and drug deals and ... BLAU! BLAU! BLAU!?

�o say I� never in my life met a Dominican like him would be to put it mildly,?Yunior explains, and in creating Oscar, D�z has used one stereotype to subvert another. Not all Dominican men are macho peacocks, and not all sci-fi, anime and Dungeons & Dragons fanatics are white boys. That this may be an obvious point doesn� diminish the skill and flair with which D�z brings it home.

But �he Brief Wondrous Life?isn� Oscar� story alone. Indeed, he often seems like a bit of an exile in the book that bears his name. The recounting of his thwarted romances, his suicide attempt, his friendships and his literary projects is interrupted ?and overshadowed ?by episodes of family history that reverse the migratory path from the D.R. to the U.S.A. and concentrate on the women in Oscar� family. His sister, a punk rocker, runaway and track star, is in many ways a more vivid and magnetic character than her brother, as is their mother, Beli, whose remarkable biography forms the novel� true narrative backbone. In Ban? the provincial Dominican city where she was raised, Beli was a dark-skinned beauty, a scholarship girl at a fancy private school and eventually the lover of a notorious criminal. Her son� painful, familiar passage into adulthood is set against her own transformation, shown in reverse. When we first see her, she is an angry, borderline- RICKY MARTIN. On "The Black and White Tour," the Spanglish superstar is still "Livin' la Vida Loca." Sunday night at Madison Square Garden.

Ricky Martin used to barrel down the American Dream Highway chasing a girl with devil-red lips and skin - by now you've heard - with the color mocha. He was so big they were thinking of renaming the Zeitgeist after him. But now he was standing at the lip of the Madison Square Garden stage like a Spanglish Beatle just back from India, happy to slow down a little.

"I'm having a really good time," he said with a sigh, visibly perspiring as he tossed his sport jacket into the third row of the capacity crowd, causing a frantic scrum not seen since Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run. "It's purifying, it's cathartic. After years of ups and downs, it's cool when you find neutral."



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Martin had just run through a turbo-charged remake of his signature hit, "Livin' la Vida Loca," the halfway point of a thunderous performance that featured tirelessly athletic dancers, haunting, minimalist video and the obligatory smoke and mirrors of big-time pop concerts. He talked about being at peace with himself, deciding that changing the world meant working on the world within. He cued the display of a series of photos, "some taken by my own camera," of smiling Third World children.

Martin, who heads a foundation designed to prevent sexual trafficking of children, is a poster boy for a child star who's matured to the ripe old age of 35 with few visible scars. From the opening salvo of his latest hit, "Pégate," to a funky medley of "I Don't Care" and "María," he seamlessly switched languages and glided easily around the stage, pushing his crack dance troupe to further heights.

While Martin calls this "The Black and White Tour" (a live CD/DVD will be released Nov. 6), presumably after his reigning wardrobe motif, it should have been called "Reborn." At different points, we saw a video of Ricky emerging from a pool of water and then curled up naked in a fetal position wearing a tattoo that reads "To live is to be born, step by step."

The crowd ate up all of Martin's catchy if derivative rock-dance-pop, from the Michael-Jackson-meets-"The Matrix" electric-guitar-dueling spectacle of "Revolución" to the generic samba stomp of the World Cup paean "Cup of Life." But Martin seemed most impassioned with the pensive ballad material that is the backbone of his Spanish-language success.

When the lights darkened, he was alone with a piano and an electric cello for songs such as "Fuego de Noche, Nieve de Día" and Franco de Vita's "Vuelve." And for "Somos la Semilla," he used hand gestures associated with Buddhism to explain that we are all seeds of a new life.

The show's most effective moment came during his encore, when he sang the Puerto Rican Aguinaldo-influenced "Tu Recuerdo." "Your memory persists/Like a rainfall breaking over me," he sang, and his unique childlike earnestness rang true. Earlier in the evening, he promised New York he would "leave my soul onstage tonight." And even though you know he said that in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and every other town, it really felt like he meant it.

More articles Reign Over Me
Starring: Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler
Written & Directed By: Mike Binder
Released: 2007
Grade: B+

Adam Sandler was one of the top comedians of the 90's. He was on Saturday Night Live during some of the shows funniest years working with others such as Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Rob Schneider, and David Spade. His movies were mostly out of the dumb comedy genre, but he always delivered on laughs. Sandler has passed his prime though. He has had some good movies in the last couple of years such as 50 First Dates and Spanglish. However, these were a little different than what he is in his comfort zone. 50 First Dates was much more of a romantic film than anything else. Spanglish was purely drama. It has become clear that this is the direction Sandler needs to go. He is getting too old to be playing the horny slacker and being the straight man in a gay joke doesn't seem to be much better. This is why Reign Over Me was the role for Sandler. It allowed him to expand off of his performance in Spanglish. He is the backbone for the film and in a way which enriches and highlights struggles, regrets, and friendship.

Alan Johnson (Cheadle) is a dentist who is married with two daughters. He loves his wife, Janine (Pinkett Smith), very much but he feels locked down; restless in his own world. He feels like he has no choice in anything that he does. Alan wants to have his own time, to do things that make him happy. Basically he wants his time with his wife, but he also wants his guy time to do things he can't really do with Janeane. Alan isn't very happy at work either. He started the dental practice and it seems everyone around him is always ordering him around and looking down on him. Alan often waits outside of a therapy office to get advice from one of the therapists, Angela (Tyler). She is friendly but resistant towards Alan.

One day Alan is shocked to see his old college roommate, Charlie Fineman (Sandler). He screams for Charlie, but there is no response. Alan hasn't seen Charlie for years since he heard the news that Charlie's wife and three daughters were all killed in the attacks of 9/11. Alan tried getting in contact with him, but he was never able to. Now is his chance though and he does in fact run in to Charlie again. However, Charlie acts like Alan is a complete stranger. Alan tells him who he is and still there is nothing. He doesn't seem to remember anything about Alan or college at all. Alan still makes an effort to get his old friend back so they start spending time with each other. It seems like Charlie is starting to remember things from their past, but at times it is hard to tell whether he really does or if it is an act to keep the only friend he seems to have left.

Charlie is a completely different and unstable person. One minute him and Alan will just be having a good time and the next he will be suspicious of Alan. Many times he accuses Alan of being sent by someone and Charlie demands to know what he wants. He will have fits with destructive behavior verbally and physically. We find out that this is from the loss of his family. After Charlie lost them he cut off ties from everyone in his life associated with his family or anyone who knew them at all. His fits mostly are a result of any hint of his past. Charlie can't bare to think of it, so he refuses to. Alan ends up forgiving Charlie, but the same thing happens over and over again. He cares too much to leave Charlie though. Alan is desperate to help him. It is just hard since Charlie is so resistant of this. Finally he agrees to see Angela. They have a few therapy sessions that are a little shaky but they go better than anything else has gone. Charlie panics and wants to leave when things get personal. Angela tells him coming in is pointless unless he opens up to someone about his past, even if it isn't to her. Things get more complicated when Charlie ends up arrested, evaluated by a mental hospital and has to go on trial to determine whether he will be taken to a mental hospital for a minimum of one year. This decision ends up going to his parents-in-law; the only family Charlie has left.

The performances really enhance the film. Adam Sandler gives the best performance of his career. He has had this laid back persona in many recent films. In Reign Over Me, he has such a wide range of emotions though. He is so unpredictable, yet he kind of seems to be in the same cycle. Charlie has blocked himself off from the rest of society so much that he can't trust anyone. Also, he has no concept of reality any more. He creates false and unrealistic accusations. Even when he is having fun, he isn't considerate of Alan and his life. Don Cheadle worked wonderfully with Sandler. Alan had many of his own struggles, yet many times he puts Charlie above him. He is desperate to help him, because he knew who he once was and he wants him to have the same happiness again. In the end, Charlie ends up giving him the strength to take charge of his own life. Jada Pinkett Smith plays the stern and at times unsupportive wife. In the end though she just loves Alan and just wants him to herself. Liv Tyler is smart and understanding to Charlie. She is patient with him and knows not to rush anything but she also knows to get anywhere he has to stop hiding from everyone.

The plot of Reign Over Me sparked from the events of 9/11. It is really not about that day though. United 93 showed some of the horrors of that day and paid tribute to those victims. That is not Reign Over Me's territory though. Reign Over Me shows us the days after that event for one individual in particular. Charlie was essentially killed on 9/11 at least for the next 6 years until Alan came in to the picture. It shows how damaging loss in general can be. It seems as if Charlie is just dodging thinking of his family at all costs. However, he really sees them everyday, every where he goes, everywhere he looks. This haunts and essentially paralyzes him. Mostly because he is so alone. Charlie has no one to grieve with or to heal him.

Struggle, pain, and loss are huge themes in this film. Another one is friendship. Alan and Charlie keep on coming back to the other. They both have reasons to leave the other behind. Charlie has threatened Alan's job and relationship with Janeane. If remembrance of his past is what Charlie fears most, than why not cut the guy out who wants him to go back to that? Simply enough, neither one can or wants to give up on the other. They have a loyalty
to the other and give each other a sort of freedom and companionship.

Cuban-American actress Eva Mendes recently expressed her determination to raise her future children to be bilingual, despite rejecting rumours of an upcoming pregnancy.

The 33-year-old Latina beauty intends to teach her children to speak Spanish despite the actress' claims that she would first need to read up on her own skills in the language as she speaks Spanglish - a mixture of Spanish and English.

However, Eva has recently denied media speculation that she is expecting a baby with long term partner director George Gargurevich after being spotted attending exercise classes for pregnant women in New York.

She claimed: "I don't wanna have kids. I love the little suckers; they're so cute but I love sleep so much and I worry about everything.

"I feel like the institution of marriage is a very archaic kinda thing. I don't think it fits in my world today."

The Revlon spokesmodel blames her "off-season" diet of pasta and desserts for the recent change in her already curvaceous figure.