by Ryan Almodovar
I’ll level with you here – I can’t stand YouTube. People will argue that it’s a great way to share media, but in all honesty, you’re just enabling annoying people with webcams to film their crap and mouth off. Naturally, when Charlie Sheen – a veritable master of filming crap and mouthing off – went off the deep end a few weeks ago, people took to YouTube to exploit his newfound ‘winning’ ways. One such parody, a dub of Sheen’s quotes over Eminem’s “Hi, My Name Is,” was created by a group calling themselves Kamikaze School. Some lousy flash animations ensue, but in the end they got enough views to garner some attention for themselves.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5PktJWTX0U&feature=related]
Riding their newfound YouTube fame (being popular on YouTube is like appearing on the local news twice in the same week), the Kamikazes followed up with a little train wreck of a video called, confusingly enough, “Everybody’s Latino (Betcha) Obama is Latino?” The general gist of the video is four poorly animated dogs, including a Chihuahua in a sombrero, playing an even more poorly written mariachi song apparently aimed at letting the president know that various celebrities are Latino.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNhdOffsyA]
It’s alright. I’m confused too.
I racked my brain, searching for some kind of analytical depth, some kind of connection, or even a point, that this video might be making. My leading idea is–get ready for it–“There are Latino Celebrities…and the president must be notified.” As we all know, all Latinos are just a function of our celebrity counterparts, so this video only makes sense in this way.
Amazing things are described in this film, such as the fact that Jimmy Smits is a ‘real churro,’ but the ‘Latino’ aspects of his last name are called into question. Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez is not only Latino, but lost in the AFC playoffs last year – which I’m still trying to forget. The dogs point out that Jerry Garcia, Cheech Marin, and Tommy Chong love marijuana and are all – you guessed it – Latino. This kind of high level exposition rambles on for several minutes, ending in President Obama being named an honorary Latino, apparently.
I’ve written about senseless depictions of Latinos before (Old El Paso tacos, anyone?), but Kamikaze School takes things to a new, awful, and laughably bad low. Let’s be blunt – this video is a confusing mess. I understand that most of the videos on YouTube are just for entertainment, but this fails on that level too. I don’t know much about these Kamikaze guys, but this low level attempt at humor serves no purpose. I’d be offended, and normally I could comment on its stereotypes, but like those stereotypes, this isn’t worth our time.
My advice? Stick to the Charlie Sheen jokes, guys.
For more information about Ryan, visit Awkward and Dangerous.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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About Ryan Almodovar
of all the ignorant stupid **it… wth.