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Nov 8, 2024 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
Periodically, the Latinx Files will feature a guest writer. This week, we’ve asked De Los contributing columnist JP Brammer to fill in. If you have not subscribed to our weekly newsletter, you can do so here. It’s not quite déjà vu. While there are echoes of 2016, many things are different for Democrats this time around in the brutal days following a Trump victory.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
At a recent Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whom I was made aware of entirely against my will, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” initiating a wave of backlash from Latinos and progressives mere days before the presidential election.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
eater.com | Sean Sherman |Mecca Bos |Jess Brent |JP Brammer
If you’re looking for the American heartland, an amorphous term for the center of the country, you might start at 35,000 feet, the only way many travelers ever experience the so-called flyover states. From a plane window, you’ll see plenty of farms, as you might expect.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
eater.com | JP Brammer
This is the visit to Meers Store and Restaurant I remember best. It was the summer before my senior year of high school. I’d been swimming with some friends in Lake Elmer Thomas by Fort Sill. It was one of those deceptively gray days, when sunscreen is unwisely forgone.
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
On paper, the gig is straightforward, albeit unconscionable: kidnap the daughter of a wealthy businessman and hold her until daddy coughs up the ransom. A crack team assembles, satisfying all the necessary roles for a heist. But after the girl is taken, it slowly becomes clear that the job description wasn’t entirely transparent about the true threat. Daddy’s little girl, it turns out, is a vampire.
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Feb 7, 2024 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
Recently, the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts found itself in hot water for failing to include Colman Domingo in a tweet congratulating actress America Ferrera and, erroneously, singer Becky G on their recent Oscars noms (“The Fire Inside” from the film “Flamin’ Hot” was nominated for original song, but not Becky G herself).
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
The video in question could have been recorded in south Texas, or in any Chicano peluquería with a mural of La Virgencita emblazoned on the wall. The barber wears a black dress shirt with every last button fastened, tucked into a pair of high-waisted dress pants; a wide-brimmed hat on his head is adorned with a long, flamboyant feather. Oh, and the client in the chair?
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Jan 12, 2024 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
It’s hardly controversial to say that it’s been a difficult few years. Between a pandemic, the backsliding of our nation’s institutions and the myriad horrors abroad, many Americans, quite understandably, would like nothing more than an entire year of peace and quiet. Well, too bad! It’s officially 2024, which means it’s an election year, a time when we as a nation put our similarities aside to focus on our differences and what we hate about each other.
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Dec 27, 2023 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
The summer before last, the summer of the horchata latte, I was in Los Angeles quite a bit. I was working on the TV adaptation of my book “¡Hola Papi!,” in a process that looked like me bringing my laptop to my showrunner’s house and hammering out things like tone, runtime and character arcs. Doing this for a show based on a memoir is evil, upside-down therapy: The main character cares only about clicks and views. He’s not too handsome. He’s an advice columnist, but his own life is a mess.
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Dec 8, 2023 | 
latimes.com | JP Brammer
There are many kinds of drag queens. Some are aesthetes, devotees of beauty and fashion. Others, my favorites, are social commentators. They critique the status quo by embodying an exaggerated version of it. These people are clowns, jesters, fools in the medieval sense. Their job is to hold a mirror to our wicked world and expose its artifice, to mock what we accept as mundane, to remind us that we, too, are mere actors on a stage.
