Geekanerd: mexico

It's Cinco De Mayo! Apparently this holiday is celebrated more in the US than in Meh-hee-co proper, EXCEPT for in the town of Puebla, which is right around where my family is from, so there's legitimacy for you. And though Mexico is not particularly renown for it's exportation of geek culture (it's no Japan, I'll tell you that much), I could think of at least five (or CINCO; get it?) nerd icons of Mexican ancestry, and I'm not even including myself. So what follows is a collection of folks both real and fictional, born inside and outside of Mexico, all of whom are totally freakin geeky.

5. Pedro

Pedro Sanchez hails originally from the town of Juarez, where apparently they bust up pinatas that look like real people all the time. The filmmakers never pull the curtain too far back on Pedro's inner-workings; we become well aquainted with Napoleon's specific areas of geekdom, but we never get a good idea of what Pedro's special skills really are. But it's a cool spin on the mixed-race buddy-comedy formula that Pedro's ethnic makeup is never mentioned or possibly even noticed by Napoleon, as the two are united by their shared asbergian deadpan. Sweet.

4. Guillermo Del Toro

Del Toro first scratched the surface of the American geek's concioness with Mimic, which I saw in theaters for some reason. But he really made his mark with Blade II and Hellboy, showing he had a certain flair for adapting geek source material. Now that he has the prestige of Pan's Labyrinth on his resume, he's gearing up for the motherload of nerdy adaptations; Tolkien. He's in post-production for The Hobbit, and is talking a big game about using super-advanced animatronic techniques for the creature effects, racking up some big points in my book. Isn't everyone sick of CG? Filmmakers think it looks real, but it doesn't. You know what's real? Puppets. Puppets and robots. They exist. Del Toro also said in an interview with MTV that he has some European comic book artists in mind to bring to the design team, and all of this makes me think that dude is a serious nerd and will do right my favorite Tolkien book.

3. Betty Suarez

I don't care what anyone says, Season 1 of this show was some of the best network TV I've seen in years. It's pretty awful now, but nothing good ever lasts, unless it's on HBO. Betty is pretty much everything a leading lady on a prime-time series isn't supposed to be, including not-white and an over-analyzing, socially awkward nerd. Betty is not just a girl with glasses who will one day be made effortlessly into the belle of the ball; she's a overly enthuasitic know-it-all who is fairly confident in her high-functioning brand of nerdery. She's also unabashed about her Mexican hertiage, as seen in the above still and tons of plotlines about going to Mexico or getting hassled by the INS, that sort of thing.

2. Jaime Reyez

The greatest Mexican superhero since El Santo, the third Blue Beetle is the most funny, unique and sympathetic teen hero in comics today. Or at least he was during John Rogers two year run, now that he's done I hope the new writers can keep the spark alive on this book. Jaime protects the town of El Paso, Texas (right next door to Pedro's hometown!) from supervillians and alien invaders, and manages for the most part to have a pretty good, largely angst-free time while doing it. Throw in some hard working immigrant parents, some spanglish speaking friends, and a red and orange texas backdrop, and you've got a book that feels new and authentic, even if it is written by a white dude.

1.Robert Rodriguez

An auteur with an obsessive attention to detail and a willingness to push things right over the top in the name of awesomeness, Robert Rodriguez makes movies for action geeks, horror geeks, sci-fi geeks, and you feel the love of a fanboy coming through every frame. Robert gave American audiences the only great Mexican action hero of the 20th century with El Mariachi. (or does Zorro count? I think he's Spanish. So's Antonio Banderas, of course, but why split hairs.) He's featured Mexicanos in just about every film he's written since then, and gave us one of the greatest poster taglines ever; "Are you a Mexi-CAN or a Mexi-CAN'T?" Rodriguez's films feel specific to what he knows and enjoys, yet their enthusiasm and eagerness to entertain make them accessible to all audiences. Next up from Double R should be a direct-to-DVD version of Machete, the freaking awesome looking revenge flick starring Danny Trejo, which you saw the fake trailer for in Grindhouse. It looks like it's getting held up in production, but I hope it gets made. If anyone can make Trejo a leading man, it's Rodriguez.

That's it! Now go drink Miller Chill and eat chips! Happy cinco!