Canto CDXII: The Hate U Spew

Gentle cabrones:

Two of you told me each of these stories, and your anonymity is guaranteed…and can’t wait to receive your text about whether it’s the story you told me long ago.

They are!

The first one comes from someone who works…somewhere. They were a committee to hire someone. The candidate was talented, young, and eager — job basically assured. Then, out of nowhere, the candidate brought me up.

I not only am a friend of the person who was on the committee, I have done much for their employer. Pitch in when I can even to this day because they helped me out when I needed help.

The candidate knew all of this — and proceeded to trash me.

They didn’t get the job — not because of the insults against me, as my friend would explain later, although that won the candidate no favors. The candidate was talented enough that hating on a friend wasn’t necessarily a disqualification, which I totally understood and even respected.

But the candidate’s mistake turned out to be the hate.

The insults let the committee know the candidate was immature and easily distracted. Because who brings up a friend of the company out of nowhere to trash them while trying to impress the prospective employer?

Second, shorter anecdote: My friend brought up my name to his audience as an example of someone who WERKS. Someone pushes back and proceeds to trash me. Then afterward, the person went up to my friend and asked about job opportunities.

Yeah, no.

Moral of the story: Don’t hate me, because I’ll get the better of it.

Kidding! Kind of.

But the true moral: don’t hate. Critique, fight, resist, bash — all that stuff.

But hate?

No.

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The canto this week is going to be short, because I have a columna and Essential California to write, a new class to prepare for (canto to come) and needed to get up early to water Puppy Strong Farms.

But the two anecdotes I just shared I’ve wanted to address forever, because it’s about something that’s always on my mind:

Not letting others live rent-free in your head. And not letting them poison you, as terrible as they may be.

I’ve seen how hatred against others have led people to do stupid things. I’m not talking about phobias against groups of people, although that’s obviously destructive as well.

I’m talking about enmity against one person and one person alone, to the point where it becomes an obsession that derails you.

Someone you don’t like. Someone who did you a desaire — disrespected you. Someone who burrows into your mind until all you can do is obsess about them and eventually demonize them and eventually…

STOP.

Seriously: The above people hated me so much that they felt it necessary to tell people whom I’m close with — and they knew this — about it. In both cases, they did it at a point where they could’ve advanced their career.

Instead, they’re in Nowheresville.

Hate will not make you better. Hate will not allow you to win. Hate always loses. ALWAYS.

You don’t have to love everyone, even if Jesus commanded you to. You don’t even have to like everyone. But hate is bad — it’s cancerous, it’s toxic. It will beat you — and then you lose.

One thing that people near me have long criticized me for is how nice I am to people who haven’t been nice to me or to people close to me. They find it shocking that I interview people whom I fundamentally oppose — that I don’t immediately scream in their face. They find it a betrayal of my self-respect or of them.

Not at all.

I just don’t have time for hate. I don’t have time for performative acts. I try to better the world, or at least tell people how it is so they can look into themselves and make it better. And I always think that people can change in their hearts if only they hear the right message or realize that they’re wrong— and though I probably will not be the catalyst, I will have at least tried.

I’m beyond naïve, and that’s okay. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil — because I don’t hate.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Bad photo of a good supper at IKEA save that terrible garlic toast that tasted like of the shelves for their Billy bookcase.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.” — Mark Twain

LISTENING: “Nine-Pound Hammer,” Tony Rice. Bluegrass classic performed by all the greats, high lonesome and not. Work songs are always inherently sad, but the chords of this standard give it another morose layer, damn that joyous banjo. Tony Rice was great! Hence included in Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly Radiola of Randomness YouTube songlist, where I’ve included every song I’ve ever featured in a canto — give it a spin!

READING: “Publishers Noted”: There are columnas with narrow beats, and then there’s this back-of-the-book review in the New York Review of Architecture, a brilliantly overwrought quarterly (I think) of way-too-long essays and reviews that is a must-read on print. Their beat? Covering the the offices of other publications — no, seriously. What could easily be the worst navel gazing imaginable instead turns into a poignant manifesto on the luck and times of Gotham’s various publications. The publication office reviewed this issue? Co-Op City Times, which covers the biggest co-op housing development in the world. A frank discussion of the paper’s office limitations while stating the case for the publication’s importance — media criticism at its finest.

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo Events  

Sept. 17, 10 a.m.: I’m going to be giving the annual Margolin Lecture at the University of Denver, focusing specifically on my coverage of Mexican food during my career. At Anderson Academic Commons, Room 290 at the University of Denver, 2150 E. Evans Ave., Denver. Lecture is FREE, but you need to register — and you can even see it online!

Sept. 24, 12:30 p.m.: Time for the semi-annual Zoom version of my Alta Journal co-columna “Ask a Californian” with co-columnist Stacey Grenrock Woods! It’s FREE, but you have to register here.

Sept. 27, 9 a.m.: Join me and my People’s Guide to Orange County co-authors as we do a walking tour of Fullerton and its hidden history. $20 — buy tickets HERE.

Sept. 27, 1 p.m.: And then after that, join me at The Untold Story as three teens do an oral history of me! Part of the Anacrime bookstore’s new project to get the oral histories of Anaheim old-timers — and I’m the first! At 301 N. Anaheim Blvd., Ste. D, Anacrime. FREE!

Oct. 11, 1 p.m.: Speaking of OC Weekly, I’m going to be on a panel for the occasion of its 30th anniversary timed with a major announcement about its archives! Going to happen at Alta Baja Market, 201 E. Fourth St., SanTana, and it’ll be FREE!!!

Oct. 17, 7 p.m.: It’s my honey’s annual Rancho Heirloom Bean Encuentro weekend festival of all things legumes. I’m in charge of “The Bean Monologues,” which is exactly what it sounds like — I and some brilliant people are going to give stories about…beans. WAY cooler than it sounds, like every goddamn thing I do, and it comes with food! At Grand Central Art Center Black Box Theater, 125 N. Broadway, SanTana, $20 — buy tickets HERE.

Oct. 18, 3 p.m.: The other event I’m doing for Encuentro is “How to Taste a Tortilla,” where I teach people exactly that. At Alta Baja Market, 201 E. Fourth St., Ste. 101, SanTana. $15, and people who go will get some tortillas to take home — buy tickets HERE.

Oct. 25: Join me in conversation with the legendary L.A. scribe D.J. Waldie as we talk about his new book! At my honey’s Alta Baja, where he’s regularly gone for years, 201 E. Fourth St., Ste. 101, SanTana. Convo FREE; books, BARATO.

Nov. 8, 9 a.m.: Join me and my People’s Guide to Orange County co-authors as we do a walking tour of Anacrime and its hidden history. $20 — buy tickets HERE.

Gustavo in the News

“Arellano: Trump’s mirage economy is putting America in foreclosure”: Someone messed up the headline AND byline to put my name next to something I didn’t write haha

“Food, Culture & Journalism” with Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times”: A quick plug for a talk I’m giving this week.

“Rancho Gordo News: You Have to Taste It to Believe It—A Bean Cocktail”: Steve Sando plugs my upcoming Bean Monologues, which you should totally go to!

“Say Adios to El Noa Noa...and Welcome El Chingon to Santa Fe Drive“: Speaking of Denver, I missed this plug that Westword gave me a couple of months ago in their eulogy for an amazing Den-Mex spot.

“Rough and Tumble”: I make it on the daily offerings of this long-running potpourri of California political stories.

“How Appealing”: And I make it on a blog I haven’t thought about in YEARS.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“SCOTUS lifts limits on immigration raids in LA”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary talks about the subject at hand.

“I’m a U.S. citizen. I’m always going to carry my passport now. Thanks, Supreme Court”: My latest L.A. Times columna talks about how the highest court in the land has taken the handcuffs off la migra. KEY QUOTE: “Would Kavanaugh describe this as a “brief encounter” if it happened to him? To a non-Latino? After more cases like this inevitably happen, and more people are gobbled up by Trump’s anti-immigrant Leviathan?”

“Against the backdrop of the Hollywood sign, the Border Patrol takes a hellaweird group photo”: My next latest L.A. Times columna talks about a stupid stunt that got lost in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassinationSo Bovino and his janissaries posing in front of the Hollywood sign comes off like a hunter posing in front of his killed prey or a taunting postcard to L.A.: Thinking about you. See you soon.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!