Things That Concern Me: March 6, 2012: Selena Edition
When I started my very popular (over 50 views and thriving) "Things that Concern Me” blog posts a long 3 months ago I went in blind, not knowing what would concern me each month, except for March. In January, I made a note in my MemoPad on my Blackberry (yes Blackberry - two more months people). I typed “Things that Concern Me in March – Selena.”
Every once in a while, up until last night, I would become hesitant to write this post merely due to
1) I know my closest friends are going to think this post is well past the line of my self-diagnosed, yet obvious addictive personality and I don't deal with critiscism from them too well
2) this wasn't going to be a particularly funny post
3) the fact those close to me, and even those not so close have had Selena shoved down their throats by me since I was 12. I know that last thing those people want is to read more stuff about Selena. And the last thing I want to hear is "Oh there she goes again talking about Selena."
But there are still a few people who haven’t heard the story, so here it is, to be chronicled on the internet for eternity or until Apple invents something better than the internet.
When Selena died at 23, I was 10 years old. I’m 27 now, so technically I am now older than her. I couldn’t imagine if my life had ended at 23. Mainly because when you are dead you can't imagine. When I was 23, I was still in college binge drinking, and making bad choices nightly, I was so young at 23 and still I had so much left to accomplish, I still do. When Selena was 23, she had been nominated for a Grammy twice, winning one and a plethora of other awards, she had a cameo in a movie starring Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando, was adored by thousands and thousands and thousands of people, married, she opened two fashion boutiques and salons, sold out venues all over Mexico and the U.S., and drove a Porsche. She was so young at 23 and she still had so much left to accomplish.
I vividly remember my mother watching Inside Edition when I was in 4th grade and they were covering the death of this Mexican singer named Selena who was 23 and killed by her Fan Club President. I remember seeing the candlelight vigils and her fans just hysterical on the TV screen. I didn't really understand. My mom mentioned that it was really sad, she was so young. I was at the age where if you were 20 or older, you were a senior citizen to me. That was that, never thought about it again. The closest thing I knew about Spanish music or the culture at that time was Gloria Estefan’s song Conga and Taco Bell. Selena didn’t pop up on my radar again until 1997 when the trailer for her biopic was strewn across our TVs with those powerful taglines:
“For One Brilliant, Shining Moment...The American Dream Came True.”
"Discover the true story of one of America's brightest stars...that faded too soon."
Again, that was that. I didn’t even go see the movie. If you and I can thank anyone for this Selena obsession of mine besides my addictive personality, it is Mr. Zane, my 7th grade Spanish teacher. He had popped the movie in the VCR one day at the end of our school year. I think it was when I heard Selena’s voice on On the Radio in the beginning of the movie that I became intrigued. We didn’t get to finish the movie that day, so right after school I made my mom drive to Blockbuster to rent the VHS. For some reason, that I still to this day cannot explain why, I was just really affected by the fact that I could watch this story about this girl who had worked so hard and had such a pure heart, an amazing voice and watch, one by one her dreams that she had since she was a little girl come true and the whole time knowing about that tragedy that was going to happen to her.
I had cried during movies before, I believe the first one being The Lion King followed by The Sixth Man and I also cried a little during Titanic but after this movie I was in hysterics. I watched Selena over and over until it was time to return it. By that time I had learned all the lines. (Whenever I need a monologue during an audition, I use the scene when Selena and A.B. are trying to convince Abraham to tour in Mexico. "We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, BOTH at the same time." Maybe that's why I never get the part.) I then purchased the movie and the soundtrack that went along with it. It didn’t have all the songs that were in the movie though. It didn’t have Amor Prohibido which was playing during her fashion show, or El Chico del Apartmento 512 which played when she was recognized in the mall on her trip to the Grammys, it didn’t have No Me Queda Mas which she sang after Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. I needed those songs in my life. So I continued buying each of her albums. I was also hopping on AOL, dial-up style and researching everything Selena. Within 3 months I had every Selena album I could find at Best Buy and Tower Records (ironically, RIP to you too) even though they were completely in Spanish. Luckily there were hardcore bilingual Selena fans on the internet that were kind enough to not only post the lyrics in Spanish, but translate them into English as well. I learned the songs phonetically, just like Selena had before she became fluent. I unfortunately have yet to become fluent.
Turns out there were also books on her, which I purchased and read feverishly. Also on these fan sites there were people who were lucky enough to be fans of hers during her living years and were gracious enough to sell Selena specials, interviews and concert videos of hers. My mother is a psycho in the sense that she cuts up and shreds every piece of paper that has her name and address on it; for fear that someone may steal her cute little Dutch identity. To this day I don’t know how I persuaded her to write checks to strangers so I could get these videos, or how I convinced her that we should vacation in Corpus Christi, Texas so I could go to the Selena Museum. We never ended up going because my obsession slowly flamed out to an admiration, but going there is still on my bucket list.
I don’t know why, I just needed to know more about her, maybe I kept searching to see if I could find at least one flaw in this person that I have never seen, heard or read a bad comment about. Maybe if I could find that horrible flaw, it would help me easier understand why something like what happened, could happen to someone so seemingly perfect. But nope, with everything I watched, every thing I read, and every fan that spoke it was the same things; she was endearing, humble, ambitious, loyal, funny and talented. Talented is an understatement. Listen to Siempre Hace Frio and then Tu Solo Tu to get a sense of her range.
I’ve been a fan of Selena’s husband Chris Perez since the movie. He had that vibe where he came off as that hard rocker yet soft-spoken/sensitive guy all us girls love. He is a very cute guy and ages very well; he has those eyes that are childlike and kind of sparkle when he talks, and he is just an amazing guitar player. If you have never watched the movie with me, here is fun fact for you: when Chris played by Jon Seda is auditioning for the band and the camera zooms on to his hands that is actually the real Chris playing. As I was obsessively learning more and more about Selena at the same time I was learning about Chris, and how he dealt with the death of his wife. He did interviews once in a while never really saying that much but you could see his heartache was written all over his face. He then formed a band called the Chris Perez Band and made a Grammy award winning album. He had a couple of songs on there that were blatantly about Selena and there was a hidden track at the end of the album that to this day still gives me chills every time I listen to it. After that he kind of slid off my grid, I would search his name every once in a while usually around anniversary time and see that he remarried and had kids and he would work with Selena’s brother A.B. here and there.
My obsession with Selena had started to dwindle too. I would receive texts from friends that Selena was on TBS or TNT. To this day, every time that movie is on, I am guaranteed at least two texts. My curiosity would pop back up and I would Google and YouTube, and like clockwork, cry at the end of the movie. I would make a Selena playlist on my iPod and listen to it for a couple days and then go back to my Jonas Brothers playlist. A random day towards the end of 2011 I had gotten my texts that Selena was on, so I slipped back into the routine. My mind wandered and wondered if Chris Perez or any of the Quintanilla family had Twitter. I hopped on, saw A.B. did, but hadn’t tweeted in forever. Then I searched Chris, found him, and immediately followed him. Turns out 17 years after Selena’s death, Chris decided to finally put into words for the world his life with Selena. The book was released March 6, 2012. I somehow went to Barnes & Noble the day before and they had it (only in LA, maybe?). I got home after work and read, cried, and read, and cried, and cried, and read until the very last page. It took me 5 hours to read almost 300 pages.
As a fan of Selena's for years this book was a godsend. Finally new things to read about, from a very reliable source. The book shows you another side to Selena, which, for the most part are the same sides we have heard about for years; the funny, talented, couldn’t hurt a fly, compassionate side. Except we finally get to see a Selena that had a temper. One time after a show when they were both tired and got in a tiff on the bus, she went into their house and went to bed. She was angry with Chris and went out her way to kick his brand new 2000 dollar guitar off the other side of their bed. Another time once they were married, Chris tells us about him mentioning to Selena that he was thinking about leaving the band to pursue his dream of playing rock music. She flat out told him, if he did that, they would be over. We also get to see a vulnerable Selena. Chris talks about a time they were first married and Selena just broke down sobbing, he asked what was wrong and she spoke but he couldn't understand a word and to this day he has no idea why she had the breakdown. I was relieved to read this, after all these years finally. I finally found flaws Selena had. Then I realized these aren’t flaws, these are things that are just part of human nature.
The book reads like a Nicholas Sparks novel in the first person. From the first time they held hands to their very last night together and conversation, if you could call it that, the morning of. Chris really lets us into their lives. He paints a picture of Selena the person, not the famous superstar. He tells us about the time Selena broke up with him for trashing that hotel room, his arrest for drinking and driving and her forgiveness towards it. One of the more surprising parts is how Selena's dad was informed that something was going on between then and who it was that put it on his radar. He talks about the only time during their marriage they ever hit a rough patch, closer to the end, where they both seriously discussed separating and after what came from it.
It is clear that their happy times far outweighed their bad times. The way he writes about Selena and how he saw her when he looked at her is the way every girl wants to be looked at and talked about by their boyfriend/husband. Chris was debating on buying this truck he liked and Selena went back and bought it and surprised him with it on their one year anniversary, he still has it today. He surprised her on their second anniversary with a getaway to Jamaica. He wrote how they often talked about their dreams, like building their home and how adamant Selena was with the fact that she wanted 5 kids and horses and how when they were 80 they would sit in their rocking chairs next to each other on the porch.
When you’re reading his words you can tell that Chris will live everyday with the what-ifs. I remember reading it and still having that hope that it would somehow turn out different. He goes back to when Selena's father confronted him about their relationship and called him a cancer to the Quintanilla family, but he turned out benign, and that later on like a lot of time you catch the real cancer at stage 5 when it's too late. He talks about the day everything happened and the immediate time after and what was going on inside of him. He explains about the time a few weeks before her death how he was working at home with a singer the day Selena went in to record Dreaming of You and she had called him and begged him to come in to listen to the song, which she had never done before, and how he said he was finally making progress with this guy, and he'll try to come to the studio later. He regrets not dropping everything to see Selena sing for one of the last times ever. He believes that when she was recording it she was thinking of him. If Chris believes that, so do I.
Even if you aren’t a hardcore Selena fan like me buy Chris Perez’s To Selena, with Love. Even if you aren’t a Selena fan at all, but you are a love fan, buy the book, it’s a true love story.
Fun fact: Selena would have been 39 this year. I’ll be 39 in 12 years. I was 12 years old when I first discovered her. Weird, right? Oh, I’m weird? Yeah I know.
Every once in a while, up until last night, I would become hesitant to write this post merely due to
1) I know my closest friends are going to think this post is well past the line of my self-diagnosed, yet obvious addictive personality and I don't deal with critiscism from them too well
2) this wasn't going to be a particularly funny post
3) the fact those close to me, and even those not so close have had Selena shoved down their throats by me since I was 12. I know that last thing those people want is to read more stuff about Selena. And the last thing I want to hear is "Oh there she goes again talking about Selena."
But there are still a few people who haven’t heard the story, so here it is, to be chronicled on the internet for eternity or until Apple invents something better than the internet.
When Selena died at 23, I was 10 years old. I’m 27 now, so technically I am now older than her. I couldn’t imagine if my life had ended at 23. Mainly because when you are dead you can't imagine. When I was 23, I was still in college binge drinking, and making bad choices nightly, I was so young at 23 and still I had so much left to accomplish, I still do. When Selena was 23, she had been nominated for a Grammy twice, winning one and a plethora of other awards, she had a cameo in a movie starring Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando, was adored by thousands and thousands and thousands of people, married, she opened two fashion boutiques and salons, sold out venues all over Mexico and the U.S., and drove a Porsche. She was so young at 23 and she still had so much left to accomplish.
I vividly remember my mother watching Inside Edition when I was in 4th grade and they were covering the death of this Mexican singer named Selena who was 23 and killed by her Fan Club President. I remember seeing the candlelight vigils and her fans just hysterical on the TV screen. I didn't really understand. My mom mentioned that it was really sad, she was so young. I was at the age where if you were 20 or older, you were a senior citizen to me. That was that, never thought about it again. The closest thing I knew about Spanish music or the culture at that time was Gloria Estefan’s song Conga and Taco Bell. Selena didn’t pop up on my radar again until 1997 when the trailer for her biopic was strewn across our TVs with those powerful taglines:
“For One Brilliant, Shining Moment...The American Dream Came True.”
"Discover the true story of one of America's brightest stars...that faded too soon."
Again, that was that. I didn’t even go see the movie. If you and I can thank anyone for this Selena obsession of mine besides my addictive personality, it is Mr. Zane, my 7th grade Spanish teacher. He had popped the movie in the VCR one day at the end of our school year. I think it was when I heard Selena’s voice on On the Radio in the beginning of the movie that I became intrigued. We didn’t get to finish the movie that day, so right after school I made my mom drive to Blockbuster to rent the VHS. For some reason, that I still to this day cannot explain why, I was just really affected by the fact that I could watch this story about this girl who had worked so hard and had such a pure heart, an amazing voice and watch, one by one her dreams that she had since she was a little girl come true and the whole time knowing about that tragedy that was going to happen to her.
I had cried during movies before, I believe the first one being The Lion King followed by The Sixth Man and I also cried a little during Titanic but after this movie I was in hysterics. I watched Selena over and over until it was time to return it. By that time I had learned all the lines. (Whenever I need a monologue during an audition, I use the scene when Selena and A.B. are trying to convince Abraham to tour in Mexico. "We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, BOTH at the same time." Maybe that's why I never get the part.) I then purchased the movie and the soundtrack that went along with it. It didn’t have all the songs that were in the movie though. It didn’t have Amor Prohibido which was playing during her fashion show, or El Chico del Apartmento 512 which played when she was recognized in the mall on her trip to the Grammys, it didn’t have No Me Queda Mas which she sang after Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. I needed those songs in my life. So I continued buying each of her albums. I was also hopping on AOL, dial-up style and researching everything Selena. Within 3 months I had every Selena album I could find at Best Buy and Tower Records (ironically, RIP to you too) even though they were completely in Spanish. Luckily there were hardcore bilingual Selena fans on the internet that were kind enough to not only post the lyrics in Spanish, but translate them into English as well. I learned the songs phonetically, just like Selena had before she became fluent. I unfortunately have yet to become fluent.
Turns out there were also books on her, which I purchased and read feverishly. Also on these fan sites there were people who were lucky enough to be fans of hers during her living years and were gracious enough to sell Selena specials, interviews and concert videos of hers. My mother is a psycho in the sense that she cuts up and shreds every piece of paper that has her name and address on it; for fear that someone may steal her cute little Dutch identity. To this day I don’t know how I persuaded her to write checks to strangers so I could get these videos, or how I convinced her that we should vacation in Corpus Christi, Texas so I could go to the Selena Museum. We never ended up going because my obsession slowly flamed out to an admiration, but going there is still on my bucket list.
I don’t know why, I just needed to know more about her, maybe I kept searching to see if I could find at least one flaw in this person that I have never seen, heard or read a bad comment about. Maybe if I could find that horrible flaw, it would help me easier understand why something like what happened, could happen to someone so seemingly perfect. But nope, with everything I watched, every thing I read, and every fan that spoke it was the same things; she was endearing, humble, ambitious, loyal, funny and talented. Talented is an understatement. Listen to Siempre Hace Frio and then Tu Solo Tu to get a sense of her range.
I’ve been a fan of Selena’s husband Chris Perez since the movie. He had that vibe where he came off as that hard rocker yet soft-spoken/sensitive guy all us girls love. He is a very cute guy and ages very well; he has those eyes that are childlike and kind of sparkle when he talks, and he is just an amazing guitar player. If you have never watched the movie with me, here is fun fact for you: when Chris played by Jon Seda is auditioning for the band and the camera zooms on to his hands that is actually the real Chris playing. As I was obsessively learning more and more about Selena at the same time I was learning about Chris, and how he dealt with the death of his wife. He did interviews once in a while never really saying that much but you could see his heartache was written all over his face. He then formed a band called the Chris Perez Band and made a Grammy award winning album. He had a couple of songs on there that were blatantly about Selena and there was a hidden track at the end of the album that to this day still gives me chills every time I listen to it. After that he kind of slid off my grid, I would search his name every once in a while usually around anniversary time and see that he remarried and had kids and he would work with Selena’s brother A.B. here and there.
My obsession with Selena had started to dwindle too. I would receive texts from friends that Selena was on TBS or TNT. To this day, every time that movie is on, I am guaranteed at least two texts. My curiosity would pop back up and I would Google and YouTube, and like clockwork, cry at the end of the movie. I would make a Selena playlist on my iPod and listen to it for a couple days and then go back to my Jonas Brothers playlist. A random day towards the end of 2011 I had gotten my texts that Selena was on, so I slipped back into the routine. My mind wandered and wondered if Chris Perez or any of the Quintanilla family had Twitter. I hopped on, saw A.B. did, but hadn’t tweeted in forever. Then I searched Chris, found him, and immediately followed him. Turns out 17 years after Selena’s death, Chris decided to finally put into words for the world his life with Selena. The book was released March 6, 2012. I somehow went to Barnes & Noble the day before and they had it (only in LA, maybe?). I got home after work and read, cried, and read, and cried, and cried, and read until the very last page. It took me 5 hours to read almost 300 pages.
As a fan of Selena's for years this book was a godsend. Finally new things to read about, from a very reliable source. The book shows you another side to Selena, which, for the most part are the same sides we have heard about for years; the funny, talented, couldn’t hurt a fly, compassionate side. Except we finally get to see a Selena that had a temper. One time after a show when they were both tired and got in a tiff on the bus, she went into their house and went to bed. She was angry with Chris and went out her way to kick his brand new 2000 dollar guitar off the other side of their bed. Another time once they were married, Chris tells us about him mentioning to Selena that he was thinking about leaving the band to pursue his dream of playing rock music. She flat out told him, if he did that, they would be over. We also get to see a vulnerable Selena. Chris talks about a time they were first married and Selena just broke down sobbing, he asked what was wrong and she spoke but he couldn't understand a word and to this day he has no idea why she had the breakdown. I was relieved to read this, after all these years finally. I finally found flaws Selena had. Then I realized these aren’t flaws, these are things that are just part of human nature.
The book reads like a Nicholas Sparks novel in the first person. From the first time they held hands to their very last night together and conversation, if you could call it that, the morning of. Chris really lets us into their lives. He paints a picture of Selena the person, not the famous superstar. He tells us about the time Selena broke up with him for trashing that hotel room, his arrest for drinking and driving and her forgiveness towards it. One of the more surprising parts is how Selena's dad was informed that something was going on between then and who it was that put it on his radar. He talks about the only time during their marriage they ever hit a rough patch, closer to the end, where they both seriously discussed separating and after what came from it.
It is clear that their happy times far outweighed their bad times. The way he writes about Selena and how he saw her when he looked at her is the way every girl wants to be looked at and talked about by their boyfriend/husband. Chris was debating on buying this truck he liked and Selena went back and bought it and surprised him with it on their one year anniversary, he still has it today. He surprised her on their second anniversary with a getaway to Jamaica. He wrote how they often talked about their dreams, like building their home and how adamant Selena was with the fact that she wanted 5 kids and horses and how when they were 80 they would sit in their rocking chairs next to each other on the porch.
When you’re reading his words you can tell that Chris will live everyday with the what-ifs. I remember reading it and still having that hope that it would somehow turn out different. He goes back to when Selena's father confronted him about their relationship and called him a cancer to the Quintanilla family, but he turned out benign, and that later on like a lot of time you catch the real cancer at stage 5 when it's too late. He talks about the day everything happened and the immediate time after and what was going on inside of him. He explains about the time a few weeks before her death how he was working at home with a singer the day Selena went in to record Dreaming of You and she had called him and begged him to come in to listen to the song, which she had never done before, and how he said he was finally making progress with this guy, and he'll try to come to the studio later. He regrets not dropping everything to see Selena sing for one of the last times ever. He believes that when she was recording it she was thinking of him. If Chris believes that, so do I.
Even if you aren’t a hardcore Selena fan like me buy Chris Perez’s To Selena, with Love. Even if you aren’t a Selena fan at all, but you are a love fan, buy the book, it’s a true love story.
Fun fact: Selena would have been 39 this year. I’ll be 39 in 12 years. I was 12 years old when I first discovered her. Weird, right? Oh, I’m weird? Yeah I know.
Bravo Cho! love love love
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