A song like 'Osito Carpintero' came straight from the Pedro Infante films, movies that all the kids in Mexico watched.

I came from a middle-class family in Mexico, from a household full of women, in a country that is very machista.

People who LIKE movies have a favorite. People who LOVE movies couldn't possibly choose.

That's what the movies do. They don't entertain us, they don't send the message: 'We care.' They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theda Bara, Shirley Temple, take your pick.

Social Note: I have sought escape in the Prytania on more than one occasion, pulled by the attractions of some technicolored horrors, filmed abortions that were offenses against any criteria of taste and decency, reels and reels of perversion and blasphemy that stunned my disbelieving eyes, the shocked my virginal mind, and sealed my valve.

My husband is American but Italian. Then I have the Mexicano side. I see both in my kids. My daughter is more Italian - she leans towards pizza - and my son leans more towards guacamole and puts lime in everything.