Like the best things in life—sex, million-dollar corporate ventures, running for city council—it started as a joke. Only, the seven vatos in Manic Hispanic never let the chuckle turn serious. They are seven dudes of Mexican descent who dare to say things that I, as a white journalist with a white editor (our publisher is a white guy but he’s married to a Mexican), cannot say. Like “wetback.” Like “beaner.” Their motto is “we’re brown, we’re down, and we’re coming to town.” Just like gay folks made an in-joke out of “queer” in the ’80s, Orange County punk rockers like vocalist “El Jefe” (The Cadillac Tramps’ Gabby) and Steve Soto (The Adolescents) are having a ball poking fun at themselves and the whole damn Cholo Nation. The double-edged irony is that they’re taking mostly white punk songs and tweaking them in the process (The Ramones’ “The KKK Took My Baby Away” becomes “The INS Took My Novia Away,” D.I.’s “Johnny’s Got a Problem” is “My Homeboy is a Joto,” etc.). Good punk rock. Funny-funny-ha-has. Three days before Mexican Independence Day.