El veintitrés de abril/April 23rd

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Photo from pe.com. Click HERE. 
¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... George López! (1961-       )

A comedian and actor born in Los Angeles, López was raised by his maternal grandmother, Benita Gutierrez (his father left when he was a baby, and his mother remarried and left when he was ten). He never celebrated a birthday and dealt with bullying as the "darkest kid in the neighborhood" (read more in the 2002 New York Times article A Life So Sad He Had to be Funny, HERE). Despite the difficulties of his childhood and conflicting feelings about his grandmother, who passed away in 2009, López acknowledges the huge role she played in his life, telling a writer for The Chicago Tribune in 2016, "I think about her every day. I think, probably, about her, like every hour" (click HERE for full article). López began pursuing stand-up comedy after graduation from high school, crediting comedian Freddie Prinze, his idol, for helping him realize it was possible. He was performing in a club in L.A. in 2000 when Sandra Bullock saw his act and loved it. She approached him about writing and producing a show for ABC. The result was the sitcom George Lopez, which ran from 2002 to 2007. López was co-creator, writer, producer, and star of the show. In 2004, due to his work on the show and his wide-ranging charity work, López was presented the Artist of the year and Humanitarian Award from the Harvard Foundation at Harvard University. He was named one of the "Top 25 Hispanics in America" by Time Magazine in 2005. López has twice hosted the Latin Grammys and once co-hosted the Emmys. He had his own talk show on TBS, Lopez Tonight, in 2009 and 2010. His DVD comedy specials Why You Crying?, George Lopez: Tall, Dark & Chicano, and George Lopez - America's Mexican, among other projects, have all been wildly successful commercially. His 2013 autobiography I'm Not Gonna Lie: And Other Lies You Tell When You Turn 50 was also a bestseller. Lopez and former wife Ann Serrano (who donated a kidney to him in 2005 to save his life) have one daughter together, Mayan, born in 1996. The two divorced in 2011. For a two minute video overview of López's life (in Spanish) click HERE. For George Lopez's official website, click HERE, and for an interview with him with The Smithsonian Magazine on comedy and race, click HERE.

 For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.




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