Remember going on field trips when you were a kid? It was a chance to get out the classroom, and it would an adventure. Not always a good one, but a diversion from the routine of school.

Last week I found a Botanica just a few miles away, bit it was like entering another universe.

This was a real, authentic Botanica, not the one in Hollywood that sells candles to hispters. It was dark and dusty, crammed wall-to-wall with weird packets of herbs, oils, religious statues, Santeria supplies, trays of amulets and charms and some shit you didn’t even want to know what it was.

There was a girl behind the counter in full cola uniform and manner. She might have been Filipino, and she didn’t speak much Spanish. She had died blonde hair with long black roots, heavy winged eyeliner, and a tattoo in gang writing down in her cleavage,

Her name was Jenny, and she watched me ogle the stuff behind the counter. I told her I was looking for something to cure a friend’s illness, instead of admitting to being a nosy Jew on a cultural field trip.

She asked me if I believed in “that stuff” and I said “nah,” immediately outing myself by mistake.

We talked for a bit and she told me she had a month old baby. It turned out that her husband was in jail, BUT IT WASN’T HIS FAULT.

Of course it wasn’t his fault! I watch Lock-Up, I’m not an idiot!

She told me his story and I narrowed my eyes like Nancy Grace and asked: “Who threw the first punch?”

It was the Other Guy, not her husband! But somehow the other guy’s wife, a crazy bitch, told the cops that bla bla bla bla.

Poor Jenny! Only twenty-two.  She was watching the counter for her husband’s mother, who owns the shop and gives readings and ‘cleansings’ in a back room.

Jenny revealed that her baby was asleep in the back of the shop. She insisted on showing me the baby girl, who has some stupid name like Kaylee or something.

I cooed at the baby appreciatively. A fat little girl appeared and spoke to Jenny. She seemed to know her way around the store and might have been the innocent husband’s little sister.

The little girl fingered the tiny evil-eye bracelets and Hamsa charms in front of me. I told her that I love Hamsa’s, which actually isn’t true,  but I wanted to engage her in conversation.

“Good for you,” she answered coolly.

What a fat little bitch, I thought to myself.

I am thinking of going back to get the owner to give me a spiritual cleansing in the back room. I am completely serious.

Plus I want to hear more about Jenny and her predicament.

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Growing up in Los Angeles, I discoverer the magic of cholas at an early age. A chola promised to kick my ass in 7th grade, so I left school early and ran all the way home. She was mad because I’d been hanging out with her ex-boyfriend, a Mexican boy who wore a white t-shirt with khakis and a plaid Pendleton. What the hell was his name?? The main thing about him was that he was taboo.

Fashion changes but chola style is eternal. I’ve only just realized why Amy Winehouse struck suck a resonant chord for me:   She’s a Jewish chola, a hybrid I longed to be but couldn’t really pull off.

Thanks to youTube, everyone knows about cholas now and they are widely parodied. For me, they are too magnificent to make fun of. They are girls who want to kick your ass after school. They know how to use eye-liner and they look sexy in the most masculine get-up.

Mexican gangs go back several generations in Los Angeles, and have a nobility lacking in Crips and Bloods. Not that long ago, I was still planning to have my (imaginary) gang name tattooed on my bicep: “Lil’ Spiteful.” I went around asking my Hispanic friends to find out how to say ‘spiteful’ in Spanish. The closest I got was the word for ‘vengeful.’

Max grew up loving cholas, too. The first girl he ever brought home, when he was around 13, was a chola he met at Magic Mountain. She was 14 going on 25, with earrings the size of dinner plates.

His last girlfriend before the crazy one was the perfect chola, even though she was born in Israel. They met in rehab, and when he brought her home, she let me do her make-up.

It was easy to see what he loved about her. She’d been arrested fourteen times, and she could text a dirty joke at lightning speed.

All of his girlfriends were beauties. But beauty without brains was a deal-breaker for him. He always had friends who were women and he wasn’t afraid of intimacy.

God bless the Mighty Chola. Maybe I should get the tattoo after all?

Back in 1995, Mrs. Palin was a real hoochie, as you can see in this video. Lots of eyeliner, big hoop earrings, snapping her gum, she almost looks like a chola, and that is a huge complement.   No wonder she’s such a mean-spirited bitch! Losing your youth is a hard pill to swallow.

What I like even more about this video is Todd’s face. He appears to have some rugged pitted acne scars, which are now missing. Has anyone researched the missing acne scars??

I think it’s time to add Todd’s Face-gate to the Babygate, Housegate and Troopergate inquiries.