What says ¡Feliz Cumpleaños! better than a piñata

The piñata has come a long way in recent years from the birthdays of my youth some four-plus decades ago.

I can recall the multi-colored paper mache figures made to look (sort of) like donkeys, or multi-pointed stars. While it seems that some people stick to such images when trying to liven up a party with a piñata (what can be more fun than blindfolding someone, then handing them a club?), it seems like some people get ever so elaborate.

STAR WARS PIÑATAS (Darth Vader’s head!). A guitar with Miley Cyrus’ picture on it. Even piñatas meant to look like every child’s favorite Latina, Dora the Explorer.

It seems like a lot of effort to put into creating something whose sole purpose is to be smashed to pieces, thereby causing a lot of little kids to charge forward in hopes of gaining a few pieces of candy that will give them their next sugar rush.

Personally, I have only a couple of memories from childhood related to piñatas. One was of a party I attended when I was about three years old. Somebody ahead of me smashed the piñata. I charged forward along with a lot of other kids.

Yet I remember being too slow or too small. All the candy got scooped up before I could get to it. It sticks in my mind because it is the earliest memory I have in life of being disappointed.

THEN, THERE WAS the high school Spanish class project where we were supposed to pair up with others in class and make piñatas. Ours was a bright red creature that wound up looking something like a deformed earthworm.

Any lasting delusions I might have had of being some sort of artist were driven out of me by then.

Perhaps it is a sign that elements of Latin American (particularly Mexican) culture are working their way into our society that we now get very untraditional images for pinatas. All the Disney characters that one can buy a piñata for were definitely NOT the creation of any Mexicanos I know.

As far as the images of political parties and government officials that can be found in piñatas, that definitely strikes me as being bizarre. I might have disagreed with Rudy Giuliani’s actions and statements throughout the years, but I have to wonder about anyone who would actually purchase this particular item.

TO ME, A party is where you forget about politics and troubles and try to relax – not make some statement by smashing Giuliani over the head (I hate to think that will become of all those Barack Obama piñatas that are advertised).

So what brought on this reminisce of piñatas?

It is that I have managed to survive for yet another year on Planet Earth. So even though I have no plans for Tuesday to smash anything with a club, I felt an informal commentary on the Mexican way to liven up a party (at least that’s how a piñata was described in that dreadful 1970 western Two Mules for Sister Sara, which featured a mule-shaped piñata laced with dynamite) was the way to go.

I’m also going to take the time to point out that people such as Frank Robinson, Eldridge Cleaver and Julius Caesar allegedly shared my date of birth (although not the exact year), as did Jerry Allison – as in Buddy Holly’s original drummer with The Crickets.

I BRING THAT up because I know for a fact that those columns that tell you what “celebrities” were born on your birthday always tell me that my date of birth is shared by actor Richard Gere and one-time teenage pop singer Deborah Gibson (who is almost as old as I am).

Ugh! With the exception of his role in the 2002 film based on the musical “Chicago,” I can’t think of any recent Richard Gere film I’d want to see.

Then again, if we could get a Gere-shaped piñata, or at least one shaped like that dreadful 1997 film of his, “Red Corner,” perhaps that would be worth smashing to pieces.

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