I’m giving this special award to Chevy’s, which likes to call itself “Fresh Mex”. I’m wondering if they actually have anyone on their staff besides busboys who speaks Spanish at all. I’ve ridiculed them for years because they make their tortilla chips with “El Machino”. Every truly Ugly American knows, of course, that in order to make yourself understood in Spanish, all you need to to is speak really loudly and slowly, and add “O” to the ends of English words. Fortunately, “El machino” is pretty inoccuous, since it means nothing at all in Spanish. (The Spanish word for machine, BTW, is “Maquina”, which would get the feminine article, “la”.) Today, however, their ignorance and UA-ness moved me to post. In an advertisement, they are promoting “dinero” for two. Lissen up, Chevy’s, if you’re going to pretend to have anything to do with Mexico whatsoever, you need to learn that sometimes a word with the UA “O” added to the end of it is simply an Ugly American tourist word. Other times, though, it turns out to be a real word, and in this case it has nothing to do with what you think it does. “Dinero” is not “Dinner-o”, but “Money”. I would like to sponsor a protest in which pairs of people converge on Chevy’s restaurants around the country and ask for their “Money for two”. It doesn’t say exactly how much money, but I think enough people asking for it will eventually either impact the bottom line, or get them to stop pretending to be Mexican while simultaneously butchering the Spanish language.