Kelly and Quang's Global Roam

I never read gossip mags (except when I'm at the hair salon) and I certainly never buy them (unless I'm getting on an airplane). This week, however, I couldn't help myself. I bought In Touch Weekly at my neighborhood grocery store where someone I know might have seen me!

I quickly stuffed it in a brown paper bag and rushed it home. There was one thing inside that magazine I wanted: an ad for a new, upcoming TV series playing off the face of Che!

The ad reminded me of a picture I'd snapped in Buenos Aires of an artistic graffiti Che-cross-Marilyn Monroe.

Of course I had to google The Fashionista Diaries, which turned out to be a reality show about young fashion grads getting their first jobs in the Big Apple. It's a show on which I will pass. Nevertheless, I had to admire their clever spoof of a global icon.

Once at home in front of google, however, I thought back to a conversation I had over the weekend with a friend of mine. She said, "Who's this Che guy you're always writing about on your blog?"

Che? How could she not know about Che?!?!

"How much do you want to know? This could take a while," I warned.

"Just the basics," she answered.

And of course I proceeded to monopolize the next hour with Che talk.

It's not that I'm Che-obsessed, I heard myself tell her. I'm not a revolutionary. I'm not a communist or a socialist or whatever else people might say he is. It's not even that I admire his Robin Hood mentality, his intellect or his desire to help others, no matter how twisted that desire might have become. In some pictures he is kinda cute, but in others he looks totally grungy and gross. I don't fantasize about Che.

I do feel slightly sorry for him. There are few people in the world that actually deserve to be gunned down and buried in a hidden grave for decades, and I'm not convinced Che was one of them. Not only that, but I can't help but doubt the "friendship" between Fidel and Che. What kind of a person turns his murdered BFF into political propaganda?

Here's my thing about Che: I'm totally smitten with his reach. It's almost as if he is omnipresent. His image is nearly everywhere. In fact, two weekends ago, I drove out of the city to a farmer's raspberry stand I know just to get one of the season's very last pints of hand-picked raspberries. The rural teenage kid who took my money was wearing a Che t-shirt.

If I think about it long enough, I believe my borderline Che obsession can be traced back to something I saw in a tiny Honduran town.

I watched a local man give a gringo tourist a hug. The tourist was shocked. He'd done nothing to invite the hug. He didn't know this sober Honduran guy handing out hugs on a dusty, unpaved street.

After the hug, the local did something even more amazing. He unhooked a chain from around his neck and passed it to the gringo. Then he walked off.

The gringo looked down at the necklace, its medallion was an image of Che.

The connection? The gringo was wearing a Che shirt.