PAJIBA: Taking place in a phone booth in the middle a corn field — an image that evokes both the loneliness and the vulnerability of the immigrant experience — Miranda plays a Latino immigrant who uses a calling card to phone home to talk to his mother. He speaks in Spanish, except when referring to the huge, bizarre wonders of North Dakota — the marshmallow salad, Little Debbie snacks, big mounds of yellow and orange foods — and he tells his mom about the friend he made working as a dishwasher. Preston. He’s the QB of his high school football team, and Preston took him to watch the fireworks in the bed of his pick-up truck. He has dinner with Preston’s family. They’re full of American platitudes, and they make him feel at home. Miranda speaks of what a great country America is — big, wonderful, strange. It’s not a funny short (it’s more akin to the melancholy “Sad Mouse”) but it’s not meant to be, either. It captures the vulnerability of those who enter this country earnest and hopeful, who miss their families but who relish those new connections they make in America, connections that remind them of their long-lost connections to home. MORE
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