So my hood latch popped yesterday, in the middle of my xenon upgrade. Had my son push the hood down, and used needle nose pliers to pull the cable to open the hood. Cable goes from interior, thru firewall, and into a connector out of which comes two cables. One for each hood latch.

Lube the living bejesus out of the hood latches, and then do this to the hood latch release in the kick panel: