CASUAL FRIDAY:...The Book Of Life...The Resaca Of Fire ...Wretched Bloggers Lament...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | Still no resolution to the city's silly Soap Opera quickly getting crazy attention from many in this luckless Border Town. Attacking bloggers currently roiling Texas Southmost College know it as "As The Welders Turn," while to the TSC crowd, it is known as "The Old & The Restless."

For bloggers, every unhappy, disgruntled student in the school's welding program is gold. For the TSC administration and board of trustees, those old and restless bloggers are nothing but annoying gnats to be fumigated.

Stay tuned.

It's been a little more than a week since excitable Bloggers El Jerry McHale and his typing shadow, Jimmy Barton, launched a half-baked attack on TSC Chair Adela Garza and school President Dr. Jesus Rodriguez. The two would-be detectives nailed nothing, but they got some attention as the cheesy innuendo quickly gained some traction, like that of a '58 Oldsmobile needing a tune-up but still clunking down a muddy downtown alley.

Perhaps next week, eh Boys?

McHale posted a photo of popular Justice of the Peace Linda Salazar yesterday, asking if maybe she would be a better TSC chair than Ms. Garza. I know, I know. El Jerry is Irish and the Irish are great at flashing their stubbornness. But that flaming ego of his - man, he can be vicious in defending himself even when wrong from the get-go.

Older Barton is a lesser evil, if only because he exhibits the brain of an eternal follower. His bent is to be El Jerry's Tonto, there to praise El Jerry daily and chime-in with a two-bear mambo laugh or two.

Barton's "Laundromat Bulletin Board" blog had fallen off the TSC story, the non-college graduate fixated on the arrest of a woman at SpaceX's property on Boca Chica. That's where he belongs, writing stories with hardly a spark, one no other media chases as tongue-heavy as he does. It's the thinning hair, dude! The jelly belly! The fat your son talked about when you told him you wanted to buy a scooter!

Then he got out of bed, perhaps combed his thinning hair and wrote another episode to the Welding Recital, this one about some "cancer inhibiting" move at TSC he explained badly. Writing does not come easily for vocabulary-addled Barton, although that can likely be traced back to his employment as a grocery store cashier/bagman, a motel clerk and a shrimp boat unloader. Never the professional, no.

Still, ever the chippy, beakless woodpecker, Barton let out a weird posting this morning in which he wrote: Many in Brownsville know that currently jailed Sylvia Atkinson and TSC Board Trustee Adela Garza are "as thick as thieves."

Huh? I think he means "friends," but that "thieves" thing could be interpreted differently. 

Lawyer-up, son!

But then, after we messaged him, Barton deleted the entire post! Ha ha ha. Amateur!

The hell-bent McHale kicked in the unlocked door. Now, let's see if he can nail someone - anyone! - responsible for the wrongdoing he cries about daily. On Friday, the balding blogger wondered if TSC boardmember Zavaleta was providing cover for the welding program director.

If there is something to all of this, good. Perhaps it's just a case of a good story being in the hands of inexperienced reporters.

Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day for this Lethargic Duo...

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What crazy stuff moves down Brownsville's mangled streets? Look at the downtown street in photo above. That's something to be proud of, Browntown? Fer Chrissakes, do something about it. Embarrassing is too kind a word to use about here. Pitiful? Pathetic?

Well, yes.

But perhaps folks at City Hall want their downtown streets to look like their downtown buildings. You can see the resemblance in the photo, as well. Man, this is 2023, not 1973.

Or maybe they're hoping some Hollywood type wants to come to town to film a western set in, say, 1955. Actor Kevin Costner as the Texas rancher chasing Border hero Juan N. Cortina through downtown streets. That scene aided by 100 horses galloping after Cortina, whooping and hollering all over the place.

Whoa, Howdy! Camera 1, pan in on Cortina's face. Get me that look of wild, perspiring desperation! ACTION!!!! Cameras 2 and 3 get ready as Cortina gets set to jump across the Rio Grande. Helicopter camera, you're on!!! Great, that's a wrap. Catering!!!

You'd love that, wouldn't you?

Those downtown streets are ready for Hollywood. Heh, heh...

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Just last week, the dude in photo you see above was persona non grata for blogger El Jerry McHale. His name is J.J. DeLeon and the mercurial McHale spent several articles on his blog encouraging Texas Southmost College boardmember Tony Zavaleta to enlist their friend Ben Neece as a quick replacement for the DeLeon, a trustee known for the most part in his home.

That idea has now flowed down the city's sewer lines, as McHale has angered and lost Zavaleta's friendship. McHale, seemingly an expert in mischievous sophistry, now wants DeLeon to challenge TSC Chair Adela Garza for her job.

It's a dizzying life McHale leads, boys. One day he's your best pal and the next he's your worst enemy, which is funny because he used to accuse former Blogger Robert Wightman of the same thing. Yes, Maria, he perhaps is cheered by the sight of herds and resaca flocks.

Could we say that he is enfeebled with age? McHale is 73, but we cannot say that, as we're not shrinks.

Going offstage is his recent act, however. I mean, who woulda thunk it to believe that he would unfriend Tony Zavaleta so viciously, a dude McHale praised and fawned-over for years! That blog of his is a weapon, and he uses it.

There must be some special pleasure he gets from flying to his pen for relief.

I don't know, but this, too, shall pass.

This ridiculous assault on TSC has to be some transit gust of enthusiasm for the cumbia-dancing McHale. The hilarity and good feeling will end.

Brownsville blogging is that predictable...

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Lost in local conversation during the TSC Soap Opera has been the whereabouts of mouthy Republican Mayra Flores, once the main target of local bloggers. She's still around, still harping on her road-weary issues of God, America and Legal Immigration.

Is she worried about her Republican opponents in the party primary?

You'd never know it, but opponents Mauro Garza of Raymondville and Laura Cisneros of Brownsville are not doing anything, either. Nothing. Both are "new" Republicans, with Cisneros ripping off and trashing her Democrat cape after last election. 

If this is a contest, well, someone should tell rookies Garza and Cisneros to start gunning their engines. Flores would want them to play toesies with each other as long as they wish, although we all know Mayra would be the flyswatter in any sort of pre-election brawl.

Garza seems the excitable one; Cisneros, as we have written a time or two, more the Happy Homemaker.

We'll see if there's fire in those Oppo eyes...

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Is there a coming defense here, we ask. Pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya, shown at right in photo above, has been - and probably will always be - the Great Defender of Texas Southmost College. That's TSC Chair Adela Garza in pink, btw.

Montoya attended TSC back in the day. The two Anglo bloggers currently rolling the school did not. Heavy-shoulders blogger Jerry McHale, aging as fast as Mylanta goes down the throat pipe after a night of bad rice (he wanted to eat 2,000 of something), claims to have graduated from Sacramento State in California (we're checking with the school on that one), while milquetoast Blogger Jimmy Barton never made it to college after high school, or was it after the GED stuff?

So, we're wondering why Montoya hasn't set these boys straight. I mean, once and for all. They keep spewing a story as if defecating "peas off a diseased pod." Trickling water is a Chinese torture drill. Here, McHale and Barton do it, only as if two elderly dudes (McHale will be 74 in December; Barton is an older-looking 75) unable to piss in a stream, but agonizing over painful drips.

Both wish to get out of this TSC Welding Recital they have fashioned for now going on two weeks.

The original issue they posed as if laughing teens was one that went to alleged wrongdoing or bad administration at the college's welding program. The latest angle is a desire to rid TSC of its chair, Ms. Adela Garza.

It's called dog-paddling like sumbitches in the face of a tiring, relentless head current.

Bloggers McHale and Barton scream for help, as if wanting off the story in the worst of ways. It would be so easy for Montoya to "woodshed" these happy-feet boys.

We know Mickey Mantle would upbraid Roger Maris and Yogi Berra, so...

Will he do it for his alma mater?...

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Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda is still on the go. For her city, we mean. The new mayor (one year in office) keeps promoting Harlingen like gangbusters. If it's not a local business she's spotlighting, it's a city employee.

Stuff-shirt former Mayor Chris Boswell never did any of that.

It's good public relations, we say.

And even when Mayor Norma and her husband bought a new Ford Bronco recently, she lapped all sorts of praise on the car dealership. Leadership skill, she has. An attorney by profession, Mayor Sepulveda knows the value of good P.R.

Some cities and towns in the Rio Grande Valley can't buy a good word...

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We would advise him to stay out of it. Him is the gent shown in photo above, Capt. Bob Sanchez of Brownsville podcast/street gab and eatery fame.

The trendsetting El Capitan reportedly hosted - or is hosting rampaging Blogger Jerry McHale for the purposes of airing out that welding nothingness at Texas Southmost College. Don't do it, or don't do it again, Bob.

Sanchez, at last check a Republican, knows that TSC Chair Adela Garza also is a Republican.

Is he joining the wanton word-stabbing of his political compatriot?

Oh, boy. Talk about lasting loyalty.

Bob, Old Sport, the Tale Of Dust And Disgust your bud McHale and his less-educated bud, Jimmy Boy Barton, are spewing is still a Big Maybe. Why risk your own rep, dude?

I know, I know. One must keep appearances.

Capt. Bob is the same cat who once, angered to the Max by McHale for something or another, one fine day grabbed at the bad blogger's backpack as he entered the captain's restaurant and flung it across the dining room. 

But it may just be as they say elsewhere about Brownsville - You can never trust its people. One day, they love you, the next day they want to kill you.

Metaphorically, we mean...

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