TACO TUESDAY:...Cumbia Inferno...On The Border, By The Sí...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | Every big city and every little town has a guy like Erasmo Castro, that annoying-yet-on-it local critic quick to bless and quicker to blame. He's here, he's there, he's everywhere. Last week, the podcaster extraordinaire with the tripa taco-eating grin was in Mexico City and in Cabo San Lucas, jewel of the Baja.

What exactly he was doing there we do not know, although we did catch portions of his dizzying, down-to-the-colon podcasts from both lovely locations. Invariably, Rassmo tells you where he is but quickly segues into whatever local action/inaction he wishes to spotlight. He's host and second banana most of the time, but every now and then he has an actual guest, the last one we saw was proverbial boring gadfly Roman "Who?" Perez.

Castro's podcast often duels with the city's other one, the soon-to-be-a-minor-motion-picture offering by one Capt. Bob Sanchez, the set usually his popular restaurant on the city's fish-smelling side. Where Castro emotes somewhat intelligently about crazy political doings in town, El Capitan will merely smile into his camera and poke at his show's guest for something interesting. I've yet to catch a CBS podcast and come away believing I learned something. It's very much like watching fog roll in.

Usually I end up sending Sanchez messages such as that he has now perfected the Mexican accent and that, no lie, he would look a lot like rocker Ozzie Osbourne if only he wore a Beatle wig. The Captain merely smiles that smile we last saw on Captain Kangaroo and the wrestler Haystack Calhoun.

We say Erasmo Castro should go all out and blow El Capitan out of the stinking resaca water. With heady topics and important people as guests, we mean. Or with a pretty dame as co-host...

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The lad is young and maybe that's what it's all about for him. But new Brownsville City Commissioner Bryan Martinez is an elected official now. Dressing like a slob at a public function may be a Border Vato thing, but he does his district, poor La Southmost, no favors with that cheap-ass, high school shorts & polo look.

Buck up, son. Be the man!

They're saying he takes after his mentor and former boss, City Commissioner Roy De Los Santos, a chubby cat who favors flip flops and loose-fitting, wrinkled, just-out-of-the-dryer slacks. Sadly, it is the look of the moment for these two.

True that neither of these amateurs would look all that great in a suit & tie, but fashion give-ups is the last thing locals need at City Hall. You want to tackle the shitty conditions of city parks, well, shorts and flip-flops would be okay.

But if you're working on resolving once & for all that humiliating Tenaska deal, well, who'll take you seriously?

Young Bryan Martinez still has time to grow into the job, yes.

And maybe even slide into a nice pair of new dress slacks and a button-down shirt. No tie needed; he's a Mexican and Mexicans were not born for suits & ties. Fact.

Yeah, sure, a sit-down chat with fashionista Juan "Trey" Mendez is in order for this lad...

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Where did she go? Is she still in town? Boy, it wasn't all that long ago that honeyed City Commissioner Jessica Tetreau was all over Brownsville. So, she lost the race for mayor. So what? Stick around. You've been part of the pictorial landscape for - how long? - years.

Leggy Tetreau may be plotting a return (we've heard nothing) to local politics. Who knows? Do you?

The dude forever on her tail - Pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya - has written nothing about her since the election. He's hung up on posting cartoons, so maybe her defeat hit him hard, as well. Who knows? Do you?

Anyway, we do hope she makes a Hollywood-like re-entry into the local political scene.

That gal. She was always all-dolled-up with everywhere to go.

Go for it, we'd say to her. Brownsville women need to see that they can dress-up if they want to, do it on maxed-out credit cards. We know, we know. That we spotlight the very-married Mrs. Tetreau as a role model for drab, Walmart-attired local women is yet another of our cheap indictments lobbed at the City On The Border, By The Gulf.

Hey, the attractive are very different...

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Another blast-from-the-past. This would be one Nurith Picasso Galonsky. Okay, not Picasso but Pizana. Lighten-up! I get tired of all the Mexican names around here. Boston and New York were never like this. An occasional Italian or Polish name would help, but what are the chances?

Miss Galonsky lost her city commission seat to shorts-and-ha-ha-teenager Bryan Martinez in the last election and seemed to fade into one of those uncollected Southmost garbage heaps. Well, no, she just went home, is what one of our local friends told us the other day.

Would Nurith make her own comeback?

We always believed she was wasting her time and talent serving the poverty-stricken residents of that particular district. Mayor would be her station, we recall writing a few beers ago. But she has her own brain, so she will run for whatever post grabs her, maybe even on the beer-fueled advice of some local feller.

Not that we have any inside info that she's contemplating a return.

No, Nurith is gone. Out of sight and perhaps even out of mind for many of this under-achieving town quick to turn out 500 voters and put some uncharismatic dude in as mayor. The day will come when a smart and articulate woman will bowl over this town of some 200,000 do-nothing-always-bitching residents and then - and only then - will the circle of fatalistic defeat be broken.

Gee, ese. I thought Nurith might have been it back when she first won her city commission seat a bit over four years ago.

How wrong I was...

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So, what's shakin' at the little college atop that two-foot hill on the southside of town? Anything interesting happenin' at Texas Southmost College? What's that you say - a controversy involving its much-ballyhooed welding program?

Ho hum.

Boring. Mini, teenie-weenie Junior College scandal! Ha ha ha

But it's keeping some people up all night, writing about it as if some Hunter Biden scandal of astral proportions. That's the school's president and the unofficial face of the TSC Board of Trustees in the photo above. The gent is Dr. Jesus Rodriguez and the woman in the leopard (not Scorpion) dress is the lovely Adela Garza.

They are being spit-roasted daily after someone complained that the welding program certificates the college was doling out did not quite satisfy the requirements of something called the American Welding Society, not to be confused with American Cancer Society, an actual helpful outfit.

We've sort of stayed up with the controversy from afar and have yet to see any of the social media wonders chasing the story contact either TSC Pres Rodriguez or Miss Garza for comment. Yeah, I know. Maybe today, or tomorrow.

It used to be easier to pick up the phone in the era of landlines...

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One of the city's ever-inquisitive-never-correct bloggers this past weekend wondered if perhaps Port of Brownsville Commissioner Ralph Cowen might be too old to serve at age 81. Who knows? It's not like we as yet have an Age Police cruising the city, so Cowen is not going anywhere unless he wants to. Well, him or his God, yes.

I recall an afternoon like 10 years ago, when I visited Brownsville and hung around with Ralph and my then-darling Melissa Zamora and Rey Guevara-Vasquez and Blogger Juan Montoya at the 1-2-3 Lounge on 14th Street.

Ralph was a hoot on that day. His jokes bounced off the cheap bar's cheaper walls as if cannonballs last heard on Mexico's Independence Day. He was, as they say these days, en fuego. I recall we all chipped in for a fajitas botana and Montoya went out to go get it.

What a time it was.

And, yes, it's sad to hear some people laying the age thing on ever-genial Ralph...

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The city is dropping an intial $20 million to restore the old El Jardin Hotel. Some say the name comes from a Spanish variation of the Biblical Garden of Eden. Quien sobby? It's true that downtown needs something new - anything! - to again feel as if it has plunged into the 1990s. Lord knows it looks down and out, more like East L.A. than McAllen.

It's a grand plan.

Affordable housing is the motivation, and what Las Prietas fool will argue against that? The city has a large population in need of cheap rentals. And downtown is full of vacant, abandoned buildings, so the idea is a winner. For sure. We read where the city's Housing Authority has a waiting list of some 10,000 families waiting for the telephone call.

That's wild! Like a packed house over at Sams stadium on a night the Seguin Matadors come to town to chase Brownsville High's QB Desi Najera into the turf?

Where are these 10,000 families living now? In Brownsville, or in neighboring Matamoros?

There has been little - if any - info on how many units will be carved into the new & re-painted El Jardin, and just what the price range in rentals will be. Something about businesses on the ground floor, but no restaurant on the top floor.

We're in complete favor of this project, as we believe it will show Brownsville that progress can actually be accomplished...

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Yeah, eat it. It's Taco Tuesday and tacos it is for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It don't get no better'n this. Mess with your three on your plate. Drop some salt & pepper on each one, some salsa. Reach for it with your hand and clamp those itchy fingers over the first one.

Lift it slowly to your mouth and initiate a nice, tasty chomp.

Hey, maybe rough-around-the-edges TSC will offer a two-tortilla taco eating class. You know, get the American Taco Society to accredit the program? Yeah. Have Miss Adela Garza, a good Republican, become the face of that wildly-successful, todas-las-thin-and-gordas student initiative. Oh, Hell yeah!

By the way, do send us a note via our comments feature if you would like to be, well, featured in our Taco Tuesday weekly offering.

There is no charge, no...

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