TACO TUESDAY:......Island Tacos...Capt. Bob & Nefertiti ...Comb Over Hasse...Ben's Other Office... Dairy Neck Barton...Photo Of The Year ...The Scribbler McHale...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...This is the penultimate (next to last) Taco Tuesday of the year that was 2023, and we can say that it's been a roaring success from the outset. Although it has leaned heavily on Brownsville and Brownsville characters, plans have it that it will go valleywide in 2024.

There certainly are others in the region worthy of our attention.

And unlike the sedated bloggers of Browntown, The Sun will not fall back from its features. Once there was a Stormy Monday in town, but Blogger Dairy Neck Jim Barton quickly laid down on the job after one offering. Elderly Blogger Jerry McHale's wimpish, junior high version of Taco Tuesday died 'cause he could not keep it up, as happens when you turn 74 years old.

This Taco Tuesday will stay the course.

Herewith, then, is this week's episode... 

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...If the fast-fading Capt. Bob Sanchez can take a photograph with the purposeful Republican rat, Mayra Sanchez, then all bets are off this bugger of a political season. There he was, standing chingon with the Nefertiti of The Rio Grande, while seeming to say, "Uppa yo ass!" to all in town.

Miss Flores, age 38, is the favorite to win the party's primary next March and then set her crazed sights on Democrat incumbent Vicente Gonzalez in that 34th Congressional District Jell-o & Mud rasslin' PayPerView show.

Sanchez, a late-late blooming (nobody believes him) Republican, has about as much importance in South Texas politics as any other bald-headed eat, shave and shit dude. Will it matter for Mayra? Uh, no. She could pose with Pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya next and it would mean even less. The girl is hot in her own panties, boys. Let's not even think about saying, "Oh, I support seafood and Mayra Flores!"

The captain, who is a captain of nothing, loves taking photos with newsmakers. He's really a "Nobody" in winning politics, but, like the local bloggers, thinks he's Big Shit just cause he offers a podcast in which he seems to fakes a Mexican accent that sure sounds like impacted turds dying to come out of his ass.

Hey, Mayra, sweetheart, go take a photo with John Cowen, the mayor rumored to be a Republican.

He's half-bald, and that may mean something to the district's fickle voters.

Captain Bob is supposed to have spaced teeth that makes it easier to lie, is what a local blogger once told us. But, yeah, who knows. It just could be that the captain is merely one of those humans who sees pain and smiles, who sees death and laughs out loud.

A funny sort of guy and nothing more, yeah...

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Well, he lost his last election by 29,000 to a high school dropout. Charles "Tad" Hasse, shown with crazed comb-over in photo above, wanted a seat on the State Board of Education (SBOE), only incumbent Ruben Cortez stood in the way. Stood in the way!!! Shit, Ruben slammed the damned door in Hasse's aging face!

That was four years ago, and now the Libertarian/Democrat/Republican Hasse (his name means "Rabbit" in Germany) wants to be the Cameron County Republican Party's chair. His opponent in the party contest will be one Deborah Bell, a healthy-looking chick with all of her hair.

Hasse has known little success in politics, having taken it up the ass in several other elections for several other posts. His political resume, you may say, is one defeat after another, beatings that may have taken some salt off his skin the night of the results, but, like acne, he's still there into old age.

A Trumpian from early-on, Hasse can be a however-whiney loud cat.

In that last campaign, he was scolded down by then-GOP County Chair Morgan Graham for seeking the extermination of all Democrats in a speech upstate. Hasse sort of apologized, if dead silence is an apology.

But he has some support, at least from the wishy-washy, mollusk-like blogging community. Pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya, usually an anti-Trump dude, has posted a rather clean story about Tad's latest bid for office. Fellow Dairy Neck blogger Jim Barton also has gone slacker in covering Hasse's campaign. We expect Elderly-About-Town Blogger Jerry McHale to fall-in with the blogging faction and push Hasse to the starting line in a semi-positive way.

There really isn't much there in Hasse's political background to ballyhoo - he's done nothing!

Hasse's nickname of "Tad," he has written, is a contraction of his childhood nickname of "Tadpole," which is not good in the rough & tumble Political World.

Tadpole?

Uh, no...

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Five days before he died on December 12, Ben Neece posted the photo you see above on his Facebook page and let friends know the scene would be his "office" on that particular Thursday evening.

I can't tell you the name of venue, but suffice it to say that it likely was downtown - Ben's backyard throughout most of his adult life. They say he could hear just about every musical note ever played in that part of town.

Neece died at age 68 while at a local gym.

He will be buried at 1:00 p.m. this Saturday over at Buena Vista Cemetery on McDavitt Road. The Heart of The Weekend is a most appropriate time for Ben's last goodbye to a city he loved. a funeral ceremony is the correct send-off for every human being, although we do know others see many options to the traditional memorials and graveside service.

Ben Neece at a cemetery evokes imagery of Ben playing his music for someone else's passing.

In this case, we are pretty sure his family and his many, many friends will be there to observe the interment and to remember a song or two they recall hearing over the years from Neece and Neece's musical band.

It is definitely a goodbye.

But Ben had a way of sticking around at his downtown club after being on stage or seeing other musicians on stage.

No doubt, he'll stay in the memories of a good amount of people, here and wherever else he went and made friends...

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He still will not answer. Dairy Neck Blogger Jim Barton, the 76-year-old news reporter wannabe, guards his reasons for not serving in the U.S. military back when he was definitely of draft-age during the Vietnam Conflict.

And he will not say how far he got in school. High school, we mean, as he did not go to college.

We chase his butt down every week on this because Barton sees himself as some journalism cop who can go after public servants and politicians, many of them military veterans who do not need this clown chasing them down as if he's somebody.

Barton is a Societal Nobody.

His employment resume is thin, thinner than that of a hard-working illegal alien washing dishes at a local eatery or a maid working all sectors of the community. Barton's jobs were of the hourly, minimum wage variety - at grocery stores, motels and on the shrimp boat docks at the Port of Brownsville.

We've asked, but he will not say where else he has worked, when up in North Texas or in incest-happy Arkansas with his late-wife Nenny.

Should we care about this guy's unaccomplished past? Sometimes, we tell ourselves that no, we should not. he's free to "act" out any part he wishes in this home of the brave and land of the free - even if he never has paid his debt to freedoms he enjoys.

And this week, we're not even going deep into that Great Story that is his donation of his dead wife's body to science in April of 2019. I mean, who does that? In the Rio Grande Valley, we mean.

Little Hands Barton (he ragged Republican hellion Donald Trump about his small hands, btw) did it, and he's okay with it.

Perhaps someday he'll open-up, let loose serious stuff he keeps well-closeted for reasons that may affect his standing in town. Until he does, those of us with our questions will keep them handy and waiting on an opening, perhaps on some emotion Barton lets go when his insecurities rise as if weeds against a lawnmower...

Old cat Barton, who plays at being a real member of the press, should know that the press is accountable, too...

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Our PHOTO OF THE YEAR. Donald Trump being booed and saluted with the middle finger at an Iowa Hawkeyes football game this Fall. The photo, one of several showing fans shooting Trump the finger, was widely-circulated in new stories and social media. 

The imagery is priceless.

There is, we say, nothing like the American middle finger salute. Its message is immediate and unmistakable. You suck! Fuck off! Sit on this, Mofo! It's a very visible diss absolutely. You shoot someone the finger and you're telling them you hate their ass. One more stare and it's Fight City!!!

In Brownsville, the middle finger is as popular as the two-tortilla taco.

You get a bad waiter at a good taqueria and down goes the taco and the waiter. Trump felt it, we're sure. He felt the hate he engenders in Good Americans. They would rather kick his face in than see him as any sort of political star.

In fact, we're sure Trump's face is atop the list of fucktards people in this country want to fuck up...

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He likes to think of himself as some accomplished writer, but Elderly Blogger Jerry McHale is nothing of the sort. He's a retired ESL teacher with a laptop and nothing more. What's he written that's anywhere near memorable? Not a damn thing, says the stadium crowd.

There is no signature sentence. No creative language. No unique plotting. No character worth remembering. No paragraph of note. No self-published book worth a quarter.

But the 74-year-old McHale does hold hard to his Irish penchant for attacks and insults. Once he had a very good friend by the name of Tony Zavaleta. Today, he doesn't. Not after that Welding Recital disaster McHale offered this past summer that had Tony Z fuming.

Once he could sit down for a few chelas with pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya. Today, he can't. Not after calling Juan the third-best blog writer in Brownsville. Behind him and non-college Dairy Neck Jim Barton!!!

Once, he had local attorney and former municipal court judge Ben Neece as the one always at his side. Not anymore. Ben died last week and McHale cried his woe-is-me poetry on his nursing home blog. No, Maria, let's once and for all dispense of any notion saying this guy is a writer.

He's not, not of Real Journalism and certainly not of sentient fiction.

McHale turned out to be the city's loudest wannabe - that's all...

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TACO TUESDAY out...

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