TACO TUESDAY:...McAllen Mayor Out For A Holiday Kill Shot...New Year's Eve In The Bally...We Tackle Mayra...Paz In Our Time...Dunderheaded GOP Games...Neece Gone...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas |...The mayor was out killing deer. It was the week before Christmas and a steady salvo of gun shots rang out across the land. There would be fresh venison at the Holiday Dinner Table, after all.

That's McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos at left in field photo above.

Villalobos, a non-screaming, non-scheming Traditional Republican, is a walkabout mayor. He's been to Olde Mexico umpteen times, and he recently returned from another business-seeking junket to Colombia, where he hobnobbed with that country's bigwigs.

There has been no response from City Hall to our complaint centering on the woeful Holiday street-lighting along busy, busy N. 10th Street. It's okay, but it could be so much more. As it is, the street lighting is straight out of 1972. The bare minimum, yeah.

Maybe next year, eh?

For now, we end the year with the imagery of the mayor traipsing down some weedy shank of muddy geography in some South Texas ranch in search of some antler-thing to kill. It's a sport, we know. And there are times when the herd has to be thinned for its own sake.

It's just that the mayor & the guns thing that clashes.

A few of his commenters on his Facebook page asked about the meat, one or two or three wondering if the mayor and his family were in for deer meat tamales.

Villalobos is an out & about sort of mayor, very much like Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda. You can see him ambling into Starbucks, into local small eateries, into the newly-opened chic bars and at a whole host of civic activities that often include stops at McAllen ISD schools.

And, yeah, who knows about what comes next for him?

Perhaps a journey to Dark Africa with a fully-packed entourage for a shot at an elephant or a lion.

You have to lock & load if you're going to be a Republican...

-0-

Next Sunday is New Year's Eve. Do you know where your drink is being served? Party, baby. Doll-up and pick me up at seven. And this year bring your own American Express card, sweetheart. We can hardly wait for this damned year to end. Sorry F. Scott, it was just damned, not beautiful.

Much came this Year 2023, most of it bad. There were some good moments, but the overwhelming number of problems suffocated the life out of Cupid, priests and food delivery drivers. A pizza I ordered was duly returned when the driver arrived in a 1950s car with actual fins and I watched him walk to the back, where he lifted the trunk and extracted my pizza.

"Not happening," I told him. "Take it back. I'll call for a refund."

The kid just shrugged his shoulders and got back in his jalopy and rolled out.

That was one chalked up to ridiculousness. I could almost smell the dead cat or rat the kid had in that car's cluttered trunk. It was no place for a hot pizza. But there were oh, so many other moments in the year that all stand out like thumbs busted by a hammer. Where to begin?

Locally, SpaceX blew up to expensive rockets - both with 33 engines - at company's launching pad on Boca Chica in Cameron County. Hundreds were there to see it, all gasping, all oooohing-and-ahhhing as the rockets lifted off, pierced the sky with ease...and then blew up. SpaceX said it was a good thing, part of the getting-to-perfection plan.

Quien sobby, I know.

Things bad around here? Well, a few more inmates at that haunted Cameron County jail died in captivity. The same answers emerged from the sheriff's department. Nothing else came of it. The dead can't find a lawyer.

Things good around here? Those over-achieving kids from Brownsville Veterans Memorial High School had themselves a mighty run, beating ranked, undefeated teams in the state playoffs before losing in the semifinals. Waytogo! Brownsville fell into a days-long funk after the loss, but the kids kept smiling. They knew they had accomplished much.

We kept waiting for a Rio Grande Valley political scandal, but one never came. Not this year. No sexual escapades with men or women not their spouses by our elected or appointed officials, no one caught drunk or with drugs, no resignations of note, hardly a pendejada.

So, this being short for obvious reasons, we can only hope that the last night of the year is a celebratory one for all, a time for one last hug and kiss of the year in a bar or night club.

Make it a tight, nipple-on-nipple hug and a long, wet kiss. The year has been draining, our emotions spent...

-0-

Word in the mean streets and bars have it that she's still the one. Favored to win the Republican Party's nomination for a run at the 34th Congressional District seat, that is. It's a given, only some air seems to have left her Dollar Tree balloon. Mayra Flores has been uncharacteristically quiet.

Does that portend anything?

Probably not, but she needs her A-Game against incumbent Democrat Vicente Gonzalez.

Maybe it's the Christian Holiday that has her in a more-mellow, more-sociable mood. No loud anti-America speeches lately, no pig-like squealing pro-Trump spiels, no yelling and screaming about that Red Wave that never materialized last election, but that she insists will crest here this time around.

Or so she hopes.

Another loss and that'll be that for Mayra. She has hung her hopes and dreams on a Troubled Star. It's an odd situation in that, once, Mayra Flores was a rising star, one coming over the horizon as if a moon and not some shiny, distant celestial body.

Politics can be fruitful...and it can be cruel.

Mayra's fight between now and the November General Election in 2024 will be the moving brawl of her life. She's won and she's lost, once on each count. This next contest could be it for the daughter of Burgos, Mexico who came to this country and gleefully joined a noisy uprising.

What's she going to do if she loses? There is nothing much to fall back on, nothing, in fact...

Well, she could wait two years and then challenge Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn in 2027. The other senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, is up for reelection in 2024...

-0-    

PAZ IN OUR TIME...Well, I started going out again after my last goofy relationship and, as always, I ran into that one word that just loops me - feelings. I know I have them all, but my problem is dealing with the feelings of others.

I remember a lovely gal in New Mexico who would tell me I hurt her feelings and it always sounded like "fillings," which threw another image onto the back walls of my skull.

Anyway, it's the cellphone this time.

I have one, but it's not like I use it all that much. "Call me," she said, there near the end. "Chase me. I like to be chased." So, I tried, but it never was enough.

She would call me at midnight after texting a note that said, "Can u talk?" My eyes were rolled up above my top eyelids, asleep to the world and completely unable to chat about the holiday blues. It's a bitch trying to stay up with a woman who needs attention.

I mean, I need it, but not like that.

In any case, when I last saw her what I said was this: "Try the being-alone thing, baby. It'll settle your bones."

She walked away...and, not surprisingly, I haven't heard from her in a week...

-0-

WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?...Four comfortable Republicans taking to the stage to debate. For what? This fulsome foursome will soon fade into the rotting woodwork, not to be heard from for long months. It's Hell being a Nobody in a Party of Clowns.

We'll ID the four GOPers shown above for the police: Chris Christie, ex-governor of New Jersey; Nikki Haley, ex-governor of South Carolina, Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy, a Nobody.

They showed-up and tried. All are well-spoken college grads, most with some political experience, Haley rumored to have had an affair with a blogger and Christie one with a Pappadeaux's Sampler Plate.

We feel sorry for these people.

The national press and most of the free world has known that their partisan colleague, one Donald J. Trump, has been the anointed one, known it for a long freakin' time. But, bless their beating hearts, they debated. Debated the issues, as if it meant something.

It meant nothing...

-0-

OBITS:...If we can ever say that a city fell into a deep holiday funk, well, maybe Brownsville is it. One of its admired citizens died days before Christmas and there were words of sadness moving across town. Everyone's got a good memory of local Ben R. Neece, the former municipal court judge and ex-city commissioner.

Neece died while at a gym. He was 68.

And, well, how does a community grieve the passing of one of its best & brightest?

Brownsville did it well, honoring Neece pretty much at every turn - in the newspaper, on Facebook and other social media, on the local blogs and at a well-attended memorial.

Neece had his small warts, but readily counted on an upstanding reputation.

Brownsville's reaction came quickly, grieving on the minds of many from the very moment they heard the news. The city doesn't have many citizens of note.

Ben Neece was one... 

-0-

TACO TUESDAY out...

-30-