By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...It's been a tough year for bloggers here, their days heavy with grief, fatalism and defeat. Readership for all, they will tell you via self-aggrandizing posts, is on the rise, although they lie so often that one could be forgiven for saying it.
Blogging is largely dead these days. It's too-yesteryear, would be our early-morning assessment, even as we sort of participate in the online game ourselves. Hey, yeah, we're out to make some noise, hopefully intelligent noise we say is missing from local discourse.
If you look at local blogging as entertainment and not news, well, it does make one laugh.
Our target today is 74-year-old blogger Jerry McHale, shown in 10-year-old photo above. He is a writer if you believe that when he writes it on his dying blog over and over and over and over - as if to convince himself and not the reader.
Take this, from a posting he offered yesterday: "By nature, I am a bohemian, a non-conformist, anti-materialistic, a rabblerouser and an iconoclast."
He was a lowly (ESL, mainly) schoolteacher for some 35 years! That's a bohemian? A non-conformist? He married three times and had a home and children. A rabblerouser? Maybe 30/40 years ago. He's nothing of the sort these days. Aging fast and hanging on with Maalox.
An iconoclast? He likes the word, but, well, as the word is defined, "......the iconoclast nomenclature can really only be bestowed on you by others and only with some degree of retrospect."
Elderly Blogger McHale (shown wearing birdshit-blue shirt in recent photo at right) labels himself an iconoclast, clearly because no one else will do it or has done it. It only shows his insecurities. The cat is a retired schoolteacher living out his string and nothing more!
Writer? He's written nothing of note or lasting value. His "border" novels are best suited for anecdotal mention on the feces-stained walls of local outhouses.
What he really means to say is that he is a typist, someone with a laptop who has tried writing a book but has never done it for the marketplace. McHale's so-called books - available only at Amazon and not commercial bookstore like Barnes & Noble, the real writer's outlet, are self-published nothingness. The odds of anyone in Brownsville buying one are likely astronomical.
We'd go a step further and say none of his sons has ever read one, much less bought a copy of his "vato-gets-drunk-chases-women-speaks-spanglish" novels.
But he does make us laugh.
Poor dude. Living out his life fashioning himself as something he is not...
Oh, I almost forgot:...I am an avant-garde writer.
HA HA HA HA HA...AHA HA HA HA HA...
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The gent in the photo above is running for some office. We'd look it up and tell you which one, but that would be granting him certain standing. His name is
Jonathan Gracia, however, and we mention him here this week only because we wanted to give him a little push.
No one's heard of him!
Oh, well, voters will decide his political fate. We're just sort of chiming-in on his longshot bid for office, whatever office that may be. State rep., is it? Perhaps. Only, who cares. Politically, Gracia is a nobody. What's he ever done to set himself apart from every blue jeans aspirant out there?
Get a cowboy hat and be mistaken for a sheriff candidate, lad. That and a mustache should get you 10/15 votes to run the jail.
We're big on looks, so we'll just say that this Jonathan has an odd face. The fleshier, almost bigger bottom half looks out of place there with his upper half, like it was molded out of clay. Who knows what voters will see in that, if anything.
They can be fickle, as we all know.
In any case, Jonathan Livingston Gracia should make the seagull as his campaign mascot. You know what they say about them: A gull sees farthest that flies highest.
But, yeah, who cares about this candidate?
We at The McAllen Sun would only back him in a race against Charles "Tadpole" Hasse," cause then Jonathan would win since Hasse has never won a bid for office, has he?
Good luck, Jonathan. You'll need lots and lots of it...
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Ronnie is still in the sheriff's race. That's him coming around the turn in that noisy 1958 Oldsmobile, nine laps behind incumbent Sheriff Eric Garza and just ahead of second pretender Jesus Rosas Jr. Eight laps behind Rosas is some candidate named Trevino, the forgotten candidate who came in from the cold and never had a chance.
Ronnie Saenz, shown pressing the flesh with two voters in photo above, believes he'll be the next Cameron County Sheriff, La Ley Del Condado. He's the only one, however. Boring Ronnie is given no chance of winning, his own camp wondering why he keeps throwing money away on local bloggers pushing his doomed campaign.
Hey, $20 is $20...and as they say here when speaking about better-heeled residents in McAllen upriver, $20 here is $10 there! Yikes, tamale breath. Put that cash back in your wallet. That's cash going down the drain, ese.
Ronnie not listening.
He'll lose the election, shrug his shoulders and go on to a burger & fries life...
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The Brown Blogger has it in for
Mayra "Miss Excitement" Flores, our Republican candidate for the
34th Congressional District seat held by
Demo Diva Vicente Gonzalez. Why,
Juan, what did she ever do to you? That
Juan, what a card. He isn't the news reporter he used to be (now using stories from the
San Benito News on his fading blog), so we figure he uses Mayra to spice up his day just a bit.
It used to be a Bohemia with this guy, but, well, he isn't writing much about his beloved 14th Street Cantinas anymore.
Leave her be, ese.
Pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya (shown at right) is not being very Mexican as things concern Mayra Flores. Perhaps we'll slip her a generous contribution so that she can buy an Ad on Juan's gasping blog - TuAbuela.com - and get a change of heart from the Old Jarhead.
We like fairness. Tough, bitching fairness but fairness, yeah.
Montoya looks and is too rigid a dude. Maybe it's his face, or that odd, farmworker-like body of his. Who knows, I know. It could be a myriad of things with that cat.
Mayra will show up for the Pay-Per-View wrestling match against Lost Gonzo Gonzalez in the November Election, and she'll show Juan a thing or two about bold Mexican women. She's a fighter with a big mouth, something that perhaps Montoya does not like in women.
Machismo Journalism is alive and kicking in Brownsville...
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Has anyone seen or heard from former
Mayor Pat Ahumada? Geez, Louise. He was just here the other month, throwing out
MAGA crap all over the Facebook stage, like some dude unable to decide if he was a politician or a comedian.
Pat should keep on chooglin'.
The only mayor to ever side by the stray dog cannot simply fade away. He has thoughts coming out of his ears! We know, 'cause we've heard him pontificate on a whole lot of lot. Pat Ahumada always had an opinion. Some he stayed true to, some he purposely misplaced.
But that's all politicians, isn't it? Has anyone heard a damn thing from new City Commissioner Tino Villarreal? He was all gung-ho during and soon after the election, but has gone todo turtle. That's him in that shell, officer!
Whatever. We can do without the arrogant Tino, but Pat Ahumada needs to make a Return of The Lone Ranger entrance one more time. His stuff is needed by all local bloggers. They are about to get off the Holiday couch and start slinging shit again as 2024 dawns.
And all that barking at night in the barrios?
Those are local dogs wondering where Pat Ahumada went...
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I met La Chula at a McAllen bar in the days before New Year's Eve. She was hot; I was getting there. Something about a Mexican woman with an arrogant back, and this one had one. Watching her walk into the bar had been eye-opening. Seeing her approach and take a stool at the bar served as my dessert.
An attractive Babe in a black dress at year's end does something to me.
Her name was Linda, which she was. I introduced myself as an iconoclast and she smiled the sort of smile you get at bus stations and airports when someone you meet is going somewhere you are not. Goodbye, sweetheart. Look for me on Facebook, doll.
Anyway, we hit it off nicely and promised to meet at Starbucks on New Year's Eve before heading out to some partying joint. That turned out to be three bars we hit before the night was over. This one, I told myself early-on in the date, needs noise, needs a crowd, needs bright lights, needs love.
She's now with me, if I can say that.
And that's something, 'cause I don't just give away entry to my apartment to any old broad. Well, maybe sometimes, when the moths are on the wing, as the poet once wrote about sexual healing.
2024? So far, so good. Wish me continued happiness, as that will mean a happier blog and less attacks on Brownsville bloggers.
Women have that effect on men...
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Name this clown. He's a squirrely dude serving the folks of Cameron County in some political capacity, only he hasn't done squat since being elected. Well, other than go along on a suggestion that his salary be raised.
Ah, Hell. We'll tell you who he is.
That's County Commissioner Joey Lopez, a grown man going by Joey.
He's apparently a public servant without a public, as his contribution to the betterment of area life has been minimal. Well, okay, non-existent!
Joey Lopez may as well be a ghost of sorts. He's nowhere and likes it that way.
Someone tell him there's nothing wrong with the name Jose Lopez.
Not in Brownsville, Texas, home of some 45,000 Joses...
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One and done. Those high-flying Texas Longhorns saw their season end on a losing note last night in New Orleans. 37-31 was the final score.
A season of steady good play lost its shine against the rough, tough and undefeated
Washington Huskies in Game 2 of yesterday's first round of the 4-team playoffs.
Michigan whipped Alabama 27-20 in the first game.
It's Washington against Michigan in the Finals!
I mean, if your care. Texas ended at 12-2 in yet another disappointing finale to a much-ballyhooed season. The Horns will regroup and live to play football another day, is what Head Coach Steve Sarkisian told reporters after the game at the Superdome. That word. Regroup. It's been there at the end of each season for the past - what? - 12 years.
College football, with an exceptional game here and there, has become a drag.
Bring on the pros...
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TACO TUESDAY out...
