Story Of The Year...

"I looked out across the river
today. Saw a city in a fog
and an old church tower
where the seagulls play..."
- STING, All This Time

By RON MEXICO
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The pirujas in short skirts pussyfooting around me all looked stupid, as if in a psychotic trance of the sort you see in darkest Africa, their lips in natural pouts and their black makeup on the run. Lapping-up next to them were short and stubby, heavyset men in thick mustaches, all wearing polyester shirts adorned with flowers and little cars and trains and planes. It was Disco Night at one of this bordertown's newfangled Blues Bars.

A ruckus has come to town, all dressed-up and ready to go, like a young, mullato prostitute on her first night of serving a string of rough-edged men with few sexual skills, but carrying all the desire of a powerful panther. That music is being offered as "Blues" is the kicker, for everyone who has been to this part of the world knows the blues have been here for centuries. Indeed, it is often said - and written by anthropologists - that no one wears pain and suffering better than a resident of the Texas-Mexico border. Blues? Black & Blues, is more like it! Are they celebrating spousal abuse? Wife-whipping? Neglect of the region's children? The color of another dead-end year?

What's with the recent attraction to the Blues anyway? You'd think that any of a dozen genres of Mexican music would be more suitable for the locals. Conjunto? Sure. Banda? Absolutely. Corridos? Of course. Traditional? Bring it. Tejano? I'm inside Selena.

The Blues?

I'm no Count Basie wannabe, but it's gotta be a joke on somebody. There isn't a worthy piano within 250 miles? Blues Guitar? Spare me the laughter. Blues, they say. Da' Blues? That's funny. I see a dude at the dingy convenience store in a pair of ragged, brown slacks and an orange Mervyn's shirt and I don't see the Blues. I drive onward, spot a fat woman with a gross overbite selling tamales at the corner and I don't see the Blues. A high-throated bartender at a bar on 14th Street laughs in my face when I ask about Blues on his dusty jukebox. "Que te pasa, buey?" he asks from behind a row of corn-yellow teeth. Blues? Where!

This town moves on cooking oil, used in the making of eggs for breakfast at the downtown, Tex-Mex cafes, for those tasty refried beans, for those killer tamales, for the fucking, Sunday morning menudo. Blues? You cannot be serious. Play me something else by Mahalia Jackson, sonny. What's that? You want me to hear local blues? Indulge me. Keep looking. I'll know it when I hear it.

Atop this story you'll see a photo of a happening town in action. True, blue stuff, not some imagined bullshit thrown about like rice pilaf at a Gay wedding. Get me a photo like this one of a local scene and then we'll talk. Chase that lunkish broad up the sidewalk, lad. You tell her the Blues at midnight'll set her straight. She'll turn around and look at you as if you're the next moron to hit on her before she tells you to scram, to get lost. You don't know shit about the Blues, cause you're from this falling town.

So, there's my Story of The Year, a non-story, really.

That's what's breaking here, becoming the nouveau addiction, cutting up the town's craggy, fajita-like face like some teenage acne episode. Blues? You're still with that?...

- 30 -