We Have Moved...

In our endless quest for the best venue, we have settled on this one for the immediate future. Come check us out at:

www.ThePazFiles.blogspot.com

- 30 -

That Time Of the Year...As Summer Roars, We Take A Needed Break...See You later...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - We've been putting this off for a few weeks, but the time has come to shut The Tribune down for a few weeks. A break is always good for the brain and the soul.

We shall return at a still-to-be-determined date.

See you then...

- 30 -

For WhiteWings, A Long, Drawn Out Light Bill...City of Harlingen Is Patient...Season Drags On...

"I stand on my sincere convictions concerning the WhiteWings, while you seem to make comparisons with them and major league teams. Of course, that is not true, but they provide good entertainment and, yes, there are some very good players in the league. Why not pick on the Killer Bees hockey team for a change and give your fixation on the Wings a rest..." - Harlingen Blogger Jerry Deal, a Journalist

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - Almost 40 games into the ongoing season, the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings are in the thick of things on the field. As they head into tomorrow's doubleheader in Edinburg, local fans can take solace in knowing the Wings will not be playing in Harlingen, where the team continues to negotiate an estimated $40,000 debt it owes for utilities availed at the city ballfield.

"We are still in talks, but just within the last 10 days they finally made a token payment of $4,000 towards their balance due," said a source familiar with the ongoing negotiations.

The news is good for residents underwriting the venue. Harlingen provides the field, takes care of maintenance and, by contract, provides electric power for night games. It has been a very good deal for the team and its management, members of the new North American Baseball League that also outfits clubs in nearby Edinburg and McAllen. Following weekend losses, the WhiteWings record is 21-18, good for second place.

Second hand everything is something many Valleyites endure. This is not professional baseball; it is very minor league baseball being played by players who couldn't - or haven't - made it up to the lowest rung of established A ball. But Harlingen, like many small towns across the country, signed-on, thinking it, too, could dream the impossible dream. It has paid the price when seeking reimbursement from the WhiteWings for that electricity provided at Harlingen Field.

Does the city need this headache?

Some realists at City Hall say, "No."

Still, there it is, that siphoning cash from the strained city budget that could perhaps go to hiring one more police officer or perhaps the funding of a better program serving all residents, not just the easily-buffaloed, rabid baseball fanatic.

Pride comes from success. The Wings may yet win the league championship. But what is the value of that, when the league is such an obscure league that the award is laughable? You don't have to soil major league baseball by comparing this level of ball to the Big League clubs. Only a rube would do that.

In this town, it is about coming clean with the taxpayers and the fans.

Yesterday, on ESPN2, the network carried a program in which it looked at the Good Old Days of baseball in New York, the crux of the show posing the question as to who was the city's best centerfielder when Mickey Mantle patrolled center for the Yankees, Willie Mays did it for the NY Giants and Duke Snider for the Brooklyn Dodgers. You'd have to know baseball to even pose the question.

No, the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings, bless their hearts, are nowhere near that league. Team owners and managers would quickly admit it. But that's about play on the field.

The team's bills are public record, as is that contract the City of Harlingen entered into with the team. Who cares what player is running down flyballs in center at Harlingen Field? You can be sure it's a nobody, always is at this level of play. That's not even up for discussion.

So, what is the current state of that contract?

How much do the WhiteWings owe, and when do they plan to pay it? You would think the town's excitable bloggers would be on it like flies on Guacamole. But they're not...

- 30 -

Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy: Reading Back Pages...The Famous And The Near Famous...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - There's a linchpin somewhere in all this, so bear with us as we mow the morning mental lawn at a time when perhaps we should be wondering and writing about something a bit more serious - like Libya and a woman's right to an abortion, that stuff.

But its Tuesday, after a long, holiday weekend under a high sky in Austin and a hot sun generally everywhere south of the North Pole. We've toasted on our way into and out of local restaurants, and we've waited on rain that looked to be up there, but just beyond our lot. My daughter called to say it was 84 degrees in New York. Lucky, was all I could think to say. Still, it is the times we live in, despite what the non-Global Warming believers say. The polar cap can melt and these guys will still deny it. You can gurgle underwater, but not for long. We'll see about that.

In any case, I'm reading this book titled Casanova: Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy. Yes, that Casanova, the one whose name is associated first with excitable sexual escapades. He wrote about them, as did others, so they exist in the legend of Giacomo. I'm halfway through it, so I've drawn no conclusion on whether I buy its promise of finaling revealing the many talents of this Renaissance Italian from the 17th Century. We'll see, although there have been some interesting tidbits to do with his talent as a painter and a bit actor on the French stage. I suppose his sexual prowess comes in the middle of the book.

Casanova did as much as he could with his life in a world that yielded little opportunity of the sort one has these days. He might have been a wilder man today. Casanova, according to this book by English writer Ian Kelly, invented the lottery, a successful one at that that became the overwhelming rage of his time. "I was never attractive," Casanova is said to have said about himself. "I simply had an unbridled belief that I was capable of anything."

That brings me to the new blogging effort of my ally, Jerry McHale, who has birthed his http://www.browntownnews.com/ as the fountain of all that semingly is good in his adopted hometown of Brownsville, Texas. First, as an early assessment of his offering, I'd say McHale wishes for another time - perhaps 1911. Like Casanova, he, however, does his life impulse with what's before him. Brownsville is not an attractive town, yet McHale wants to write about it as it was a beautiful community, full of gaiety, pomp, counts and countesses, harps and jesters, the spirit of Casanova's Venice. Brownsville is the petrie dish of trouble, most of which is bad, of darkened streets and shuttered doors. The only Brownsvillians having fun are the criminals, the corrupt politicians and the gendarmes. Perhaps that is why his previous online efort - El Rocinante - was so successful. For that effort, McHale mined the gutters and dumpsters as if addicted to the worst of news.

When McHale can write this about Brownsvile, then shall he be able to make factual headway: "By the Eighteenth Century, Venice had become the city of pleasure. The convents boasted their salons, where nuns in low dresses with pearls in their hair received the advances of nobles and gallant abbes. And everyone, from patricians to gondoliers, who were given free entry, was imersed in theatre."

Brownsville knows theatre as street and alley crime. Its hardly-creative plots are printed in newspaper crime stories and obituaries. Brownsville is a beggar of art, forever dreaming and wishing and pining, but rarely getting its dessert. One more comparison, from the past: "The man fit to make his fortune in Brownsville must be a chameleon...he must be insinuating, impenetrable, obliging, often base, ostensibly sincere, always pretending to know less than he does, in complete control of his countenance, and as cold as ice. If he loathes the pretence he should leave Brownsville and seek his fortune in Harlingen."

Early-on in his new Journey, McHale too-easily reverts to his old style. He bashes the same people he's bashed before, the novice mayor, the lady commissioner fond of posing for photos with local men, the usuals. Between those familiar jabs, he is leaving the trusted path and writing about some interesting, yet not so-interesting local buildings, historical figures and God-damned cantinas. That's the Brownsville we have all come to know. No news there.

It would be a better trip if McHale, in the spirit of Casanova, would not merely kill the snake by slicing off its head, but study it a bit more, ripping off its hide and reaching for and grabbing its innards, the real ones. We are sure that Brownsville counts a few thousand residents no one has ever written - or cared - about. Those are the new stories at hand for him, his new cast of characters.

"These are the handsomest moments in my lifestory," Casanova wrote in one of his many journals. "These happy, unexpected, unforeseeable and purely fortuitous remeetings...and, hence, all the more precious."

It's a choice, this life.

And it is true that, given the task, two people would do the same job successfully in different ways. Another Blogger out to do what McHale is doing might do something else altogether different, might actually create either a spectacular novel writing trend or maybe birth and deliver a new local superstar. It's not easy, but that's the reward.

Creativity also allows for taking the long way home, so...

- 30 -

Editorial: Birthday In America...A Country Turns 235...What's To Celebrate...We ask...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - The French reacted with clear pride: One of their own was again free. It was a stunning turn of events one does not often see, the freedom, we mean. This development that had Dominique Strauss-Kahn walking free in New York City called for outright glee in his native country, a land known for its pastries, its food, its museums, its culture, its delightful standing in the world. Strauss-Kahn had stood accused of raping a hotel maid and it was his status as a well-known Frenchman overseeing the influential International Monetary Fund that brought initial shame to his prideful nation.

We wondered about such pride. What is it about France that makes it so proud? It is a country whose flag has been dragged across the mud in war, and flown proudly as a place for opera, for ballroom dancing, for artists, for writers, for those things in life often openly labeled as being the best of the best. France has its blackeyes, that Nazi occupation by Germany during World War II being one. Yet, it has endured that shame and horror and lived to remain a nation often associated with civilization's brightest shine.

America celebrates its declaration of independence today.

It does it, again, under darkened skies, under the threat of economic collapse, under the weight of internal roilings that cannot help but eat at its very foundation. Unlike the French, we Americans rarely find that one moment when the entire lot of immigrants can say we are together, united in this effort, this goal. We do it when those occasional Sept. 11s come around, hit us upside the head and shake the racism, the class wars, the bigotry off us, as if dandruff sailing off a homeless wino's hair at check-in time at that shelter in the bad side of town. Every nation has problems these days. We are not immune to the bankrupt coughings of Greece, the newfound financial might of China, the rebellious mess of Egypt and Libya, the pyscho-juking and spewing of North Korea and Iran, the slime of Afghanistan.

Yet, it is in this world environment that the United States, a pretentious idea that at times works beautifully and at others fails miserably, continues its march toward a better world. Externally, the problems are handled from the perspective of a nation; internally it is another matter altogether. Where do we go wrong? Why do we find comfort in segmenting ourselves. We are outrageous Republicans, we are under-achieving Democrats. We are Americans. It is the giddy roller-coaster ride we have known since that glorious day in 1776.

Freedom allows for much.

It allows us to be different, to think we're special, to think we're better, to think we're not this or that, to think everybody else is the problem, to think it's not us, it's them. Somewhere in there lived the dream. At one time, the dream seemed clear and possible. At one time, the dream seemed attainable for all. One Nation, Underway.

We like to think of ourselves as being the beacon of freedom, the place where the oppressed, the poor and the needy can find shelter from the storm. We shine the light on problems in Africa and in Russia and in the Middle East and in Central America. We note the failings of other countries and their leaders. We are experts at everything. We can spot a blooming dictator as easily as we spot a cultural trend at home. We are the world police, we are the world psychiatrist. It is up to us. No one else can do it. Let the happy French be the butterflies. Let them open the best museums, best cafes, best shops. It's okay. We have to vacation somewhere abroad.

But as we again take time to celebrate the meaning of this great day, it's also important to note the struggles and many sacrifices of those Americans who did the work and are no longer around. What would a construction worker who helped build Hoover Dam think of the curent social disarray in this country? What would the migrant workers who pick that lettuce for your salads and our burgers and your tacos say about the converstaions at the dinner table in a so-called Red State? WWJD.

It's part of the rolling freedom symphony, that brassy national conversation that blares between love and hate. It'll be fireworks in a Texas backyard, fiery words in an Idaho living room. We are America, home of the brave and land of the free.

It's freedom of speech and we should defend it all costs.

But it does tend to throw us apart.

Do yourself a favor today: Be nice, and say a kind word about your neighbor to your right to your neighbor on the left...

- 30 -

Rolling Stones Against the World: The Autobiography Of Keith Richards...Life Itself...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - Most of the time, we don't have time for the rebels of the world. It's easy to brand them outlaws, fools, ornery or simply publicity hounds. There are many in that museum of delight and anger located somewhere in the darker alleys of your brain. Some people see the positives in Charles Manson, in Ted Bundy and in Pancho Villa. But none of them ever brought you great music.

Keith Richards, guitarist for The Rolling Stones, did.

If ever an autobiography had mountains of interesting tidbits and outright confirmations of a host of illegal activity and the debauchery of runaway passion, it was this guy's story. He offers it loud and proud in his book, titled simply: Life.

Richards nears his 70th year on the planet, but his reputation lives as if born yesterday. The Stones always have been tagged as being the ultimate bad boy band. Vocalist Mick Jagger, characterized in the book as a trusted and untrustworthy bandmate, isn't far behind in the ledger filled with strange and bizarre exploits that followed this British band from the moment it first left the slums of London for the adulation of America.

Written in cahoots with rock 'n' roll writer James Fox, Life is an eye-opening cataloguing of booze, drugs and women, enjoyed before, during and after concerts. It is also a looksee into the manner in which the band pushed itself onto the largest stage in the world, and how it resisted a "clean-up" ala The Beatles, instead insisting on being the outlaw band that started as young punks and lived to see old age.

Richards spares few details in the 547-page book, writing openly about an affair involving his mother that broke his heart, the father he abandoned for four decades and later brought back into his life, the many women who played varying parts in his evolving life and even glimpses into such moments when a fall led to cranial surgery friends and family said he'd never survive.

But survive he did. The tale is one big glob of short pieces to do with his life as a kid and with being, in the end, an elder statesman of rock music. Richards runs through his ever-brief relationships with a number of pretty women he says never should have been handled by someone like him, the son of a dirt-poor family who turned himself over to the guitar and exploded a unique sound on the world. He writes viciously about Anita Pallenberg, the mother of his older son, Marlon, as if writing about some girl he met, bedded often and then flitted-on, away into the arms of some other high-society groupie. Indeed, he laughs off the sentence where he says Pallenberg, once a top model and actress in Europe, and also a bedmate of Mick Jagger, saw her beauty fade horribly, describing her as an old grandma in the book's back pages.

He drank and did his share of drugs. Cocaine, heroin, that stuff. He was busted in Arkansas and Canada and in his native country, but the most time he ever spent in jail was a day, thanks to the band's sharp lawyers and a few fans. Even the surgeon who performed that life-saving operation throws him his memory of the episode, openly noting his fondness of the band's music ahead of the surgery.

Where The Beatles are known as the band that started it all in that so-called British Invasion, The Stones have taken pride, writes Richards, in never selling out, never bending for convention, never going on stage with everybody wearing the same clothes. It was an all-out run at freedom, at throwing stuff in the face of what stood for civilized behavior, at what was expected by local authorities in the calmer, early 1960s. It is The Stones that arrived with something to say and said it without giving an inch. There was, according to the book, no interest in writing or singing Penny Lane.

Something good comes out of being a purist. Bending to laws, rules or convention eats at the root of creativity. And in the music business, it is easy to bend. Look at The Monkees, a completely manufactured, made-for-TV band. You'd never see any of The Stones in such scenes. "Here, they come, walking down the street..." Maybe tearing down the street, but not walking. Musicians get a break from society, of course. Willie Nelson, admired by Richards in his book, has more publicized pot busts than any man alive, but he finds a way out of those tight squeezes. Creative license is granted so long as the artist doesn't push it, doesn't take it to the press in a fighting, bitching manner. There are several incidents related to that in this book, times when Richards got a little help from a long list of influential fans.

The book is his memory of his life. A writer working a biography on him, able to seek sources other than one brain, could write a different version of this man's life. This is a memoir, and it stands as such. There are enough details, however, to make it seem believable.

Humor moves through the pages, as well.

The reader learns that Stones bassist Bill Wyman's real name is William Perks, and that drummer Charlie Watts once got so bugged by Jagger calling him "my drummer" that he bolted for Jagger's neck and almost killed him. Brian Jones, the founder of the group and also a guitarist, is characterized as a 5-foot dictator who saved The Stones from internal anarchy by drowning during their early years. In fact, it was Jones who brought Anita Pallenberg onto the scene, loved her and then lost her to Richards and then to Jagger.

One could say with some assurance that the easy-passing of Pallenberg around was similar to the boys passing a joint around the room. In a sentence, that seems to be the assessment Richards gives of his life and times with the world's most dangerous band - one toke for me, and one for you.

It's an okay book, one I recommend for those moments when all the jabbering on TV pisses you off, or when an annoying cold knocks you into bed for a few days...

- 30 -