I haven’t attended the State Fair of Texas in a decade or more, and I don’t intend to anytime soon. I don’t like crowds with guns and am afraid of getting caught in a gang crossfire. Eating a Fletchers Corn Dog ain’t worth the risk.

One highlight of my visit when I was young, besides watching the hoochi-cootchi dancers and seeing Bonnie and Clyde’s death car, was listening to Big Tex, the 55-foot-tall talking cowboy, say, “Howdy folks, welcome to the State Fair of Texas.” For decades, he wore Dickies western clothes, size “G” for giant, though now he wears Cavender’s western wear, and a Resistol Hat completes his wardrobe.

The picture above isn’t Big Tex; it is puny-assed James Talarico on his state fair day, thinking he’ll soon be the new Big Tex in town. In Fort Worth, I see a lot of young women and their mothers dressed like that: blue-jean too-short shorts or skirts, boots, halter tops, and hats; it’s a Texas thing: watch Taylor Sheridens “Land Man,” filmed in Fort Worth, and you’ll see. He’s not married, no girlfriend, no kids, no dog, nothing, and he drives a tiny electric Prius, except in his TV commercials, where he drives a rented pickup truck and wears jeans and boots, so he was likely alone or with someone on his staff, or worse. He would be a big hit in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas.

He is a confused Democrat running for the Texas Senate against Ken Paxton, who ain’t no angel either, and claims to be a New Age Christian, a New Age Pastor, a New Age man of God, plus a hero to working-class Texans. He throws around lofty claims, but not all of them hold up. He believes there are six genders, God is non-binary, and Christianity has got it all wrong; his way is better than God, Jesus, and the Bible. His way must be one hell of a book.

He was an educator for a time, then served in the Texas House, and then attended Divinity School and Harvard. He also graduated from the University of Texas in Austin, which says a lot about this weirdo and how the school and the city indoctrinated him. Even Wavy Gravy, the old hippy of Woodstock fame, said in an interview that Austin, its hipsters, and its old hippies, who came there in the 60s and never left, were too much for him, and that he and his Hog Farm group fed the folks at Woodstock and gobbled up all the brown acid Arlo Guthrie said to stay away from. I’m with Wavy on this one.

Most of us Texans don’t consider Austin, and its inhabitants, part of our state; Houston and Dallas come right behind it. I lived 30 or so miles north of Austin in Georgetown for three years, but the city had the good sense to erect a 10-foot electrified fence around it to keep out the Austinite Artistic Radicalized Whole Food fed Zombies; now they have made their way to one of my favorite places, Marfa, way out in the Chihuahuan Desert in far West Texas, and the folks out there make sure they don’t stay more than a few months: they have their ways to oust them, but keep it a secret. The fellow at the front desk of the Hotel Piasano wanted to tell me, but was skittish about it. I’ll find out from my buddy Sagebrush Sonny on my next trip to Planet Marfa, my favorite bar, if he’s still alive. The last time I saw him, those damn nucleurized, mean-as-hell Chihuahuas that inhabit the desert chewed off his good arm, and now he’s down to one good leg, a wooden leg, a gimp arm, and uses a straw to sip his beer. He needs to stay out of the desert. But no, he had to help that poor, misguided, dysfunctional family from Lake Minitonka, Minnesota, set up camp in the desert. I wrote about the incident in an earlier story.

I would love to see this Talarico cat debate my Pastor at church about the Bible and the Word, and try to explain the six genders and the non-binary God and all the LXJBQ crap he believes in. It would be as fun as a WWF cage fight against a confused Demon.