Secret Anniversaries of the Heart...

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart....
---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's been a few days since the one year anniversary of the breaking story about the Mayor and his affair with former Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas; and it's been about a year since I first poked my virtual head into MayorSam's to get the latest MAV and Mirth chisme after a Google search popped up MayorSam on the top of the list.

Don't judge! I was raised in a family in which the wimmin' folk were real serious about their telenovelas (oh my gawd, does anyone remember Topacio-- circa 1985-ish? I loved that one! "Oh Jorge Luis! Jorge Luis!!!"); I know not to call any of my Tias aytime between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. -- "Meija, I'm watching my show, call me in an hour." "But Tia, I've been abducted by car jackers and they have me locked in the trunk. Help meeee!" "Ay, not now Meija! I'll call you back on commercial!" ::click::

This stuff was better than any of the telenovelas. For real.

So -- you could say that if MAV and Mirth had never, well... you know... I would never have come to MayorSam's. I learned more about Los Angeles politics in a few short days just by coming here than by reading any of the local fishwraps. The bloggers here (past and present) and many of you posters were responsible for shining a light on the City and it's politics and politicians and making me see The Way Things Are in a way which I had never done before. You could say that Antonio and Mirthala's tryst was partially responsible for the birth of Valley Doll. Thanks guys!

Unfortunately, the scrutiny and bad press doomed the star-crossed lovers, and the affair didn't even make it to Christmas. Salinas was summarily dismissed as an anchor on Telemundo and sent to the greener pastures of Riverside. She never showed up for her first day of work at her new assignment; quickly hightailed it outta Dodge; moved from the state; met a nice (we hope) boy; snagged a decent-size rock and posed with it on the cover of Los Angeles Magazine. What would Nathaniel Hawthorne think?

The current state of the Mayor's personal romantic life is less known or played out in the public eye -- which is really too bad; a single Mayor should be Los Angeles' Most Eligible Bachelor and conducting himself as such (on his off-hours, of course), and instead by reputation, has been reduced to Los Angeles' Biggest Lech. Hopefully his family has been able to put back the pieces of their lives post-Mirthala and all the fun that circus must have been in their respective worlds.

Bukowski once wrote: it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn't work, as all love finally doesn't work ...

Feeling pleasant, Antonio? Yeah, that's what I thought.

For MAV and Mirth...