The Silver Toilet Awards: In A Year Full Of Surprises, Some People Stunk Up The Joint...2010 In Review...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - No other town along the Texas-Mexico town counts on as many controversial sorts to shake things up as you'll find here in this Mid-Valley outpost known for waiting on things to happen. For us, then, it stands as the foundation for much of what is wrong with the Valley as a region. From flashing its rows of decaying buildings as a skyline, to offering the area the poster child for a bad public servant, to serving as home for the world's worst blogger, Harlingen rules the disreputable roost we know as The Home Of Defeat. Duds, flops, lemons, wrecks, turkeys, incompetents, losers, that stuff. Disappointment is a word that has been scratched out of the dictionary at the local Chamber of Commerce. Yet, a certain funk lives here. We shall note a few of them in our Worst of The Worst in 2010 presentation.

1.) Harlingen City Commissioner Kori Marra - One word about this elected public servant: inept. If ever, in the history of the RGVofTexas, there was a public official so out-of-synch with his or her local geography, it surely has to be Ms. Marra. As a reprentative of a sizable district constituency, perhaps she is doing what keeps them happy. But as a member of a citywide group of elected leaders presumably out to advance the town's standing, well, she is the so-called broken spoke on the bicycle wheel. Time after time, in incidents that challenge the normal mind, she has turned the page to find herself still the subject of whole-hog ridicule and concern. Is she healthy or not? That is the question on the minds of many Harlingenites who wonder why she misses so many commission meetings. Marra won't respond. Her approach to date is to believe that sticking your head in the sand is one way to deflect criticism. Once seen as a novice who could've learned on-the-job, Marra now looms as the futile Gang of One - at complete odds with the word "instrumental," which is what local residents wished for when she gained her seat. It's useless to seek out any worthwhile accomplishment this one delivered in 2010, unless it was the idea that locals now have a good model for the sort of politician they should never elect...

2.) Blogger Tony Chapa - Once, in an All-Chicano galaxy far, far away, lived a man with great ambition. He would storm out into the streets to do battle against evil. He would retreat from time to time to write about his community's ills, and, he believed, he would be rewarded with great adoration and love. Laurels would come his way on those occasions he ventured into a public setting. All would be good. Well, things went the other way and Blogger Chapa soon found himself in a ragged and ever-dirty BizarroWorld. His one-man crusade to rid Harlingen of the Good Ol' Boy style of governance lies in ruin. No one reads his Blog anymore, and those that do forever complain about his bad grammar, his shallow postings and his inability to read the writing on the wall. His blog - MyHarlingenNews.com - is sooooooooo-oh yesterday that it boggles the imagination to think that this man sits at his computer keyboard 24 hours a day, as he often notes in pumping his own smallish, barrel chest. Chapa never had the skill to pull-off his dream. He depended on rumor and innuendo that came from parties allied with their own causes. The community aspect of his effort never gained fruition. In the end, his enterprise was no different than a border tire shop selling dangerous used tires to the elderly. The worst part for local residents about all this is that feeble Tony Chapa likely will still be around in 2011, so we'll save this write-up for use next December...

3.) The RGVofTexas Culture - We're okay with being Roman when in Rome, but being Valley when here is something of a beast of burden, as the song says. We wish to spotlight the local diet without getting everybody in a huff, mainly because we believe that a plate of six double-tortilla tacos chased with six beers is not healthy. And we are of the opinion that it is the diet that leads to marital discord, i.e. beating of the wife and kids. Women should work at breaking this vicious tacos & beer cycle. It is a winner this year, but we feel spotlighting this local phenomenon is something we would've done had been here for the past 100 years. Included in this category is the idea RGVofTexas women have of being photographed. If it isn't those cheap-ass shots taken in photo booths at the carnival, it's photos of women with a hundred guys. How that can ever be seen as being a positive is the mystery. So, yeah, we say, stand back from the table and put that taco down. And you lovely lasses over there in Brownsville, kill the urge to photograph yourself into eternity with all those guys. There comes a time when the myth becomes life, when the camera doesn't lie, when the joke is not the picture, but the person in the picture...

4.) The Jailing of Juan Montoya - Bad news for the longtime Border Journalist. It took a few beers and a bitch of a road that must have looked crooked as All Hell, but Juan Montoya found himself at the county lockdown for a six-month stay that included this Holiday season. We're all for dropping the heavy boot on anyone driving while intoxicated, but seeing Juan in orange is not our idea of a neat Xmas postcard from the border's best street reporter. Montoya is expected to be out of jail after the first of the year. Let's hope he finds the better path, but life is hard in the Valley, so much so that most men are driven to drinking too much booze sooner or later. It comes with the territory, we were told upon arrival. That may be so, but we think booze is to be held in reserve for those times when pretty gals are part of the scenery. Here, they are, and why would any guy want to get bombed before bedtime? Juan Montoya is in his late-50s, so perhaps that's part of it, too. Getting old in a place like the Valley has to be rough. The only available refuge for the Geezers, it would seem,would be the Old School cantinas of the sort you find along Brownsville's 14th Street, which, we 're told, are well-known to Montoya. Someone amble into El Siete Mares lounge and drop a coin in the jukebox for Ol' Juan. Yeah, something by Los Tigres Del Norte...

5.) The Ever-Present Ten-Percenters of the RGVofTexas - No one disputes the fact that the Valley counts a large number of people who do little to advance the so-called economic ball down the field. Too many people are unemployed; too many men have given up. Call it the Coca-Cola Crowd, that group of Batos & Roocas who just won't get off their asses to contribute. You see them up and down the Valley, ferrying grandma to the grocery store, where a 24-pack of Budweiser invariably lands in the battered shopping cart. That guy living across the street has only one fear: arrest on that warrant that says he owes a shitload in missed child support. Who knows how big of a population this group is, but it's sizable. All you have to do is overhear the conversations at the popuar breakfast joints, at the neighborhood fajita burn-out, in church, on the day the monthly bills are due. I've listened enough, and they are stories that would shame Charles Dickens into thinking the shitty world he described in his novels do not approach the miserable  plots he'd hear in this part of the world. But, sure, we wonder. We wonder if the prevalent can ever be changed. Perhaps not...

There were other candidates, some who should have been featured more prominently here, such as Harlingen Blogger Jerry Deal and his Ga-Ga flirtation with disgraced Major League Baseball player Jose Canseco, who one day played baseball in the Valley. But, sure, it was a long, hot summer...and maybe Jerry Deal lost one in the bright lights of those sun-parched afternoons. Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada's drinking habits brought a DUI arrest, which wasn't his first. McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez tried to sell-out the city to big corporations, but failed on several fronts when the voters told him to go take a hike, especially as things related to a popular community park on the city's West Side. High school kids again went down to annual defeat in football games played outside the Valley. And then there were all those valley cops who found themselves on the other side of the law, too many to count or list here. It's true: we could go on and on and on..

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