Mayoral Race
Politics and Poker: a Honky Tonk Idea Dashed
By Contributing Writer, 9-06-05
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| Photo of Bob Wire/copywright Ednor Therriault | |
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By Bob Wire
The idea was simple, and a potential powder keg: invite the half dozen candidates for the mayoral primary to a friendly poker game with me, a guitarist/singer/loudmouth in a local honky-tonk band.
The purpose? To gather away from the spotlight for a couple of hours, sip an adult beverage or two, and talk about their different visions of Missoula’s future, as well as the personal style they’d bring to the office of Mayor. I would then report on the game for a local media outlet.
My plan was to ask questions, but not about infill, annexation, growth management, or any of that other mumbo jumbo they’ve already answered a hundred times. I wanted to float some fresh, hard-hitting queries out there, like, Who do I have to kill to get a Krispy Kreme shack in this burg? Can someone take Will Snodgrass for a long walk in the woods? Has anyone else had it up to here with cilantro? Van Hagar or Van Halen? Stuff like that.
So I set the date: Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Surely they’d all be back in town by then. There was a Democrats Picnic scheduled that evening, but it would be over by 8:00. I bought a couple of six packs and a fresh deck of Bicycles.
I contacted each candidate by phone, then sent a persuasive, well-crafted e-mail that spelled out my intentions. I presented it as a chance for them to get together without the glare of the media spotlight, or a room full of disgruntled plebes asking the same questions over and over (read a newspaper, people), and without a gaggle of reporters ready to misquote them at will. They could relax, I told them, and have a free-wheeling discussion couched in a friendly, nickel-dime-quarter poker game at a neutral site: my kitchen table.
Well, the responses from the candidates varied from amusement to wariness to confusion (“Bob who?�) to thinly-veiled annoyance. One candidate, a quick-witted Missoula native, said yes right away. He/she saw the exercise for what it was, and felt confident enough about his/her own chances in the election to risk getting mixed up in this potential Vietnam of seven-card stud. Another candidate begged off, citing “previous commitments,� but I caught a whiff of disdain in his/her curt e-mail. Must have heard about my anti-gun stance. Believe me, I know disdain when I smell it.
Another candidate responded with a qualified maybe, and a veritable laundry list of concerns:
- I don’t like playing poker with seven people.
- I don’t like playing with more than one wild card.
- I won’t participate unless all the candidates are there.
- I’m not sure about the legality of gambling at your house.
- Do the others know how to play poker? I hate having to explain how the game works.
Once I overcame my paralysis, I realized that I would soon be sharing a poker table with Woody Allen. I made a mental note to provide cheat sheets for any poker greenhorns.
Another candidate communicated with me through his/her campaign manager.
“I have forwarded your request to Candidate X. Candidate X is very interested, but has the Democratic Picnic to attend that evening. Candidate X would like to come if time permits. Candidate X welcomes the opportunity to share his/her views with a different group.�
Hmm. Something tells me Candidate X might be a tad insulated if he/she were to gain office.
Another candidate, a self-proclaimed “outsider� (what does that mean? He lives in a tent?) spoke with me on the phone for twenty minutes, railing against the status quo like Ross Perot on a three-day meth jag. I hinted that he should save it for the poker table, but he was already in fourth gear.
“Listen,� I tried to interject. “I won’t let you keep me,� trying to extricate myself from the conversation. But there was no stopping him. One issue that really frosted his balls (I’m paraphrasing here) was the movement to encourage Missoulians to use alternative transportation, and drive their cars less. Drive less! This is just stupid, he said. Everyone drives cars! They need to drive cars! They love their cars! Oh yeah—he sells cars for a living. After a few attempts at saying Good Day Sir, I finally hung up and checked him off my list as another “maybe.�
The sixth candidate said he/she would think about it, but even after a couple of follow-up e-mails and the mention of some candid photos in my possession, never contacted me again.
I suppose I can understand the reluctance of these people to open themselves up to a local entertainer who was once accused of having an “abberant personality� by the daily newspaper. But get this: I was actually approached to run for mayor myself. Me, Bob Wire, a man who once drank a jar of Barbecide onstage. A man who appeared naked in front of a roomful of New Party members (I could swear the guy on the phone said “nude party�). A man whose tequila-fueled rants in public venues have been known to alienate and disgust even his band mates. A man who would not pass even the most cursory background check. A man who occasionally writes about himself in the third person.
But I had a plan…
Two plans, actually. The first plan was to run on a populist platform that promised all things to all people. Once I was swept into office, I would immediately banish all members of the City Council to a cabin on West Petty Creek, and hire a city manager. That would free me up to be a figurehead, appearing at KFC openings, ribbon-cuttings, key-to-the-city ceremonies, that sort of thing.
Once I was informed that I would have no such authority, I devised my second plan: I would choose a very level-headed and capable lieutenant mayor, and as soon as I was elected, I would fake my own assassination. Then I could live out my days in a cabin on West Petty Creek.
But I digress…
Anyway, the poker game never happened. The wheels came off before it got out of the showroom, and in the end I was called away on business (no, really). But the mere specter of such an event was enough to bring out the true colors in most of the candidates for Mayor of our fair city. I may not be the world’s best poker player, but I can generally tell when someone has some juicy cards, is betting on a weak hand, or when they have no business being at the table in the first place.
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Comments
But I still like the idea of getting those candidates off their protected turf and into a situation where they have little control. Nobody has control at Bob Wire's house, so it makes a prefect venue.
By the way, I've got a pair of natural 7s - what game are we playing again?
I'm going to take an guess here and say Engen was the only one who would play poker with you. And if I'm right, he truly is a 'man of the people'
"previous committment" man was probably Clayton Floyd - he used the same excuse to show up for a first-5-minute photo op at the beginning the the Housing Forum, only to disappear when the questions got rolling...
And the "outsider"? sheesh - he's a USED CAR SALESMAN! why would he want anyone to ride bikes or use public transportation?
and Bob? - next time someone asks you to run for mayor, why not take the request a little more seriously? ;-)
March 27, 2005
Ednor,
It may or may not be 10:20 p.m. on Easter Sunday here in New York City. I woke up in my girlfriend’s bed in London, England this morning and almost missed my transatlantic flight on Air India airlines because daylight savings time kicked in and I space rangered it until I heard the time announced on BBC radio exactly one hour before I was supposed to be in the air. Once I’ve added five hours to New York City time to make London time and then subtracted an hour to make daylight savings London time and then subtracted five hours to go back to New York City time and possibly subtracted another hour, then I don’t have a fucking clue what time it is. But I do know for god-damned sure that here Steve Earle is on my radio. If you’ve got speakers on your computer, here’s a tip: Steve Earle does this super-cool radio show every Sunday night on this phenomenal radio station called Air America (Air America being the People-With-Brains answer to the Rush Limbaugh show). Go to http://www.airamericaradio.com and check it out!
Let’s forget about the normal platitudes like “Howdy, how are you? What’s going on? How’ve you been? I hear the Magnificent Bastards have left footprints in a whole bunch of buttocks,� etc… Not because those things aren’t important, but because this is a specific letter. Specifically, it’s about politics.
I wrote a letter to your friend and mine, “Uncle� Carl Bassner, from the air today and I was trying to explain my relationship with the Missoulian. Back when the first three digits of my zip code were 598, I never, and I mean NEVER, read the Missoulian (unless that crazy Sherry Jones was talking me up or slashing you down). I didn’t need to read about the news in Missoula: I just knew it. Like Dylan said, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.� Natch.
These days, boy, it’s a whole different story. My web browser is almost constantly jammed on missoulian.com. In fact, I look at missoulian.com even more than I look at freddiemercuryforever.com, gimplove.com and sexxxyednor.org (and all I can say about that Ednor, is that many wallabies really should be in the Guinness Book of World records and I hope you’re earning royalties on that stuff, you GO girl!).
Maybe I sound like chicken little, but it sounds like everything in ‘Zoo City has been shot all to hell since I left. All I read are stories about how Missoula is BOOMTOWN. How they’re putting up gazillions of houses out by the airport, planned communities down in Florence, and Reserve street threatens to metasticize its box-store cancer all over the Missoula Valley. Meanwhile, nobody on the city council wants to push for more infill so Missoula just keeps sprawling out threatening to swallow whole all the little towns in its wake from Frenchtown to Clinton to Victor to, fuck, that Silver Dollar palace place.
I’d be able to blow all that off if the evidence of Missoula As Boomtown wasn’t corroborated by the national press. The latest issue of Men’s Journal -- another bastard ‘zine of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner -- has once again named Missoula one of the Best Places on Earth to Live for the severealith year running.
Well, you know what good press like that brings, don’t you? BORING FUCKING PEOPLE!!! You know, the middle-managers from Dayton and the accounts transition specialists from Pittsburgh and the payroll wonks from Omaha who all read that Missoula is a cool place to be.
Not that I have anything against those folks individually. Fuck no! I’m a liberal! I love each and every one of ‘em. But when there’s an influx of people who don’t know Missoula, well, then Adam Smith’s silent hand comes into play (or was it his silent?…oh never mind) They buy their Cds at Wall-Mart and not Rockin’ Rudy’s. They get their books from Barnes n’ Noble and not Garth. They watch Will Smith movies at the Carmike 10 and not Severt at the Crystal. They eat their Grand Slams at Denny’s and not the brains and wait-a-minute-did-you-just-say-this-is-fucking-brains? at the Ox, they do their dancing at the new night club at SOUTHGATE MALL where women are raped in the booths instead of going to Sean Kelly’s where people at least have the decency to fornicate in the alley out back. This is all to say, yes, they bring their money, but they give it all to big conglomerates with headquarters outside Missoula and leave the people who really make Missoula what it is in the lurch.
Then there are the rich motherfuckers, looking for the “New Boulder� or some such damn thing, driving up property values so the only place a dyed-in-the-wool Missoulian can afford to live anymore is out by the airport or somewhere where the daily commute involves running the gauntlet of Highway 93.
Yes Ednor, it appears the once-funky little burg of ‘Soul City, Montana is at a crossroads. It can hold on to the essence of what made it an attractive haven to move for folks like yourself, Uncle Carl, my parents and my friends parents. Or it can become a city-planner’s abortion, another sprawling New West town with all the trappings of any other fucking town anywhere.
Now perhaps you’re thinking why the fuck do I care about this, after all I don’t live there anymore. Well, I plan to come back as soon as I’ve got a few trophy heads from the East Coast to line my den with, and I don’t want the place to be fucking ruined when I get there.
There are two things Missoula needs desperately, and with a little creativity they can be one in the same.
First off, Missoula needs some truly wretched publicity. Hats off to the Treasure State of Montana, she’s done her best to scare people the fuck away: i.e. the Militia of Montana, the Unibomber, Nathan Hale, lesbian-house-burnings, tied-with-Mississippi-for-lowest-per-capita-income, bear attacks, avalanches, forest fires, deadly highways, and the fact that no, Brad Pitt doesn’t actually live here, that was just a rumor that started in, like, 1995, loser. But it just doesn’t work. The press just keeps getting better and better. What Montana, and Missoula in particular, needs is something truly horrible that will disgust and frighten all but the wacky few from moving to town. For example, what if in addition to the trout statues in Caras Park, the Downtown Association erected a statue commemorating the infamous, colorful character known as “Randy the Bum� (19?? - ????) that stood as high as the Millennium building and depicted Randy straddling the Clark Fork river and masturbating. That would work good, huh? Or what if the writing on Mt. Jumbo and Mt. Sentinel were expanded just a tad to spell out “Lick Me.� (If “Squaw Peak� is listed in some books as “Squaw Tit Peak� surely we could have Mount Lick and Mount Me…heh-heh, “Mount Me,� I like it). Perhaps the city landfill could be moved from its current location to Reserve Street and a sign could fly above the road that read, “Why Don’t You Throw Away Some Worthless Shit On Your Way To Buy Some Worthless Shit.� Or maybe instead of the city jail, the city could build some stocks along Higgins Avenue right across from the Farmer’s Market where subdevelopers would be locked up and their lucrative proceeds given to the Hmong vendors for tomatoes, which would then be hurled at their heads. Perhaps all the city police officers could have their guns replaced with industrial sized cans of pepper-spray and then be forced to consume bull-moose size quantities of methamphetamines at the start of their shifts. Uppity out-of-towners would only miss that 35 to 25 speed trap coming down Rattlesnake Drive once before they were on their way, yowling and crazed, to Boise, Idaho.
The possibilities are endless when you really start thinking about it, like Animal Husbandry demonstrations in the entryways to all box stores. If word got out about the Sick and Twisted and Wrong things happening in Missoula, it would sure put the brakes on the number of people moving in.
Secondly, there is one public official with the power to enact some of those Heinous and Depraved ideas: the mayor. And as the fates would have it, that seat will soon be open.
Ednor, I think you should seriously consider running for mayor. You’re one of the only ones crazy and cantankerous enough for the job, plus you KNOW what Missoula is supposed to BE. Listen to what the front-runner, that dough-head John Engen, is saying in the papers: “I’m a pro-business Democrat.� In Missoulaspeak (the town with the precinct with the highest number of Ralph Nader voters in the country in 2000) that means that MISSOULA WILL BE FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST, SCUMMIEST BIDDER.
You’ve got all the tools for the job, you harnessed the powers of the almighty Fencemenders and now the Magnificent Bastards -- how much different could the City Council really be? Plus you’ve got the talent, skills and flair for self-publicity. What if your SEE BOB WIRE THIS SATURDAY AT THE UNION CLUB posters also included the line AND DON’T FORGET TO VOTE BOB WIRE FOR MAYOR!!! And, boy howdy can you communicate with the people. Quoth: “I’m watching Earnhardt Jr. in my pleather recliner/with a cheap bowl of Skoal, there ain’t nothing’ finer/than watching that bitch Jeff Gordon crash into a wall.� Fuck the Gettysburg address, man, and Kennedy’s inauguration.
You would be unbeatable. Unstoppable. And you would scare and puzzle the bejezus out of the people who stand to profit on how funky Missoula is -- funky because of the same people that are having to move away because the cost is too high and the funk is diluted.
Plus, I don’t know who it was that said that “behind every great man is a great woman� (definitely a kinky SOB), but he could‘ve been speaking specifically about you, Ednor. Shannon would be like your secret weapon. Because of her hard work and experience on the Health Board, she could help run the town with you and make sure that the air gets clean and the water stays pure and toxins don’t seep into the soil while you’re keeping the greedy, opportunistic fuckwads at bay.
Think about it, Ednor. If you can get voted Best Band in Missoula, how much harder would it be to get elected Mayor of Missoula? Would people even calculate the difference? You’ve GOT the power base! The town NEEDS you (or someone like you, and there’s no one like you, so that leaves you!) You could leave your MARK, Ednor. You could SHAPE THE FUTURE. You could leave your LEGACY.
And maybe someday, they will build a statue of you, just like the one of Randy.
I will offer up my services as a writer, brainstormer, researcher and networker to your campaign.
I remain, as ever,
Nate