And Now We Know

[October 15th, 2008]

What is politics if not theater?

And what is Candidates Gone Wild if not a chance for me as WW’s theater critic and resident political curmudgeon to review the latest edition of the election event produced Monday night by WW and the Bus Project. Here’s what I learned at the weird (and weirdly educational) evening at the Roseland Theater.

I want to get hammered with Carla Piluso.

The Gresham police chief and candidate for Multnomah County commissioner promised to rein in teen pregnancy by dropping a condom in “every high-school report card and every ballot,” and to deal with a Godzilla attack by moving the county seat east. She also would make me look amazing at karaoke. Her Roger Miller rewrite (“Queen of the Roads”) wasn’t the worst singing during the candidate talent segments, but it was bad enough. She can bring her opponent Diane McKeel’s butch guitar-playing friend, but should leave the apparent duct-tape fixation at home.

City Council candidate Amanda Fritz is your awkward friend from high school.

I see a lot of bad theater, but the budget-wranglin’ Brit’s halting rendition of Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song” was the most awkward performance I’ve witnessed this year. And Fritz’s deepest secret, to which she admitted in the final, Dating Game-inspired segment of the evening, is that she sometimes pays her water bill late. Then again, her opponent, Charles Lewis, compared himself to a puppy, “always learning and loyal.”

Michael Allen Harrison’s duet with Multnomah County Commission candidate Mike Delman was the lowest point of Harrison’s career.

The song was “Michael H. and Michael D.,” sung to the tune of “Ebony and Ivory.” Yeah, you get the picture.

If you coo at CGW alum Steve Novick, he will filet you like a cod.

True cod, not ling. So sayeth event host Storm “Jon Stewart with Implants” Large.

A crowd of politicos gets real ugly after 2 1/2 hours of drinking.

Overheard, shouted from the back row by a yuppie in a suit: “Sarah Palin—fuck her or no?”

It’s not about the candidates. It’s the Storm Show with Commissioners Sam Adams and Randy Leonard.

The candidates don’t go wild (state treasurer candidate Allen Alley’s ear-splitting Tarzan scream “talent” excepted), we let incumbents go wild on the candidates. The show has become more an exercise in public hazing than voter-education. It’s a lot of fun to watch them publicly humbled, but one gets the impression what Storm and the boys really want is their own late-night talk show.

Leonard will never run for higher office.

He called Storm “the most canoodly bitch in Portland,” demanded the affections of Adams, the mayor-elect, and got pissed on by a 6-foot diva pretending to have a 12-inch dick. On film. That won’t play well in Klamath Falls.