Top 10 reasons I write Les Pages aux Folles:
1. Two words: satire groupies.
2. It keeps me off the streets.
3. It keeps my mind off the real problems in the world…like how long Trista and Ryan’s marriage is going to last, or when Ozzie is going to kick those good-for-nothing kids out of the house.
4. I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years, now, so I guess I’m committed…
5. If I don’t keep writing my columns, who will teach the children?
6. You think a mainstream publication is going to let me write about a computer programmer who threatens to torture and kill employees of a company he blames for filling his email inbox with penis enlargement ads?
7. Somebody has to apologize for the existence of The Jerry Springer Show, and you know it’s not going to be Jerry Springer.
8. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t.
9. One can only read so many Gore Vidal interviews on the Internet.
10. I crack me up.
Top 10 reasons to believe that the post in the discussion area from “Mike” is a plant from Tom Jakobek’s Mayoral election campaign team:
1. He actually knows how to spell Jakobek. Almost.
2. He knows some of the issues in the campaign.
3. He knows the positions of every single candidate on those issues, including candidates from the Green With Flecks of Yellow Party, the Unnatural Law Party and the Liberals. Not bad considering municipal politicians don’t even acknowledge party affiliation.
4. The email address he signed on with is “VoteForTom@VoteForTom.Ca,” and it doesn’t seem to work.
5. It doesn’t refer to anything on the Les Pages aux Folles Web site. In fact, it doesn’t refer to anything funny.
6. Only another candidate or his lackey would take John Nunziata seriously.
7. He believes “[former Mayor Mel] Lastman’s tenure as Mayor put Toronto on the world map,” a credible position if you think ridicule is a worthwhile form of international attention.
8. He thinks David Miller is “a loose cannon.” This is weird on so many levels…
9. He supports the idea of a casino in Toronto – because lord knows we’ll never have enough drunks, drug addicts, cheap hoods with mob connections (or delusions of mob connections) or poor people in this city without one.
10. He can write “He [Jakobek] is not about glad-handing and platitudes, and shooting his mouth off without thinking” with a straight face, and without causing his computer’s hard drive to have a meltdown.
Top 10 reasons for me not to write Les Pages aux Folles:
1. Three words: satirically transmitted diseases.
2. The street finds its own uses for technology – and I’ll never know any of them.
3. I’ll have nothing to talk about around the water cooler…as if I knew anybody and actually hung out around a water cooler.
4. If I do it for another 20 years, I’ll have to be committed.
5. The children can learn from the streets (or, so I’ve been told…).
6. You think I’ll ever be able to make a living writing about a computer programmer who threatens to torture and kill employees of a company he blames for filling his email inbox with penis enlargement ads?
7. There ain’t enough sorry in the world.
8. I’m not able to sleep at night, even though I do write it.
9. So much Internet porn, so little time.
10. I need to stop laughing out of context in public – people are beginning to wonder about me.
Top 10 favourite Les Pages aux Folles columns:
1. You think I’m going to touch this question? It’s like asking a rabbit which 10 of his hundreds of children he loves the most. Do not even think of going there, cuz it ain’t gonna happen!
Top 10 favourite words or phrases in Les Pages aux Folles columns:
1. Defenstration.
2. Orange.
3. HumanitAryan.
4. Any word with a “k” or a hard “c” in it, because, as every Neil Simon fan knows, these words are funny.
5. Hair removal.
6. Redeacclimatizationalized.
7. Owl (but only when it’s used as a verb).
8. Love (but only when it’s used as an obscenity).
9. Dalton McGuinty is the new Howdy Doody.
10. Hummina hummina.