Home Is Where The Weird Is

It's been a weird couple of weeks for my various hometowns.

Today, while we were working hard of course, my boss, who also lives in the illustrious Orange County (the one with motorcycles, not real housewives), saw a link about Jon from that awful awful show Jon & Kate Plus 8. He was apparently seen in a nearby town called Newburgh with two ladies. I just thought that was funny. If I can offer Jon one piece of advice, stick it out till they're 18 and THEN bounce, otherwise that's a hell of a lot of child support homey.

Also, last week I was listening to NPR on my way to the train station (cause I like to be cultured for no less than 5 minutes a day when I'm not listening to Fall Out Boy CDs) and heard about the super crazy mayor of Toledo Carty Finkbeiner. He apparently asked people to mow the area parks with their own mowers. Hey not so crazy right? Here's the video.



Not only is it awesome that the much younger dude is walking next to the old man while he mows the lawn, but how does the mayor have time to go out and mow the grass every week? Fix the town! I mean it's not like the economy has shit the bed, the automotive crisis is having any repercussions or Toledo was voted THE worst medium sized city to try and find a job in! Goddammit! I feel my inner Lewis Black coming out.

Now, if this is your only experience with Finkbeiner I can hear you wondering "Why'd you call him crazy? This isn't so bad." Well, my ignorant friend, listen up. In his first term as mayor of Toledo, a city of over 300,000 people, Carty made headlines with two ridiculous statements. First up, he went on record saying that deaf people should all move out near the airport because they can't hear the planes anyway. Hey, maybe that's not so bad. Think again. This statement immortalized Toledo in the boardgame Trivial Pursuit. I tried figuring out which card it is to scan for you fine readers, but I couldn't nail it down. If any fellow Toledoians are reading this and now, please let me.

The other point of national infamy brought on my hometown thanks to Carty stems from an appearance he did on the Daily Show. This was back in the mid 90s when they would routinely search out politicians from podunk towns with crazy ideas. Well, it seems Carty wanted to convince the world that Toledo was the Hollywood of the midwest. Oh how I wish this clip was floating around the internet. Instead, more ridicule. On national television. Thanks Carty.

If these sound like isolated incidents, please click to the 20 or so controversies on his Wikipedia Page which include maybe roughing someone up!