Low-hanging fruit: Rob Ford

"Rob Ford".

He has become that sort of comedy gold-standard so fast, his name – just by itself – is hilarious.

You don't even have to TELL a joke. You just have to say his name, and people start giggling.

Sure, it's low-hanging fruit. Easy pickin'. A massively fat, stupid piñata. And we've got a 5-foot thick baseball bat. And we're not blindfolded.

But who in their right (comedy) mind is going to pass this up?

NO ONE! Including me!

The whole scenario is so comedy-rich that it has ALMOST become TOO much! 

Every

Lookin' sharp there,
Robby-Tommy Boy!

day it's something new ... something more absurd ... more unbelievable. Can just ONE man be this moronic, this clueless, this much of a bumbling, drunken, drug-addled, hair-trigger-tempered, lunatic, mush-mouthed ...

Yes. Yes he can.

Ford's a Daily Show regular segment now! But
it HAS to be testing the limits of even Jon's
creative genius, and budget!

Even the brilliant Jon Stewart on The Daily Show is having trouble keeping up! He's regularly and ceaselessly focussed onto each day's shenanigans from Ford (which are painfully easy to find online, as they are gleefully reported in ALL the Canadian news outlets, and immediately picked up by all the American ones).

But even he's having trouble staying "current". That's how fast and furious the crazy updates are happening ... so long as Ford is awake and loose in public, the insanely hilarious stories come streaming in.

Stewart needs to start doing an hourly update, to stay on top of all this ... to remain as fresh as he can ... maybe like producing a Live Ford Follies Blog or an As The Ford Drunkenly Happens Twitter Feed.

Hell, I'd subscribe!

The Ford segments on his show are getting longer, though! Last night's episode devoted well over 8 minutes on Robby-Tommy Boy (here and here). And Ford's hijinks spill over into jokes about OTHER dickheads-on-parade on his show (and all the other late-night TV comedians too ... to be fair, Leno and Letterman and Kimmel and Maher and EVERYONE is mining this rich, fat vein of pure comedy gold).

Jon's team of graphic art and FX pros are being kept on
their toes, producing fresh new images
of the rolly polly fella on a nightly basis!

Which means ... and, here's the rumpus ... writing a blog about Ford is going to be "dated history"  the moment I press "Publish". The split second you watch those two Daily Show clips I linked to up there ... you'll be at least 24 to 48 hours behind the times. Maybe more! I'd highly recommend following the Toronto Star and the CBC on Twitter if you really want half a hope in hell of keeping up!

Ford is the thing scientists (and beer drinkers and fun seekers) the world over have been working towards, and seeking, for millennia ... he's a walking, talking, stumbling, bumbling, burping, farting, hard-drinking, crack-and-weed-smoking, perpetual-motion absurdity machine, rolling and ramming around at top speed. ALARMING speeds, in fact.

For a big fella, he's surprisingly agile on his drunken, stumpy little cartoon-like legs ... so ninja-quick, in fact – racing and careening madly along to his next embarrassing spectacle, that in some cases, he barrels over unwitting bystanders. Like the female Toronto city council member he trampled yesterday ... in his obese, ungainly, and uncoordinated attempt to get to some guy who was loud-talking him from the viewers' gallery. He seemed not to see the two dozen or so other people in his way ... including that one poor woman ...

He 'talks tough' with some of his remarks, sure. But in that first (now famous) video where he's drunkenly ranting about fighting some guy to the death? He's out of breath and staggering and nearly out on his feet just TALKING about fighting. If he ever managed to heave his bulk into an MMA ring (as it was suspected he was ranting about), he'd be unconscious from his OWN lack of ability to send oxygen through his body. Never mind actually taking a punch.

But back to the comedic onslaught of material over the airwaves, and the net ... we barely start laughing at some new Ford Folly report, when it's followed up by yet ANOTHER massive blunder. Or flounder. Or 'Fordian Slip'. Hell, he may be inadvertantly setting a new TV comedy standard here!

This is the way network TV comedies SHOULD be. A constant, ceaseless, relentless onslaught of only the best, the most brilliant satire and mockery – 24/7! (Netflix is coming close, by releasing entire seasons of recent comedy-genius shows like Orange Is The New Black, and Arrested Development, all at once).

Which is why Twitter is such a brilliant thing. I rarely Tweet stuff myself (I do re-tweet funny material I get sent), but I do have a good number of comedians plugged in to my Twitter to "follow" ... and more recently, I have added reporters and columnists from the various Toronto and Canadian news outlets too. It's instant and constant feeds, up to the minute, real-time, "oh it's ON NOW, mo-fos!" ripe reports of the crazy, blockheaded, stupid, clueless stuff Ford continually does.

What else can you say about a guy with such a massive ego (and gut), who's such a megalomaniac, AND a sociopath, that he honestly thinks he's done nothing wrong? In the same breath, where he admits to smoking crack, and buying marijuana, and driving drunk (all illegal things in Toronto/Ontario – in fact just the possession and use of crack cocaine by itself is a FELONY offense, with a maximum jail term of 7 years) ... he then says he's still a hard-liner on drug use as a crime ... and then he waddles merrily along, thinking that apologising for HIS abject and repeated criminal behaviour is his way out.

Um, Fordy? How about ... NO, you crazy Canadian bastard! (With apologies to Dr. Evil and Goldmember from that glorious Austin Powers movie). You can't have it both ways. You broke laws. You did the crime, now do your time.

Speaking of which ... how much of a bunch of feckless Keystone Kops is the city of Toronto's police department? How much crime does a fat Mayor have to do, and CONFESS TOO, in public, on TV, before you assclowns leap into action and arrest his ample ass?

But I digress ... not only is Ford trying to keep his title of Mayor (which is all he has left as of this writing ... the city council has "stripped him of his powers") .... um ...

Hmm. Powers? Do huge, ungainly, monumentally stupid, crack-smoking, blackout-drunk, racist, homophobic, violent, sociopathic rednecks have powers? I'll have to consult both the Marvel and DC comics' encyclopedias, and my team of experts, to see what sort of superheroes might have all THAT as part of their tragic backstories ...)

Oh yes. I was making a point. Wait. It gets better. This "Mayorin' job" isn't enough for Ford. This century's Fatty Arbuckle has recently mentioned he wants to take a run at being Prime Minister.

Of Canada.

No, I'm not joking.

Yes, that is classic denial. (Not the river in Egypt ...)

He's apparently banking on people rapidly forgetting that he's done wrong. (Oh, my bad ... he thinks he hasn't done anything wrong. So to follow along this convoluted path of random neuron firings from a clearly deluded and socially inept man ... he's obviously banking on the Canadian voting public to come around to his way of thinking ... that he's just a good ol' boy, a regular Joe, who HASN'T done anything wrong.

It's just a bit of good-natured fun, all this rampant drug and alcohol abuse. And the other stuff, like the violence, sexism, racism, and homophobia. But please ... don't YOU PEOPLE toke, ingest other drugs, pound alcohol, drunk-drive, be racist and homophobic, or be as violent, wacky and crazy as he IS ... just tow the line and DO as he says).

This is classic, platinum-level comedy!

Can it get any better? Maybe ... is there a precious metal kind of level ABOVE platinum? Like maybe titanium?

Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, invented a whole new
element. But let's be clear here: his character is a
genius-level super-smart sciency kind of guy.

Or, like Tony Stark did in Iron Man 2, maybe Ford will INVENT a new element!

Let's help him out here, and give it a name for him now, before he even gets there.

Let's call it ... UnElectium. Or maybe LockedUpAndCommitedIum.

But please, Ford, don't stop. This is just too much fun. I'm an expat Torontonian, living in New Zealand, and I live for these sorts of blazingly, agonizingly funny outbursts on a regular, ceaseless, daily basis. Thanks to the net, the tireless work of people like Jon Stewart, and the dedicated journalists of Toronto ... I'm kept up to date. It's hard work just READING all this stuff!

I for one (along with every other comedian out there) would LOVE it if you kept flailing away at it ... fighting the good (drunken, stoned, angry, crazy, sexist, racist) fight ... please, Mr. Pseudo-Mayor, continue comically waddling around, shooting yourself in the foot (and I wonder ... how far out past that massive gut does he have to reach to do that?)

Keep up that valiant struggle (with reality, and ...) to get back that ultra-fun Mayorin' job you clearly love so much (after all, it isn't nearly as much fun having drunken, stoned coke parties with hookers in your office, or out in public with your staff and your homies at bars ... if you really aren't the mayor, now, is it?)

Any idiot can do that.

Any guy who's just Joe Public, a regular guy, can just buy a bunch of booze, drugs and hookers, and have at at it. But does anyone really take notice? NO!

It's takes a uniquely special sort of cretin to make it to a level of public office, and THEN turn it into a wild, crazy, Hunter S Thompson-level public spectacle, witnessed all over the world!

It's so much more of a special thing when you are Mayor of the Biggest City in Canada, and then you throw down and go hard, with those kinds of zany parties, now isn't it? Plus it's easier to pick up the chicks when you're all 'The Boss' an' shit ...

So I think I speak for us all here ... don't stop believin' ... you ain't seen nuthin' yet! ... fight your way back, back to get it back ... take a page out of Rick Astley's book and NEVER GONNA GIVE IT UP ... then hoist yourself up on that bandwagon (check the supports on that sucker first!) and campaign for Prime Minister! 

Oh, PLEASE try that!

It's like Xmas morning every day with this guy!

 It'd be like watching the train-wreck that was Sarah Palin running as the US VP candidate ... and to a slightly lesser extent, witnessing "Uncle Hairdo", Mitt Romney's delightfully pompous and clueless campaign to be "all Presidentin' an' shit" in the Good Ol' USA ... both of THOSE loopy idiots thrashing around in public, merrily swapping feet in and out of their mouths ... never ever "getting" that the world is not laughing WITH them ... but AT them.

Absurdly, there's a small and dedicated bunch of loonies and redneck-crackers in Toronto who STILL continue to BACK Ford. (That's because if you stand in FRONT of him, he's likely to spill a drink, yell at you, feel you up if you're female, blow crack smoke in your face, then fall over and SQUASH you!)

These guys think Ford's doing a GREAT job!

Reports out of Toronto have this elite group of Ford Supportin' folks as high as (see what I did there?) 25% of the electorate. That report also says these people are not the sharpest bowling balls in the tool shed ... most of them never finished high-school.

This dovetails nicely into something that Toronto is, and has been, famous for ... for many decades now. The city and the highbrow people living there have been just busting ... GAGGING ... to be taken seriously as "the New York City of Canada". For a long, long time.

Well! I think you can sit on down and take a break, folks. You've succeeded!

Job well done! You're now as train-wrecky and gob-smackingly American as all get-out! Not only do you have a deranged, drunken, drug-addled cretin in charge of your city (and you voted him in!) but you've got the unending, relentlessly maudlin sort of "daytime talk show" coverage of your happenin' town, on TV and the net, all over the world!

They say there's no such thing as 'bad' publicity. In many cases, that's right.

But it does make me wonder: You Torontonians can't be this thick-headed. I suspect there's an ulterior motive ... a master plan at work ...

Is all of this just a well-planned, sneaky, underhanded method of trying to tap into that sweet, sweet Amsterdam tourist money?

Sadly that'll never work. While you can legally smoke weed in Amsterdam cafes, there's a whole other level of coolness and style about that city that Toronto will never attain.

Here's a hint: Don't vote in as Mayor ... then venerate, worship and defend ...  a grotesquely overweight, completely chuckle-headed (and blackout drunk, and drug abusing) moron with overtly obvious addiction, megalomania, sociopathic and self-control issues.

Or do! Otherwise, what are we going to have to laugh at?

Hey, and that could be a tourist draw, too!

Why don't I offer up my services as logo designer for your new Tourism Campaign!?

Woo hoo! Where do we sign?! This looks better than Vegas!

Yes, indeed.

Well now before I sign off, let's not be all greedy and piggy and ... well ... Fordish.

Once you're done having a laugh at the Jon Stewart clips, be sure to click on over to my mate Don and his recent shenanigans at Brew-Ha-Ha! This week he's neck-deep in some tasty beers (of course) ... and he's at odds with the Vegas people about something or other! I'm sure that's just drunken confusion .... Oh, and also be sure to knock on Glenn's e-door too, over at Shwa Stories – and demand an update! He's been slack!

Until next time ... I'll be ... in absurdity ...