Danehy

This being the Best of Tucson® issue, you’ll probably be in
skim-read-the-bite-sized-morsels mode, so I’ll take this opportunity to
tidy up a few things that aren’t big enough to merit an entire column
all by themselves (although, if I were up against a deadline, they
almost certainly could be stretched into columns without a whole lot of
effort).

• A big congratulations to the Arizona Department of
Transportation and all of the contractors for finishing the Interstate
10 widening ahead of schedule and in spectacular fashion. All too
often, all we do is complain about the inefficiency of government, but
these people did an amazing job.

I will admit that I did enjoy those times during the construction
when I would go through downtown, driving a strict 55 mph in tandem
with the car next to me through those narrow, two-lane areas as the
red-faced rednecks piled up behind us in their pickup trucks.

Now, I drive through downtown at 65 on wide, luxurious lanes as the
aforementioned inbreeds try to weave in and out in an effort to pick up
a crucial one or two car lengths on everybody else.

Guys, where you’re going is not more important than where I’m
going. And where I’m going is nowhere in particular. Plus, your mama’s
also your cousin.

• I highly recommend the new TV show Glee. It’s hard to
describe, but if I had to, I’d say it’s like High School Musical on a cocktail of strong prescription drugs, with the main exception
being that when you’re done watching Glee, you don’t feel like
beating all of the main characters with a broom handle.

The club of misfits includes a gay kid, a guy in a wheelchair, a
black girl, the quarterback of the football team and a talented but
wildly obsessive girl who would love to be bulimic, except she lacks a
gag response. When one kid says she wants to join because nobody likes
her, the club’s adviser blurts out, “And you think being in Glee Club
will help?”

The show also features some really sophisticated musical numbers. In
the pilot, the club does a show-stopping version of Journey’s “Don’t
Stop Believin’.” I can’t help it; whenever I hear a Journey song, I
think of Matt Stone and Trey Parker in BASEketball, where they
used the name of the band’s lead singer as the ultimate psych-out.
“St-e-e-e-e-e-v-e Perry!”

The show is twisted. When the club members go to see a show
featuring the reigning state championship glee club, they (and we) are
amazed to see 40 or so dazzling performers putting on a
singin’-and-dancin’, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers version of
Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.”

It’s good stuff.

• To give credit where it’s due, I have to say I’m surprised
that this “tea party” thing lasted longer than the three weeks I
originally gave it.

I went to the shindig they held at Kennedy Park on the Fourth of
July. There was a decent crowd there, but it wasn’t exactly a slice of
21st-century Americana. I didn’t see one black person, nor, for that
matter, any Hispanics. And, really, when’s the last time you were at
Kennedy Park and didn’t see any Hispanics? Plus, I found it funny that
these anti-taxers would gather at a park named “Kennedy.”

The tea party “movement” appears to have legs, for the moment.
They’ve formed a loose coalition with the Birthers, the Birchers, the
Truthers (including Charlie Sheen), the Anti-Truthers (better known as
the rational among us) and those who don’t want a public option on
health care except, of course, for Medicare, which half of them believe
was written by God directly into our Constitution.

Did you catch Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, mistakenly
referring to the group as “teabaggers?” That’s the most inadvertently
funny statement by a congresswoman since the last time Minnesota’s
Michele Bachmann opened her mouth. Have you caught this nutbag’s act on
TV? I think her campaign slogan is, “The Lunatic Fringe Is My Core
Constituency.”

• State highway-safety chief Alberto Gutier (no “rez” at the
end of his name?) needs to be smacked. Twice in the past week, when
asked about people texting while driving, he retreated to the nonsense
about “all distracted driving,” as though the same priority should be
placed on drunk drivers and those who are tuning their radios.

He held the same high-paying position in the 1990s, then left to
form his own lobbying group. He came back after Janet Napolitano left.
His bio says that, in the 1960s, he worked for the CIA against Fidel
Castro. That was probably the high point of his career, seeing as how
Castro was … no, wait! Castro’s still there, 45 years later. And the
Phoenix recycling of greedy lobbyists and do-nothing bureaucrats just
keeps on keepin’ on.

• Finally, Greg Shelko, the poster child for all that is wrong
with Rio Nuevo, got rehired at $100 an hour. He defended that amount on
KOLD Channel 13, saying that he has to pay his own health insurance and
benefits. His old salary of $126,000 per year works out to just more
than $60 per hour, leaving $40 an hour for benefits and insurance. I
know crack addicts who could get insurance for less than that.

How many times can Rio Nuevo self-destruct?

This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.