By Lori Dance

Start your engines, kids: the next round of political derbies is kicking into high gear, and the flag hasn’t even lowered yet! (Wait…was that proper lingo?) With a lineup that rivals any madcap ’60s treasure-hunt movie (or recent byelection), the cast of thousands vying for a shot at being either the mayor or a city councillor includes such possible names as George Smitherman, John Tory, Marilyn Churley, Jane Pitfield…and Doug Ford. Says Ford: “It’s in our blood. It’s in our family’s blood to do a lot of community service.” Says his younger sibling (you may call him Rob): “I guess he feels sorry for me at city hall. We have to go after these people with a vengeance.” What people, Rob? You’ve already pissed off gays, cyclists, and the homeless, to name but a select few. With a brother like this, Doug, who needs enemies?
Speaking of the gays, our boys will have to compete with the ladies for lap dances now that Remington’s is allowing women into the club for the first time in its sixteen-year history. Really, though, it’s only fair; in a culture that embraces equality, you guys have to understand that hetero women have the right to see strippers who are actually hot just as much as you do.
Michael Bryant’s PR plan doesn’t seem to be worth the six-hundred-dollar hourly rate his hired team is commanding. Navigator, the firm hired by (or on behalf) of Bryant, is being slammed for everything from allegedly being smart enough to feed tidbits of Darcy Allan Sheppard’s checkered past to the media in the days following his death to making a clumsy and too-public grab at the PR brass ring by handing out press releases announcing their takeover of Bryant’s strategy. “You always want good PR, but you never want your PR to become the issue,” says Daniel Tisch, president of Argyle Communications. Au contraire, Monsieur Tisch. Perhaps Navigator has stumbled upon the most genius PR move of all: using itself as the ultimate distraction.
And speaking of bicycles and legal woes, Igor Kenk, everybody’s favourite hoarder, is now trying to use the proceeds of his crime to pay for his defence. Far from being “the operator of a large scale organized theft ring and drug distribution network,” as he is described by police, he claims to be but a humble shopkeep who barely made enough to support his concert-pianist wife in their Yorkville home. Everyone who has ever had their bike stolen in the city, get out your tiny violins.