"Thanks, but no thanks. No, really, I mean it."

My city elected a brand new Democrat mayor in the elections last Tuesday and there are a number of people who are very glad about that.

Which leads me to....

My city is very strange. There is one stretch of busy road that is home to a Chinese family's nice little restaurant (a fixture in the city for probably 25 years), a bridal/formal wear shop with elegant dresses and handsome tuxes in the windows, a spiffy little car wash and one of those places that are euphemistically called "gentlemen's clubs" by the prim and proper crowd and topless bars by everyone else. I favor the second term myself, because I don't think a gentleman should ever go into such a place.

At any rate, this place is naaaasty. It is painted a lurid pink (you can probably figure out why if you think hard enough, but if you don't want to know, just stop right there) and has this big, gaudy, aggressive sign that generally advertises $2 draft beer night and the occasional buy-some -gonorrhea-get-your-chlamydia-free specials and things like that. Once, disturbingly, it even breathlessly announced "Bigger and better, with ALL NEW GIRLS." You can practically feel the cooties crawling out of the place.

Today, however, there was a new announcement up there in the air that made me do that puzzled-Scooby-Doo-sound when my husband and I drove by it on our way to the grocery store today. "Urrrr?" I said, reading the words with my head on one side and my ears standing up questioningly.

"What? Did Freddie and Daphne wander off by themselves again?" asked my husband.

"No," I replied. "Look at that sign."

He read the words and started laughing. 'Way up there on the roadside sign of the topless bar was our new Democrat mayor's name.

KEITH OBERMAN
WOOOOOOOSAH!!!!!!

Wouldn't that just make you feel special if you were Mr. Oberman? Here he just spent all that money telling us how he's going to crack down on the crime and vice in this city because he is such a Family Values kind of dude, and the local live porn establishment is cheering him on.

"That is so priceless, I don't even think I can laugh," I said with wonder, a gleeful smile lighting up my face. "That is too, too....oh, it is rich. RICH. As rich as red velvet Christmas cake. Do you think he knows? That would be so hugely embarrassing."

My husband looked at me, waggling his eyebrows with a Groucho Marx leer. "Maybe they know him well there. Maybe he's one of their best customers."

That was when I started to laugh.