The Sugarhill Gang takes over City Hall

Well...it was day three of out new Mayor's term in office. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm encouraged that he knows all the words to Rapper's Delight; it makes me think that perhaps he's not the straight laced geek he sometimes appears to be. This sort of reminds me of a friend of mine from college who had a thing for singing the Humpty Dance. I'm not sure who is more embarrassing. I don't think there's any footage of my friend so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he wins.



I wonder if the Mayor had a nickname in college. With a last name like Nutter I'm going to guess it was unavoidable. If my friend, the Jersey Canuck, were here I think she might call him Nutsack. (She has thing for incorporating genitalia references into all proper nouns.) I think I'll reserve the official nicknaming for his next appearance on YouTube.

Here's another little piece of Philadelphia news. They're doing a reality series on A&E called Parking Wars about the Philadelphia Parking Authority. You can also watch the first episode on the site. It's the same principle as Airline. You watch people with awful jobs deal with awful people and someone edits it so that you find the people withe awful jobs endearing and you wonder where they found these awful people. Needless to say, Philadelphia has its share of lunatics so I assume we're ripe for the pickin' when it comes to irate awful people.

The real gem is not the show but the Q&A with the actual employees. They ask them some basic questions about how they got the job and what makes someone successful at the job. Dear lord, terrifying... Here are some highlights so you don't have to torture yourself:

How did you join the PPA?
"Nobody aspires to do this as a kid, "Oh I wanna grow up to be a ticket writer." Yeah right! It's not something I aspired to do as a young man. But some days you gotta thank God you got a job to complain about, you know?"

"There's worse jobs in this world than writing people tickets. There's people that clean out toilets. People that scrub floors."

"My father and my mother recommended that I join the parking authority. She's in Lot Six. My father used to be a ticket writer...He told me I could work for the parking authority I just have to control my mouth."

What traits do you need to do the job well?
"You gotta be kind of cold. Feels like you're a two-legged bloodsucker sometimes. But seriously... you gotta be a little different out here."

"You need to really get into their heads and see what they're thinking and react to it in a way where they won't react crazy and do something nutty."

"This is a schoolyard thing here. You see a guy that hates you from the time he sees you pull up. If you look like you're shaky or you look nervous and they're wound up- you don't need to be doing this job. "

The only thing better than the PPA employees is the panorama of Philadelphia citizens behaving like complete lunatics. Something tells me this can't be good for our tourism.