Smelling Like Roses

On Friday night last, faithful readers, your humble scribe got all dolled up to go and represent the Mississauga Arts Council at the Mississauga Board of Trade's 29th Annual Chairman's Dinner. It takes longer to read that last line than it did for me to tie a Windsor knot. All the usual local dignitaries were there: the Mayor, City Manager, Councillors, MPP's, business leaders, community leaders, oh, and waiters to deliver the food and drinks. The keynote speaker was Mike "Pinball" Clemons who delivered as good and genuine a motivational speech as I've heard in years, and whose wife Diane provided musical entertainment with a band called Zoma, and was quite good herself. The event was MC'ed by CityTV's Gord Martineau, who arrived late, and generally failed to engage the audience, when he wasn't trying to name drop or pander. I much prefer Gord Martinhole.

I was able to speak to some of the people running the Riverwood Campaign. The fundraising and sponsorship have been tough sells, and the delays have gotten some of them into a bit of hot water with some of the elected powers-that-be, so I proposed a fundraising idea of my own, and thematically appropriate to boot.

It goes like this: buy bags of manure at a few dollars a piece, but sell them as sponsorship opportunities for $100 a bag, and invite citizens and businesspeople to come out and "Shovel --it Like A Politician." (The self-censorship applied here is for the benefit of the proposed fundraising poster or flyer, not for the Nine Inch Column - I can write bad words if I want).

The only guarantee I offered was that the campaign would make the front page of the Mississauga News. I can't really predict how many people would (a) pay the $100, or (b) come out and shovel manure.

Here at the Nine Inch Column, we're in the ideas business.