Check out this hot little snippet of civic cheerleading, available for your perusal any time at www.betterdenver.com. But be forewarned: It just might blow your mind!
When we invest in our infrastructure, we save millions of taxpayer dollars down the road. Much like making preventive repairs on your home, 1A isn't the most sensational issue ever to hit the ballot, but it is without question the most critical step toward a smarter, better, more sustainable Denver.
Wow, Better Denver, where do I sign up? And hey, where did all these rioting hordes come from all of a sudden? All these people just pouring out of their houses at the exact same time, almost as if possessed by an insane municipal fever! Get out of my way, you unruly throngs, I called dibs on voting first! Get out of my way, I say!
Here's another way of saying what the good people at Better Denver are trying to get across:
Hey, watching paint dry sure is boring, isn't it? Sure it is! Just think about it: All you do is stand there and stare at a wall. But you know what? It's important. Because how else would you know if that wall's dry? You could just touch it later and see, but wouldn't you rather have someone confirm it for you so you don't risk getting your hand all painty? Sure you would! Similarly, Issue 1A is so boring it makes you want to cry dust. But you know what? It's important, too! How important? As important as exercising regularly, drinking eight glasses of water a day and always calling your grandma on her birthday. So come on out, everybody, and vote for 1A-I! Afterward, we'll celebrate with white bread and skim milk.
The big issue on the Denver ballot this year revolves around...drum roll, please: maintenance! Cleaning buildings, repairing streets, erasing shlongs from library books, vaporizing homeless people in the parks. These are all necessary things, sure, but they're hard to rally around. To persuade people to vote yes and then mail in their ballots, you need a real kick-ass, boss campaign. A kick-boss campaign!
Instead, we get letters. A series of commercials for Better Denver in which Mayor Hickenlooper tells us how crucial it is that we watch paint dry, and a bunch of what-I'm-guessing-were-pitched-as-adorable fucking letters.
Hickenlooper, I'm speaking directly to you now: What the fuck is up with the letters? No, I get it — each letter represents one of the nine parts of 1A-I that will go to maintenance and infrastructure projects at areas ranging from Health and Human Services to Cultural Attractions, but did you really think your boyish charm was enough to distract us from the fact that you think shoving a shitty Reading Rainbow episode down our throats will entice us to vote? Hick, we've come to expect better from you. You were the man who brought us the ads with you jumping out of a plane that got FasTracks through, and pumping coins into meters downtown that got you elected mayor, and that awesome one where you ate the Life cereal and your brother was all, "Hey, Mikey, he likes it!"
Those were great spots, but a bunch of letters prancing behind you? Do you have enough letters to spell, "Shit," Your Honor? Because that's what this campaign is.
Clowned.
You know me: I'm no fan of fact-checking or even accurate information, really — hearsay and inexactitudes are my trade, see — but someone (like my editor) told me that the ad buys alone for this disastrous campaign cost around $450,000. For that much money, you could have purchased 22,500 Troy Tulowitzki T-shirts and handed them out to people on the condition that they vote for A through I, Hick. Although it might take more than 22,500 votes to pass the initiatives, do you have any idea how hot Tulo is in this city right now? Just the word-of-mouth possibility that someone might win a shirt would carry the election. But instead, you wasted that jackpot on stupid dancing letters.
Next time around, send half of that money What's So Funny's way, and I'll personally guarantee that whatever wacky initiative you're championing that week passes. Right now I'm picturing fake boobs, rhesus monkeys and fighter jets, but we'll work out the "details" of the campaign later. The most important thing is that you get rid of whoever came up with this campaign and send me $225,000 by 5 p.m. next Friday.
Because otherwise they're going to break my thumbs.
