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Dating Sparky

If you want to be themayor’s girlfriend, better bone up on Bosnia.

Now that Sparky has been re-elected for another four years, pundits and prognosticators predict we will see a new Sparky, a mellow Sparky, a kind and gentle Sparky. The mayor asserts he will spend more time with friends and family—and not so much time in the office, where he keeps several pairs of pants and his famous collection of walking shoes. There is speculation that he will reach out to members of the Church Formerly Known as Mormon. (Staffers say the mayor is studying Reformed Egyptian in his spare time.)

For his own sake, as well as for the peace of mind of those around him, everyone hopes and prays the mayor will find mellowness. An indication of how far Sparky has come on the road to mellowness may be gleaned from a recent feel-good feature on the mayor published in The Salt Lake Tribune, an up-close-and-personal look at his interests, ideals and idiosyncrasies.

About the re-elected mayor we learned all sorts of curious things. He doesn’t like the word “dating,” preferring instead “building a relationship.” He wakes up at 3 a.m. and reads Crime and Punishment. The message on his answering machine is in both English and Navajo. He goes around making people take care of baby robins in danger of being run over.

When he leaves office, he wants to go to Washington and do something about the sex trade in India. The woman currently auditioning to be Sparky’s future life partner says Sparky “has the love of humankind.” Best of all, according to the profile, the mayor “dumped a woman years ago who didn’t care enough about Bosnia.”

There were skeptics who were convinced the profile was a light-hearted put on, a tongue-in-cheek attempt to poke fun at our earnest mayor. Dump a woman because she doesn’t care about Bosnia? Answering machine message in Navajo? Surely you jest. But here at City Weekly we can assure you that the pieces were accurate and objective. Our researchers have unearthed evidence that completely substantiates the up-close-and-personal details revealed in the Sparky profile.

Sharp-eyed readers may have recently noticed a desperate letter in Harriette Cole’s thrice-weekly Sense and Sensitivity column, published in The Salt Lake Tribune. The poignant appeal appeared in late October:

“Dear Harriette: Please help! Can you recommend a good book on Bosnia? Where the heck is Bosnia, anyway? Is it by Portugal? I’ve been dating, excuse me, building a relationship with a guy who says not even to think about becoming his life partner until I finish the entire works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, in the Garnett translation.

“Plus after dinner I have to, like, conjugate the future perfect tense and memorize irregular verb forms. In Navajo! Cripes! Does he want a life partner or a code-talker? I don’t really mind that he changes his pants like 50 times a day. But I experience the depths of despair when he says he’ll dump me faster than a lazy employee unless I come up with a strategic plan to deal with the sex trade in India. He dumped one woman because she didn’t care enough about Bosnia, another because she didn’t care about the gross national product of Portugal, another because she didn’t care enough about properly fitting walking shoes, another because she fell asleep while he was showing her snapshots of his weekend at Cape Cod with Mitt Romney. He says he loves humankind, but I just want to know if he cares a flip about me. Help me Harriette, please please please. Sincerely, Sleepless in Salt Lake City.”

From Harriette came this answer: “Dear Sleepless: Grow up, sister. You are blowing your chances of finding true happiness. There are hundreds of women out there who would think that learning Navajo is a small price to pay for the opportunity to become the life partner of such a great catch. As far as Dostoyevsky is concerned, just fake it. Your local bookstore has CliffsNotes, or you can get plenty of good plot summaries on the Internet.

“On the Bosnia deal, last time I looked, Bosnia was somewhere up by Norway. You may have to do some homework to come up with a viable strategic plan for solving the sex-trade problem in India. Go to my Website and order my best-selling pamphlet, How to Solve the Sex Trade Problem in India in 10 Easy Steps.

“If none of this works for you, send me your boyfriend’s phone number. I’ve been looking for a man who cares about Bosnia all my life. Good luck!”

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Salt Lake City Weekly, UT