The people in my suburban town are not the brightest tools on the pegboard. So I've decided to run for mayor.

Stephen Kling is a grizzled veteran of the advertising wars...read more

It's a thankless job. Endless meetings, always at night, always on a Thursday or a Monday when I'd much rather be home pelting my neighbor's dog with rocks, or booby-trapping the parking meters on Main Street.

What does the mayor do, anyway? If you have to ask, you're obviously not mature enough, or don't have enough leadership ability to be one. That light on the hill at night that guides us home after a hard day at the office? That's the mayor. The sweet smell of flowers blooming in the springtime? That's the mayor. The political powerhouse that inspires and leads us in our darkest hour? That's the governor, but the mayor probably voted for him and got some "gov" smeared on her hand when she pulled the lever.

To run for mayor, you've gotta have guts, gumption, and another quality that begins with "g" that I can't think of right now. You have to have a platform; a passel of promises that you can't really keep but sound good anyway.

In our little town, we have four different police forces. This confuses people, but I'm sure it's entirely necessary to keep the evildoers from overwhelming decent people like you and me. There's the Village police force (the last mayor bought them really cool Dodge Police Interceptors with big-block Hemi engines that get 8 miles per gallon. I feel safer with every gallon of gas they burn.) Then there's the Town police force in huge Chevy SUVs, the County police force and fnally the State Police. If elected, I'll add a couple more. Police forces are a little like kittens; the more you have, the more they keep each other amused.

If elected, I'll employ our multiple police forces to invade the village to our immediate south, hold the residents hostage, and thereby balance our municipal budget.

If elected, I'll allow the three fire stations in our village, and the two fire stations just outside the village border, to wrestle each other to the ground until there is a clear winner.

If elected, I'll pass an ordinance that requires every storefront in our village to become either a real estate office, or a bank. That will help people sell their homes, even if they weren't wanting to. I'll also pass an ordinance that property values must increase by 20% every year, no exceptions. This will assure our residents of continued prosperity in uncertain times.

I will sit down with the mayors of our surrounding villages and hold high-level talks about the content of our sewer pipes, leading a committee that makes terrible, childish and unappetizing jokes as we inspect our state-of-the-(f)art facilities.

Finally, I'll remove the top six inches of asphalt from each and every street, creating huge potholes, gullies and mounds of debris, so the teensy-tiny little women who drive those enormous Land Rovers and Yukons can feel like they are protecting their children from the brutal and harsh world of a suburbia gone bad.

My opponents may seek to defame me and my platform of valiant leadership, but the residents of our village will not be fooled by their rhetoric. Life in our suburb requires courage, vision and the stick-to-itiveness of the pioneers who first crested the hill in their Chevrolet wagons and saw the promised land laid out before them, purple in its majesty, stretching to a horizon of raised ranches, redwood contempos, and stucco faux-Tudors.
(Applause line here.)

If defeated, I'll just putter in my garage. ...read more blogs