Candidates Gone Wild

Want a sneak peak at this season’s show?

Click here. But to see the rest you’ll have to get your ticket. Only $5 at the Bus Project or Willamette Week.

Buy your tickets NOW!

Some candidates forums have more fun than others. Enough said.

Not Candidates Gone Wild

I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to Candidates Gone Wild. Having the chance to watch the planning from the inside is great. It also makes me realize I was not made for the stage, nor am I going to plan a variety show any time soon. This is hard, hard work.

My boss, Jeff Cogen, is hosting the Multnomah County portion of the evening and I hoping he’ll be funny. He’s pretty comical and cool day to day, but a crowd is so much pressure. But, he’s a politician, right? He can hold it down. At least that’s what I promised Silver Fox Mark Sussman.

Buy your tickets, buy them now. You’ll kick yourself if you miss this one.

I went to go hang flyers for CGW on Monday, but at the last second realized my trusty staplegun had been misplaced in a recent move. While trolling around looking for bulletin boards, since telephone poles were out, I came across a young lady hanging concert flyers on telephone poles. I explained the situation asked if I could use her staplegun to get at least that one telephone pole. She let me use it, and then offered to take my flyers with her and hang them on other telephone poles as she made her way through SE. I gave her a stack, and she went on her way.

So to my staplegun savior, whomever you are, I just wanted to say a public thanks. That was really a really friendly, awesome thing to do, and I think it’s exactly that kind of helpful can-do spirit that makes Portland such a great place to live, and even makes awesome events like CGW possible. I ordain you the official pair of the cat’s pajamas.

October is here, which means the political event you’ve been waiting for is just around the corner.  I’m not talking about the VP debate tomorrow night (which will also be great, so come on down to the Roots Brewery to watch!)  I’m talking about Candidates Gone Wild! Be a part of all of the fun on October 13 and for the dress rehearsal the night before. Crowd control, ticket takers, voter registration, and backstage support are just a few of the areas that we need help in.

Interested in volunteering?

Contact Annie at anniemancini@gmail.com for more information and let her know if you can make it to a volunteer training on either Tuesday October 7 or Thursday October 9 at 7 PM here at Bus Central (333 SE 2nd Ave).

Not every idea we had for CGW was good, or feasible. But a great many of them were pretty funny. Here were some proposed events that didn’t make the cut.

• Candidates must answer questions while arm wrestling the American Gladiator that lives in Portland. (someone on the board knew her…hmmm…)
• Somehow getting a live emu on stage
• Pro Wrestling style challenge videos from candidates who were unable to attend
• Stripper cardboard cut-out avatars for candidates
• Sho Dozono being denied stage door entrance and trying a variety of costume changes to get past security, finally getting inside in the back end of a horse costume. Whole sequence set to the Benny Hill theme song
• Somehow getting an armadillo on stage
• Video insinuating Sam Adams and Storm are a couple in which she accidentally pees on Randy Leonard’s shoes
• Having Gordon Smith try to pick the illegal immigrant out of a line-up (Well, this one wasn’t really proposed, but it would be pretty awesome)
• Having tough questions asked by the old lady from Columbia Sportswear

I work as a coaching assistant to the National and World ranked PSU debate team, and earlier today was dissecting the ridiculous invalidity of the national presidential debates, how they’re more about character assassination than making a firm stand on issues, to former national champion, and head coach Chris Richtor.

His response was that he thought Candidates Gone Wild was a far more legitimate and revealing debate format for electoral politics. That’s high praise from someone who knows good debate, and he didn’t even know I was helping organize it. Just sayin’.

My homepage is set to Google News so the headlines will be the first thing I see when I hop on the internet. And they have this nifty feature where you can customize your page and get headlines for whatever subjects or locations you like. I chose, Portland, Oregon. Yet, every time I log on, nearly all I get, are obituaries. WTF? There has to be more happening in town. I mean, we are in the middle of a local election cycle right?

We are. But also a crucial national election. And a war. And another war that everyone forgot about. And the worse financial crisis since The Great Depression. And scandal after scandal after scandal. Basically, there’s just bigger fish to fry. Bigger more dramatic newspaper selling fish to fry. It seems sad, since despite the high drama of national and international events, we are far more directly effected by local goings-on, and should be giving them equal attention.

This situation reminds me of something one the participants in said national election, Barack Obama, has said variations of quite consistently: “We’re so busy thinking about Wall Street, that we aren’t paying attention to what’s going on on Main Street.” I know Portland has more than people kicking the bucket going down. And yet we’re hearing very little about it from our mainstream media sources because it’s getting bumped.

I think this relates directly to some discussion the CGW board has had, in that some members of the board believe there’s no way to have an event like CGW and not address the aforementioned bigger fish. But personally, this organizer is glad there are events like CGW that take the local issues and give them the interest and treatment they deserve since it clearly isn’t coming from on high. Or Google. Nor should it. The Wall Street Journal isn’t going to pay much attention to who gets elected to the city council here in Stumptown, and it’s the role of local community events and publications to give Main Street the focus and attention it deserves.

CGW is shaping up to be really awesome, and while it may not pay off with the drama of the collapse of our entire economic system, it will definitley match the funny and intrigue of a respected senator singing “Bomb Iran,” to the tune of Barbara Ann, by The Beach Boys.

So take that Google. Portland does it need you. We’re DIY baby.