Funny-Looking Mascots

Wonkette, at least in the guise of its overcaffeineated operative Holly Martins (and I sure hope that Ana is giving Martins a decent share of the stacks of bootylicious loot that Wonkette's act generates, partly through the obsessive clickifying of idjits like me), reports that WaPo reports that Uberdickweed Danny Snyder, wicked and depraved principal owner of Our Beloved Local Offensively Named Football Franchise, is partnering with two guys (one of whom is my fiance's CEO) to try to purchase the Six Flags chain. WaPo tells us here that Snyder already controls 11.7 percent of the chain through a corporation called Red Zone, LLC.

Comic ingredients here abound; for instance, the Foreskins (which team, I should confess, I have adored since childhood--my childhood, which predated Danny's by a year or three) couldn't find their asses with both hands, let alone find the Red Zone, in no small part because Snyder ranks comfortably in just about anybody's top five Asshole Sports Franchise Owners. Martins references another symptom when he notes in the Wonkette item that "Snyder is eyeing the theme park's irksome dancing-old-man-in-a-tux mascot as the Redskins' next starting quarterback." I myself favor giving the mascot job to Dweezil, who looks stunning in feathers or a tux.

Apparently, Six Flags has been hemorraging money, losing something like $177 million dollars last year, according to the WaPo story. Also according to WaPo, both Snyder and Bill Gates (more disclosure: much of my consulting work is funded by various grants from a foundation funded by Gates) own fair-sized chunks of the company's stock and are incensed at its evidently lackluster management, but have been rebuffed in their efforts to advise the company.

So, I'm not a fan of Snyder, or of MicroSoft (I am told by people who actually gaze upon his countenance from close range that Gates is a pretty decent human), but I gotta accept that these two guys know how to turn a buck. And as much as I will mourn when I am no longer assaulted with commercials featuring the noisome and faked old man and his bouncy theme music, I think I'm rooting for the bad guys on this one.

Our local Six Flags is, even after a long-term upgrade project by the company, a pretty crappy place. Despite the metal detectors arrayed at the gates, backed up by an exceptionally mean and stupid security force, there are stabbings and shootings there once every few months or so (theme parks, it seems, are dangerous places--every so often we hear of gang rumbles, or whatever the kids call them these days, at another major regional park not so far off). It's not particularly clean, even for a theme park, and efforts to upgrade the park's rides have fallen short. While there are one or two cool coasters there and the park is a pretty short ride from my home (and an even shorter ride, oddly enough, from FedEx Field, home of the Foreskins), I still prefer to drive most of the way to Richmond to satisfy my occasional coaster jones.

Ugh. Go Danny.