Presenting: The Ford 2014 Dream Team
Talk about synergy. Whether out of horrifying obliviousness, or as part of a calculated effort to indulge in self-parody as a political tactic, mayor Rob Ford has welcomed two new members to his campaign team: disgraced Canadian Olympian Ben Johnson (the sprinter caught using steroids following his 1988 gold-medal win in Seoul) and actor Sam Tarasco (best known for playing Sam “The Caveman” Losco on Trailer Park Boys). It’s unclear what role either man will have in Ford’s reelection bid, beyond further discrediting it.
With Ford assembling his crack team, Avengers-style, we thought it’d be fun—and maybe useful—to imagine how his new allies will fit in. We’ve even picked out a few more potential crossover team-ups.
So, we present: Rob Ford’s Washed-Up Avengers.
Ben Johnson: Johnson’s Olympic troubles made him a newsmaker of the year in 1988, so he knows a thing or two about weathering a scandal. Sort of. Johnson made headlines again a decade later, when he was revealed to have taken work training the son of horrible Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He was also robbed once, apparently by Romani gang members—and, in a twist of poetic justice worthy of the one-time Fastest Man In The World: he couldn’t even catch them. Maybe the depths of Johnson’s national disgrace offer Ford an angle on his own shame. It’s like how everyone hangs around with a guy whose life will always be more pathetic than their own. It’s about perspective.
Sam Tarasco: We don’t know much about Sam Tarasco: The Man. But on Trailer Park Boys, he plays Sam Losco: a washed-up schlub who is frequently made fun of for looking like a caveman. Tarasco’s TPB cachet may lend Ford some credibility with liquor-swilling, six-paper-joint-smoking young people who feel totally alienated from politics, but also only alienated enough that all it takes to convince them to vote for someone is some loose association with Trailer Park Boys. This could also just be a big publicity stunt tied to the release of the new Trailer Park Boys movie and Netflix-only seasons.
David “Zanta” Zancai: Ah, Zanta: Toronto’s most-notorious, most-schizophrenic Santa-based busker. Zanta has been inactive since about 2008, by which point he’d been banned from large swaths of downtown, but we figure he’s got the energy, the dance moves and the musculature to lift the Ford 2014 campaign to the next level. Zancai and Ford also share a common enemy: Trinity-Spadina councilor Adam Vaughan, who has called Zancai “a public nuisance.”
Snow: Remember Toronto reggae star Snow? You know: “In-fooooorm-er! You know say dackity-snooby go-daddy-bwaaaaam-bickity-boom-booom-bam”? Well you’d be forgiven for forgetting. Though his 1992 single hit the top spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, he’s managed to evade success (or even sustained public interest) for the past two decades. Still, Ford and Snow (real name: Darrin Kenneth O’Brien) share a keen interest in Toronto’s Caribbean diaspora. We’d love to hear them collaborate on a campaign-trail jingle that’s also a followup to Rob Ford’s Steak Queen rant. Maybe something like: “Rob Foooooooord-er! You know he gotta plenty to eat at home, save a billion, yeah!”
BlackBerry (corporate sponsor): Who better to back Rob Ford’s reelection bid than Ontario’s favourite doomed telecommunications giant? The pitch for Rob Ford is pretty much just like the one you always hear for BlackBerry: “Look. You already have the thing. Just keep the thing. You don’t need a new thing. C’maaaaaaaan.”
![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/city/ford-team-tktktkt/&title=Presenting: The Ford 2014 Dream Team&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/dreamteam.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_269715" align="alignleft" width="624"] "Avengers...coagulate into a fleshy, unelectable mass!"[/caption]
Talk about synergy. Whether out of horrifying obliviousness, or as part of a calculated effort to indulge in self-parody as a political tactic, mayor Rob Ford has welcomed two new members to his campaign team: disgraced Canadian Olympian Ben Johnson (the sprinter caught using steroids following his 1988 gold-medal win in Seoul) and actor Sam Tarasco (best known for playing Sam “The Caveman” Losco on Trailer Park Boys). It’s unclear what role either man will have in Ford’s reelection bid, beyond further discrediting it.
With Ford assembling his crack team, Avengers-style, we thought it’d be fun—and maybe useful—to imagine how his new allies will fit in. We've even picked out a few more potential crossover team-ups.
So, we present: Rob Ford’s Washed-Up Avengers.
Ben Johnson: Johnson’s Olympic troubles made him a newsmaker of the year in 1988, so he knows a thing or two about weathering a scandal. Sort of. Johnson made headlines again a decade later, when he was revealed to have taken work training the son of horrible Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He was also robbed once, apparently by Romani gang members—and, in a twist of poetic justice worthy of the one-time Fastest Man In The World: he couldn’t even catch them. Maybe the depths of Johnson’s national disgrace offer Ford an angle on his own shame. It’s like how everyone hangs around with a guy whose life will always be more pathetic than their own. It’s about perspective.
Sam Tarasco: We don’t know much about Sam Tarasco: The Man. But on Trailer Park Boys, he plays Sam Losco: a washed-up schlub who is frequently made fun of for looking like a caveman. Tarasco’s TPB cachet may lend Ford some credibility with liquor-swilling, six-paper-joint-smoking young people who feel totally alienated from politics, but also only alienated enough that all it takes to convince them to vote for someone is some loose association with Trailer Park Boys. This could also just be a big publicity stunt tied to the release of the new Trailer Park Boys movie and Netflix-only seasons.
David “Zanta” Zancai: Ah, Zanta: Toronto’s most-notorious, most-schizophrenic Santa-based busker. Zanta has been inactive since about 2008, by which point he'd been banned from large swaths of downtown, but we figure he’s got the energy, the dance moves and the musculature to lift the Ford 2014 campaign to the next level. Zancai and Ford also share a common enemy: Trinity-Spadina councilor Adam Vaughan, who has called Zancai “a public nuisance.”
Snow: Remember Toronto reggae star Snow? You know: “In-fooooorm-er! You know say dackity-snooby go-daddy-bwaaaaam-bickity-boom-booom-bam”? Well you’d be forgiven for forgetting. Though his 1992 single hit the top spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, he’s managed to evade success (or even sustained public interest) for the past two decades. Still, Ford and Snow (real name: Darrin Kenneth O’Brien) share a keen interest in Toronto’s Caribbean diaspora. We’d love to hear them collaborate on a campaign-trail jingle that’s also a followup to Rob Ford’s Steak Queen rant. Maybe something like: “Rob Foooooooord-er! You know he gotta plenty to eat at home, save a billion, yeah!”
BlackBerry (corporate sponsor): Who better to back Rob Ford’s reelection bid than Ontario’s favourite doomed telecommunications giant? The pitch for Rob Ford is pretty much just like the one you always hear for BlackBerry: “Look. You already have the thing. Just keep the thing. You don’t need a new thing. C’maaaaaaaan.”){kind=link}
Well he might as well bring the Dixon Bloods on board too and all the local dealers and extortionists . You can never have too many failed losers on the campaign trail.
You Guys are Mean over there at Toronto Life!
Snow has done a little More than stay out of the public eye since 92. He has had more than the one Hit you Assholes should do your Due Dilligence! I am not really a huge Snow Fan but I do know he may not be as popular as Justin Bieber however he still sells records and lots of them in Europe and Asia. He tours as well as puts out new music. Informer was his huge but he has other hits.
It’s O.K. now to make fun of Schizophrenics?
Leave Ben alone?
Ben doesn’t get a pass here. He’s stupid enough to allow Mayor McCheese to use him as a publicity stunt, so all bets are off!
Lumpenproletariat
This term is roughly translated as slum workers or the mob, this term identifies the class of outcast, degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements. In times of prolonged crisis (depression), innumerable young people also, who cannot find an opportunity to enter into the social organism as producers, are pushed into this limbo of the outcast. Here demagogues and fascists of various stripes find some area of the mass base in time of struggle and social breakdown, when the ranks of the Lumpenproletariat are enormously swelled by ruined and declassed elements from all layers of a society in decay
Johnson and Tarasco have gotten themselves involved in this mess, but it remains unclear what Snow did to merit this undeserved nastiness from Toronto Life. He should call a libel lawyer.
Interesting that the byline attributes this article to “Toronto Life Staff”. No one wants to own up to being the asshole who wrote this.
Ford’s got a hip hop group – Dixon Bloods street dancing in the background, the cave man on percussion, Ford and Johnson as the feature rappers with Ben belting out hard time street lyrics and Ford backing him with Jamaican patios.
You can keep Zanta out of it; he’s just a wannabe that got rejected in the auditions.
Dave Zancai – zanta is not schizophrenic. He knows what he’s doing and he is capable of intelligent conversation outside of his zanta character. These labels get thrown around too easily with no legit proof.