Fancy Dance(s)

The newly-elected governor of the State of Montana will be presiding over his Inaugural Ball tonight. Actually, that will be Balls. (no, this has nothing to do with that!) Spread out over three different venues, the governor will make appearances at each. Two of the venues have sold out, and they say that if try to buy tickets at the door at the third, you might not get in. It seems to be a big deal for two reason, as I see it.

First, it's returned to Helena, the capital of MT, after having been hosted elsewhere for the past 2 or 3 times. I still don't understand why it ever left. How weird would it be for George W. to have his Balls in TX? Secondly, and maybe the bigger reason, is that the Democrats have regained the governor's seat for the first time in 16 years. They've actually taken control of the House & Senate, too. Now I don't have any political idealogy--if anything, I might lean a bit left, but I've found that most of my readers, hence most of the blogs I read, have a definite GOP flavor to them. That's OK--I don't really care. In MT, we had a very popular Republican governor--almost everyone liked him. He went on to head the RNC for awhile. But his Lt. Governor succeeded him. She was, and I think you MT Republicans would agree with me to some degree, a crazy lady. I don't know that I'd call her incompetent, but damn, she was embarrassing at times! So there's a bit of giddyness in Helena that the Democrats are on the firing line now. And this is a state that W took easily!

So now the Demos are in charge, the Ball is back in Helena, and they're sold out. Of course, the Republicans are launching an investigation about the fund-raising for this. The governor's brother is heading up that effort. Geez, how else will they pay for it??? Do they want to use state funds for it??? Of course someone's got to go out and raise money!! The brother is an unpaid volunteer for this, whose expenses will be paid for by any leftover contributions. The Republicans (who are doing a great deal of whining this year since they're no longer in control) claim that he's working as a lobbyist. It's good to know that things like this weigh heavily on everyone's mind, so that they don't have to deal with other issues, such as education funding....

What you have just read is as political as I'll ever get on this blog. Why do I even mention any of this? My band isn't playing at any of the venues! In fact, there's only one group from Helena playing (a mediocre jazz group). And there's like 20 different musical groups of one kind or another involved. One group from Helena??? We were excited to hear that the Ball was back in Helena. We were "a shoe-in" to play at one of the venues. Our sax player works for Legislative Services. We had legislative staff, as well as legislators, pushing for us with those who did the planning. "Great band!" "They play everything!" "They're cheap!" We even penciled it into our calendar. But no, we're not playing. Apparently the wrong asses were being kissed, or the right ones weren't kissed enough.

So tonight I may blog. I may watch TV. I see that "Die Hard" and Die Hard 2" are running back to back tonight on FX. And the Hallmark Channel is running "Family Plan", starring Tori Spelling, 3 times in a row. Do I sound bitter? I was, but I've gotten over it. Really, I have.