Danny Smallwood?

There are some hard tickets in downtown St. John’s, I can tell you.

Imagine taking Danny’s hair and superimposing it over Joey’s face.

The gall.

The guts.

The laff I had.

The image was on a lapel button I got for Christmas, a gift purchased downtown at Living Planet. I keep the button on the bookshelf next to my Clyde Lied bumper sticker, and Moon Man licence plate.

Of course, the button isn’t the least bit realistic.

Even if Joey did have hair, the blowdryers back then weren’t powerful enough to mold such a glorious divide.

Still, Joey could have just paved the center cut prior to an election, like he did everything else.

The button raises some hard questions:

Should Joey have worn an '80s wig all along?

Should Danny wear horned rims and bowties?

And finally — did Danny change his hairdo because he came across one of the novelty buttons and reality smacked him in the face?

That's not the official story (some Florida nurse messed with the premier's hair when he was comatose), but I've heard wackier conspiracy theories.

Here's another question: are there many similarities between our 1st premier and the latest, No. 9?

They’ve both achieved Messiah status, with overwhelming majorities.

In 1966, 3 Tories squared off against a Smallwood majority of 39 members.

Danny has 43 of the 48 seats in the House of Assembly today, and he’s desperate to keep every last one.

How desperate?

A story on the front-page of the Weekend Telegram says Danny’s Tories spend just over $48,000 on the Straits-White Bay North byelection last fall, almost double the Liberals.

As many as nine cabinet ministers rained on the Northern Peninsula district during the campaign — eight of them in the last week of the race.

Danny himself made four separate trips there after Trevor Taylor announced his resignation in September 2009.

Still the Tories lost.

Which goes to show money can't buy Tory happiness.

Why does one more seat mean so much to Danny Williams?

Is such an overwhelming majority even healthy?

The answer is no — it’s not.

There’s a byelection on Tuesday in the district of Topsail to fill the vacancy left by Beth Marshall, who retired to the Senate.

Danny Williams needs one more seat in the legislature like Vickie Kaminski needs another scandal over at Eastern Health.

•••

Speaking of health care, and Danny’s controversial decision to have his heart operation carried out in the U.S., I came across the following song on Sunday.

The song is dated Feb. 5, 2010, but I’ve purposely omitted the writer’s name for fear he/she would be crucified for the blasphemy.

Danny Boy, the revised version.

Oh Danny boy, the Yanks, the Yanks are calling
From Florida, and other states beside
They’re all lined up to fix your ailing ticker
’Tis you, ’Tis you, must go and we must bide

To wait our turn at the Health Sciences Centre
And hope our hearts won’t break along the way
For we have nothing but our MCP cards
We can’t take off, we’ve mortgages to pay

And if we die, well really, that’s the breaks b’y
That you can go, the rest of us must stay
So let’s shut up, and stop all this complaining
Accept our fate, it’s always been this way

When you come back, with all the big flags flying
Your fans will cheer as your bright face they see
Then we’ll recall the words of Scott Fitzgerald:
“The rich, the rich, are not like you and me.”

•••

Finally, I came across the following quote by Charles Péguy at the beginning of Chapter 4 of Joey Smallwood's 1973 book, I chose Canada:

"Short of genius, a rich man cannot imagine poverty."