All these cat loving friends of mine keeping asking me why I pay so much attention to silly dogs, so I'm finally responding to their inquiries by highlighting a special cat I recently saw in Chico.A person in a Disney-esque cat outfit is trailing the Steve Westly bus tour on behalf of the Phil Angelides campaign.This ubiquitous "Fat Cat" debuted in Chico and it was quite hilarious. The "Fat Cat" showed up in Redding and Sacramento during Westly's other campaign stops, and likely will continue following the Westly bus for the next few weeks.The "Cheap Replica Handbags" title the Angelides campaign is attempting to label on Westly is severely undermined by the fact that Angelides is also a multi-millionaire who has heavily relied on his own "Fat Cat" Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos to pour millions into an independent expenduture committee on behalf of his own campaign.What I found amusing is not only this ridiculous looking "Fat Cat" and its blog, but also how the Westly campaign quickly responded.According to L.A. Weekly's Bill Bradley, a Westly campaign staff member is now following the "Fat Cat" with a "big hand-painted sign in Angelides' blue-and-yellow colors proclaiming: Get Your Picture Taken With Phil Angelides.'Now whenever the "Fat Cat" shows up, it's labeled as Phil Angelides by a "Get Your Picture Taken with Phil Angelides" sign pointing at it. Pretty funny. So we've got a "Fat Cat" demonstrating at Westly events who is now ironically identified as Angelides, and to add to the comical story, we've also got a copycat "Fat Cat For Angelides" to highlight Angelo Tsakopoulos' $7.7 million independent expenditure committee spending on behalf of Angelides.
Politics can be an unfortunate rough contact sport, so this type of levity and comedy is sometimes welcome in the heat of political battle.By the way, the ER's Ari Cohn decided to lead his story on the Westly event with a supposed incident involving the "Fat Cat" and Randall Stone, which proves my observation that the media doesn't just report the news, it creates the news too - even about trivial matters.The comical non-incident, to me, wasn't even worth mentioning in a newspaper given that (1) if you know Randall Stone, you would know he would never intentionally shove anyone, as the article implies and (2) the "Fat Cat" appears to have been "drunk", or pretending to be drunk, so probably ran into the wall without help from anyone given how crowded the sidewalk in front of Moxie's was when the Westly entourage and reporters walked by in tow.If this was a serious incident worth reporting, I don't think the "Fat Cat" would be joking about the non-incident in its blog. In fact, I saw the "Fat Cat" in person. I would bet 2-1 odds that the "Fat Cat" would have pounced - yes, bad joke - on Randall in a head-to-head ultimate fighting match-up if the incident was as serious as Ari Cohn describes. Why do I believe this? Well, I learned early in life that one should never underestimate a person wearing a silly cat suit. Regardless, I wish the "Fat Cat" well on its merry journey. I'm sure Angelo Tsakopoulos is paying the "Fat Cat" well with a healthy per diem for drinks and food.But "Fat Cat," please watch out for silly dogs, especially those that dance to the Grease soundtrack.Today's Scrabble word is invar, an alloy of iron and nickel having a low coefficient of thermal expansion.