Earlier this week we commented on a photo used on the Courier’s website of park board commissioner Aaron Jasper. He was surrounded by foliage and looking off into the distance like a man who’s seen the bottom of more than a few Kombucha bottles and been through some “stuff” — drawn-out park board meetings, the soul-crushing grind of bureaucracy, bike path conspiracy theorists, off-kilter dog owners, community centre brouhahas, maybe even a few donnybrooks. In the photo, Jasper looked like a singer-songwriter from the 1970s, à la James Taylor, who had come out the other side and penned a heartfelt album of acoustic ballads about having seen fire and rain and foggy memories of when he was once virile and present. This should be an album cover, we told our co-workers, before embarking on a creative journey that we haven’t experienced since the time we photoshopped ex-Canucks coach John Tortorella’s head onto the shirtless body of Rambo.
The response was swift — the fake album cover retweeted by a who’s who of municipal politics and those who have their fingers on the faint pulse of municipal politics. Like Ellen’s Oscar selfie, we had broken the Internet. But as it turned out it was only our office’s slow Internet connection.
Still, it has encouraged us to spread our wings leading up to the civic election Nov. 15 and launch our new series of fake album covers for local politicians and public figures. Jasper was our first, but he won’t be our last. Unless of course, our 10-year-old computer finally kicks the bucket. Which is entirely possible.
