[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]Toward the end of one of my more forgettable marriages, my For a Few More Minutes Wife slid past me one morning at the breakfast table.

It was 8:45.

Summoning her most attractive smile — midway between a Doberman and an ailing dachshund — she said icily, “Are you going to the office today?”

While I weighed whether to be grateful that she had fired her Spanish-speaking intermediary and was speaking directly to me for the first time in a month or be mad because of her sarcastic tone, I cheerfully replied “no.”

I had been on vacation for a week.

But the woman I was sleeping with was so darned concerned with consumptive matters in her separate life she had failed to notice I was around the house 21 hours a day more than normal.

Which brings me around the circle to the formerly smiling face of our formerly collegial County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

I was thinking of contacting my favorite milk carton distributor and pricing placement of the Sup’s mug on my family’s brand of milk.

Have you seen him?

I haven’t?

Maybe he is flying Nato missions over Libya for President Elmer Fudd who just changed his name and rank to Gen. Boob Obama. Gen. O’s midget-sized military and intellectual competence are cartoon material.

We could call Gen. Boob’s predictably backfiring war over Libya a joke except that it ain’t funny when he is responsible for uncounted bombing deaths.

Returning to our once popular County Supervisor, he took ubiquity to unprecedented levels 2½ years ago when he set out to not only spank but practically obliterate City Councilman Bernard Parks in a race for the Sup’s chair.

It would be hyperbolic to say that in those days I saw Mr. Ridley-Thomas’s smiling face in the bathroom mirror when I climbed out of bed every pre-dawn and padded across the room.

But not by much.

Mr. Ridley-Thomas was more in evidence than God or what’s his name, that obscure Illinois state senator who ran for the White House.

Now that he is safely tucked into a downtown office for a few years, Mr. Ridley-Thomas has become more scarce than a Boob Obama compliment for a Republican.

He took exception to a critical story three months ago.  He was on the telephone before the type in the story cooled down, and that did not look like a grin in his voice.

He has been in strict hibernation ever since.

His public performances have followed the trajectory of a lopsided medicine ball rolling over a steep cliff.

Too bad that he has melted into a grim disappointment resembling the mass of political faces in this town rather than continuing to stand out as an authentic man of the people.