[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Witlessly, four foggy-minded middle-aged women, looking desolate, as if they had been abruptly abandoned on a mental desert island, converted what was intended to be a serious Cultural Affairs Commission meeting last night into a dog-and-pony show — with apologies to our friends with four legs.

Reading from left to right, Gayle Smashey, Marla Koosed, Marlyn Musicant and Michelle Bernardin, four housewives who should not have left home, staged a pitiable performance that will set community volunteering back 40 years. They should be barred from being seated until the next worldwide flood.

Surely these ladies were unintentionally funny.

They must have wandered into the wrong room, didn’t they?

Maybe they were looking for a pickup game of pinochle.

Shouldn’t lovely-sounding volunteers undergo a competency test before the City Council enthusiastically votes them onto boards for which they are richly unqualified?

Allowing these housewives to make sober recommendations about the future of the Summer Music Festival and Gary Mandell, the producer for the last 11 seasons, is even less responsible than handing an infant three lighted matches and walking away.

I hope they treat their spouses with slightly greater sensitivity than they accorded Mr. Mandell.

If just one of them knew what she was talking about, she cleverly hid such a secret from the public.

The absence of original reasoning was appalling. They spoke as if there was a prize for the most vague person in the room. Congratulations, girls. You tied for last place.

We Don’t Know What We Want

They want to sack Mr. Mandell and turn the present format into — well, something different. They aren’t sure what. They are not sure why. They are not sure where. But by thunder, they said, stomping their sneakers, we want you to know we feel very strongly about this — don’t we, girls?

Each of them phonily commended Mr. Mandell, then tried to dropkick him across Council Chambers. Honesty took a holiday.

Their abysmal ignorance of the subjects charged to them is blight on the judgment of the Council members who — heaven forbid — touted them. Better they should evaluate a crayon-counting contest with a limit of two crayons. Or a tractor pull.

Four plastic mannequins would have reasoned more cleanly and spoken more articulately. Here is a dollar if one of them can spell a-u-t-h-o-r-i-t-y correctly within two letters on the first five tries.

They were as hazy about their intentions as a glasses-wearing midget mouse in a blizzard. They not only lacked vaguely adult-level judgment, but I will speculate they had no notion how wildly inspecific they were.

People have guessed for years that most of the changing faces on the Cultural Affairs Commission are merely frustrated producers, possibly jealous of Mr. Mandell’s platform and visibility. I don’t know of anyone more modest than Mr. Mandell, an evident irrelevancy to the housewives of the Cultural Affairs Commission.

It must take intense practice to bungle the “Downtown Business Assn.” twice.

You could have hired four stinky homeless bums from Media Park. They would have made new City Manager John Nachbar, seated in the front row, prouder.

My first effort after leaving Chambers was to wash, hopefully rubbing off the stench of what I trust was an accidental travesty.