I'm in love with a certain fella over at Honolulu Hale. And I'm not afraid to let the world know. I love City Councilman Rod Tam. There. I said it. I just adore the little galoot. Sometimes, I want to just give him a big hug. Like when he proposed a bill that would pay state workers to take naps. Or when he supported workers getting snack breaks. Yes! I wanted to make noogies on his noggin and ruffle his hair. And when he co-sponsored the bill recently to ban smelly riders from city buses ... well, I swooned. Seriously. I nearly got the vapors.

It's not easy being a humor columnist. You have to make up a lot of weird stuff to get a laugh out of people. It's exhausting. And folks are cranky these days, what with their houses being foreclosed on and the country being sold off piecemeal to China like a crack addict's yard sale. ("Hey, man, I'll sell you our banking sector for only a trillion. And I'll throw in West Virginia. Hell, one Virginia's enough for a country, right? You want a piece of our insurance companies? Done. And here, take the TV and the lawnmower.") So anytime I don't have to make something funny up, life is sweet. And Rod Tam is my go-to guy when it comes to providing entertaining and humorous material for columns. He's the zany gift that keeps on giving. Bless him.

Sometimes I get a little worried that he's going to figure out that he really doesn't want to be a councilman. I'm afraid it's going to dawn on him that what he really wants to be when he grows up is a matron in a preschool. He'll don a flowery mu'umu'u, tell all the little tykes to wash their hands after going poopy and remind them to sit up straight when they eat their snacks. Then he'll settle them all down for their naps, and while they are sleeping, write notes to the parents of certain children who need to be reminded to bathe their little darlings before sending them off smelly into the general population.

Those are all laudable things. I believe naps, nutritious snacks and hygiene are important parts of life. But they are things you generally learn in preschool or kindergarten, along with not poking your finger into your friend's eyeball, blowing milk bubbles out of your nose and using your "outdoor voice" indoors. They aren't really things that grown-up people need to be reminded or forced to do by elected representatives.

I'm no politician, but I would think the role of a City Councilman would be to spur economic growth during a recession, keep the streets safe from predators, make sure potholes are filled and garbage is picked up in a dependable, cost-efficient manner. Making sure adult state workers are well-rested and bus riders smell like an Irish spring doesn't strike me as being the province of the Honolulu City Council.

Nevertheless, for my own selfish reasons, I am sorry that the smelly-bus-rider bill was killed. I looked forward to the court cases. ("How do you plead, stinky or Old Spicey?") And I hope my special fella on the council continues to introduce his unique legislation. The public needs a good laugh and I need the material.