BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s column on the Tyler Street trash cans was already warming in the hopper when THE PLANET heard the plaintive requests to address the Berkshire Museum’s planned sale of 40 works of art. Beginning tomorrow and running every day of the week, we shall present our dissection. Yes, we will present a new column every day, in other words, a series. Fair warning to all those who have advised or defended this depraved plan: Get your asbestos underwear ready. You’re going to need it.

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION, SEPT. 22-24, 2017) — According to our good friend and commentator Thomas Moore, the new garbage bins on Tyler Street cost $600 apiece. It took the F Troops in city government only took two years — the sentence you get for armed robbery — to solve what for them must have been a task as daunting as producing the equation for The Theory of Everything. Hey, doesn’t councilor Peter White “live” after a manner on or about Tyler Street? Well, in any case, he has eaten there. THE PLANET knows. We saw Pete’s comatose post on Facebook.

Wake us when it’s over.

Six hundred bucks apiece for 10 cans. Let’s see: The calculator puts the bill at $6,000, although in the city of Pittsfield, you cannot trust numbers. For Mayor Linda “Trashcan” Tyer, six Gs could have paid for a week of vacation behind her desk in the Corner Office plus shined her Sunday shoes in the process. And where else except for DC’s Bizarro World does it take two Bog-forsaken years to get a few wastebaskets on one of a city’s major roadways? That Mayor Trashcan felt no embarrassment standing like the Statue of Stupidity, scissors in hand, behind what looked like squashed Daleks, speaks tomes about her executive ability and political gravitas. For further proof, look no further than the mayor’s Exercise with Jane Fonda workout program, a gauntlet that has induced three heart attacks, two cases of scoliosis, and the heartbreak of psoriasis. “Give me your tired, your poor, your Michelin Tire Man, your Goodyear Blimp, your Roseanne impersonators …”

Tyer may square the circle, win the Boston Marathon, and cure the common cold, but no matter what she does from this point forward, the infamous trashcans shall forever be her political legacy and the inspiration for the inscription on her civic tombstone. It will leave her heirs with a feeling that lies between the apex of brain freeze and the cellar of heartburn.

We can think of better legacies.

What other city pays $6,000 for garbage cans that (a) will be underused (b) will be used for target practice and (c) could have been manufactured at 1/10th the cost by area vocational students? Mayor Trashcan told the media horde who dropped the emergency meeting of the United Nations’ Security Council to cover the ribbon cutting for this momentous moment in the history of Pittsfield, “I love that [the bins] were engineered and built in Pittsfield for a Pittsfield neighborhood.”

She would.

Tyer even noted that each can “has the Pittsfield logo and the theme of environmental stewardship,” a “Gee whiz” moment that we hear had Buffalo Bob resurrected from the grave. What a groove, as in “hip,” baby — that’s what the mayor called the former home of Uncle Lewis Lent, who lived on Tyler Street back in his child molesting days. As for the manufacturers of the cans, our guess is Someone Who Knows Someone Inc., a subdivision of Muraca Enterprises. We could be wrong.

Diane Marcella, president of a two-headed cow called the Tyler Street Business Group, told the breathless media, “It is kind of comical” to cut ribbons for man-killing Daleks. Uh, no, Diane. Saluting garbage cans is not “kind of comical.” It’s downright stupid. It’s absolutely abject. It’s positively putrid. It’s for sure f***ed up. “Comical” doesn’t enter the picture. To prove it, she even dragged her Honey Do, Ron, to stand by his woman. During the ceremony, he stood there manly but vacantly, dreaming of holes in one, rolling games of 300, hitting the lottery, and downing ducks on the wing until he heard the “snap.” It wasn’t anyone’s neck breaking. It was the sound of scissors ripping through silk, a sound he probably hadn’t heard since college.

Mayorally and morally resplendent in her slacks, Saks cloth, and ashes, Mayor Trashcan cracked a joke: “This is the first time I’ve ever done a ribbon cutting for a garbage can.” THE PLANET has no doubt she believed this, but we would urge her to think. Real Hard. It wasn’t the “first,” and it won’t be the last. Or maybe the six police cruisers and a convention of cops seen mid-morning at the Cumby‘s on First Street was simply another Pittsfield mirage.

Several days after the canned photo-op, nigh a single fancy receptacle could be seen on Tyler Street. Were the cans stolen? Were they requisitioned by Hotel On North? Did JIV succumb to a fit of envy? As with all enduring mysteries, we may never know.

Have a Great Weekend, everybody!

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“You have created a monster” — Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) to Victor Frankenstein (Colin Clive)

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.