You may have already heard about Reykjavik’s new mayor, Jon Gnarr, but I feel I must blog about him in case there’s any of my 12 readers who haven’t heard of him yet. He’s an Icelandic comedian who decided to run for mayor after the collapse of Iceland’s economy. He formed a new party, the Best Party, and became mayor after winning 34.7% of the vote.

Some highlights from the New York Times article (which you should probably just go ahead and read for yourself):

• Gnarr promised a classroom of kindergartners a Disneyland at the airport.
• “No one has to be afraid of the Best Party because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.”
• The Best Party won 6 out of 15 council seats, so Gnarr needed a coalition partner; he ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of “The Wire.” (He ended up forming a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats “despite Mr. Gnarr’s suspicion that party leaders had assigned an underling to watch ‘The Wire’ and take notes.”)
• “At 11, he decided school was useless to his future as a circus clown or pirate and refused to learn any more.”
• His foreign relations experience includes “a radio show in which he regularly crank-called the White House, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and police stations in the Bronx to see if they had found his lost wallet.”

The article has more details on the punk rock members of the Best Party and Gnarr’s campaign promises regarding polar bears and free towels.