A CHRONICLE OF THE PASSING SCENE

The Building of a Fencer

On Valentine’s Day most of us will be into hearts and flowers, but not Jeff Feinblatt.

He’s going to be in a combative mood and mode, on a quest for Olympic gold.

This 18-year-old Chaminade College Preparatory honor student and senior is a latter-day D’Artagnan.

In his latest fencing outing, he placed first among Americans and 57th in the world in the junior (under 20) World Cup competition Jan. 7-11 in Budapest.

His next outing is the Feb. 14 Junior Olympics in Colorado Springs.

According to his fencing coach, Father Lawrence Calhoun, “He’s definitely on the track to the 2000 Olympics.”

Calhoun, a coach for 26 years, learned to fence when he was a chaplain at Notre Dame University and later with a fencing master in France.

He says Feinblatt is one of a number of good fencers at Chaminade in West Hills, all 10 of whom he will be taking to Colorado Springs.

What sets Feinblatt apart from some of the others, he adds, is his ability to analyze his opponent and, mid-match, correct the thrust of his game.

After being a member of the freshman volleyball team at Chaminade and having participated in extracurricular football, soccer, baseball and basketball, his friends could not figure out why an all-around athlete would want to fence.

“I’ve tried to explain that fencing is a combination of intense athleticism and a mental exercise like a chess match. Whether you win or lose is only up to you,” he said. “You can have the best coaching in the world, but once you get into competition the moves have to be yours.”

The students at Chaminade may not understand Jeff’s sport, but they understand his passion.

The student body donated $1,000 toward his travel expenses to Budapest.

You Can Drink (Coffee) to That

Lose Your Blues is the brainchild of former financial planner Tom Sauer, a recovering alcoholic, and Sally Dean, a recovering breast cancer patient who was his substance abuse counselor in 1990.

Three years later they are a couple, one that wants to provide people of all ages with a place to hear good music in a drug- and alcohol-free environment.

They dreamed up the Lose Your Blues coffeehouse, which is the relaxed stepsister of the fern bar, without the booze.

Well, no booze might have been the idea, but it also was the rub.

Sauer and Dean threw an opening party with four bands in the parking lot.

The next thing they knew they had a visitor.

The visitor said they couldn’t have live music or acts inside or outside the Lose Your Blues cafe.

They didn’t have the proper permits, including one for serving alcohol.

Sauer and Dean, irate, called some powerful friends in 12-step programs and others such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and they, in turn, called the Agoura Hills City Hall to demand to know why such an inane law was on the city’s books.

City Planning Director Dave Anderson said there was an original misinterpretation of the city law which did, in effect, say you couldn’t have live performances without a liquor license.

That has now been reinterpreted, according to Anderson, so that now all Sauer and Dean need to do is get the proper permits. They are doing so.

Meanwhile, the cafe is open and happening.

During the day, young mothers sip cappuccino while their youngsters play with toys kept in a corner toy chest.

Evening are lively. Sauer says Nick Nolte drops by, and he has invited his friend Mel Gibson.

The coffee is gourmet, the atmosphere retro and inclusive.

It’s, well, cool.

You are likely to hear poetry readings, or maybe a blues or rock band working the kinks out of the music.

People play chess and talk.

It’s what folks pretend the ‘60s were.

Thanks to Clinton, a Tree Will Grow

A tree will be planted in Glendale thanks, in part, to a hug by Bill Clinton.

No, the President hasn’t turned into Prince Charles of England who is reported to have meaningful relations not only with a Camilla, but also with most species of trees.

When Clinton made his memorable trip to the Glendale Galleria, shortly after his election, he took one look at 4-foot, 10-inch Maggie Macklin, who was one of the thousands in the shopping center, and took himself right over to where she was by the See’s Candy outlet for a quick chat.

She told him she was happy for his election, that she had voted for him even though her pilot-husband had been killed in the Vietnam War.

Clinton, with tears in his eyes, she remembers, gave her a hug and asked her to write to him in Little Rock.

“He said he wanted to know about my husband, and how I had managed in the years since he was killed in 1965,” Macklin said.

She wrote Clinton telling him how she never got her husband’s dog tags or personal effects and added that since he was a Glendale boy and the city’s first casualty in Vietnam, she wished that the city would create a living memorial, like, maybe a newly planted tree.

Macklin said she hasn’t heard back from the now-President, but she did hear from the Glendale City Council.

“I have been told that there will be a tree planted in March in honor of my husband, Ronald Wayne Macklin, and that dignitaries, including other Vietnam widows and veterans, will be invited,” said Macklin, obviously pleased.

Closet-Floor Chic

“What do you call that outfit you’re wearing?” a Sherman Oaks Fashion Square groupie named Valerie Pearson was asked.

“Clothes,” the teen-something high school junior with a Hillary Clinton page boy replied, cheerfully.

She had on about six layers of shirts, T-shirts, flannel shirts, lots of beads, two pairs of pants, the short ones over the long ones. On her feet were something that looked like Bosnian combat boots.

Over her Hillary-like locks, she wore two baseball caps. One backward. One sideways.

A New York-directed fashion statement?

Not!

This was an in-your-face, correct-for-the-market-or-cleaning-toilets kind of not-in-this-lifetime haute couture look.

Liberation from, and retribution for, the fashion reign of Nancy Reagan.

Asked what the fashion message of this sort of ensemble was, our sage and muse, Valerie, replied without hesitation:

“It means you can wear whatever you want. Of course, I do that anyway.”

Overheard

“You mean you actually go into the studio and give classes when it rains?”

--Woman with water-on-the-brain on the phone to her aerobics instructor in North Hollywood