Image Problem Is Everything

The night before the game, the powers that be were panicky. They were afraid it might rain on their Super Bowl.

Hah!

Why didn’t they come to me? Never mind the weather bureau, isobars, occluded fronts and all that malarkey.

I don’t have to know meteorology. I know L.A.

I could have told them that old trollop would never let the rest of the world see her in hair curlers, no makeup, a ratty robe tied in the middle, shuffling around smoking and drinking reheated coffee.

No way!

When L.A. knows the world is going to be looking in on her, she gets out the eye shadow, lipstick, puts on her net stockings, her highest heels and shortest skirt, piles her hair up in a beehive, bats her eyes and adopts her most seductive pose. She looks like the first runner-up in a pageant.

What I’m trying to say is, like an old-time movie star, she always looks her most glamorous in public.

It sometimes rains here. But you would never know it from the telecasts of major sporting events.

Do you know how long it’s been since it rained on a Rose Bowl game? Since 1955. Thirty-eight years. Now, the law of averages would dictate that it would rain on Jan. 1 more than once every 38 years. I mean, it does rain here. But never on New Year’s.

We do have smog, fog, fires, wind. But never on Channel 4--or 2 or 7 or whatever network is televising the latest international event. We have had seven Super Bowls here. But we didn’t even have dew on those days.

I remember when we had the Olympics in ’84. A crew from British television came to my home. They began the interview with negatives. L.A. would be too hot, too smoggy, the traffic would be horrendous. And so on.

I sighed.

“Let me tell you something,” I said to them. “L.A. will be gorgeous. Sunshine, palm trees, card tricks. The traffic will be nothing. We get 100,000 people at the Coliseum lots of times. We get a million and a half in Pasadena every New Year’s. We handle it. There won’t even be any smog. That old strumpet L.A. will be at her chamber-of-commerce best.”

She was. I think it was the only time in history, or since the invention of the motor car, there wasn’t even a rush hour.

The problem is, this kind of false advertising brings new hordes. People in the rust belt look up and see these people in January sitting in the sun, bare to the waist, eating ice cream cones and drinking beer, and they wonder what they’re doing there with that snow shovel. When I came to this state, its population was around 8 1/2 million. Now, it is more than 30 million and climbing. I blame television.

It can rain right up to the morning of the game. Then, as they used to say in the old Ralph Henry Barbour novels, “The day of the big game dawned bright and clear.”

San Francisco doesn’t have this problem. They got in two World Series. The first one, it rained five straight days. The second one, they had an earthquake. Some cities have all the luck. Well, no, there’s nothing lucky about an earthquake. Let’s say some cities tell it like it is.

I have addressed this crucial situation before. Basically, it’s one of image. We somehow have to counteract the notion that we live in La-La or Lotus Land, that this is really the Good Ship Lollipop out here.

It’s not easily gotten around, given the coquettish instincts of our lady. We have to convince the world that this isn’t a Shirley Temple set out here. We have to stanch the immigrant flow or face getting pushed into the Pacific ourselves.

Accordingly, the demon real estater from Pasadena, Mr. David Bryant, and myself got our heads together a few years ago for a set of rules regulating sporting event telecasts from our too-fair city.

And I would like to reprise at this time, as this latest Super Bowl shows that L.A. has no intention of mending her ways and presenting an honest image to the world. You saw how it rained right up until midnight before the game and then beamed cloudless sunshine at kickoff.

We will get no help from the old bawd. We have to be resourceful to counteract her wiles. With this in mind, here are the rules:

1. For attendance at the Rose Bowl, it should be mandatory for all ticket holders to wear ski masks, mittens and ear muffs, to sneeze a lot on camera. The front rows will be restricted to those with runny noses, head colds, migraines or watery eyes.

2. Tickets will not be sold to anybody with a tan.

3. Sunglasses are to be confiscated on the spot.

4. Tank tops will be barred and anyone taking a shirt off will be summarily ejected, even if it’s Cheryl Tiegs.

5. NBC will be forbidden to photograph the magnificent backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains--unless they are on fire.

6. No one is allowed to broadcast that the windchill factor is 85, under pain of getting the plug pulled.

7. The network will be barred from televising the Rose Parade, since we don’t want to leave viewers with the impression we live in a place where you can grow roses in January. To discourage even attendance at the Rose Parade, we will lobby to have Saddam Hussein named grand marshal.

8. We will truck in mud and rain machines from the back lot at Fox.

9. No one wearing shorts will be allowed within 500 yards of the stadium. Anyone seen sweating will be required to take a cold shower before admittance.

10. We can publicize tornado warnings. Even though they are for Olathe, Kan., we can give the impression they are for Orange County.

11. Under no circumstances can we show orange or grapefruit trees blossoming. We can show the traffic jams instead, zeroing in on vehicles with vapor lock, or station wagons that haven’t moved more than two inches in the last hour. Emphasize that this is not game related, but normal traffic going home from work on the 210.

12. See to it that the Buffalo Bills get in every time. That way, nobody west of Tonawanda will watch and all we’ll have to worry about is a few stragglers from Olean.

These would help. So would real rain. But when L.A. knows the cameras are on, you can’t even seed the clouds. There aren’t any.