Wake Up and Smell the Fumes, L.A. : Mayor’s race: Let’s renew our streets as a symbol of our equality and mutual ownership.

I think being mayor of Los Angeles is the most important job in the world.

The year I was born, an Irish playwright named Samuel Beckett released a work called “Waiting for Godot.” With that dark play, he started a whole new school of thought. He started the beat generation and an onslaught against society.

The main characters in this play, Didi and Gogo, spend all their time in long, involved argument, sometimes with each other, sometimes with the world, while they wait for someone named Godot to show up at the only prop on stage, an old, dead tree in a sea of mud.

Dressed in pre-Blues Brothers matching black suits, they discuss life’s important problems, like whether or not boots need to be taken off every day. They wonder what sexual pleasures they might enjoy if they hanged themselves. They get personal in their comments when they start calling each other the worst names they can think of that start with “cr” sounds, like creep and cretin , until one mouths the ultimate insult-- critic!

The tone of the play can be summed up with the line spoken many times in dialogue, “There’s nothing to be done!”

The really sad part is that we’ve all been under this man’s spell for years now, especially here in Los Angeles with its most important jewel--Hollywood. Beckett is responsible for Hollywood’s dirty little secret: Nobody’s watching any more.

As mayor, my platform of good, clean fun and only good, clean fun, would completely reverse his influence not only on Los Angeles but the entire world. Fashion is a phenomenon. Nobody knows why it happens. However, we in Los Angeles know one of its big starting places is here.

Here’s my vision for Los Angeles:

Beckett died a few years ago. The wicked witch is dead. The spell is over. It’s my job to tell you that you can come out and play, sing and dance. You don’t have to worry any more. You can wear your brightest clothes and be happy. It will be my job to make equal justice and opportunity available to all Los Angeles residents.

Do you realize that the asphalt gives off the same fumes as gasoline and the hotter the city gets the more we suffer? Let’s start over with our streets. Let’s make them all new as a symbol of our equality and mutual ownership. Everyone will understand that all streets belong to all citizens, and that we are one city. We could put down cement, or stones, or rock. How about a nice yellow brick road?

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