Memo to the Mayor

Dear Mayor Dick:

Please include me in on the massive effort to improve the image of L.A. through implementation of your New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership, very cleverly known as the New LAMP. It is long overdue.

I was thinking about this just the other day as I stood in the thundering rainfall trying to set up my Little Wizard pump to keep water from entering my house in the Santa Monica Mountains.

I also thought of it when I came inside dripping wet in time to put pans under the area where the roof was leaking, and later when I had to go outside and wade through mud to clear my driveway of a tree limb that had been snapped off by the wind.

So help me, Mayor Dick, I said to myself, “What this place needs is a new image.”

I realize this has been tried before through song and story, but every time it is about to get off the ground, the fickle finger of fate flicks upward in a gesture of scorn. Right, Dick. Life gives us the finger.

So what we need, I thought as I dragged myself through the mud and corruption of the latest storm, is something bigger than all of the disasters we have suffered. Something mightier than reality.

I stood so long in the rain thinking about it that my wife, Cinelli, called from the house that my brain would wither like a raisin if I didn’t come in. “It might already be too late,” I heard her say.

And then, like Henny Penny stricken with an idea from above, it hit me. What this town needs is the greatest image-enhancer of all: denial.

*

We have already tried euphemisms to gloss over the series of disasters that have plagued us, but that didn’t work. Referring to the fires of ’93 as the recent warmth or the storms as a local dampness just doesn’t scan.

But flat-out denial is something else. It works. I tried it on my sister Emily, who calls from Oakland to pray for me whenever God seems ready to flush L.A. down the toilet. She has been mired in novenas since I moved here.

Emily believed L.A. to be a cesspool of drunkenness and sexual iniquity, and figured it wouldn’t be too long before I would be right in the middle of it. “You’re a lot like your real father,” she’d say mysteriously, harboring a memory of him of which I had no knowledge. “God save your damaged soul.”

But I am small and throw up easily, thereby lacking the capacity or inclination for heavy drinking, and my wife frowns on sexual orgies, so neither booze nor big-time sin have ever been a serious problem for me.

Once Emily was convinced of that, she began praying for my safety whenever news of an L.A. disaster reached Oakland. Before long, she was praying so often her knees gave out and she had to stand and pray. Standing prayer is not as effective as kneeling prayer, but that was the best she could manage.

To cut to the chase, Mayor Dick, Emily telephoned at the height of our storm to say that even though they were catching a lot of hell in the Bay Area, thus diverting some of her prayer to local regions, she was also praying for my safety through the storm that was pounding L.A.

That’s when I put denial to work, Mayor Dick. I said, “What storm?”

*

Using a capacity to twist the truth that I’ve perfected as a journalist, I told Emily that the skies down here were an angel-eyed blue, the temperature was balmy and wildflowers bloomed like God’s pixies on the verdant hillsides.

I said all that even though I had to raise my voice to be heard over the rain that was pounding on the roof and the terrified howl of our dog Hoover, who hates rain almost as much as he hates the vacuum cleaner.

By the time I hung up, Emily was convinced the electronic media was lying about the L.A. storms to enhance their own hidden agenda. Convincing her that the media was lying was probably the easiest thing I had to do, since everyone believes that anyhow.

The beauty of deceit, Mayor Dick, is that it is always practiced on someone else. For instance, while it might be difficult to deny to each other there had been an earthquake when a freeway lay crumpled at our feet, it would be a snap to deny it to others by simply saying television had faked the whole thing to enhance its ratings.

The process of denial would have to be refined, of course, but it’s worth a try. Our only other alternative would be to go with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who has offered to soothe our mantra and calm Mother Nature by sending 9,000 “coherence-creating experts” to L.A. for $165 million a year to hum and think good thoughts.

I say to hell with good thoughts, Mayor Dick. Spend a few bucks for bumper stickers that say “It Didn’t Happen in L.A.” and the devil take tomorrow.

Your loyal constituent,

A Gifted Liar