A Day Like Any Other Day

An Open Letter to America:

Dear America:

The sun rose at 6:46 a.m. in L.A. on the day after the verdict was returned in the O.J. Simpson wrongful death trial. It set exactly at 5:29 p.m.

And while I realize this may be a big disappointment to some of you, there wasn’t a lot going on in between that was related to the trial.

Oh, sure, there was endless talk on the radio and reports on television and God knows how many words in the newspaper, but nothing, well, physical, if you know what I mean.

It was, after all, a lovely day in L.A., with a temperature in the 70s and skies as blue as a starlet’s eyes. We tend not to riot or raise a lot of hell when the weather’s nice.

You were probably expecting another of those wild uprisings or some terrific racial brawls, but to the best of my knowledge they didn’t occur.

The closest anyone came to a fistfight that I saw was in an elegant restaurant called Mirabelle on the Sunset Strip where two well-dressed ladies were arguing over whether or not Madonna deserved an Oscar for “Evita.”

I suggested that she deserved one for having a normal baby and they both told me to mind my own business. Women work out and lift weights a lot in L.A. and are generally taller than me, so I skulked away. When you’re short and out of shape, skulking comes naturally.

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I put on a lot of miles looking for trouble, but it was pretty much business as usual in the City of Angles. I had a friend who used to say there was nothing more boring than the lack of something and that’s about the way it was.

One of the most boring areas in L.A. was the beach. Bodies-beautiful were strewn along the shores of Malibu like mannequins, and blond, vacant-eyed surfers hung 10 after 10 after 10 like they were on a watery treadmill. What could be more culturally vegetative than that?

I’m not saying all of those beach bunnies and surfin’ boys are necessarily dumb, however. Some, I’m sure, have high school diplomas and a few probably even studied P.E. at a junior college somewhere.

On the Day After the Verdict in South-Central L.A. people got up when they had to and went to work or fixed lunches for their school-aged kids and tried to ignore the television cameras peering in their windows and the microphones shoved in their faces.

I’m not sure it’s true, but I heard that one of the tabloids actually offered a family in Watts $10 million if they’d riot, but they were busy. I wish they’d have asked me.

I’m not saying that everyone agreed with the jury that nailed O.J. The news was full of interviews with people who didn’t agree and were willing to say so. Personally, I don’t think the jury went far enough. It should have been an $8.5-million judgment with Simpson being forced to work it off in hell at $5 an hour.

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I looked for signs of verdict-related tension in Hollywood and Monterey Park and Bellflower and even Beverly Hills, although I expected none there. They don’t usually riot in Beverly Hills. They just don’t ask you to dinner.

It was a long, hard day for me, America. Looking for trouble can be exhausting. What I found, I guess, is that we’re tired of violence in L.A. Maybe we’re learning to talk and debate rather than smash and burn.

On the other hand, it could be we’re all just tired of O.J. and want to get it over with so we can go back to watching “Jeopardy” and worrying about the kids and being bored to death by the political news out of Washington.

On the old television show “You Are There,” Walter Cronkite used to say: “What sort of a day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. . . . “

The kind of day it was on Wednesday wasn’t filled with much that would alter and illuminate, although it was a day like most days in L.A. We usually live pretty ordinary lives. You just see us when all hell is breaking loose and not when we’re taking out the garbage or walking the dog.

I’ll have to say, though, that a few of us are uneasy over the stillness. We realize that when you’re on the world stage more is expected. So if you’d like me to break a small window somewhere, just let me know.

Meanwhile, though, I’m going to lie on a green hillside and look at the blue sky and be grateful for the boredom. Maybe I’ll even see a leaf fall. Did I mention that the winds were from the northeast at 8 miles an hour?

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com