A Colorful Cast of Characters, Noah-Style
Come in, come in and get warm! Let me take your coat. . . . Jeez, isn’t that the truth? It must be 60 out there!
I’m so glad you could make it to my New Year’s gala. People always go on and on about “ringing in the new.” I’m a believer in “ringing out the old.” One last turn around the dance floor for the year gone to ghosts. . . . Oh, you noticed! That was my idea, inviting everyone in pairs. Like it? My own little ark party.
Do you know everybody? That’s OK, I’ll fill you in as we go. (Him? No, that’s not a general--it’s Lee Baca, our new sheriff, in uniform. Some get-up, eh? First Latino this century with the Big Badge. Fellow with him is the previous sheriff, Sherman Block. Pulled down almost 39% of the vote even though he died before the election. They’ll be talking about this campaign for years. I mean, the language people used! “Lying . . . macabre . . . vicious . . . sinister.” And my favorite: Voting for a dead fellow is “a real choice.”)
Edith! Katherine! Oh, come on, ladies. Can’t you stand next to each other just long enough for a picture? This is a historic moment! (Katherine Mader. She was the LAPD inspector general they pressured out, said she was substandard. Her side said she’d be too independent for them. Edith Perez? Police Commission president. Anonymously mailed out clippings slagging Mader and got found out because she used her office postage meter. What was it someone said that was so funny? “The lesson is, use stamps.”)
Aww, isn’t that nice--Tom Bradley and Sam Yorty, two mayors letting bygones be bygones, now that they’re both gone. I overheard Bradley lamenting the state of the subway system he so wanted, and Yorty lamenting that he has nothing big named after him, not even a subway.
Well, well. It’s the San Fernando Valley, going stag! What do you mean, you’re lonely? Isn’t that what you’ve been squawking about? Well, then. Be careful what you wish for; it might come true. (I asked Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, but she didn’t show. At some quarrel over spending transit money in the Valley, she’s the one who said, “Let them secede.” Very Marie Antoinette, no?)
Of course you know these gentlemen: Jay Kim, Sonny Bono--the disappearing congressmen. Jay spent the election under ankle-bracelet house arrest for his campaign finance crimes, and he lost. Then he bailed! Closed up shop on his constituents even though he was still in office! And poor Sonny--skied into a tree. Then his widow admits Sonny’d been popping painkillers and Valium like 20 times a day for years. First he gets killed, then his reputation does. Now the widow’s in Congress, saying Bill Clinton sets a bad example for children. Politics!
Whaddya know! Over by the salad bar--that’s the elected charter reform commission and the appointed charter reform commission! And they’re arguing over the balsamic vinaigrette!? Isn’t there something those two can agree on?
Now there’s a power couple for you, giggling in the corner. Monica and Marilyn, two Brentwood gals, two presidential girlfriends. A lot of nervous tics in the Beltway when those two put their heads together.
Councilmen! Glad you could make it! (Mike Hernandez and Richard Alatorre. Boy, what different paths cocaine has led them down. Mike’s kept his nose clean and talks to his NA group. Richard . . . well, there’s that surprise drug test. And he may wind up talking to a grand jury. IRS, FBI, MTA--boy, is his dance card full.)
Nancy! Susan! Where did you get those fabulous outfits? (Nancy Mehta. Her ex-employee and co-shopper, Susan McDougal. You’d probably recognize her in orange jumpsuit and Whitewater leg irons. What a bust that case turned out to be. That jury wouldn’t have found Susan guilty of anything worse than wearing white after Labor Day.)
Boys, I told you before, this is not a costume party! (What a pair of cutups. Anthrax, the boogeyman that wasn’t, has everyone in a fit. And fluoride--the city’s putting it in the drinking water and not so much as one John Bircher in sight. What’s America coming to?)
Cardinal Mahony--now that is a spectacular cope, Your Eminence, if I may say so. You should’ve worn it to the groundbreaking for the new cathedral. Of course you know Jeff Dietrich of the Catholic Worker? Oh, right--he scaled barbed wire at the groundbreaking to protest spending money on stone instead of soup. Well, eat up, gentlemen.
And speaking of protest, it’s Zev Yaroslavsky and Eric Mann, Mr. Bus Riders Union! You two carpool here? (Eric threatened a fare strike unless the MTA bought more buses to stop overcrowding. And of course Supervisor Yaroslavsky put Proposition A on the ballot, and people voted to plug the public sales tax pipeline for more subways. Dig we mustn’t!)
There were so many more I wanted to invite, but I just ran out of room. The chimp who escaped from the brand new chimp enclosure at the zoo. That poor fellow who blew his brains out on the freeway on TV over medical care. The leaf-blowing gardeners. The people who named their TV show “Hyperion Bay,” after a sewage treatment plant--but at least one that finally meets federal standards.
Oh, at midnight I’m announcing the winner of the Quotable Cup. (Actually it’s a tie. Mayor Riordan, endorsing an Orange County airport project, said, “An environmentalist is a multimillionaire who just closed escrow on his beach house,” and Mike Hernandez, talking about plans for a riverside development, said, “Nothing is set in cement,” when everybody knows the L.A. River is set in nothing but cement.)
Happy New Year. God help us, every one.
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Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.
