Forget nuclear disaster, beware the mattress
AS I understand it, the reason for the power outage earlier this week was that someone cut the wrong wires. While undertaking the domestic equivalent of plugging in a toaster, he snipped the cable that supplied power to a good part of Los Angeles, fouling traffic, silencing daytime television and muting my e-mail system. That hurt.
The electrical failure came on the heels of Monday’s column in which I was critical of the president’s efforts in the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. He spent a week scratching his head and rubbing his jaw before it occurred to him to do something to rescue, feed, house, clothe and protect the people there, even if they weren’t Republicans.
To be fair, however, he did make several trips to the Gulf Coast after the storm had passed, offering words of comfort, patting old ladies on the shoulder, praying with the starving and snuggling terrorized babies, whether or not they chose to be snuggled. Then he promised that they would all be better for the disaster. He didn’t say how exactly, but you get the idea.
Anyhow, the e-mail was beginning to come in at a snappy clip when, due to those severed cables, our system went kaput right in the middle of some angry response to my column, raising the suspicion that I might have had something to do with the power failure. The mail, however, was generally running in my favor, so why would I silence a chorus singing my song?
It’s just that electricity is such a mystery, even, apparently, to the DWP. I’ve hired dozens of qualified electricians over the years for various jobs, and each new one has assured me that the one before him had done it all wrong. “Look at that mess of spaghetti,” they say, pointing out a tangle of wires. “Could’ve burned down the whole damned neighborhood.”
I have to take their word for it. I don’t know a lot about reverse polarities, power surges or eddy currents. I also don’t know how voices travel through wires, where cyberspace is, what is combusting in an internal combustion engine, why lift exceeds drag and how women think. Their mysteries are deep.
The power outage made me wonder what would happen if the city’s electricity went out at the same time mattresses were accidentally dropped in every fast lane of every freeway in L.A. Chaos, that’s what.
If terrorists ever figured out that a combination of seemingly simple occurrences can paralyze one of the world’s largest cities, oh boy. Guarding our power plants is essential, of course, but so is keeping a check on anyone stocking up on mattresses. It ought to be in the Patriot Act. We’ll have to keep in touch with that annoying gap-toothed guy who shouts, “Or your mattress is freeeee!” in TV commercials to see who’s been buying a lot of them lately.
With terrorists threatening to make L.A. a target, our greatest fear shouldn’t be nuclear disaster or a chemical assault but that simultaneous combination of total electric failure and freeway mattress attacks, and maybe even a series of car chases down the side streets. Our world as we know it would end without Oprah, Judge Judy or automotive mobility. We would sit on the 101 honking ourselves to death. Oh, the agony.
But not to worry, bubeleh. Sooner or later, our president will come sauntering west and bring comfort to the stricken, except perhaps for Tim Robbins and Michael Moore and others of their liberal Hollywood ilk. For prayer purposes, aides will gather a cross section of those who typify L.A., including lesbian kick-boxers, cannabis farmers, unemployed screenwriters, actresses looted of their Vera Wang gowns, surly teenagers with rings dangling from every visible part of their body and courageous Malibu seniors, all face-lifted and tummy-tucked, whose off-road bikes have been lost in the chaos.
We’ll be better for the terrible disaster of people starving to death in traffic jams, diseases being spread by those who use the sides of the freeways as toilets, drivers in Mercedes and BMWs being badly beaten because they won’t stop honking, cellphones going dead from overuse and humble Kias and VWs being crushed by brazen canary-yellow Hummers running amok over the top of the stalled traffic.
There will also be no critical e-mail again suggesting that I perform an unpleasant and slightly disgusting act involving my head and that part of my anatomy, as my stepdaddy used to say, where the sun don’t shine. It is anatomically impossible to begin with and certainly unsanitary.
I may be amused by the suggestions of my critics, but their temporary absence won’t depress me. I’ll be too busy watching Bush cuddle tattooed babies with Mohawk haircuts.
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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.
