There we sat at last Monday night’s yawning City Council meeting.
Tired and cranky by 11:20, the 4-hour wait would be worthwhile because when it was time for Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger to speak during the Council comment period, he probably would attempt to resuscitate the explosive Entrada Office Tower proposal.
However, when the Vice Mayor’s turn came, he didn’t even use words that had the letters of E-n-t-r-a-d-a in them.
A perspective on the unrelenting nightmare of veterans returning from the Iraq War zone and the foundation-shattering interruptions they frequently face in their work lives once home.
To say it differently, the worst aspects of the dreadful Ted Cooke legacy rise from the dead and haunt a journalist in quest of sobering truth, which is in discouragingly short supply.
Unless you can scope out the well-curtained truth from inside the hearts of the most influential persons downtown at the Metropolitan Transit Authority, there is no way to determine which side is right in a smokin’ debate about the Expo light rail.
One of the gifted young persons I have met in Los Angeles journalism is Damien Goodmon, whose clear-thinking work has appeared in this newspaper for a number of months.
In less than one shaky hour last night, the newly seated City Council turned into the Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama of City Councils.
A train-wreck. A nightmare. Embarrassing.
Pity Scott Malsin. The very talented newly elected Mayor of Culver City figures to lose a lot of sleep in the next year trying to keep these directionless varmints vaguely in line.
It may not be an exact analogy. But trying to picture new City Council members Mehaul O’Leary and Christopher Armenta on the dais shortly after 7 o’clock this evening is kind of like trying to imagine your girlfriend as your wife.
She really will be on the porch, dressed to kill, at 5:30 every afternoon before you breeze through the door, flinging her adored and loving arms around you as she squeezes the last five drops of stress out of your consciousness.
I don’t think Mr. Armenta’s wife Colleen or Mr. O’Leary’s wife Susan will be throwing their arms around anybody but their hubbies tonight.
I am certain when Diane Watson, my least favorite liberal of all, was a little girl, she was different from all of her playmates, loudmouthed, ill-mannered, bossy, which, by golly, is what she grew up to be.
Besides growing insufferably brassy, the Democratic Congresswoman who is said to represent this section of Los Angeles but actually plays well at being invisible, reminds me of an old broad — she was born old — who would watch an arsonist torch a building, then dip into her cheerleading mode.
Here is a fragrant bouquet of April flowers for those critics of the School District who complain that personnel cuts too often are made from the bottom up rather than off the top.
At the height of budget-cutting season, the citizens committee advising the rejuvenated School Board has produced an imaginative recommendation concerning the District’s campus security staff:
Unload the expensive Security Director, the expensive Director’s expensive deputy and slash the office’s mysteriously bulging “operating expenses” account by about 40 percent.
As etymologists and sensible politicians long ago realized, the curious root word of the term “liberal” is “limp,” which rhymes with wimp — and we probably ought to stop there.
Liberals, the founding fathers of the moral handcuffs we call political correctness, are known for their proud inability to call an act by its true name.
Los Angeles Jews and blacks, who have not had much to do with each other since Dr. King was murdered 40 years ago, are pitted in a fascinating dispute this week that screams about a deficit of character.
Pity the poor developer, attired in oversized bib overalls, fraying flannel red shirt and clodhoppers with mismatched shoestrings, who drives his wheezing, dying, dust-drenched old Chevy into Culver City, hoping to sell an imaginative enough project to City Hall so that he can feed his large, usually hungry, family down on the farm for the next several years.
Possibly you may not recognize the profile since it did not match up with any of the stone-faced team of suits that monopolized the first couple of rows at this week’s Entrada Office Tower deliberations by the City Council.
Sadly, the lately expanding dourness of City Councilman Gary Silbiger never seems to need a rest.
Even in an intimate setting, by-invitation-only, his personal storm clouds are unrelieved.
At last night’s farewell dinner at The Culver Studios for the three departing members of the City Council, there were 18 guests, 17 of whom reported having a rollicking good time.
