Five months and four days after taking her seat as the much-welcomed, much-needed Superintendent of the School District, Dr. Myrna Cote will get her first hot-breath taste of Culver City school politics tonight.
Like war, School Board meetings are loosely scripted.
Like war, this School Board meeting probably will get muddy before it is over. Some overheated parents will say aloud what they should have kept to themselves.
[Editor’s Note: City Manager Jerry Fulwood announced this afternoon that the most closely watched subject during this week’s budget hearings — the City Council’s relationship with three high-profile groups — will be heard on Friday at 6 in Council Chambers instead of Tuesday night.]
Wednesday afternoon’s regularly scheduled prayer meeting has been canceled.
Among the significant opinion-holders in Culver City on my mind this afternoon are Jerry Fulwood, Tom Supple, Jay Handal, Carol Gross and Gary Silbiger. Here is why.
The Gary Silbiger Marching and Chowder Society should rest up this weekend.
Each member of the chorus will need to be in full voice to protest on Tuesday night at 6 oclock in Council Chambers. The City Councilmans fan club is Culver Citys most loyal and best organized group of liberal partisans.
During the last two years of warring in the Middle East, the financially dieting Los Angeles Times has hired a steadily expanding staff of food-for-work Arabs to supplant staff reporters the newspaper is bringing home or dropping.
For the Times, this has served two worthy purposes it saves money while maintaining the appearance of on-scene coverage.
In fact, the Arab-written stories, qualitatively, have been indistinguishable from the dispatches the Timess homegrown boys and girls used to produce.
This day began extraordinarily slowly. I spent the first three hours with Culver Citys favorite cartographer.
Risk averse, I did not want to imperil the chances of Culver Citys magic state senator now you see him, now you dont getting lost on Saturday.
Mapping My Strategy
Perspiringly clutching the latest edition of Map of Culver City for Dummies in my right hand, I plan to entreat the redoubtable Mark Ridley-Thomas into participating heaven forbid in Saturday afternoons second annual Artwalk.
I am less optimistic about luring the Gentleman with Two Names inside Culver City than I am about my second ex-wife avoiding a mental hospital.
The only bad news on my fathers 92nd birthday this weekend came from my wife, the nurse practitioner. She said that just 6 percent of ones genetics for longevity is attributable to his parents.
Living a long life, Diane explained, is more closely related to nutrition and external stressors.
History, though, is on my side if genetics is not.
Pops parents lived into their mid-80s, and all three of his sisters are chugging along in their 80s.
We bow deeply and tip our fedora this afternoon to Peter Messinger.
The laser-focused, hard-driving owner of The Aquarium easily made the best catch at Tuesday nights marginally civil meeting of the Citizens Advisory Committee on the redevelopment of South Sepulveda Boulevard.
In Quest of the Truth
Did he catch the much-talked-about developer in a game of elasticity with the truth?
Maybe.
We shall shortly see.
If Culver Citys state senator, Mark Ridley-Thomas, were slightly less obsessed with the politics of race he might mature into an effective legislator.
He practices black all of the time.
His attention to his race appears to be not only the main motivation but the single driving force of his political career.
The state senator for Culver City gives good speeches, especially for new presidents of community colleges.
One of the disgusting scenes in Los Angeles yesterday was an immorally contrived stunt at UCLA, the type that morally liberated liberals love to pull.
A publicity-grubbing do-gooder alerted his friends in the press that he was bussing three dozen uneducated, bought-and-paid-for victims from a housing complex to the UCLA business school.
As these words are being written, El Loco, Mayor William Shakespeare Villaraigosa, this afternoon is furiously trying to drive Los Angeles one mile closer to Third World status.
To the exasperation of grownups in the room, Mayor (I Love Me) Villaraigosa constantly prefers to act like a bad boy from the barrio.
You can dress him up like a respectable person, but appearance not performance is the best you can hope for.
Does lipstick on a pig sound familiar?
