Clowns Abound In Our Town

Back to the business at hand after a day of fun yesterday. Did I have you going with my little April Fool's Day spoof?

As I perused the agenda for the City Council meeting Tuesday, April 3rd, I noticed that buried way down at the end of the Consent Calendar at item number 21 is the proposal for new City Council Policy #000-13, "Dais Seating For City Council". The policy states: "Authority is hereby delegated to the Mayor to assign seats at the dais."

The procedure for such decisions is prescribed as follows:

"1. Immediately following the meeting at which the declaration of the municipal election results is made and the City Council has chosen one of its members as Mayor, the newly selected Mayor shall solicit input from the remaining Council Members as to seating preferences.

2. Prior to the next regular City Council meeting, the Mayor shall provide the City Council with the new seating arrangements."

What a colossal waste of time and money! All this expenditure of staff time to simply satisfy a petulant petty tyrant on a power trip! And, you'll notice that there is no restriction in this policy for a particularly abusive mayor to make the council swap seats any old time he wants.

Speaking of petulant petty tyrants, our old pal, The-Brain-That-Ate-Costa-Mesa, on his "little newsletter", the CM Press, had an interesting weekend skulking around our city, looking for violators of whatever law he had in mind at the time. In two separate postings Saturday he did his best "Ace Reporter" impression as he cruised the area of The Farm Sports Complex, looking for illegal aliens making their way to an event at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in which representatives of the Mexican Consulate were supposed to be distributing Mexican Matricula Consular identification cards. This "heinous act" had our old buddy all in a tizzy.

Based on his reports, I have this image of him ducking from tree to tree, counting heads as they came and went from the church. What a schmuck! Of course, he also reported that a flock of Minutemen vigilantes and other "concerned citizens" were on hand to "peacefully" demonstrate against these meetings. A separate report on this subject indicated that the event was poorly attended and ended early.

Coincidentally, I also read that a funeral service was being conducted simultaneously at that same church for a woman named Bunny Richards, who apparently was famous as a "visiting clown", performing at any number of events over many years. News reports and photos showed several attendees attired in their clown costumes to pay homage to Ms. Richards. I'm sorry, but I just couldn't help thinking how absolutely appropriate it was that our old pal from the CM Press and those other Minutemen clowns were lurking around the premises while clowns in costume made their way to the service. I found myself wondering if any of those demonstrators had even the slightest twinge of remorse for demonstrating outside a church during the funeral service. I suspect not.