It has been a wonderful year and it’s past time for our Annual Family Christmas Newsletter and I know you are all wondering why it is so late, but we were tied up in court the last few weeks defending “man’s best friend” against some irrational dog haters. They’re all worked up because our two pit bulls supposedly killed 15 of their chickens in an “unprovoked attack.” I call 15 against two an “unfair fight” and everyone in the neighborhood knows what provocative bullies their roosters are. Our dogs, “Genghis Khan” and “General Tojo,” have not been in any trouble since they ate the mayor’s horse over a year ago.

We had a wonderful family gathering at Christmas as each of our boys brought a friend home with him. Chris’s friend “Knuckles” McGinley was out on parole, Bourke’s friend “Skip” Palumbo was out, dodging an all-points bulletin. Kent’s closest friend, an accomplished counterfeiter, was also here with his laptop printer. You talk about a “prosperous New Year” and “money to burn!” I put cash down on a new beach house. My boys’ buddies lead interesting lives and they are home-loving kids — they visited about 76 homes this past year! (Their case comes up in May.) Our neighbor’s daughter is a real go-getter. She just graduated from the California Women’s Correctional Facility and the dean there told me she has all the prerequisites to get into San Quentin.

Nancy and I have had a great year with only minor injuries from sail planing and sky diving. In both cases the Lord was with us and we landed on soft swampy ground in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Nancy only broke two of her legs and I was uninjured except that my right foot is now under my left armpit, and I shall be the star of a surgical procedure at the UCLA Medical School Arena, with the entire student body in compulsory attendance. We will be featured on an upcoming episode of Discovery Channel’s new series entitled “Bloody but Unbowed.”

We continue to be active in the community, as evidenced by Nancy’s election as president of the Malibu Society for the Preservation of Landslides. They disabled four bulldozers, 11 skiploaders and 16 dump trucks last year. My election as adjutant of the Malibu Mobile Militia is the high point of my life. I am proud to say I have inspired this group with some new nicknames like the “3M’s” or the “Hit and Run Boys” and some new slogans like “We never saw a gun we didn’t like or a fed we didn’t hate” and “Today Malibu, tomorrow Peoria.” Local Democrat and Republican leaders say I’m the best thing that has happened to them. Our militia group was asked by the Chamber of Commerce to help clear the trash from the local beaches and we sure did. We evacuated 9,500 tourists at gunpoint and posted 100 signs reading “Locals Only.”

Haven’t had a word of thanks from the Chamber, but received a nice formal invitation to meet with some big shots from the L.A. County sheriff, fire and lifeguard services. We feel so blessed this year. Our health is fine except for Nancy’s elephantiasis and my leprosy, but it was a fun safari. Will write again next year if I still have a hand.

Bill Dowey

One issue here in Malibu is whether Hollywood types get preferential treatment compared to your average resident. Every builder here has to deal with a restrictive set of rules designed to prevent turning Malibu into Laguna Beach. It’s nice that Streisand, Inc. maintains a “sanctuary” in Malibu. This should not insulate her from the reasonable request — among others — that her alleged $5,000.00 per month watering bill does not continue to undermine the beach bluff on which her massive compound is perched. Remember the San Diego woman killed this week by a collapsing ocean cliff? This is what environmental review is supposed to prevent. And please, don’t paint the extremely wealthy Miss Streisand as some kind of a victim, regardless of her humble beginnings. Consider her former neighbors where her old home now hosts near continual weddings, parties and fund-raisers. The traffic and noise they experience are relentless. As I hear it, the design of the proposed new structure has rooms for gift wrapping, media screenings, research and entertaining, yet only has two very small “bedrooms” designed with no closets and no view. It’s not a home, it’s a convention center.

Everyone fortunate enough to live here has worked their butts off for the privilege, generally without the benefit of a remarkable creative gift like she has. Democracy says we all have to play by the same rules.

Marshall Thompson

In Malibu they came first for the sports fields, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a sportsman. Then they came for the playhouses, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a child. Then they came for the unpermitted structures, and I didn’t speak up because I thought they were grandfathered. Then they came for the old timers, and I didn’t speak up because I was a newcomer. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

“Malibu Citizens”

None of the experts can seem to agree

If it’s influenza type A or influenza type B

I had thought of the shots and then I forgot it

But whichever the strain, I know that I’ve got it!

My eyes are all red and my nose is all runny

My throat is on fire, I’ve cramps in my tummy

My stomach is queasy, my head’s in a fog

The hell with the type, I’m sick as a dog

You tell me that soon I’ll be on the mend

So I’m hanging in loose, but it’s at the wrong end

Then you boldly proclaim that it’s only the flu

Well you ought to know, since I caught it from you!

Geraldine Forer Spagnoli

In 1993, I donated my property in Ramirez Canyon to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy because they had an excellent reputation in protecting the environment and were seen as excellent stewards of the habitat of the Santa Monica Mountains.

It was my understanding that the property I donated would be used for environmental education and research. The only public purpose that I was aware of was the intention to create a small conference center for scientists, academics and environmentalists.

From the start, when I donated my land, I was concerned for my neighbors, the neighborhood and the traffic situation. Accordingly, I specifically had the following language inserted in the Memorandum of Understanding signed by both parties: “Donor’s intent in making this gift is to provide a location and facilities for the establishment of the Streisand Center for Conservancy Studies (“Center”). Donee and its affiliated nonprofit, the Mountains Conservancy Foundation, will plan and operate the Center as a place for advanced academic and applied studies directed towards solution of the most pressing conservation and natural ecosystem management problems, and will carefully evaluate all relevant issues related to its use, including vehicular access and impact on the neighboring community.” It recently has come to my attention that the conservancy has petitioned the California Coastal Commission to use sections of the property as a public park. I join with the concerns of my former neighbors that the land will now no longer be used for its original intent.

Since the property was donated in 1993, the conservancy has decided to set up an administrative office on the property and has conducted events to help defray the costs of administration and upkeep of the property. My former neighbors have contacted me in the past to keep me apprised of their feelings and points of view. I have had my staff contact the conservancy and inquire about the issues at hand. However, while the center has historically carried my name, I have had no control over its ongoing activities and operations since the time the land was donated. In addition, I have requested and the conservancy has agreed that the center will no longer carry my name.

In summary, I am not in agreement with the proposed use of the land, my name will no longer be affiliated with the property, and I ask you to give every consideration to the concerns of my neighbors and the community that are before you today.

Barbra Streisand

“Sakina’s Restaurant” and “Over the River and Through the Woods”

The fun of “Sakina’s Restaurant” is watching its writer and performer Aasif Mandvi create its many characters. The poignancy of the play is in Mandvi’s lyrical telling of the American immigrant experience, melded with brief myths of India.

This one-man, nearly two-hour play, directed and developed by Kim Hughes, in production at the Odyssey Theatre, follows an ebullient young man named Azgi, who leaves his home in India to pursue a “better life,” starting as a waiter at Sakina’s Restaurant in downtown Manhattan.

Mandvi mimes, he dances, he has an eye and ear for characters — young or old, male or female. He plunges heart and head into the immediately recognizable family members of Sakina’s.

The patriarch Hakim tries to hold his family together by tradition while pleasing his American customers; Mandvi creates him with his head perpetually cocked to the left, as if the telephone were permanently clamped to his ear.

Hakim’s wife, Farrida, sacrificed body and soul to fulfill Hakim’s American dream; Mandvi creates her with a light voice, “feminine” hand gestures and a wayward scarf that seems to have a life of its own.

Mandvi expertly captures the energy, stance and speech cadences of the 10-year-old son. He tugs at the hem of daughter Sakina’s short knit dress as he creates this very Americanized bride-to-be with a thick New York accent.

And no story of an Indian restaurant would be complete without a customer — an American customer — who demands extra spicy food, No. 5 on the restaurant’s scale. “Number five is not a real thing you can eat,” Azgi frantically pleads with him, “even in India.”

As the play begins, Azgi’s mother presses a pebble into his hand and asks him to recall the story of the stone and the river. He can’t recall it. But as the play ends, he remembers the story of a boy who received a beautiful stone but threw it in the river to make it a diamond. It floated downstream and became deposited at the stream’s end with countless other pebbles. The boy spent his days searching for it but gave up when he realized he couldn’t find it because he never really knew what it looked like.

Mandvi has looked at each pebble, memorized and then re-enacted each one, showing us we are all the same and yet different enough to warrant a moment of individual attention.

“Sakina’s Restaurant,” plays Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., matinees Feb. 13 and 27 only, through March 5, at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Tel. 477.2055.

“Over the River and Through the Woods”

There are a sweetness and a familiarity about “Over the River and Through the Woods,” by playwright Joe DiPietro, and a reminder that there is nothing like family — for better or worse.

In one charming scene, the family plays the board game Trivial Pursuit. Grandson Nick plays strictly to win, precisely following the rules and testing his mental mettle. His four grandparents play it as a springboard for conversation, a chance for human interaction.

At the newly refurbished and reopened El Portal Center for the Arts, the production shows how plays can share this dichotomy; some are designed to hone opinions or probe emotions, others seem created for a warm and fuzzy evening out.

In this case, the production favors the grandparents’ modality and the warm fuzzies.

Grandson Nick lives in New York. His parents and sister fled to the far corners of the country, leaving him with four doting grandparents, not coincidentally Italians all. As the play begins, he has something to announce to the four: He has been offered a promotion and transfer to Seattle — the fourth corner of the country.

The play asks Nick, and of course the audience, to decide whether the grandparents are selfishly manipulating him into staying or whether they have a legitimate and ancient belief that families must stay together.

Directed by Asaad Kelada, the play has a pleasing cohesiveness. But each character is a little grating, and while they must love one another because they are family, the audience has no such constraint.

Stuart Fratkin plays Nick with a pleasant balance between naturalness and manic frustration. Joseph Campanella, Joseph Cardinale, Carol Lawrence and Erica Yohn are his grandparents. Shannon O’Hurley plays a “visitor” to their home.

Cardinale delivers a meaty monologue, about his childhood and his later return to the old country, that stands above the rest. Lawrence has an entrancing presence and is a wonderful casting choice in lieu of the traditional, mortadella-shaped Italian grandma.

The theater is warm and inviting, with good sight lines. But opening night had its share of missed light cues and muffed lines, and the play was too often disrupted by a banging sound from backstage — mishaps that should have been corrected after previews.

A slight echo from the theater’s acoustics spoiled some of the play’s intimacy and may be responsible for the muffling of some of Campanella’s delivery.

“Over the River and Through the Woods” plays through Feb. 6, Tuesdays through Sundays, plus weekend matinees, at El Portal Center for the Arts, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. $35/$40/$42. Telecharge: 800.233.3123. Information: 818.508.4200.

I spent the better part of last week sitting through meetings where citizens were interacting with their government. Actually, interacting is not really the appropriate word. It was more like the government was acting and the citizens were reacting in horror and fear as a government seemed to be trying to bowl them over.

The first was the California Coastal Commission meeting in Santa Monica, where the commission was tackling the issue of the Streisand Center. Just what was it going to let the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy do with that cluster of buildings, located deep in the rear of Ramirez Canyon and accessible only via a private road through a very small, narrow, wooded canyon?

Originally, when it was donated, it was to be used as an environmental think tank for contemplative examination of environmental issues by environmental scholars.

As often happens with these large donated properties, it turned out to be a big white elephant, expensive to maintain, requiring a large staff and generating enormous water bills.

The conservancy decided to solve this financial problem by turning the place into a commercial event facility for weddings, bar mitzvahs, movie shoots and conferences. The canyon residents and the city went ballistic.

After much pushing and prodding, the Coastal Commission finally got the conservancy to file for a coastal permit. In the fall, the Coastal Commission staff, after reviewing the proposal, recommended it be denied. The conservancy said, “OK, we’ll try again,” and pulled the application back to modify it. A short time later, the conservancy returned, not with a revised project that was smaller and more environmentally sensitive than everyone had expected but with a substantially larger project. This time, the Coastal Commission staff looked it over and essentially said, “It looks fine to us,” and we more cynical observers immediately suspected the fix was in. There is no question in my mind if a private party had come in with anywhere near this kind of proposal to put in a commercial facility, the Coastal Commission staff would have just laughed at them.

Because of all the opposition and a parade of witnesses — hell, even Streisand told them to take her name off the center — the Coastal Commission did what bureaucracies do with a hot potato. They stalled the decision until a later date.

Make no mistake about it. This conservancy application is a show of pure political power. Joe Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy and a major environmental player in Southern California, is out to get what he wants and to show he has the muscle to make it happen.

My view is this is such a profoundly inappropriate use for that land, it’s not even a close call. The Coastal Commission ought to turn this down cold and send it back to the drawing board because if they don’t, it will be a pretty clear indication the Coastal Commission “talks the talk” but when up against somebody with some clout it doesn’t have the nerve to “walk the walk.” I hope I’m wrong, but it still feels like this deal is wired for the Coastal Commission to cave in.

On the local scene, there is another conflict brewing between government and the local citizens. This time, the government is the city of Malibu, which is flexing its muscles. The citizens, many from Point Dume and Malibu Park, are rapidly organizing to fight what they see as a very frightening local development. It’s called “code enforcement,” the process by which the government sees we obey the laws they pass.

We’ve got a new code enforcement officer, Gail Sumpter, and a number of citizens are very unhappy with her for what they feel is a very heavy-handed code enforcement philosophy. In all fairness to Sumpter, she didn’t make the rules, she inherited them when she got the job, but she unfortunately is the person on the firing line trying to enforce some very unpopular restrictions put on by our council. For example, there are unpermitted structure like barns and guest houses all over Point Dume and Malibu Park. Many have been there for years if not decades. We were told over and over again by a succession of political candidates and council members not to worry about the new zoning because we were “grandfathered in.” It turns out “grandfathering” is something quite different than we thought it was. You are grandfathered if what’s there was permissible at the time it was built, which means the current owner has to know when it was built and what the county codes were at the time and be able to prove it. It takes money to prove it. And if it turns out the owner is wrong, our council in its infinite wisdom has turned all these building violations into criminal offenses (meaning fines and jail types of criminal offenses). The message I took away from that meeting is people are scared.

I wish I could reassure you and say I had talked to Gail Sumpter, and she had been able to reassure me the enforcement was fair and even handed and the horror stories I heard were just that, horror stories. I did call her, and I did try to talk to her, but the problem is she’s not allowed to talk to me because of the city’s “employee no speak” policy, which says any communication with the press has to go through the department head or city manager.

This matter is going to the council Monday, when a group of citizens will be there to plead its case. If you have a problem with the “code enforcement” people, or have heard from the city prosecutor, or think you might be next, I suggest you show up at the council meeting and have your say during public comment. It’s time they stopped running us and we started running them. And if you don’t like what they have to say, remember it when you go to the ballot box in April.