It is apparent from Joan House’s incensed letter, along with additional letter writers, in the July 1, 1999, issue of The Malibu Times, that in our attempt to build a peaceful, benevolent Malibu community we’ve lost one of society’s greatest champions of justice –the old-fashioned punch in the snoot.

In American lore, never was there a kinder more suitable American than Mr. Smith, when he trekked off to Washington clad only in idealism and armed with the emblem of the underdog as he fought valiantly to expose the corruption of the entrenched governmental establishment. In “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” the idealistic freshman senator is confronted by a host of trials that test his character. Being forthright and genuine, he can see no phoniness or treachery in others. Every act of governmental insider deceit dumbfounds him. The final straw is when a photographer takes a picture, publishes it in the newspaper and all of Washington is given to believe that the fabrication told by the photo is true. How does the valiant young hero handle this particular test under fire? He slams down the newspaper in disbelief, leaves his office and searches out the sinning photographer. Without a word of explanation he lands an old-fashioned punch in the photographer’s snoot.

Now, nonviolence is a good thing if we Malibuites were dexterous enough to turn the other cheek. But in this defective world, filled as it is with untrustworthy and counterfeit letter writers who smite the truthful, turning the biblical cheek isn’t always the answer and can actually encourage deceitful behavior. Lawsuits aren’t the answer. When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of 12 people who weren’t resourceful enough to get out of jury duty. Is there nothing available between ignoring the transgression and a punch directed to the snoot? Honor, truthfulness and respect are precarious commodities. Would not evil doers and purveyors of falsehoods tread somewhat differently were they subject to the occasional punch in the snoot?

If you think this entire concept uncivilized, think of all the time, money and disgrace we Malibuites could save if we forsake the legal quagmires of seeking out the untruthful and issue a blow for the truth. Would Joan House, Mona Loo, Fay Singer and Reta Templeman have deserted their letters to the editor if they could have felt free to do the honorable thing, and delivered some phantom letter writer her just desserts — an old fashioned punch in the snoot?

Striking a blow for truthfulness,

Tom Fakehany

Do we all suffer from some strange affliction

Or is all we observe a real contradiction?

Who’s the pursuer the fox or the hound?

Is the suspect the victim or those underground?

Is celebrity in of itself a virtue?

Could laws to protect you ultimately hurt you?

Where is it going and where will it end?

Must we now use caution when we speak to a “friend”?

Is it chic to use language that’s vulgar and crass?

Do you think we’ve gone through the looking glass?

We know all the answers to solve this riddle

But we answer in whispers, we guys in the middle

Is it noble to suffer the arrows and slings?

Well take heart it’s not over, the pendulum swings!

Geraldine Forer Spagnoli

It’s after 11:30 p.m. on July 4 and I’m still hearing illegal fireworks being set off nearby. It was hard enough trying to comfort my aging dog during the legally sanctioned Independence Day displays, but the continuing percussive disturbances at this late time are unforgivable. I’ve been hearing from my neighbors for the past couple of hours. All have been concerned about the effects of the local explosive noises on their pets — both cats and dogs — and the potential damage which could be caused by fire.

I wonder, where are the sheriff’s deputies, whose resources and numbers are so prodigious while nabbing nude sun bathers (referring to recent letters to the editor), when there’s a real threat to our community from a small group of idiots who have either forgotten the fires or weren’t here when the rest of us had to live through them? Is the spark from a misguided bottle rocket or a lit cigarette tossed out the car window along one of our canyons any less dangerous than a sun bather in the buff? I’ve witnessed both. I felt no threat for my home from the nudity, but upon reporting the flammable littering, I was ignored by the Sheriff’s Department.

In no way am I taking stand in favor or against those who choose to sun bathe in the buff. Rather, I’m imploring the residents of our beautiful city who, this night, have unwisely chosen to set off illegal fireworks, to reconsider their actions before they do it the next time. The potential of loss from their misguided bravado is far greater than the personal, immediate rush they may achieve.

And, I’d like to request our local law enforcement officers to be a bit more present to “protect and serve” us from the real threats to our community.

Robert Allan Curtis

Arnold G. York/Publisher

A few nights ago, Karen and I saw “Summer of Sam,” Spike Lee’s movie about the blazing hot summer in the 1970s when a loony who called himself “Son of Sam” went around New York killing people. If you’ve ever been in New York in August when the thermometer tops 100 and the humidity is so bad your clothing sticks to your body, you begin to understand how claustrophobic it gets. The patience, the tempers, even the judgment evaporate as it gets hotter.

Normally, summertime in Malibu is pretty mellow. People go to the beach and try and put confrontation on the back burner. But this summer, if you hang around city hall, something is different and it’s beginning to look a little bit like the setting for a movie. Maybe it’s the unseasonably hot weather, maybe we’re just all getting on one another’s nerves. I don’t know, but everyone seems to be battling everyone else.

The council has continued to degenerate into continuous snipping. There was a time when that meant the three snipped at the two and vice versa. Now it seems to have expanded, and even Hasse and Keller are going at each other. The point of contention at Monday’s meeting was whether or not the staff would give its opinion before public comment or after public comment. Keller wanted to change the order, and the others objected. They squabbled and finally took a vote. Keller lost 4-1, which is beginning to look a little like what happened to him the last time he was mayor and he took to constantly arguing with his colleagues. Invariably, many of those were also 4-1 votes.

Then, our state Sen. Tom Hayden, who is getting termed out, decided to run for the Assembly seat now held by Assemblymember Sheila Kuehl, who is also termed out. Normally, a politician running for a new seat bends over backwards to make constituents happy. Well, not Tom Hayden. In his inimitable fashion, he fired off a letter to Gov. Gray Davis, making it clear that he was strongly opposed to the city keeping its baseball fields on Bluffs Park. In fact, he wants them off when the city’s lease expires in 2002. That letter, coming from the chair of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, carries clout. No one will ever accuse Hayden of pandering to us. Perhaps someone may finally decide to run against him in the Democratic primary.

We’ve also got a running battle going with the Regional Water Quality Control Board, which, I have a strong suspicion, believes that Malibu may be a major polluter of Malibu Creek and Lagoon. They want us to do some very expensive, detailed studies, and we’re very nervous that they’ve already made up their minds. We fear that they don’t think our septics work very well and that they may be looking at things like “packages plants” or even, perish the thought, “sewers.” The Legislature had a bill this year, AB 885, which would have mandated septic system standards, perhaps standards that some of us couldn’t meet, but it got sidetracked in the state Senate after passing the Assembly. However, everybody figures the bill will come back again next year, and it’s just a matter of time before some standards are imposed.

The fix of the ballfields on Bluffs Park somehow got really messed up. The city treasurer did an analysis for the city and wrote a blistering report about everything that went wrong. It sounded like a checkoff list of what not to do when contracting a job. The council and staff were contrite, almost embarrassed, about it, but somehow still in disarray. Recently, someone — perhaps the city, perhaps the contractor — off-loaded a large amount of silica sand at the ballfields for field repairs. Unfortunately, no one thought to notify the teams, or put tape around the area, or cover it with a tarp, and some young kids were seen playing in what is apparently some very dangerous stuff. The sand is very fine, sticks to the skin, can be breathed into the lungs and most definitely is not for a sandbox.

And then, to top it off, someone wants to put an overlay on parts of the 310 area code, and people are ready to kill, and the summer’s only just begun.

It promises to be a real New York-style summer.

Well, it’s trash day again and as usual, as the trash truck traverses our street, trash descends from the truck landing on the road, driveways and into the wildflower blooming lots. I do not understand why this must happen week after week. Cleaning up trash that was in the trash receptacle and now thanks to our trash collectors gets deposited back into the environment is defeating the purpose. Then we have the seagulls at the beach emptying the trash cans as soon as you walk away. I am sure there exists out there seagull proof trash cans — and if not someone out there invent one. But, this is not the biggest trash problem we have. Littering humans is by far a much greater problem, especially when the weather is good, our roads and beaches swell with the influx of visitors. Why don’t we enforce our littering laws, even just for a few months and see how quickly the littering stops when you start handing out $500 and $1000 tickets. Yes! One thousand dollars.

Have you actually comprehended those littering signs as you pass them each day in your daily travels? Think of all the revenue it would generate as well as a clean Malibu for all of us to enjoy. Let us set an example and be the first to actually enforce this law and see how fast other cities and towns follow suit. There are nothing but benefits from this course of action.

Now, let the powers that be make this happen.

Marc Johnson

It’s with great amusement and some consternation that I pick up your paper almost each week and find so much time, energy and effort by your readers devoted to saving the dolphins, whales, fish and animal life in general. None of these folks seem to have any serious concerns about water quality in our lagoon or ocean.

One only has to read the latest water study by the state to see that Malibu Pier waters again received an “F.” The myth of effluent being released by Tapia into the creek has finally been debunked. The real damage is being done from the houses and shopping centers. If you don’t believe this is true, the next time it rains, take a deep breath through you nose. That ain’t the roses that you’re smelling.

The city of Malibu was founded for essentially only one reason. This was to keep sewers out. Most residents did not want to incur the cost involved. The general line then, as now, is sewers would lead to unbridled development. Our area still developed and the ocean got worse each year. I am told that in the top 10 of polluters in this area is the building that houses City Hall. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

No one can reverse the development that has gone on in the last three decades. In addition, new draconian building laws and a micromanaging Planning Commission have not succeeded in stemming development. We need to rebuild all sanitation systems and install sewers while they are still affordable. Don’t let the “founding fathers” of this city talk you out of this a second time. Put your energy and monies into cleaning up the waters. The kids need a clean ocean to play in. It’s the Malibu lifestyle.

Art Newman

“Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly” and “I Must Be Mr. Boswell”

By Dany Margolies/Associate Editor

Dressed for excess

On the very surface, “Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly” is five men in drag.

For those willing to look, listen and think, however, this musical revue is a world populated by the cheeriest of messengers conveying the weightiest of messages. It satirizes — and satyrizes — politics, normalcy, the straight world, the gay world and the world in which it all comes together — the theater.

“Conceived by” Howard Crabtree and Mark Waldrop, with sketches and lyrics by Waldrop, music by Dick Gallagher and costumes by Crabtree, the show follows Crabtree as he tries for a career in the theater — primarily as a costumer.

We meet Crabtree (Christopher Carothers) as he is being reprimanded by his high school teacher/counselor, Miss Roundhole (David Pevsner). Crabtree is dressed as his idea of “Dream Curly,” the dancing version of the lead role in “Oklahoma.” She of no imagination wears a frumpy flowered dress that surrounds her amorphous breasts, with a gray topknot, gray sweater and sagging nylons.

When Crabtree’s imagination triumphs by play’s end, he’s dressed once again as Curly, but in the professional quality costume he’s fought to create.

Those costumes, and the many in between, come from a child’s imagination and an adult’s skill. Headdresses look like confection, including sugary 18th century wigs and cotton-candy clown hair. An underwater mermaid’s hair floats upward, until the grumpy impersonator (Loren Freeman) steps out of the suspended tresses. It may be a while, however, until we can look at hot pink again.

The songs (yes, people like songs to go with the costumes) range from political satire to plain punny. Jim J. Bullock sings a torch song trilogy — longing for Newt, Strom and Rush and the best they have to offer (they’re short songs). Pevsner and Blake Hammond sing and dance the Vaudevillian “Light in the Loafers,” with tiny lightbulbs on their shoes choreographed to twinkle timely.

The casting invites the audience to be open-minded and pleasantly surprised. Despite his television persona, Bullock sings with intelligence and craft. Despite his deceptive heft, Hammond moves as lightly as Astaire.

It is Freeman, however, who seems to know, whichever role he is playing, that the only place to go when one is so far “over the top” is directly to the heart.

Choreographer Keith Cromwell makes a laugh-a-step pastiche out of Broadway biggest clichs. Cheery lighting is by Paulie Jenkins.

“Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly” plays the Coronet Theatre, 366 N. La Cienega. Tel. 310.657.7377.

Something to speak of

In 18th century England, people put their intellect into English. With no technology to speak of, the brilliant minds of the day played with language — writing, speaking, sharing ideas, even imagining the technology that would wait for our century.

One such mind belonged to Samuel Johnson, England’s lexicographer, the man who compiled one of the great English language dictionaries (his definition of lexicographer included the description, “a harmless drudge”). Another of those minds belonged to James Boswell, who decided it was his purpose in life to be “assiduous in collecting Dr. Johnson’s wisdom and wit,” writing what has come to be known as “the most celebrated biography in the English language.”

“I Must Be Mr. Boswell,” the one-man show written and performed by Kenneth Tigar with direction by Lawrence Osgood, playing at the Odyssey Theatre, leaves its audience feeling revitalized, longing for the past and hopeful for the future.

The play follows Boswell for a day. Boswell awakens with a hangover, breakfasts, dresses and readies to attend Johnson’s funeral at Westminster Abbey, while reminiscing about his time spent in debate with Johnson and the intelligentsia of the day. In Act II, he returns from the service, mourning the anticipated decline of ideas.

Boswell suffered from depression. He also suffered from the concern that he was not great. “But I derive an enthusiasm for great men,” he admits. So he resigns himself to his role in life: “I must be Mr. Boswell — no other.”

Boswell was wrong about his assessment of art, however. “Words cannot describe our feelings,” he claims. “The finer points are lost, like the radiance of light can’t be painted.” Those who master writing and painting must do exactly that.

As a writer, Tigar provides a tidy structure, wonderful anecdotes and enough interest to make the telling theatrically suspenseful.

He also neatly weaves arguments pro and con on the issues of Boswell’s day — taxation, ethnic cleansing and finding cures for sexually transmitted diseases.

As an actor, Tigar makes Boswell engaging, confiding and inspiring. Tigar also gives the people in Boswell’s life (whom Boswell mimics for us) ample physicality and personality.

Costumes by Elly van Horne include night wear, undergarments, footwear, breeches, vest and jacket, made with the apparent care and attention to detail that Johnson gave each definition in his dictionary. The furnishings, however, are too modern, and Tigar’s work deserves a better set than that borrowed from the concurrent production at the theater.

“I Must Be Mr. Boswell” runs Sundays, 2 p.m., and Mondays, 8 p.m., through July 4, at Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. (north of Olympic), West Los Angeles. Tel. 310.477.2055.