Here is a very short test.

Question No. 1:Do you always tell the truth? Answer yes or no.

Question No. 2: Are you careful not to hurt the feelings of others? Answer yes or no.

End of test.

If you have answered yes to both questions, and if you permit some stretching of the definition, you have just created an oxymoron. Two contradictory statements. Don’t believe me? Try this on for size. “Honey, does this dress make me look too fat?”

Guys will tell you that the answer to that questions is always no. Always! (However, there are times when you might suggest she wear something more flowing, less formal, more comfortable.)

Is this honesty at work or is it survival?

Of course I always tell the truth, but I’m not stupid, either. Besides, telling little white lies is not really lying, it’s a manifestation of caring. Isn’t it?

We tend to go through life as experts in telling little white lies instead of dealing honestly with each other and telling the truth at all times. There, an oxymoron I can live with!

Ray Singer

Was it seven or eight years ago? I do not recall.

A young man and his girlfriend drove up into the hills of Malibu. They walked awhile and upon returning to their car they came upon a female Malamute puppy. They opened the car door, the puppy jumped in and the couple drove off, claiming the dog as theirs.

I had moved to Northern California, but once a year I drove down to Los Angeles. My first time back, I was invited for coffee to the family who had “dognapped” the Malamute. Seeing the abuse this dog was subjected to, I immediately asked for it as a gift or a purchase. The answer was “no.” Every year thereafter I visited the family to see about the dog and on my third visit luck was with me as I was allowed to take the dog for a month.

I left at five the next morning with the Malamute in my car. I gave her a new name and swore to her that she would never go back. The thought of the abuse I had seen still nauseates me so that I cannot describe it here.

We have nine acres fenced — plenty of room for dogs to run. The Malamute, who had been spayed while with that family, made friends quickly with my neutered Spaniel.

We invited breeders and a trainer to look over the Malamute and assess her. When they saw the result of the abuse, they refused payment, warning us that it would be a difficult task to bring our beloved KT back to being a dog again. The veterinarian confirmed this and suggested we give it a try for 18 months.

It was six months before she even lifted her tail up over her back, but we were encouraged. She sat every day all day with her nose pointed into a corner and would not move. It was nine more months before she socialized with us and played with the Spaniel. She is now an affectionate, intelligent, playful and happy dog. She will never be able to run well, since her back legs suffered from her being chained so many years. She can run some and we are glad for that.

I hope the original owners of the Malamute puppy will see this article or if friends do, they will tell them. I thank The Malibu Times most sincerely for printing this and bringing some belated comfort to the original owner of that beautiful puppy.

Elizabeth Binstock

Come with the family for a day at the beach

Only to get stuck on the deadened mass of cars on the highway.

Grow increasingly worried

By the sight of endless taillights,

And a new sign every 50 feet, claiming:

One land ahead

Expect delays

Road construction next two miles

Beware of falling rocks.

Curse El Nino under your breath

As your children become restless in the back seat, squawking

Geez Dad, where are you taking us? Out of the country?

Realize you wasted your hard earned money on yesterday’s carwash

When only 24 hours later,

Your black 4 Runner wears a thick suit of dust on its once clean paint job.

Finally push the speedometer above 10 mph,

As you pass a massive conglomeration of landslide, barriers, rubble

And smiling Caltrans workers.

Stop first in town

When your wife insists the need for Starbucks,

And try to look like you belong in the crowd of

Shaved heads,

Tattooed arms

Pierced tongues

And scantily clothed bodies

Of the city s youth.

Sip your grande decaf nonfat no foam extra hot hazelnut latte,

And wonder exactly what it is you paid $3.95 for.

Be persuaded, once again by your wife

To look through the mystic, new age shops,

Smelling strongly of incense,

Magickal ambiance set by soft music and wind chimes.

Return to your car after purchasing an overpriced necklace

For your born again hippie sister back in ‘Frisco.

Finally arrive at Zuma

Squinting into clean, smogless sunlight.

Delight at the massage of pure hot hand on your weary feet.

Relax on your beach towel

With a book and a soda.

Listen to your children

laughing and screaming with delectation

At the foamy fingers of salt water

Licking their dancing toes.

Notice the light of contentment

In your wife’s smiling eyes as she rubs sunscreen on your back

And tells you what a great husband you are

And how much she loves you.

Realize:

It’s worth it.

Tiffany Betts

“This community needs expression,” says Kathleen Saporito (fka Mazzola). “They don’t want to leave here to find it.” So the actor/director/writer is jelling plans to start a theater repertory company, meanwhile teaching adults’ and children’s acting classes locally and seeking independent financing for her newest screenplay.

“I lived here a few months before I realized it’s short of a theater — of a repertory company,” says Saporito.

There’s room for her vision and that of Charles Marowitz and his Malibu Stage Co., she feels. “I love the classics and traditional theater,” she says, “but I’m really looking for new talent.” She is actively seeking producers, writers, directors and actors to build a repertory company. Submissions are open through September. She hopes to select company members by mid-November, commence rehearsals in January and open the productions beginning in March.

“I don’t want it to be experimental or avant-garde because I want people to understand it. But I want it to be new,” she says. “I want to keep it simple, not in its concept but in its presentation.”

Having directed in all techniques, she says, the most exciting theater comes from that which makes the actor vulnerable and unedited.

“I’ve studied a great deal and taken from the masters,” she says, having studied acting on a full scholarship at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, as well as the Meisner method in New York. “And I try to get the actors to be ‘in the moment.’ I don’t take that lightly because the hardest thing for an actor to do is be in the moment.” To Saporito, that oft-used theater phrase means “being open, having your instrument open, and responsive, and reacting to what you see and feel.”

It does not always happen. “A lot of people are lazy,” she says. “Or maybe it’s frightening to be that close to the moment. The homework is different from being in the work. I don’t want to see the entire theater process. I want to see you on the stage.”

One of her screenplays, “an 18th century baroque musical fantasy comedy drama,” is currently in the hands of a potential producer. She plans a staged reading in September, which Francis Ford Coppola and Garry Marshall may attend. “They know enough about my work to come see it,” she says.

Saporito undertook directorial internships in television with Stephen Cannell Productions, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. “I didn’t want to do TV because the pacing was too quick,” she says. “You really have to be a master technician — although I am one — and I wanted to get into the work. The authors I work with always tell me they didn’t know their characters were that deep.”

She teaches acting classes at the Malibu Community Center on Point Dume, for children ages 8 and up (see sidebar) and adults. “With the children,” she says, “I inspire them to use their imaginations. One of the mothers said they never get to think like this. They’re inundated with computers. Imagination is a lost art.” No sooner does she drive into the community center’s parking lot than a child is running towards Saporito’s car to hug her through the open car window.

Saporito feels her success is close by. “I’m just ready for it,” she says. “I’m embracing my art, my expression. I want to encourage the same in other artists.”

The Young and the Rested

Ten girls gather on the stage of the Point Dume Elementary School for their weekly acting class with Kathleen Saporito. She starts them on a relaxation exercise, and they lie on their pillows or rolled-up sweatshirts. She asks them to imagine themselves in a safe, beautiful place. She starts describing an island. “Don’t look at me,” she says gently to the few who want to maintain eye contact. She asks them to imagine the most beautiful color blue.

Their active little bodies begin to quiet, when a newcomer arrives. All rise to check him out, a very handsome, very young male addition to the class.

Saporito quietly continues: “You can do anything you want on this island. I want you to imagine who you are on this island.”

So begins the rudimentary, and essential, basis of good acting — learning how to prepare a character. But for the children, it’s a chance to exercise both logic and imagination.

“Tell me who you are,” urges Saporito. “Do you want to tell me about your family? What do you do on the island? What do you eat?” She begins to ask thought-provoking questions, as good as those of an attorney on cross-examination. One child eats steamed vegetables on the island. “OK, do they have steamers there?” she asks. “Is it a modern island?” One child eats watermelons. “OK, how do you open the watermelon?” “We crack it open,” the actor says. “Great, Sweetie!” Saporito responds.

The actors sing “Happy Birthday” under imagined circumstances. “Sing it to someone you love,” she coaxes. “Were you embarrassed? What were you embarrassed about? How would you sing it to someone very weak in the hospital?” The actor can’t quite decide. “We have to decide,” says Saporito delicately. “We make choices.”

Next, the students catch a ball, at first real, then imagined. “Remember how it feels on your hands.”

Finally, the class breaks into groups for improvisation. One takes place in a cave. “I’m claustrophobic,” says an actor. Saporito is quickly delighted. “Can you use that?” she asks.

What a great piece of journalistic “spinmaking” has appeared in our local newspapers! And what great timing, the week before the yearly Malibu Art Festival, which brings thousands of tourists and spenders to our community.

Do Malibu citizens really look that stupid? Are we, who travel our lone highway every day, going to believe His Supreme Public Works Highness and Director John Clement, who has declared that the delays on PCH are five to seven minutes in the morning and up to 15 minutes in the afternoons? Get real, John. At what times are you traveling? Between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.? In the real world, delays between 30 minutes to one hour during morning and afternoon rush hours are more likely. Please tell me, Mr. Clement, how do you squish 40 minutes into 15 (your reported maximum delay) when traffic is backed up, bumper to bumper, between Topanga Canyon and Las Flores?

And since when are our drivers taking this “situation” in stride? Take a poll and I think you’ll find Malibuites attitudes bending towards “increasingly hostile road rage.” This situation isn’t fun. We can’t travel in and out of Malibu on weekends to visit family, friends or attractions on the Westside. And please don’t insult us by telling us how wonderful our alternative routes are working. Have you noticed the Ventura Freeway closely resembles a parking lot during rush hours and all day on Saturdays and Sundays? This is a good alternative? Not.

One possible solution would be for Public Works to find some way to make room for three traffic lanes which could be adjusted to two lanes going into Santa Monica during the morning commute with one lane coming into Malibu, and switch the lane configuration with traffic cones to two lanes going back into Malibu after 3 p.m. and one lane going into Santa Monica. But this might take one or two of your diligent workers off the job for 15-20 minutes a day moving cones. Perhaps that’s too big a sacrifice for our convenience.

I, for one, am not happy with your new “temporary” design for PCH.

Linda Caplan

This letter was addressed to the Surfside News with a copy to The Malibu Times

Please refer to your July 16, 1998, article regarding the City Council meeting on July 13 and City Attorney Christi Hogin’s request (which she had withdrawn prior to the meeting), in her role as the city’s prosecutor in criminal matters (as distinguished from her civil role), to the City Council for authorization to employ an “Outside Attorney to investigate the alleged Municipal Code (Election Law) Violations,” a misdemeanor under the law. The complaint alleging the violations was filed by former Councilperson Jennings before the election and not after he had lost it. Space limitations dictate that I address only a limited number of the statements and allegations in your article. My failure to comment on many other statements and allegations made by you is not to be construed as an acknowledgment that I believe they are factual or accurate.

Preliminarily, I note that you have labeled me as a “Jennings activist” which in the context of your letter is apparently calculated to question my objectivity. As you know, I have in the past also supported Walt Keller and many other successful (and unsuccessful) council candidates. However, my support for a candidate did not constitute a pledge of allegiance to and blind support for such candidate on every issue regardless of his/her stance nor has it deterred me from opposing his/her policies if I think they are wrong and not in the best interests of all the people of Malibu. If labeling is appropriate, shouldn’t you have labeled all of the speakers at the July 13 council meeting, who engaged in a frenzy of Hogin bashing? Weren’t they all Keller and/or Van Horn and/or Haase “activists” and/or contributors to (“activists”?) the “Road Worriers,” the organization reportedly accused of violating the campaign laws?

As to the remarks you attributed to Frank Angel, who, if I recall correctly, acknowledged a modest contribution to the “Road Worriers” and for whom I have a high regard as an environmental lawyer, that he “challenged the wonderland of the bizarre secret prosecutoral system set up here,” (apparently by Ms. Hogin because she refused to publicly disclose any information about the matter at this time), his colorful rhetoric and personal attacks on Ms. Hogin and her motives are reminiscent of the traditional ploy by trial lawyers to divert attention away from the absence of factual and legal support for their positions.

Since the July 13 meeting, I have received further information from several expert sources regarding the law and procedure followed by prosecutors in matters of this nature, which completely supports Ms. Hogin’s position, as mandated by the California Rules of Professional Conduct, that a prosecutor does not and should not publicly disclose to the accused parties, or anyone else, any information about a case under investigation, until such time as the prosecutor has completed his/her investigation and files some form of a formal accusation which has not occurred in this matter. To do otherwise, as one expert put it, could result “in a lot of dead potential witnesses, the disappearance of evidence, the tailoring of testimony and the possible detriment to the reputation of the accused parties if the prosecutor decided not to pursue the case.”

Frankly, after listening to the orchestrated personal attacks on Ms. Hogin by the Keller, Van Horn, Hasse and “Road Worrier” “activists,” notwithstanding my belief that Ms. Hogin, if she remained as the prosecutor, along with her associates, independent or otherwise, could and would do a first class professional job, I am more convinced than ever, if the people of Malibu and the accused parties are to have a fair and impartial hearing of the alleged violation and minimize complaints from all sides about conflict of interest, undue influence, whitewash, political pressure, council pressure, etc. (and here I agree with Councilperson Keller, who suggested it at the July 13 Council meeting), that the entire matter should, if at all possible, be turned over immediately to the L.A. County District Attorney’s office.

A. David Kagon

Monday night the Malibu City Council spent nearly two hours debating a motion proposed by Councilman Walt Keller to prevent Malibu City Attorney Christi Hogin from going on her vacation.

You might well wonder why it is the council spent all its time trying to block a long-scheduled vacation by a city employee who has been here almost five years.

Keller doesn’t want Hogin to leave on vacation until she finishes the investigation of alleged campaign violations in the last City Council election. Hogin has repeatedly told Keller and the council that the investigation is ongoing, that she cannot nor will not divulge the contents of the investigation, that she can’t give them a completion date because that depends on the evidence and in any event they have no legal right to that information. The motion died because the vote was 2 to 2 , Keller and Van Horn for it, House and Barovsky against it. It takes three votes to pass a motion. Councilman Tom Hasse didn’t vote on the motion because he had previously recused himself from anything related to this campaign violation investigation since it may relate to his election.

This action by Keller, joined by Van Horn, is a new low for Malibu government. This is one of the most flagrant examples I’ve ever heard of to try and block a legitimate investigation by attempting to blackmail or coerce a city attorney into not conducting a proper criminal investigation. It has become more than politics. It’s looking more and more like an attempt to obstruct justice.

First, at an earlier council meeting, they attempted to block her hiring outside counsel to help her conduct the investigation. Then, there was an obviously orchestrated attempt by a group of their cohorts to launch a continuous, venomous attack against Hogin and the investigation by attacking her at the council meetings and in the letters to the editor.

I must confess, when this investigation first started I didn’t think much of it. Most of these post-election investigations don’t amount to much, and even if they uncover anything people usually end up paying a fine and saying, “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” Now I’m beginning to wonder. When Keller, Van Horn and their allies spend almost two hours shouting and stomping, fuming and speechifying, you begin to wonder if there is something there, something they are desperately trying to keep out of the public spotlight.

This tack is fraught with peril. Aside from the obvious potential criminality in some of these actions, there are all sorts of civil implications. These attacks against Hogin go to her professional reputation, her honesty and her ability. If they are unable to coerce her into giving up the investigation, which I suspect will be the case because Christi Hogin is not easily pushed around (as anyone who has ever been up against her well knows), they next will try and push her out of the job by making it as uncomfortable as possible for her. If that doesn’t work, they’ll try and trump something up and fire her.

Of course, they can’t do that without Hasse since it takes three votes to take that action. Look for Hasse to try and weasel out of recusing himself from these votes as the investigation gets closer to home.

Ultimately, if what they’re trying to cover up is as bad as it appears, or more likely if the people who have broken the campaign ordinance are well-known Hollywood personalities, as some of us suspect, this could make the national news and prove very embarrassing. Before it gets to that point, they most certainly will move against Hogin.

The civil exposure of the city in this episode isn’t just big, it’s horrendous. It’s wrongful termination, it’s harassment, it’s asking employees to do illegal things, it’s trying to force a city attorney to violate her oath and break the law and then punishing her when she refuses. It’s a city’s worst litigation nightmare.

It’s up to us as citizens of Malibu to stop this. If we don’t protect our city employees and honor them doing their job, then we deserve what we get.

I encourage you to watch the tape of the City Council meeting of July 27, 1998. Judge for yourself if I’ve exaggerated. Then send your letters to the editor to us and the Surfside News. Call your City Council members. Send them faxes. Stop them in the market and let them know how you feel.

It’s up to us to protest this venality or shut up and live with it. If any of you are as appalled as I am at this conduct by Keller, Van Horn and their mob, get in touch with me. It’s time to fight back.

I attended the Malibu Arts Festival last Sunday. Other than its location, where was the “Malibu” at this Chamber of Commerce event? The Malibu Art Society was pushed off in a corner to make room for vendors selling things like garage door openers, venetian blinds, blue-blocker sun glasses, beanie babies . . . and a substantial amount of imported product that was more appropriate for a swap meet. Many of the vendors were selling artwork they had not created themselves — imports from places like Haiti and Indonesia. I saw very few Malibu artists exhibiting and selling their work. The whole event had a corporate, produced feel to it, as if it were some kind of fund-raising package deal sold to the Chamber of Commerce with little regard for the many fine local artists and their work. If the chamber’s purported mission is to “Shop Malibu-Buy Malibu”, why are local artists being excluded?

The Chamber of Commerce needs to rethink this event and make a bigger effort to recruit Malibu artists. Perhaps the chamber could actively seek Malibu artists by advertising procedures and deadlines for obtaining a space. Perhaps the booth space fee could be reduced for Malibu artists to encourage their participation. Perhaps Malibu artists could have priority over garage door openers!

Come on, Chamber of Commerce — put the “Malibu” back in the Malibu Arts Festival!

Laurel Kenner