THE VIEW FROM MAIN STREET 

Josh Needle
Special to the Mirror

   If you weren’t here for the Cartoon Art Museum fund-raiser on National Cartoonist’s Day, all I can say is that you missed a great party. If you also missed Patt Morrison’s wonderful “Life & Times” segment on the event which was scheduled to run tonight, my mother will rent out the tape at lower than Blockbuster prices. My thanks, as always, to Paul Conrad, Michael Ramirez, Tony Peyser, Roman Genn, Lalo Alcaraz, Jerry Scott, Patrick O’Connor, Daryl Cagle, Steve McGarry, Mark O’Hare, Ted Rall, Keith Robinson and the other cartoonists for venturing forth from their caves for the day and for a good cause.
   A major treat for those who came by was a chance to meet one of the great cartoon voices and all-around great social and political satirists of our age, the, obviously, great Stan Freberg.
   The turnout was wonderful. A crowd of 150 - 200 people gobbled up the fabulous food from Lula Cucina and quaffed vast amounts of vin extraordinaire from the Wine Expo. Though 29th and Santa Monica is not Main Street (Why aren’t you down here where you belong, Roberto? Ali?), their shop is absolutely the best wine emporium in all of Santa Monica, if not Southern California.
   Among the people I finally met was fellow, but more regular, Mirror columnist Steve Stajich, whose columns are always terrifically interesting; among the missing, however, was the always elusive Peggy Clifford, mythical editor of these pages who apparently spends every waking minute glued to her computer screen toiling for your edification. Too bad: She missed a hilarious conversation between Conrad and City Council member Kevin McKeown about Conrad’s massive Santa Monica icon, the “Chain Reaction” sculpture outside of the Civic. Pipe in hand, grinning ear to ear, Conrad was overheard to impishly ask, among other things, “Do you know how heavy that damned thing is?”
   Dennis Tito didn’t make it either, having just returned from space, but if he wants a collection of the Tito-in-space cartoons that he missed while away, I know where he can get them....

   Coolest Second Career Award Winner
   Among other treats that I’ve received recently (i.e., a glowing review of Impolitic.com in a world-wide survey of cartoon art galleries by the Times of London among them!), in the April 9 edition of the National Law Journal I was named winner of the “Coolest Second Career” award, beating out the founder of the “North American Butterfly Association.” I was found “guilty of irreverence!” I like that. The last time I was found guilty of anything comparable was at “Libel and Slander Night,” when I graduated from Loyola Law School (Class of ‘77) and the faculty found me “guilty of violating the Socratic Method” for refusing to play their silly game.
   On the other hand, practicing law is a step up for some people. The winner of the “Coolest First Career” award spent his pre-lawyer days as an “eyeball harvester.”

   There Goes The Fourth Amendment
   Other than the brown paper bags full of cash, no, I don’t really miss practicing law. (Note to the IRS: It’s a joke! I promise, I’ll throw out all of the “kinder and gentler” cartoons...) I love “The Law,” and wouldn’t mind doing a few juicy appeals a year, so that I can continue to a) represent people who deserve a good defense, b) get to argue interesting constitutional and other issues in an arena generally more sophisticated than the trial courts, and c) again receive brown paper bags full of cash. (Alternatively, I wouldn’t mind a part-time gig as a writer/consultant to movie and television producers on criminal law since I hear the paychecks more than match what’s inside those brown paper bags.)
   I won’t go off on a rant about what happens in trial courts — if you want outrage and entertainment free for the taking just hang around any of our local courthouses any weekday — but there was a recent ruling by the Supremes that just made me bust a gut: Their decision to elevate seat-belt violations and all other traffic infractions — for which you cannot be jailed upon conviction! — to the level of custodial arrests is nothing less than obscene. Why did they do it? Simple: Once you are subject to being “seized” the cops can search every area of your car, and every area of everything in your car, without any warrant or reason. It’s the “War on Drugs” folks, and YOU are the enemy. The Fourth Amendment is barely surviving on life support, and W’s judicial appointments are just itching to pull the plug.
   I could have sworn that the essence of “conservatism” was a healthy disrespect for and distrust of expansive, unbridled exercises of power by the executive branch of government. These folks aren’t “conservatives” at all. They’re all in favor of State power commanding and controlling how we live our personal lives, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the “property rights” of business interests to rape, pillage and plunder in the name of commerce.
   I’m halfway to convincing Michael Ramirez, the Pulitzer Prize winning “conservative” editorial cartoonist for the LA Times of this philosophical conundrum, but I fear that if he ever buys the fact that it is the defense attorney who stands for “conservative” values in the Criminal Justice system he’ll feel obligated to move from Orange County to Santa Monica, or even, God Forbid, show up at a party in jeans rather than a suit. Happy 40th Birthday, Michael.

   Main Street Stuff
   The most famous line from the classic “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America,” may well be “rumble, rumble, rumble; mutiny, mutiny, mutiny.” Well, there’s a bit a rumbling and a rumor of mutiny here on Main Street. A reliable source tells me that during services at the Church in Ocean Park on Mother’s Day it was even announced that the Main Street Merchants Association want “to shut down the Farmer’s Market because they don’t want the competition.”
As the Stooges would respond, “What a revoltin’ development this is!”
   NONSENSE! IT”S NOT TRUE! NOBODY WANTS TO SHUT DOWN THE MARKET, and the Merchants’ Association has NOT suggested otherwise. You know the phrase, “You heard it from the horses’ mouth?” Well I’m the horse and this column is my mouth: IT JUST AIN’T TRUE.
   Nobody wants to send the farmers packing. Nobody. What has been the subject of discussion is that many of the restaurant owners believe that the prepared food vendors who have grown to occupy such a large amount of space at the “organic farmer’s market” have unfairly hurt their Sunday Brunch business.
   Among the valid issues they raise are not only that these “restaurants on wheels” do not pay the taxes and fees, rents and utility bills, or follow the same sanitation rules that the restaurants have to shoulder. It’s also the parking spaces that are occupied for hours while families shop and picnic instead of for minutes picking up their weekly supply of fresh greens, fruits and veggies. Those parking spaces, the life-blood of all merchants and restaurants everywhere, remain unavailable for patrons who want to sit at tables, with chairs, at one of our fabulous restaurants or shop in our stores.
   So questions are being asked. Responses are being evaluated. Solutions are being considered. I’ll let you know what our answers are when we have them.
   In the meantime, join us after the Farmer’s Market on Father’s Day, June 17, for the Main Street “Summer Soulstice,” an afternoon of fun, frolic and performing arts all up, down and around our fair village square.
   Josh Needle is chair of the Main Street Merchants Association and the owner of Impolitic: Cartoon Commentaries.