Thousands of people gathered at a local funeral home to pay tribute to ex-President Ronald Reagan. Embarrassed liberals spotted at the scene explained that they mistakenly believed the assembly to be a protest against the funeral industry’s use of energy inefficient vehicles.

President Reagan’s death reminds us that were it up to Santa Monica voters, the cold war would have to have been waged by Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

To Santa Monica voters the Evil Empire was not the Soviet Union, it was the Apartment Association.

Santa Monica police had to manage crowd and traffic control at the funeral home where President Reagan’s body was prepared for burial. The Gates Kingley Gates location at 20th Street and Arizona Avenue was ideal from the department’s perspective. A spokesman for the police pointed out that it was only four blocks to both a 7/11 and donut store and walking distance to IHOP.

Santa Monica police chief James Butts attended the burial service for President Reagan at the presidential library. City Council members were also invited but refused to go because there wasn’t time for the City’s consultants to first perform an environmental hazards survey of the building and grounds.

The City of Santa Monica won a lawsuit against a group of oil companies found guilty of contaminating the City’s water supply. The companies will have to pay the City $60 million plus build, at their expense, a new water treatment facility. Attorneys representing the oil companies failed to persuade the court that a new treatment facility wasn’t needed since they maintained that people in Santa Monica only drink designer bottled water anyway.

As a show of gratitude to the attorneys who represented Santa Monica successfully on a contingency basis, the City promptly filed suit against them challenging their fees as excessive. Filing the suit was a City Attorney who earns $187,000 per year, who receives 33 days of vacation, every other Friday off, 12 days of sick leave per year, health benefits and life insurance protection.

ior to filing the suit the City and its attorneys tried unsuccessfully to resolve the conflict through arbitration. But with politicians on one side and attorneys on the other, the truth was nowhere to be found.

A homeless man, 22, was recently profiled in the local paper. His aspiration is to be a chemist. So far, so good. He went on to say that his drug of choice, DXM, was created by chemists and as a chemist himself, he could make the drug to be completely safe.

In the land of political correctness, I was surprised to read that the City Council is expected to allocate $151,228 of a $246,400 state grant to target Spanish speaking do-it-yourself auto mechanics to teach them to use environmentally preferable used-oil disposal practices. Maybe the $95,132 left over will be used to teach white men to jump higher.

An alternative to government bureaucrats descending on the Pico Neighborhood with clipboards trying to talk about used-oil disposal in Spanish, the $151,228 grant funds could buy over 5,000 coupons for oil changes at Jiffy Lube. But then there’s that old adage, “Give a man an oil change and you save him $30. Teach him to change his oil and you guarantee him dirty fingernails for life.”

Live theatre will soon have another major venue in Santa Monica. Construction is scheduled to begin this fall on a Renzo Zecchetti designed 504-seat facility to be located at 11th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard. The only other live local theatre performances take place at the City Council meetings on Monday nights.

rivate fundraising efforts in support of the theatre are going well. An unnamed donor gave $100,000 for a sculpture garden, Houston’s Restaurant donated a 7-foot Steinway piano and, not to be outdone, Hooter’s restaurant donated a 7-foot sculpture of Anna Nicole Smith.

A study ordered by Santa Monica College officials has concluded that the City is lacking in available park and recreational space compared to other Los Angeles and Orange county cities and proposes a $175 million bond measure largely to be used for College related facilities as the solution. Either the researchers never heard of the beach or feel that Santa Monica needs a nice community gathering place like L.A.’s McArthur Park. It’s a good thing the study wasn’t done for a grade.

Perhaps the lack of recreational facilities in Santa Monica explains the town’s low real estate values.

Art students at SMC competed in a year-long program to have their works shown at the College’s Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery. The favorite for the Grand Prize is an impressionistic portrayal of a used refrigerator on a dolley.

An ex-Raider football player was tried for allegedly setting fire to the Simply Sofa store in the 2300 block of Lincoln Boulevard. The case was prosecuted by the L.A. County District Attorney’s office as Santa Monica City Attorneys were too busy prosecuting landlords. The trial ended in a hung jury. The key evidence in the case was partially burned mail addressed to the defendant, which was found inside fire bombs present at the scene of the fire. The defense had argued that an ex-Raider couldn’t be that dumb; such stupidity was only possible from someone in management with the L.A. Clippers.