My dear, dear friend — let’s just call him Tim Whyte to protect his identity — used to be general manager of The Occupation Newspaper and it was his thankless task to beg the staff to invent fiction about local progress. It gave all the local suits a rare chance to pontificate and have their photo out-of-focus in the town paper. Because you couldn’t sell a special section just called “Progress” year after year, Tim would have to create some 3rd-grade sub-theme.
Like “PROGRESS: Looking Toward the Future” or “PROGRESS: Better Than an Inflatable Sex Dummy” or “PROGRESS: Death before Disco.”
Actually, I think Inflatable Sex Dummies is a great name for a garage band. I’d also pay $5 if some practical joker hung a banner on the City Council dais during the next televised meeting.
Anywho…
One year, at the beginning of this particular millennium in which we are currently stuck, Tim reluctantly called our Progress section: “SANTA CLARITA 2000 AND BEYOND — RAISING SANTA CLARITA.”
Snooze, snooze, snore, snore.
Drop one “G” and you have the more palatable: “Raisin Santa Clarita.”
Or, even better — Raisin SClarita?
It sounded like a crop disease.
Or one of those guys from Peru who gets the Nobel Prize for literature.
“Guns of My Father’s Llama,” by Raisin Santa Clarita. “One Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle To Find Divergence in an Elitist South American Junta.”
“The sun was hot and the bananas, green here 4,00,000 feet above sea level in the Andes. My father was Peru’s greatest living stand-up comedian and it was here, in this village, where he was shot by men with big mustaches for calling the sacred hills, ‘The Amos ‘n’ Andes.”
Raisin Santa Clarita.
And what does it mean to be a dehydrated little piece of fruit in the 21st century?
Dear Mr. Boston:
I take personal umbrage at your non-stop wisecracks at especially me and at the city and staff of the fine city of Palmdale. Don’t think I don’t know that this is nothing but a veiled reference to myself and my new home in Stevenson Ranch, 60605 Robert Louis Stevenson Parkway, Unit #7. Bring an Inflatable Sex Dummy if you come over at 11.
If you really want to get sued until blood appears miraculously from your palms, just keep it up, buster.
Very truly yours,
Britney Spears
Pretend Mayor of Palmdale
Thank you, Pretend Mayor Britney.
Do you ever stop to wonder how raisins get to be raisins? Migrant workers, bent over in the hot sun, holding a grape between thumb and forefinger, and, in the other hand, a hairdryer. One ponders how agribusiness sell them so cheap.
Lee.
With the hole in the ozone growing, I can imagine many of us mutating into raisin-like creatures in the decades ahead. I suppose if our grandchildren were built like raisins, everyone would have to wander around in jump suits. You can forget the thong bikini and Victoria’s Secret over at like, The Mall, would have the banner: “Burnt, Shriveled, Dehydrated and Very Sexy!”
Perhaps in my lifetime, we will finally get some forward-thinking people on our city council and our community will adopt the name, “Santa Raisinita.”
Our logo could be a raisin dressed up like Santa Claus.
If the overeater Orson Welles were alive, he might say of the dried fruit: “If You Stare At Them Long Enough, Raisins Actually Look Like Little Hamburgers” Perhaps the producer of “Citizen Kane,” inarguably one of the greatest films ever made, could use his clout to create a bigger raisin. “After all,” said Orson. “It takes too many of them to get into a box.”
Some knucklehead years ago came up with a city slogan: “One Valley. One Vision.” Foof. I say: “One box. One valley. One raisin.”
Perhaps 21st century science can reverse the downward spiral of the raisin. I’m sure if we can inject enough water into raisins, we can certainly turn them back into grapes. Hydration, hydration, hydration.
I remember baseball legend, Roger Clemens, who went to my alma mater, Hart High, recalling how raisins affected his life: “I was with the Red Sox as third base coach with the bases loaded, no outs, bottom of the ninth and I look at my right shoulder and panicked. I thought it was a mouse pellet but really, I must have bumped into a box of raisins or something because there were like four of these little suckers just sitting there, on my jacket. I start frantically brushing my shoulder and jumping to get the darn things off and the next thing I know, all three guys are breaking for home plate. Bing. Bing. Bing. The catcher tags all three of them out and that’s how we lost the World Series. To this day, I can’t look a raisin in the face.”
President Barry Obama echoed Clemens’ concerns. Recently, while stumping for support in Syria, the leader of the crazy half of America noted: “I can’t stand the little beggars. They remind me too much of rabbit presents.”
The raisins.
Not the Syrians.
Raisin Santa Clarita.
Actually, the above makes much more sense than adding the obligatory “G” to the sub-theme.
Raising Santa Clarita?
The question naturally begs.
Raising from what?
The dead?
And if so, shouldn’t we all practice running around and screaming? In a big deep horror movie preview voice, we hear: “SANTA CLARITA. A GIANT RAISIN RAISED FROM THE DEAD. AND NOW IT’S OUT FOR BLOOD.”
We see a shot here of thousands of Yuppies running from our mall, screaming.
I have a good friend who works for the local giant scenery scraper, Newhall Land. The fetching and hubba-hubba veep Marlee Lauffer has a talent for positive spin. I can just hear her cheery missive:
“While we don’t condone giant mutant raisins eating homeowners, we can appreciate the significant loss of human life and puddles of dripping raisin goop dotting the landscape of Valencia, the positive side is that there are now even more swank 12-family 1-bedroom condos for sale at ridiculously low, low prices, starting at $800 total. Cash. No questions asked.”
I can see Barbra Streisand, singing at the annual Christmas Tree lighting at Henry “Hold The” Mayo Hospital next December. She solemnly takes the mike, stares at her shoes, then at the rooftop of a building as you can’t see the mountains any more … “People … People who eat raisins … are the luckiest … people … in the SClarita. People. Feeding other people. Raisins. They ain’t Masons … are the LUCKIEST PEOPLE … in the woild.”
Sorry.
Somehow, I got back to raisins, didn’t I?
Here.
Let me get into my mock, “This Is Terribly Important” adult voice as if I were Fox News’ Neil Cavuto lecturing drug-addict kids on a TV promo:
“You know, children. Raisins in the Santa Clarita were very important to me as a boy growing up here,” I say, tummy in, voice on maximum bass, lower lip sticking out. “All of us were so poor growing up here in Newhall, we couldn’t afford Halloween costumes. We had to stick raisins between our teeth and pretend we were from Palmdale.”
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net