An Evening With Tom Fuentes and Friends

(REBEL GIRL, with a big assist from RED EMMA)

A PALL fell over the festivities in the Grand Ballroom of the Balboa Bay Club last Thursday night, the 1st of November. The gala event, billed as "An Evening with Tom Fuentes and Friends" (tickets $150.00 a head) was a fundraiser for a committee with the amusing, jejeune name of The Committee to Re-Elect Tom Fuentes. Fuentes, as many of you know, has served on the board of the South Orange County Community College District for some years now, so that the committee's moniker suggested straightforwardness and straightshootery.

The Grand Ballroom was full to its grand 7,000 square foot capacity with 300 plus celebrants in attendance. The lights twinkled, the ice cubes tinkled, the necks were wrinkled. Beyond the bay windows, the sun set into the Pacific, as in postcards and direct mail appeals. Somewhere out there to the west, in Newport Harbor (famously dredged by Roosevelt's progressive WPA), John Wayne's luxurious yacht, the Wild Goose, was moored, waiting. This was the Day of the Dead, after all, El Dia de los Muertos , and locals have, for years sworn they've seen the ghost of the Duke and dear departed friends Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Bob Hope aboard the former minesweeper for an evening cruise and hand of poker.

Back in the Grand Ballroom, that pall from my opening invocation settled, as I mentioned, like so much dirty, toxic ash from the week-long wildfires burning in the local canyons. —You know, the so-called "Santiago" Fire, the hungry one wreaking its terror still, the cataclysm that might have been curtailed had these Captains of Industry (Ahoy!) and Business Leaders (all graduates of Buy Low Sell High), Orange County's mean and mighty, had the foresight or humanity to fund the purchase of more than only two measly helicopters—what somebody amusingly calls the "first responder air fleet"—for what the U.S. census accurately identifies as the second most populous county in the state, the fifth so in the nation, and one of the wealthiest places in the world. But two years ago they'd decided that the OC Fire Authority didn't need any more funds for flying machines—though, as it happened, the Sheriff's Department did, and for what, exactly, we wonder, Hmmm?


No, not even the good humor and hospitality of the evening's keynote speaker, the inimitable Bruce Herschenson, could dispel the gloom and pallage. Not the hors d'ouevres. Not the booze. Not the swag stacked outside the ballroom's doors, where secret handshakes were exchanged and attendees were given free ceremonial robes to don for the revelry a la the Bohemian Grove.

Herschenson, like many of those in attendance, wore the required costume too, a plush white terry cloth robe embroidered with the Balboa Bay Club insignia: a Balboan in docksiders, smoking a cigar, clubbing an illegal immigrant, on a field of strawberries, the red juice of the fruit mingling with the blood from the open wound. Bruce's robe was sashed low and allowed a few grey chest hairs to peek out—but not even the sight of those frisky follicles nor Herschenson's own powerful charm could lighten the gloomy mood.

Not even the ebullient and fantasical Raghu Mathur, also wearing a monogrammed robe, this one adorned with his official SOCCCD badge and American flag pin, could lighten the mood. He looked especially peppy as he worked the room, pressing flesh with those others similarly clad: the trio of Supervisors (Bates, Moorlach and Campbell), Congressman Rohrabacher, Assemblymen Silva and deVore.

But why the pall? Were they perhaps worried, like most of the county, about those displaced canyon residents, their homes and horses, goats and llamas? Maybe they were concerned about those hard-working firefighters, selfless brave heroes this week, selfish money-grubbing lazy civil servants when next their contracts were up for negotiation? Or perhaps the gang was still smarting over their stinging defeat in l'affaire Chemerinsky? Ouch. Still stinger-inskies.

No. One of their own was missing tonight, at what should have been the Cinderella's Ball of Orange County. Actually, more than one.

America's Sheriff, Mike Carona, freshly and firmly indicted along with his two (count 'em, two!) Debbies, could not be seen in public so soon after his arraignment. Especially since so many in the room were now busy paddling away from his sinking ship, which we like to call the Cooked Goose or, to embrace further easy poultryesque metaphor, the Dead Duck. His spokesman, attorney Mike Schroeder, lingered mysteriously in faraway and exotic Amsterdam, sending a bouquet of tulips and his regrets. Don Haidl, he of the big checks, yachts, private plane and, no doubt, plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Carona was, well, a no-show. And George Jaramillo, well, his appeal for a Big House furlough to attend the festivities was, strangely, not granted. Of course, Joe Cavallo, a former close Carona amigo and former George Jaramillo and Greg Haidl abogado, also was missing in action, due, no doubt to his recent guilty plea to three felonies (three, count 'em, three!) for a scheme that had bail bondsmen calling him from the county jail to get work, which is indeed nice work if you can get it.

Soon the party of sour celebrants decamps to the pier. Replacing their comfy robes with sailor suits (think Shirley Temple—the star, not the drink) these Titans of OC, their futures perhaps fading as quickly as the fabled green flash on the horizon, board the Wild Goose and join its ghosts. The yacht weighs anchor and chugs out into the back bay, where, for awhile, all is as it should be. Then, the smoke from the east begins to drift in, as does the echo of the sound of two lone fire helicopters, chop chop chop, above the flames.

The foothills look like tiny volcanoes.