UNITED STATES—As Inspector General, Miller had the power to persevere and give back to the people through these redundancies that he detected. It was odd how that once he became an artist–long before he was recognized as such—Miller’s innate mathematical intelligence, long unused in lieu of more artistic endeavors, but here it gave him supernatural gifts for detected excess and downright fraud.
There would be no prosecution, and the malefactors were all too glad to pay back into the system. They had a huge sense of being off the hook and enormous relief was palpable on their faces.
A lot was going on, a way whole heck of a lot. In his early days after the publication of “The Way” in which he outlined the basis of ‘radical simple’ and his dream for the future, and found he was not the only one with the dream. One of his adepts was Pratt who was running for Mayor and he spent an enormous fortune toward becoming mayor, which he lusted after, even after the victory of Megan Steel.
Pratt was a Trojan frat boy, the opposite of everything Graydon suffered at the university they both shared—which gave Miller a vast window into inequality at their place all onlookers would see as the Valhalla of the happy and carefree.
“I really expected to hate the guy,” said Miller. “Frat-boy pratt was born with a silver safety pin on his diaper.”
Miller made a short video, mocking Pratt’s vow to “clean up Los Angeles,” because in the breakdown of institutions the streetsweepers were the first to go to pot. Like they were on pot, sometimes they’d come and skip the gutter altogether. The way the black banana peels and dregs of take-out food piled up, it was severely third world. The video was more a joke, than a political statement, but he honestly felt that Pratt insulted the city of Los Angeles, especially when he slogan covertly referred not to the detritus which had taken ownership of sidewalks and gutters, but those people living on the sidewalks and alluded to by the “No loitering” signs around Hollywood.
It was funny how in chichi Carmel Valley on the wall was hand-painted in charming letters in an Italian bistro, “Great civilizations have always been characterized by loitering,” and it certainly provided the impetus to order another glass of wine. And here a citizen, in the most unlikely places where certainly no one would want to loiter, one was harassed by NO LOITERING signs.
There was the video of him with broom and dustpan, getting the gunk out and Miller extemporized for the self-held camera: “We’ve had a drought of leadership, first of all. And when it rains, and it will not just rain, it will pour again, on my street the gutter will flow smoothly.”
That’s when Miller published his piece in the Asian Times, it made a splash, after being turned down by the Times. “Indeed, there’s a ready supply of underemployed and others unhoused on these unclean streets. Perhaps they could get actual pay or gift cards. Work is transformative. It isn’t just the pay, it’s the people, the routine, and a way to get away from roommates that we can’t stand.
I hope Madame Acting Mayor Martinez gets to read this. If I were running for office, well, I wouldn’t be running, I’d be walking, but first on my platform would be to tune up the R-E-S-P-E-C-T Aretha sang about about—tune up the respect way high for so-called “menial jobs.” These jobs are anything but menial. A mop and bucket of water, some rags and Windex, a dustpan, a broom and elbow grease make a city shine.
To relegate tidying up sidewalks, as in the case of West Hollywood, to Community Service seems a further symptom of muddled values. Is public cleaning and donning the day-glo vest the modern equivalent of a laughing stock? Let’s put an end to the virus of disrespect and extol of job of all Angelenos with brooms and dustpans who will usher in a healing of values and cleaner streets…
Los Angeles could lead the nation in a movement and make serious inroads with both the overeducated and the unhoused who could find it lucrative for the spirit in and the wallet to partake in this sacred employment of erasing the line between indoors/outdoors that so lays bare the aberrant awareness of some leaders whose vision of “improvement” seems to stop right before you get on the street.
Let’s go on a real cleaning binge, you and me. And when we’re done, send the bill to Sanitation.”
To be continued…
