REFLECTIONS IN RED, WHITE AND BLUE

By Jerome Cleary

The 4th of July has just passed and as a city and a country I began to wonder what makes someone more or less patriotic. Standing along the Sunset Strip recently I ran in to two gentlemen who were visiting from Australia. As we talked, they both expressed how Americans were proud of their country. This was done in a variety of ways as they went on about how we as Americans like to display our flags. The one guy told me that back in Australia when he tried to put up his country's flag, someone said to him, "What are you doing?" As if he were a bit loony.These two men said that they were delighted by how happy and proud we are about being Americans. Many of us can remember as we see small children today at parades running along wearing red, white and blue Uncle Sam hats and holding pinwheels. Famous celebrities seem to want to create a shock and awe in draping their naked or semi-naked bodies in our flag in a photo shoot. Fox or CNN show us repeatedly our country's flag being burned which of course angers us and makes some of us then rationalize the war we are in further.But how does one become patriotic and how does that color and shape our lives? Do years and years of standing, putting our hand over our heart and reciting the pledge of allegiance in grade school, high school and public and city events make us understand exactly who and where we are? Do groups who want the word God taken out of public schools want us to be free to believe or not believe?An act has been created and updated called The Patriot Act and just the name alone would cause one to think that it will be good. But we are left with waiving away many if not all of our rights in situations that may make us wrong or right.It is interesting to see what creates fireworks among our residents and neighbors in West Hollywood. If you have lived in West Hollywood for a few or many years you may know if you are kept awake with illegal construction or noise or had a neighbor or friend who was. Whether it is a loud party, stereo music or any unnecessary noise. Our city has created a new law to enforce loud muffler noise from motorcyclists. In the last decade we got an anti-cruising law to prevent gridlock so emergency vehicles would have access and horn honking would stop at blocked intersections.As residents of West Hollywood we have some or no power to do the right thing. But as our 20-year history has shown us our efforts collectively or solely have produced results in some capacity for improvement. In my neighborhood, my business neighbors are many well-known entities. Tower Records have been my neighbor for the last 20 years and in the recent past have constructed a performance stage illegally at 4:30 a.m. on a weekday 2 days ahead of an event to be heard at noon on a Friday. Over the many years, Tower Records has had many other "live events" where microphone sound checks are done before 9 a.m. even though the performance is not until noon. Tower Records likes to also do construction on unheard of Sundays too in order to erect a jumbo tron.Recently, Coffee Bean moved from Sunset Plaza to my street corner and this past week thought nothing of jack hammering illegally late on a Sunday night until pass 2am in the morning of our workday Monday. Neighbors were unhappy with Coffee Bean and to make matters worse Coffee Bean has been basically indignant and in denial that they had no permit and kept us up.Years ago it was neighborhood kids with illegal firecrackers celebrating our country's birthday. Today it's corporate America celebrating our country's birthday all year long. The sparks and fireworks look and sound different but the impact is the same since it rubs us all the wrong way.Jerome Cleary is a 20-year resident of West Hollywood and standup comic at The World Famous Comedy Store-www.freecomedytickets.com