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ERIC PREVEN’S NOTEBOOK -
Dear Mayor Mamdani
Congratulations, Zohran. This is your honeymoon week — enjoy it, before someone blames you for the weather.
Out here in Los Angeles, we’ve spent a decade proving that “progressive government” is mostly progressive in the time it takes to load another PowerPoint. We’ve mastered the art of marathon ribbon-cuttings in a city that still can’t pave the course — empathy without metrics, reform with a confetti budget.
Pitfall #1: The Summit Spiral.
Every new problem spawns a summit — logo, tote bag, breakout session, and if you must hold one, serve drinks. Nothing changes except the font. Try a new model: fewer summits, more outcomes.
Pitfall #2: The Compassion Industrial Complex.
We’ve professionalized empathy. Consultants choreograph your furrowed brow, then invoice for “strategic sorrow.” Be kind but keep receipts. Compassion doesn’t need branding.
Pitfall #3: The Consultant Creep.
If the same firm that drafted your “Equity Blueprint” also sponsors your gala, you’re hosting corruption with catering. Read every invoice aloud — it’s healing, like yoga for your conscience.
Our own reformers reimagined everything except competence. We reimagined housing into PowerPoint decks, policing into slogans, and transparency into mood lighting.
Here’s the truth: the mayor’s job is 90 percent ceremony, 9 percent chaos, and 1 percent real authority — which everyone regrets letting you use the second you do. Still, it’s the best gig in the world if you can survive the applause.
Welcome to the machine, comrade. Keep your humor handy — you’ll need it more than your scissors.
“In L.A., empathy comes with catering and a commemorative hashtag.”
Meanwhile, back at our own machine…
If the week’s first act is about systems that consume themselves, Friday’s double feature at City Hall promises the usual blend of self-congratulation and slow-motion reform.
Thursday Warm-Up
Tomorrow’s shaping up like one of those double-header Fridays at City Hall — the kind that look sleepy on paper but end in migraines for the Controller’s office.
At 9 a.m., the Rules, Elections & Intergovernmental Relations Committee warms up the mics with a batch of state-legislation positions: PFAS regulation, ADA web compliance, post-disaster tenant timelines — the usual alphabet soup.
Then, out of the archives, strolls Dennis P. Zine, nominated for the Charter Reform Commission and fresh off his latest RantZ & RaveZ column, where he couldn’t find anything “positive about Los Angeles.” He did, however, locate $5 billion worth of Convention Center anxiety and a reminder to “shop with a friend.”
Smart Speaker’s Note: Charter reform by the guy who thinks “cloud” means rain — what could go wrong?
At 10 a.m., the full Council convenes for an anemic session — mostly procedural filings and one small CD 14 housing item now under Ysabel Jurado, who quietly replaced Kevin de León. The only real public-comment window is if that item skipped committee; otherwise, it’s three minutes of open-mic democracy before the chamber goes dark for lunch.
Then lunch ends, the caffeine hits, and the real show begins.
At 2 p.m. comes the main event: a joint committee super-meeting bringing together Budget, Housing, and Neighborhoods — featuring Bob Blumenfield, Nithya Raman, Heather Hutt, Eunisses Hernandez, Monica Rodriguez, Traci Park, and newcomer Ysabel Jurado. They’ll debate fusing four departments into one “super-agency,” sprinkle in $1 million for RepresentLA, light up Morella Street, and throw a little turf at Heart of LA Youth Park.
Smart Speaker’s Note: If bureaucratic efficiency had a halftime show, this would be it. Expect speeches about synergy, savings, and “streamlining services” — followed by at least two motions to continue.
By Friday night, you’ll have a clearer sense of which version of City Hall is winning: the nostalgic one with Rantz in its pants, or the new bloc of progressives trying to untangle the wiring without cutting power.
After a week decoding the ceremonies of governance…
A reminder that not every performance is political. Sometimes, the lights dim, the actors enter, and something real sneaks through the cracks.
New York, NY.
A Couch in the Void
From a family visit in upstate New York to Laurie Metcalf’s extraordinary performance in Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road — a play whose script, fittingly, places the action on “a couch in a void.” *
We gathered for lunch at Din Tai Fung before the show — my dad, his wife, and my daughter. Soup dumplings, laughter, then a short walk to the Booth Theatre.
Little Bear Ridge Road @ The Booth theatre.
The day before, I’d driven out to Colgate Lake Road in East Jewitt to visit my mom’s husband’s daughter. It had been years. One of her dogs is seventeen. She told me she’d spent a year or more as a hermit.
We sat in her kitchen and traded stories. I told her how much I appreciated her dad. She told me about her mother, a brilliant scientist her father met at Stanford while he was trying to get California residency. She’d picked up the phone, called UCLA, and landed a position in her field. He was so impressed, he married her and went through the MFA program at UCLA.
But her mother had a mental-health crisis. The revelation came slowly, through tears. She said the world misunderstood her mother’s bipolar disorder, that someone decided she was “completely insane,” and sent her away. The separation shaped everything that followed. Knowing what we know now about moods and medicine, it felt like a tragedy of misunderstanding.
We sobbed, and then we laughed at a few old stories — two people trying to piece together a gentler version of the past.
The next day, I took my seat for Little Bear Ridge Road. Ninety-five minutes later, I knew I’d seen one of the best plays of my life. Laurie Metcalf is a revelation — fierce, funny, terrifyingly alive. Samuel D. Hunter has written something that feels both vast and domestic, a story about isolation and connection that sneaks up on you like grief.
When you are in the presence of genius, the room gets quiet. The hum of emotion becomes audible, like a low-key data center.
At the end, I sat between my daughter and my father, unable to stop crying — not sobbing exactly, but leaking. When the lights came up after the standing ovation, my daughter was crying too.
A woman behind us, a stranger, reached out, placed her hand on my shoulder, and said softly, “It’s okay. I know.”
Sitting there in the Booth Theatre, I thought of Los Angeles — how we all build our own couches in the void, waiting for someone to knock on the door and stay a while.
Smart Speaker’s Closing Note
Sometimes, the weekends not with a gavel but a touch on the shoulder — proof that empathy doesn’t need an invoice.
Next Week
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will not meet on Tuesday, November 12, in observance of the Veterans Day holiday. The next regular meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, November 19, when the Board will return to its usual agenda of motions, reports, and public comment.
(Eric Preven is a Studio City-based television writer-producer, award-winning journalist, and longtime community activist. He is known for his sharp commentary on transparency and accountability in local government. Eric successfully brought and won two landmark open government cases in California, reinforcing the public’s right to know. A regular contributor to CityWatch, he combines investigative insight with grassroots advocacy to shine a light on civic issues across Los Angeles.)
