Piano Piano and Claremont Turn Up in Bleeding Edge Meme

Okay, this is complicated, and only propeller-heads have much of a chance of following it.

There has been a disturbance in the Internet Force the past few days about "Google Instant", the newly-enabled search feature on Google that allows you to see intermediate results as you type your search term into the box. (Thus far, it seems to work only sporadically)

For example, searching on "Claremont Insider" might produce the following first suggestions and instantaneous search pages for them:

C: craigslist
CL: club penguin
CLA: claim jumper
CLAR: claremont colleges
CLARE: claremont colleges
CLAREM: claremont colleges
CLAREMO: claremont colleges
CLAREMON: claremont colleges
CLAREMONT: claremont colleges
CLAREMONT I: claremont insider

...and there you are! The entire search results page for "Claremont Insider" pops up. You didn't have to type the whole word "Insider", just the "I", not the "nsider", saving you 2.4 seconds per search or thousands and thousands of hours over your lifetime. Google does this by serving new search results with each letter typed--some 20 sub-searches for each information search on average, according to reports.

(The sustainability harpies will probably cast the evil eye on this given the results of this 2009 study that said that each single Google search generated 7 grams of CO2. Now, with this new feature, that will be multiplied by twenty to 140 grams of CO2. And, with those thousands and thousands of hours added to our lifetimes, we will probably make even more searches. Pounds and Tons of CO2. An inconvenient truth.)

How does this relate to Claremont, you ask?

Well, Friday morning the Huffington Post carried an article about a new pastime using Google Instant and YouTube. It amounts to typing the lyrics of a song into Google Instant, saving the page images, and setting these to the music of the song. The HuffPo embeds a couple of examples. One is Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, (lame) and the other is Tom Lehrer's, The Elements (excellent). They are calling this a Lyrical Google Instant Search Meme.

Watch the Lehrer piece, The Elements. It's only 1:25 and consists, as Lehrer told us on the 1960s album, of the names of the chemical elements set to a possibly recognizable theme [from Gilbert and Sullivan].

As the search auto-complete terms flash by, note at 1:14 that piano piano claremont ca flashes by:

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That's it. Not really all that earthshaking, but moderately charming. What's really amazing is that people have enough time on their hands to do this, and other people have enough time on their hands to write about it.

C-L-A-R-E-M-O-N-T, Where the Cash Comes Sweepin' Down the Plain

We were just sitting alone talking the other day, watching a hawk making lazy circles in the sky, when it occurred to us that we had the answer to Claremont's municipal finance problems.

You may not realize it, but back on November 14, 2000, the City extended a loan of $175,000 to the Candlelight Pavilion. The money was to help re-roof the Pavilion and to refurbish the old place.

Drive by today, and you can see how the money was put to good use.


Mostly, it was a favor to the Bollinger family, whose Ben Bollinger Productions, Inc., operates the Pavilion. The city staff report for the proposed loan was written like all Claremont city staff reports - as an advocacy piece rather than an actual objective analysis weighing the pros and cons of the deal. The council, of course, approved the loan.

On May 9, 2006, the matter came back before the council. Under the original arrangement, the Bollingers were supposed to pay back $80,000 in 2006, with another $80,000 due in 2011. However, the Bollingers wanted to restructure the repayment terms, partly because all the construction going at the Griswald's-Old Schoolhouse site had caused a decline in revenue at the Pavilion.

What did the City do? What they almost always do for their friends. Wanting to get along in polite Claremont society, they went ahead and renegotiated the terms of the loan, allowing the Bollingers pay back only $25,000 of the $80,000 due in 2006. For the remainder, the Bollingers pledged "over 20 theater production sets as security," and the $55,000 outstanding was rolled back into the loan.

The Candlelight Pavilion doesn't look to be doing all that well now, what with the construction around it dragging on and the economy being what it is. Our suggestion is this: In the best Hollywood tradition, we say, "LET'S PUT ON A SHOW!"

We can take those collateralized Candlelight Pavilion sets and put them to work. With all the money we make from the gate receipts, we can balance the City's shaky budget, finance a new police station, buy the water company, and build Marilee's Marsh.

The City Council, led by Councilmember Sam Pedroza, has apparently been thinking along the same lines. We saw this poster popping up in store fronts around town and on the Claremont Downtown Trolley:

(Click to Enlarge)

We know we belong to the land,
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we sa-a-a-a-ay
Yeeow! Aye-yip-aye-yo-ee-ay!
We're only sayin'
You're doin' fine, Sam Pedroza!
Sam Pedroza S. A.!
(spelled quickly, then with emphasis) MPED-R-O-Z-A
Sam Pedroza! OK!

The City's just waiting for the money to come rolling in. Meanwhile, next door to the Pavilion in Claremont's Piano Piano bar, Sam is in rehearsal for the City Council's production of "A Chorus Line":

* * *

Party On, Dude! - UPDATED

Being a councilperson is hard, thankless work. You spend countless hours attending community meetings and events, sitting on joint agency boards, traveling to far-off conferences, and setting policy for dear old Claremont. After a hard day at City Hall and elsewhere, you really need a break.

Here's a suggestion: Run over to PianoPiano, the new piano bar at Foothill and Indian Hill Blvds., with some of your trusted staff and blow off some steam by partying hearty.

That's apparently just what some of our councilmembers did back on December 19th. Turns out PianoPiano has a Facebook page where they the post photos they take each night showing their customers. The PianoPiano photo album for December 19th carries the title "City of Claremont in the House!"

The PianoPiano Facebook page has a couple interesting photos, including one that captures a particularly "happy" City Manager Jeff Parker, perhaps basking in the knowledge that he'd received a 3% raise, bringing his annual salary to $211,000, as well as performance bonus equal to 4% of his salary. That's equal to about $15,000 in salary and bonus combined. All the more reason to hoist a cold one and toast the gods of municipal finance.

UPDATED, 7:15AM: As the Daily Bulletin reports, these details came to light at the most recent City Council meeting on Tuesday, January 13th. To be fair, Parker did voluntarily place a 90-day freeze on his 3% cost-of-living increase. He is, however, taking that bonus - worth $8,000 - to the bank.

In addition, Claremont Courier reporter and blogger Tony Krickl has a post about the council's 3-2 vote approving Parker's pay. Krickl writes:

Corey Calaycay did not support a bonus or the COLA increase.

Peter Yao only supported the cost of living increase but felt a bonus was not a responsible move right now.

“We put together a budget just a few months ago, 6 months ago, and we're not meeting the budget in terms of revenue coming in,” Yao said. “... I voted against [the bonus] simply because of the fact that I don't have money in the budget and I don't know where that money is coming from, and to spend money that I don't have isn't part of my job.”

Ellen Taylor, Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza weren’t so concerned about spending money that’s not available and voted in favor of the increase.

One might think, as a couple of speakers at the meeting touched on, that in the toughest economic times since the Great Depression, that the city council would put some added emphasis on fiscal prudence.

Nobody’s doubting Parker’s performance over the past year (save for a certain bulldozing incident), but when businesses are closing, auto sales are tanking, and city jobs and services might be threatened, the city should probably tuck away every dollar it has.

Here's the 12/19/08 PianoPiano photo:

Click to Enlarge

Left to Right: Councilmember Corey Calaycay,
Councilmember Sam Pedroza,
City Manager Jeff Parker, unidentified party.

And then there was another photo that must have been taken later in the evening showing an inebriated Sam Pedroza and company enjoying the evening out, though Pedroza's fellow Councilmember Corey Calaycay and Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos don't look half as wasted as Mr. Sam. What were Calaycay and Ramos drinking, anyway, Shirley Temples?

Click to Enlarge

Left to Right, 1st Row: Councilmember Corey Calaycay,
Councilmember Sam Pedroza
2nd Row, Far Right: Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos

With these photos being posted on the Internet for all the world to see, you'd think our City would do like James Caan's Santino Corleone in "The Godfather" and grab that paparazzo's camera and smash it to bits.

Nonetheless, with all the problems facing Claremont - a precipitous drop in revenues, business failures and home foreclosures, potential staff cuts and/or layoffs, cuts in services, delays in capital projects, a possible CalPERS pension hit - you can see why the folks in City Hall might want to tie one on. It really is enough to drive one to drink.