Our cities need to lighten up

Here are a couple of stories that, when strung together, I hope will make an important point.

Last Thursday, I was on a conference call to a guy in New York who was helping a colleague and me develop a new Web-based project.

One of the actions we had not yet taken was to announce the name of the project. Inside the office, it was not a secret but little was known about it. So, it became known in our office and to the New York advisor as Project X.

“In order to move this along,” said Mr. New York, “one of the things we really need to do is give it a name other than Project X.”

My colleague, Jennifer Dupuis, and I agreed but we weren’t ready to tell this guy that not only did we have a name -- a good one, we believed -- we had already registered it.

So, instead, I said, “We couldn’t agree with you more. That’s why we’ve started calling it Bob. So around the office here, people can ask about the project by saying, ‘Hey, how’s Bob?’ or ‘What’s about Bob?’”

The New York guy didn’t flinch. Several times during the rest of the 30-minute call, he referred to the project as “Bob.”

OK, that’s the first story. Here’s the second.

In yesterday’s Daily Pilot, there were 19 letters responding to the question about who should succeed John Heffernan on the Newport Beach City Council. Most were very short.

“I would vote for Keith Curry,” wrote Susan Dean of Corona del Mar.

Scott Peotter got an endorsement from Phillip Langford of Newport Beach who wrote, “Scott Peotter is best qualified for Newport Beach City Council.”

All of the longer letters endorsed Dolores Otting. But most were very short, like the ones for Curry and Peotter.

As I read them, there was one type of letter I was hoping to see: “I am going to support Keith Curry.” The letter would have been signed by Keith Curry.

I picked Curry at random. The letter could have been Otting supporting Otting, Peotter supporting Peotter.

There is no question that Newport Beach and Costa Mesa face some very important issues in the coming months and years.

In Costa Mesa, the poor planning of the illegal immigrant initiative has brought the wrong type of national attention. Now, there are plans for a boycott of businesses that don’t get in line with a strong-arm group’s opinion.

In Newport Beach, there is a city hall to design and build and Marinapark to develop, among other matters.

What’s missing from the “Bob” story and from the recent letters to the editor is any sense of perspective, any sense that maybe some of these issues would be less divisive and stressful if everyone just turned it down a notch or two.

There is nothing funny about a business boycott, or spending tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on a new city hall, I know. But there was nothing funny about the war in Vietnam or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the civil rights marches in the South in the 1960s. Yet, comedian Mort Sahl found humor in all of them, most of it involving irony.

Sahl is a stand-up comedian, popular since the ‘60s, who tells political jokes. He uses one prop -- a folded newspaper that he never reads.

“Will Rogers used to come out with a newspaper and pretend he was a yokel criticizing the intellectuals who ran the government. I come out with a newspaper and pretend I’m an intellectual making fun of the yokels running the government,” Sahl was once quoted as saying.

The concern here is that our local humor compass is broken, that we are taking everything so seriously that we risk losing an important perspective.

As a marketing guy who makes a good living advising people how to make money and get noticed, I tell most of my clients that sex sells. For better or worse, it is still the No. 1 way to get attention.

That is followed right away with the revelation that a very close second is humor. Humor is powerful. Reputable studies have shown that information presented in a humorous format has a much higher long-term retention rate than information presented without humor.

In my office, it is often a struggle to maintain an important perspective. My constant reminder to everyone is, “We are not saving lives here.”

Pining about the lack of local issue-based humor these days may seem strange coming from a guy who can’t find anything funny about a bunch of failing schools or the lack of soccer fields in Newport Beach, but I promise this year to try.

Consider a new, personal project. To start, I’ll call it Bob.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.

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