THE BELL CURVE:Snubbed, but planning for next year

Well, another year shot and I didn’t make the Pilot’s list of the 103 most influential people again. Surely not all of these winners did lunch with our editor or publisher or whoever made up this list. But then I’m not around much to keep a close tab on such matters.

I studied the list over the weekend looking for my name. I was aware I hadn’t been asked for a picture, but then the paper has a bunch of shots of me on file. A bio too. So what if the pictures are 30 years old; the likeness is still good.

When I didn’t find my name, I figured the head honchos would regard it as self-promotion to put anyone connected with the Pilot on their list. We are told that the list is intended to be taken in a spirit of fun and wasn’t meant to cause hurt to anyone. Sure. Us losers were then invited to tell the editors what we think. So here goes.

Just for starters, how do all of you losers feel about not making a list that includes a bunch of cottages, a boulevard of cars and a dead swan? Or Santa Ana Heights, which is where I live. My community is sandwiched on the list between ospreys and Rabbi Mark Miller, which gives you some idea of the thinking that goes on in assembling this list. We are No. 64 because we are “influencing the future of Newport-Mesa.” It is heartwarming to know that our influence is slightly less than the ospreys but seven points better than Miller. Hopefully, this will help stabilize real estate prices in my neighborhood.

It doesn’t seem to me out of line on behalf of all us losers to question the inclusion of such winged life as ospreys and swans and such inert structures as the Hoag Woman’s Center and the Segerstrom Concert Hall and such group endeavors as nameless Hoag Hospital leaders and Irvine Co. executives that displace individuals of distinction on the 103 list. I might question a few of the individuals who were recognized, too, but that would probably be regarded as sour grapes.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the list came out, even though it was difficult to clear my mind at this trying time of the year when baseball and football converge on the tube, causing an enormous amount of stress. Nevertheless, I was able during halftime shows to imagine members of the selection committee — when my name came up, as it surely must have — saying: “Yeah, but what’s he done that we would regard as even slightly influential?”

I must question the depth of research that went into answering that question. To illustrate, I’ll use my own case, not out of pique, but because I’m most familiar with it. I shouldn’t have needed to point out here that I have given freely and without rancor invaluable advice to the Orange County Republican leadership, which — had they followed it — might well have brought them gloriously into the 19th century.

But since the selection committee clearly ignored this influential contribution, I’ve had to turn, instead, to creating game plans with the specific goal of making next year’s list. Although I don’t want to give the game away this early, here are a few of the gambits I’m considering.

First off, I’m going to look for an issue with sure-fire news potential, like — for instance — turning our local cops into immigration agents or maybe closing our health services to any patients whose name ends in Z. Every time I am asked a question, I will push this issue, whether or not it is responsive to the question. This will get me on all the radio talk shows and make me both influential and famous.

I will also look into incorporating my writing and then declaring myself either chief operating officer or chairman of the board. Choosing between these titles will take a little more research, but there is no hurry since I will be the sole arbiter.

Then, I intend to change my political registration. As a long-time resident of Newport-Mesa, I don’t need to do much research to recognize the importance of this step. Those who would decry such a change as hypocrisy don’t understand that sometimes, even though our hearts aren’t in it, we have to fudge principle a little in order to bring about a socially desirable goal. Although this is allegedly a nonpartisan list, a little closet Democratizing (capital D please) would seem to be in order.

And I would remove teaching in a public institution from my resume because it doesn’t seem to play well on the 103, and replace it with such private sector jobs as a newspaper route in my early career, before I became influential. The list goes on, but I won’t belabor it further. I can’t help, however, carrying around this fantasy I created in the eighth inning of a blowout Mets game that had turned boring last Sunday.

It goes like this. When the novel I’m shopping to agents right now gets published and hits the best-seller list next summer and all the movie people are groveling about trying to secure the rights, the Pilot editor will call me to arrange a new picture for my advent on the 103 list. And I will tell him that I must decline on behalf of all the good and influential people who were upstaged last year by a swan and a bunch of cottages.

And then I will get great satisfaction in not finding my name on the list, and I will change my voter registration back to where it was, dissolve my corporation and use highly selective talk radio gigs only to promote my book.

But I won’t decline lunch with my editor if he wants to try to talk me out of this decision.