THE BELL CURVE:Stellar career brings family friend to L.A. stage

I went to see an old family friend perform Sunday, and I’m still drained from the depth and passion of the emotions that were turned loose from the stage. Bill Irwin is the latest local-boy-makes-good to return close enough to his roots that the hometown folks can see him work. Bill graduated from Corona del Mar High School in 1968, won a Tony last year as best actor in a play (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), and can be seen in that role for one more week at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles.

In between high school in Newport Beach and the scalding lines of Edward Albee’s “Virginia Wolff,” Bill paid his professional dues in almost every facet of writing, performing and choreographing. Just a few of the highlights of that journey were miming on the streets of San Francisco, a run as a clown in the Pickle Family Circus, a MacArthur Fellowship grant to develop his own creative work as both writer and performer, and a resume that fills almost two Playbill columns of professional achievement before Albee cast him against type to co-star with Kathleen Turner in “Virginia Wolff.”

During those years, my family was close to the Irwin family, and my two daughters were sandwiched around Bill in high school. That family friendship has endured, allowing us to share some of Bill’s triumphs — a few of them in person. Probably the most notable was his marriage on a grassy hill behind his parents’ retirement home in Mendocino. The honored guests who also served as entertainers for the event were the members of the Pickle Circus who pulled out all the stops for us in a memorable celebration.

As we went back stage for a brief visit with Bill after seeing “Virginia Woolf,” I thought of that day. Somehow, it symbolized the remarkable career that has followed.

Some years ago, I wrote an essay titled “The Ultimate Therapy.” My thesis — which I still believe implicitly — was the importance of trivia in finding one’s peace of mind. Only by legitimate caring about clearly unimportant matters is it possible to achieve the balance needed to deal rationally with important ones.

And at no time of year does that thesis play out more clearly than the Ides of March, when within a few weeks I will deeply involve myself in three examples of monumental unimportance in the great scheme of things: the Academy Awards, baseball spring training and the NCAA basketball tournament we call March Madness.

I bring this up here because I have been chewed out more than once for disrespecting the demise of Rupert the swan, the latest in a letter to the Pilot from Gay Wassall-Kelly. I will have to admit up front that my irreverent attitude about the homage paid Rupert is a direct departure from my convictions about the ultimate therapy.

So I would add this cavil. We all make our own choices about matters of less-than-seismic importance that we care deeply enough about to defend from the scorn of nonbelievers. Some of us choose March Madness. Some of us choose the funeral of Rupert the swan. The only time such choices get us into trouble is when we begin confusing the pseudo-important with the really important stuff.

In this economically top-heavy society in which the great majority of us struggle to survive, the lesson is implicit that if money doesn’t buy everything, it surely comes very close in material matters in the hands of those who have it. A little clout also helps.

Examples are frequent, and the latest one close to home is the incarceration of former Assistant Orange County Sheriff George Jaramillo, who recently pleaded no contest to charges of lying to a grand jury and is presently making his home in the Fullerton Jail.

He is there instead of the Orange County Jail because he was allowed to choose the jail in which he would serve his time, a perk seldom accessible to run-of-the-mill convicts — especially such dangerous offenders as Latinos caught riding their bicycles on the wrong side of the road — because it carries a heavy price. The Fullerton Jail is costing Jaramillo $75 a night, which adds up to $18,000 for the time he will be in custody, perhaps not quite the price of a Holiday Inn, but clearly beyond the means of most prisoners who might be offered this opportunity.

The upscale quarters in Fullerton need appointments, and — according to the Los Angeles Times — this has raised some other ticklish issues. The court was told by a prosecutor last week that Jaramillo should not be allowed a cellphone, a laptop computer, sex or pornography in his jail cell. Jaramillo’s attorney countered that the last two were included gratuitously to embarrass his client, and the first two are routine concessions for paying guests. He also suggested that embarrassment is one of the lesser punishments for underlings who support the political opponents of his boss.

But the special concession for paying guests is the issue here. The prosecutor’s insistence that Jaramillo should be “treated like any inmate in the Orange County Jail” isn’t happening. And the reason, quite simply, is that money changes the rules. The price of justice in this case has been pegged at $75 a night.

When white collar criminals can buy favors that aren’t accessible to the less endowed, our system is askew. And discarding the equal treatment promised by the Jaramillo prosecutor is simply another example of buying off justice.