> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Such a hoser: Disaster can’t break our stride - URL: https://www.smdp.com/such-a-hoser-disaster-cant-break-our-stride/ - Published: 2007-10-31T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-25T01:12:49.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Opinion, Malibu, #archive-import *By MICHAEL TITTINGER is Editor of the Daily Press. When he isn’t trying to be a political cartoon walking, he* Two years ago, at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval, all this wounded World War II soldier and his slutty nurse girlfriend could do was stand by and watch as the top prize in the ballyhooed costume contest went to a group of revelers dressed as FEMA — Cajun style. Wearing makeshift houses around their wastes and draping fake legs over the roofs — creating the appearance of stranded Katrina victims sitting atop floating homes — the band of bedecked sufferers were a shoo-in from the moment they took the stage. Their costume motif was topical; it was political commentary; and most of all, it was damn funny. It was a personified political cartoon and left me swilling my smuggled vodka from my World War II canteen smarting, thinking ahead to next year’s round of Halloween costume contests. Two years later, I felt I stumbled on a winner. It met all the aforementioned criteria and resonated with an ongoing news story, not two months after the fact like the FEMA fashionistas. What could be more ripped-from-the-headlines fun than the California wildfires? You can still smell it, for Halloween’s sake. Here’s the pitch: I dress as a battle-weary fireman, complete with smoke-blackened face and macho ax, and my wife (having since retired the nurse costume for general public consumption) dresses up as Miss Malibu, complete with singed hair, burnt swimsuit and a soot-laden pageant sash, of course. Maybe some stilettos just for fun. But apparently, the conjured costume hit a little too close to home for just about every Californian we let in on the idea. Letting naysayers have their say is always the first mistake anyway. In the end, as we were heading for a family friendly party in the OC, we settled for a fireman and a sexy black cat, which I reportedly saved from a tree. It seems what’s good for the golden California geese, isn’t always so good for the gander. A crispy Miss Malibu is “in bad taste.” “It’s offensive.” “It’s insensitive to laugh at others’ misfortune.” Boo-hoo. Go sell it on the bayou. Last week, while the fires were still raging uncontained, comedian George Carlin said: “People are selfish. These people with the fires and the floods and everything, they overbuild and they put nature to the test, and they get what’s coming to them... that’s what I say.” When it comes to the California disasters, I think more people across the U.S. share such sentiments, what with all the celebrities and entrepreneurs and their oversized pretentious playhouses. Let’s look at this from outside the bubble we’ve all willingly placed ourselves in here in Southern California. We pay three times what much of the country does for modest homes in a desert region that is continually slammed by nature — wildfires, earthquakes, landslides, even tsunamis. And the galling part to most outsiders is the fact that there’s no question we will build again and roll the dice with Mother Nature in order to live in what is, by all accounts, a beautiful place to be. One question I have yet to hear since the fires broke out is: “Why would you rebuild there knowing what’s going to happen again?” Who hasn’t muttered the same at a news report in Kansas where people stand tall amid their trailer park rubble following another tornado? The short answer: Because it’s home. We California coast dwellers, on the other hand, are largely a nomadic people, so many of us arriving here from all over the world and choosing to call this turbulent dirt home. Maybe a lack of sympathy from outside the state is a spiteful stab at our wealth and health; maybe it’s our perceived materialism; or just maybe people realize that if it wasn’t worth it to live here, we would just move on and chase another dream someplace else. We are a people on the move. Our home isn’t necessarily where we grew up and relate to like-minded people, it’s where we moved to escape the limits and boundaries of those homes. We fled those “Why would you live there?” places in search of something better, and when that status home for which we strove and left others behind to achieve goes up in flames, there might just be a demographic that relishes our sudden misfortune and collective shrug as we, undoubtedly, rebuild on the same singed lots... which we will... because it’s worth it. We are risktakers by nature, it’s what brought us here from points unknown in the first place. I should have risked it over the weekend and strode into that party alongside my burned beauty, but getting slapped on the back all night and told I’m doing “a great job” in my fireman costume felt pretty damn good too. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/103107.pdf?ref=smdp.com)