Part 11: The Tim Carpenter Award for Jeffersonian Achievement

NATHAN CALLAHAN: Hi, I'm Nathan Callahan. Even though I can't be with you in person tonight, I am deeply honored that OC Weekly has chosen me to be your guide for this multimedia spectacle honoring our dear friend, the namesake of the OC Weekly Outstanding Citizen of the Year award, Mr. Tim Carpenter.

[The title Tim Carpenter: The movie. A film by Nathan Callahan appears. As trumpets from Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" play, we see a video re-enactment of a struggling lower-middle-class family going about everyday life in their less-than-modest home in the desert. A scorpion skitters across the kitchen floor. Coyotes howl in the background.]

CALLAHAN: Tim was born on March 23, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona. His early years were spent watching minor-league hockey games, listening to his father's World War II stories and sweating.

MAN IN SANTA CLAUS SUIT: That's not the way it was! Tim's dad never wore platform heels!

CALLAHAN: The Carpenters were good Catholics, sort of. Tim's mom worked when the going got rough and neutered—I'm sorry, nurtured—the three children: Tim, his older brother and his sister. Meanwhile, Tim's father sold ice cream toppings. Then in 1969, the elder Carpenter was appointed sales executive to the Ice Cream Topping Capital of the World: Southern California. With that, the family moved to the more temperate climes of Orange County.

[An aerial shot of suburban sprawl. In the background, the twin peaks of Saddleback Mountain are topped with assorted nuts and rainbow sprinkles. A Catholic steeple looms on the horizon.]

CALLAHAN: In the sixth grade at Tustin's St. Cecilia Catholic School, Tim picked a name out of a hat in his civics class. It was a turning point in his life. The name belonged to liberal Kennedy-look-alike politician John Tunney. While completing his civics assignment—working on Tunney's successful Senate campaign —Tim fell in love with politics, met Hubert Humphrey, and ate lots of ice cream toppings.

[Grainy footage of Hubert Humphrey shaking hands with Tim. Humphrey's huge bald head glistens in a surreal rainbow of colors while digitally transmogrifying into George Harrison singing "My Sweet Lord."]

CALLAHAN: In 1971, our precocious boy with questionable taste in music was transformed by George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album. The segue from "My Sweet Lord" to "Hallelujah, Hare Krishna" made it evident to Tim there was more than one way to find God. And to think that drug-addled son-of-a-bitch Harrison ripped off the song from the Chiffons' "He's So Fine." Go figure.

[A school hallway. Suddenly, classroom doors swing open and screaming nuns run out, holding their hands over their ears.]

CALLAHAN: Inspired by the idealism of Tunney and Harrison, it wasn't long before Tim organized an Alternative Religion Day on campus and took over the principal's office to play "My Sweet Lord" over the PA. Because of his antics, Tim was almost expelled by Father Sammon.

Tim continued school but was eventually expelled by another, less predictable force. After his freshman year in high school, he was diagnosed with arthritis, forcing him to complete his last two years by studying at home. To this day, Tim suffers from the disease. He limps, cannot turn his head, and on some mornings finds it nearly impossible to get out of bed. In fact, many of you know what I call "Doing the Tim."

[Callahan gets off his barstool and starts walking stiffly around the room like a penguin. The audience is sullen and mutinous. Members of the front-row picnic-dinner crowd begin throwing arugula and sun-dried tomatoes at the screen. Shouts of "Kill Callahan!" are heard.]

CALLAHAN [laughs]: I indulge myself. Anyway, in 1974, Tim, through his growing political connections, met Jerry Brown—the soon-to-be governor of California.

[The chorus to Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good" plays over a photo of a Nehru-shirted Jerry Brown.]

CALLAHAN: At the time, Brown was supporting the farm workers strike and denouncing the opulence of the governor's mansion in Sacramento. Brown and Carpenter had a long talk, and by the time it was over, Governor Moonbeam had changed Tim's life.

By the age of 16, Carpenter was on the liberal-activist fast track, working for Tom Hayden's Senate campaign. After Hayden was elected, Tim studied the art of political organizing at Jane Fonda's Santa Barbara retreat and witnessed the birth of CED—the Campaign for Economic Democracy—in California.

[Video of Jane Fonda as Barbarella fighting off a dose of lethal orgasm in the Excessive Machine.]

CALLAHAN: To make ends meet, Carpenter was an administrative aide to Orange County Supervisor Edison Miller and later worked as an assistant county budget analyst. But at 20, he quit his job, moved into a garage with three lesbians, and took a vow of poverty. And—I'm just guessing here—celibacy. It sounds like I'm making this shit up, doesn't it? Well, it's all true, my friends. Tim spent the next several years working against the military buildup under then-president Jimmy Carter. But no one—no one in their right mind, at least—was prepared for what happened next. The unimaginable: Ronald Reagan was elected president.

[The Partridge Family's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" plays as a forlorn Santa Claus sits in a jail cell.]