Glendale City Councilman Bob Yousefian got down from the horseshoe at Tuesday's City Council meeting and addressed the council as a private citizen, speaking from the public speaker's stand about a setback ordinance that could affect his home, before climbing back up to his seat. That bit of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" populism was interesting enough, but the real fireworks happened after the meeting was over, when Yousefian and City Manager Jim Starbird got into a public argument. The tragedy of all this is that, while it was caught on video, there's no sound for the exchange between Yousefian and Starbird, just a lot of arm waving on the part of Yousefian and an attempt by Starbird to take Yousefian aside by grabbing his arm. The Glendale News Press judges the spat an "altercation." Anyway, let's just say that although the (silent) exchange was on cable access channel, it involved words that are more often seen on the other kind of cable TV. The video shows a police officer walking over to the counci horse shoe after the fight erupted. But needless to say, no arrests were made.

This has been brewing for years. I don't know how Starbird and Yousefian got along before this happened, but the members of this all boys club City Council have a history of taking some pretty juvenile snipes at each other. If you watch them long enough, it starts to remind you of watching high school kids in a cafeteria. There's the eye rolling, the dumb jokes and the clumsy attempts at self promotion.

Anyway, now Yousefian is saying that he's had enough. He told me he's going to next week's council meeting, and then he plans to take a couple weeks off for vacation. There was some talk of a Mexican getaway. For someone who is so married to the job that he actually - three years ago - asked his then-girlfriend to marry him in the middle of a City Council meeting, some time off may be just the solution.

What caused this rumble in the Jewel City? There was a proposal floating around that was spearheaded by Councilman Dave Weaver and would require setbacks ranging from 15 to 35 feet for the homes along part of East Glenoaks Boulevard, where Yousefian lives. It gets very technical very fast, but Yousefian was upset about a lot of things with the proposed ordinance. And he says he didn't get a notification letter from the city at his home address telling him what officials were planning to do on the setback issue. Anyone who wants more detail on this one is going to have to watch the video. Go to about 3:36:00 to watch the start of the council meltdown, when Yousefian steps down to the speaker's podium and demands to speak. If that's not exciting enough for you blood hungry council fans out there, skip ahead to 3:54:30, when the meeting ends and Yousefian and Starbird start acting like keystone cops in a silent movie.

Yousefian also said that speaking from the speaker's podium about house and home has convinced him that the council does not listen. "I can understand what it's like for the average citizen who goes to City Hall and tries to convince them that it's a problem," he said in a phone interview. "It's like talking to a wall."