Ashleigh Brilliant, Santa Barbara’s best-known practicing epigrammatist — not to mention newspaper columnist, community activist, perambulator, and all-around eccentric — died September 24 at the age of 91. According to his obituary, Brilliant died a “quick, efficient death” and “completely on his own terms.”
In person, the British-born Brilliant was both whimsical and prickly, publishing his “Brilliant Thoughts” epigrams in various publications and on his illustrated “Pot-Shots” postcards, which he sold in shops and bookstores.
“My life has a superb cast, but I can’t figure out the plot,” he wrote in one. “Incredible as it seems, my life is based on a true story,” he wrote in another, in what could pass as his own obituary.
Brilliant limited his epigrams to no more than 17 words; no puns were allowed, rhyming was banned, and no references to current events tolerated. He lost count after 10,000.
Brilliant and his family moved from England to Canada with the outbreak of World War II looming. From there, the family moved to Washington, D.C., then to Hollywood, back to England, and then back to California, where he studied history at UC Berkeley. As a practicing nonconformist, he sought succor in the free-form energy of the Haight-Ashbury hippie movement. Along the way, he married Dorothy Tucker, with whom he shared 33 years of life until her death in 2018.
For those missing his obvious intelligence — and last name — Brilliant was a member of the local Mensa club. In 1977, Brilliant ran for mayor and came in eighth out of 11.
In civic affairs, Brilliant is best known for his relentless campaigning against gas-powered leaf blowers. He complained that they were loud, noisy, and stinky; relied stupidly on fossil fuels; stirred up dust and debris; and did work that could just as easily be done manually or with electric motors. After the Santa Barbara twice declined to pass regulations of its own, Brilliant collected enough signatures to place a ban on gas-powered blowers on the ballot in 1997. Despite bitter opposition form landscapers and gardeners, the measure passed. It would be among the city’s most widely unenforced ordinances of all time.
Brilliant was criminally prosecuted for assault when he sought to yank the gas pack from the back of a landscaper using a gas blower. Brilliant argued at the time, he had asked politely first but was ignored.
With Brilliant’s passing, Santa Barbara just got significantly blander.
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