Exactly five years ago on this day, I was working with The Partnership for Resilient Communities (TPRC) to help develop a plan to contain Montecito’s occasional debris flows. Since a lot of folks are relatively new to Montecito, now is a particularly poignant time to look back at where we’ve come from, what’s been achieved […]
I reconnected with showbiz vets James Widdoes and Tim Matheson on the passing of Ivan Reitman, the prolific director and producer and founder of the wildly successful production company The Montecito Picture Company. All four of us (including Reitman) are connected through the National Lampoon, a magazine where I was once editor but which has […]
Thanks to redistricting, Santa Barbara will be getting a new State Assembly seat and of course a new assemblyperson to go along with it. At the Courthouse Sunken Gardens in Santa Barbara on January 11, throwing his hat in the ring was 33 year old Gabe Escobedo, most recently chairman of the Santa Barbara Planning […]
In recent weeks, sharks have been circling the waters off the coast of Santa Barbara. It is a scientific fact that certain species of shark must always move forward, constantly feeding, or else they will die. This is true of Mako sharks. It’s true of hammerheads. It is true of Great Whites. My big question […]
Thanks To the Internet of Things, It’s Always Open Mic Night at Su Casa Humanity may never have been more disjointed, tribal, and disconnected but our stuff, thanks to the Internet of Things, is thriving wirelessly and virtually everything has been WiFi enabled, or, in today’s parlance, is “smart.” It’s my observation that most things […]
Give Me My “Dumb” Stuff Back; I’m tired of Getting Narked Out by my Printer I love tech and wireless convenience as much as the next guy. In fact I used to enjoy going to people’s houses – okay, even real estate open houses – finding the Alexa and saying, “Hey Alexa, buy Les Firestein […]
You’ve gotta give it up for humans. With the exception of the Dark Ages, we’re always trying to figure out better ways to nest and adapt those nests to what life throws at us. But how we shelter has never had to absorb so much change… or so much stuff… so quickly as now. Our […]
With plenty of extra time on my hands thanks to social distancing, I’m doing what millions of Americans are doing: reimagining my home office. Because quarantine is a great time to fixate on that which you control (or perceive you control). Sketching out a new blueprint, I asked myself: do we really need all these […]
For a smart species, humans can also have bizarre gaps in their logic. For example, the wheel was invented around 3500 BC… but wasn’t affixed to the bottom of luggage till 1970. In a similar brain fart of civilization, people have been duking it out over toilet paper at Costco, when, a few aisles over, […]