With the Democratic sweep in the November 2018 statewide elections, the Republican Party in California continues its descent into oblivion. The GOP won no statewide office. Democrats now have a death grip on California’s two U.S. Senate seats, all but eight of the 53 California U.S. House seats and a supermajority in Sacramento in the […]
Q. Okay, so per your last column, people, as they age, want more passion, purpose, and joy in their lives and a few are finding it. I’d like that too. You can make mine with a cherry on top. But it’s hard to imagine “how.” I’m retired and supposedly living “the good life,” but it […]
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I was eight when planes piloted (in my comic-books) by sinister-looking Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Even before then, “Made in Japan” reputedly meant “cheap and shoddy.” During the war, of course, Japanese were simply our diabolical enemies. And, thanks to war-movies like God Is My Co-Pilot, the image of evil Japanese pilots was strongly planted […]
The best way to predict the future is to watch those who are working hard to create it. It is fascinating to reflect on how fast the world is changing. The Auto Industry Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that Alphabet Inc’s Waymo has become the first company to receive a permit from the […]
You may remember an old campfire song containing repeated vows that “I ain’t gonna grieve my Lord no more,” interspersed with a lengthy list of ways in which “you can’t get to Heaven.” One of those ways, which I have always remembered (perhaps because this is one case in which I strongly agree with the […]
Montecito voters will have a rare opportunity to elect two of five Montecito Sanitary District (MSD) Board members this year in a classic contest between appointed incumbents who have already held their board seats for up to 12 years and an exceptionally competent team of challengers who offer new ideas and a solid plan for […]
Maybe you’ve seen this bit of sagacity somewhere before: “YYUR YYUB ICUR YY 4ME” The “translation” is: “Too wise you are. Too wise you be. I see you are too wise for me.” Very clever – but so what? For one thing, if true wisdom is really all it’s cracked up to be, how can […]
One of the most hallowed of all Hollywood clichés is that of being saved at the last moment. This was the basic appeal of such ongoing series of narrow escapes, as The Perils of Pauline, or the weekly serials which many of us fondly remember, in which the hero was left in some precarious position, […]
“Microbubble, Toil and Trouble,” Shakespeare wrote. Actually, it’s “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble” in neat trochaic tetrameter, like a scary nursery rhyme. Either way, it’s about trouble and I’m asking for it. I’m wading into the dangerous waters of discussing boys. If you didn’t notice already, I’m a boy, a man, a male. Girls have […]
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As an aesthetic object, the human ear hasn’t yet received its due. Poems and songs celebrating eyes, lips, even chins and noses, abound. Shakespeare, in his Seven Ages of Man, even depicted a lover “with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” But nobody writes ballads, woeful or otherwise, to anybody’s ear. Can it […]
On November 6, Montecito voters will go to the polls. This year’s ballot contains an extreme rarity: a contested election for the Montecito Sanitary District (MSD) Board of Directors. For the first time in anyone’s memory, voters will choose among four different candidates running for two MSD seats. Why is this unusual? Because since 2000, […]
No doubt you have heard the wise old saw which pontificates that “There is no accounting for taste.” Yet any number of psychologists and other professional explorers of the human psyche, to say nothing of all the people engaged in advertising, marketing, and other activities involving the purveying of products, are constantly trying to account […]
I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening, Benjamin Braddock? “Microbubbles.” Think about it. I want to remake The Graduate. I know that sounds sacrosanct unless, of course, you’ve seriously never heard of the movie due to generational discrepancies or have a lack of cultural references. But I think […]
A crazy old woman of RhydeAte too many green apples, and died.The apples fermentedInside the dementedAnd soon she had cider inside her inside. I learned that poem from my father, who knew many similarly questionable classics. (Another was “It wasn’t the cough that carried him off – But the coffin they carried him off in.”) […]
