Tag: california

local politics: white supremacists, soccer, and newspapers

The publisher of our local rag, Tom Johnson, is a sensible guy, and he wrote a thoughtful editorial on Friday. He
rightly points out that one of the city’s parks has been designated a “passive park,” which is an entirely new concept, exactly to keep Mexican-Americans and other soccer fans from playing in the park.

This is of course the work of Costa Mesa’s racist-majority city council, which includes now internationally known Mexican-baiter Mayor Allan Mansour. But Johnson moves past Mansour to the real force behind the local spiral into race war.

The editorial called out our local white supremacist bile factory, Mr. Martin H. Millard. Millard straddles the border between mainstream politics and skinhead neo-Nazism adroitly. He delivered support and votes for Mansour while keeping his scarier buddies out of the picture. He’s slime. And Johnson points him out very accurately as one of Costa Mesa’s biggest problems.

The response from Millard at CMPress would be funny if he wasn’t so powerful.

Tip of the hat to Geoff West at A Bubbling Cauldron for this story.

vive Pescadou

I had one of the great meals of my life last night at Pescadou Bistro. They put on a holiday prix fixe, and mom and I went to the early seating, which was cheaper and also got us home before the… stuff started down on the peninsula.

Three courses, choice in each. I had the quail and foie gras over baby lettuce, with pears. Entree choice was filet mignon with peppercorn sauce, mashed potatoes, and endive. Dessert was a warm chocolate cake with creme fraiche. The other options were a first course of lobster bisque, a second of seabass or venison, and a third of an apple/camembert tart.

Pescadou is serious French food, which doesn’t mean stuffy or expensive or pretentious, but it does mean attention to detail and tradition. It also means reasonable portion sizes, unlike the U.S. tradition in celebratory meals of forcing an entire farm down your throat.

Everything was made… just… perfectly. The owner and staff are friends after years of going there. It’s more like showing up to someone’s house in a medium sized southern French town for dinner than it is like a restaurant. It’s nothing like any other restaurant around here, that’s for sure.

The three course prix fixe was $52. With tax and tip and two glasses of wine for mom and some fizzy water for me, $80/person. That’s about as expensive as a meal can get there. The usual dinner prix fixe is $25.

Please don’t change, Pescadou.

Letter to the OC Weekly that will not be published

Dear The OC Weekly:

Please reboot your paper. You have maybe 3 or 4 good writers left: Arellano, Moxley, Schou. Ziegler’s Meltzer riff on Matt McCluer was good last week. The rest is painful: a depressing and irresponsible guide to holiday drinking, a Social Distortion tribute band, a review of a Paul Frank party, a botched mess of a feature that should have been excellent about the Asian sex mystique, and the worst circle-jerk of solipsistic first-person journalism ever seen. Reading the Weekly now is watching a party clique amuse themselves and each other. One friend of mine suggests that each feature should be indexed to its corresponding episode of “Arrested Development.”

There is a spanish phrase “verguenza ajena” which means “pain on seeing the embarrassment of others.” It’s the cringe sensation, and we’re feeling it for you. Improve!

best,

all the leaves are brown

The SF Chronicle reports the gloomy bullet points from a doomy official state report about climate change in California.

Without serious reduction in emissions:

California will become significantly hotter and drier by the end of the century, causing severe air pollution, a drop in the water supply, melting of 90 percent of the Sierra snowpack and up to six times more heat-related deaths in major urban centers, according to a sweeping study compiled with help from respected scientists from around the country.

The weather — up to 10.5 degrees warmer by 2100 — would make last month’s heat wave look average. If industrial and vehicle emissions continue unabated, there could be up to 100 more days a year when temperatures hit 90 degrees or above in Los Angeles and 95 degrees or above in Sacramento. Both cities have about 20 days of such extreme heat now.

beyond blunderdome: christ, what an asshole

Getting popped for DUI is bad. It’s unpleasant and irresponsible to drive drunk. But if you pay the penalty and deal with your shit and don’t do it again, that’s good.

Being racially abusive is really bad too, drunk or not. But there are some people who say and do things drunk they don’t believe sober. And when they apologize (and stop getting drunk), it’s only fair to take them at their word.

But if someone is taken in for DUI, and in the process blasts out a tirade of anti-Semitic slurs and threats at the officers, and that someone is a prominent filmmaker whose father is a Holocaust-denying anti-Semite, and that person has not repudiated his father’s views, and that person is a member and supporter of his father’s crazy church, and that person has made a passion play film of just the kind used to launch pogroms and massacres, it’s time for more than just a public apology.

Hey Mel? It’s time for a complete turnaround. Stop drinking, stop being racist, repudiate your bigoted family and friends, and spend a decade or so making amends. Or just toss the citizenship and leave, because you’re not wanted.