Canary

I’ve been scratching my head ever since I saw the new Lady Gaga video, great steaming chunks of which were filmed at nearby Hearst Castle. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’ll wait while you go watch it. You can probably find it pretty easily on the Internet. But be warned: There’s a lot of […]

I sort of feel that calling the U.S. Supreme Court justices jerks is akin to saying something blasphemous in a lightning storm. If I’m around somebody who does it, I take two steps away to make sure I’m not collateral damage when the blast comes. I’m not saying that the justices are gods on high, […]

I’m going to come across as a one-note bird here. There’s no getting around that. I just wish that my one note wasn’t this particular one note.  This week’s news made me sick to my stomach. As a cynical, hardened newspaper columnist, it takes a lot to make this bird queasy, but the headlines this […]

I wanted to write another column about the drought. I know water. Everybody likes water. Then I thought about discussing the music licensing issues raised elsewhere in the paper this week. I know music. Everybody likes music. But this was all just hemming and hawing and putting off the subject I knew in my heart […]

I thought love was in the air on a recent flight I took around Santa Maria until I realized it wasn’t love, it was water falling from the sky. Even if it wasn’t romance soaking into my feathers, my heart fluttered all the same. I honestly, truly, genuinely couldn’t recall the last time I felt […]

When I was a little fledgling in flight school, I always showed up early to class, took copious notes, did my homework, studied late into the night, and met frequently with the teacher. Some of my fellow students, however, strolled in late, reeking of cigarette smoke, to hand in crumpled-up worksheets—if they handed in anything […]

Back in July, folks in Santa Barbara County were talking about food. But this wasn’t the typical debate over which ingredients, exactly, constitute Santa Maria-style barbecue. The discussion wasn’t about the best steakhouse in the area and the merits of red oak over other combustibles. And it wasn’t about how the area’s growing prominence as […]

On Jan. 9, Abel Maldonado sent out this message as part of his ongoing campaign for California governorship: “As Governor, I will work to reform and simplify California’s complex tax system. I’ll reduce the burden on the small businesses we need to grow in order to create jobs. I’ll cancel this high-speed rail boondoggle. And […]

I’m going to fly a bit outside of my usual comfort zone this week by writing about a South County issue. Of course, what happens down there sometimes comes up, so it’s really an all-county issue. I’m talking about traffic. By the time most of you read this column, the Santa Barbara County Association of […]

There’s news this week about another—another!—cockfighting ring busted by local officials, this one near the Santa Maria airport. Writers have spilled a lot of ink on this subject, but that still doesn’t seem to staunch the blood that the birds themselves are spilling for sport, so gamblers can get a sadistic thrill while watching two […]