Thursday, July 9, 2009

Thursday in San Diego

The Comic-Con International programming schedule for Thursday has been posted. I'll have the list of the events I'm hosting (i.e., the ones you really want to attend) in a few days here.

• Posted at 2:21 PM · LINK

California Rolled

I haven't written much here about the budget mess in my state, mainly because there's not much more to say than that it's a mess. Not that long ago, we ousted a governor named Gray Davis and replaced him with one named Schwarzenegger because, among other reasons, we were afraid that if we didn't, this kind of thing would happen. Well, guess what.

I concur with my pal Robert Elisberg about the root of the problem. The root is that we have this daffy system here of grass roots propositions. It sounds oh so democratic in theory but in practice, it ain't working so well. Everyone wants the roads paved, the schools improved, the infrastructure upgraded...but nobody wants their taxes to go up to pay for any of that. The system makes it easy to vote to spend without any connection with how to pay for those expenditures.

Bob correctly fingers one of the architects of my state's current woes — the late Howard Jarvis, who in '78 spearheaded Proposition 13, the aptly-numbered initiative that froze property taxes and other fees. I thought Mr. Jarvis was a horrible man even before that. He spent a lot of time 'n' money trying to ram through bills that said, in essence, that if I'm your landlord, I can do any damn thing I want to you, including tearing up contracts and raising your rent or evicting you whenever I feel like it. He never achieved most of the items on his wishlist but just Prop 13 has been pretty devastating. It basically turned into an invite for the state to spend money it didn't have and couldn't get.

So now the whole of California is one big Ponzi scheme and it's living off credit cards. I seem to remember that in 1978, there was a ballot initiative that was offered as an alternative to 13 by our then-governor, Jerry Brown. There was this sentiment up and down the state that property taxes were too high and were being raised too capriciously. In the hope of heading off 13 and the disasters it could bring, Brown and some others offered a bill that would have limited property taxes but allowed for them to be raised under certain circumstances, mainly if the public thought a given expenditure was worth it.

Jarvis and his group steamrollered over that proposition...which was a shame. I suspect it would have given them most of what they wanted but in a way that would have prevented what we're now facing. It's interesting that Jerry Brown intends to run again for the governorship in 2010. Yeah, I know he acts a little weird and he seems to have the sense of humor of a dead marmoset. But California never had better financial discipline than during his terms of office and that's what we need now.

• Posted at 12:28 PM · LINK

Bob Mitchell, R.I.P.

He's not as well-known as a lot of folks who've left us recently — and at age 96, his death does not come as a shock — but we have to note the passing of Bob Mitchell last Saturday.

In the above photo, Bob is seated at an organ. It seemed like Bob was always seated at an organ. He played one for the L.A. Dodgers between innings. He played in a wide array of venues to accompany silent movies. He was especially good at punctuating the moments and beats in a film, improvising with a perfect sense of scale — never too grand, never too subtle. He made a lot of great movies even better for a lot of us.

Bob did other things as well, mostly in the area of choir music. This obit will tell you about some of them. I just wanted to tell you how good he was at what he did.

• Posted at 9:20 AM · LINK

Conventional Dining

This will only be of interest to those attending the Comic-Con International in San Diego...

Up until a few years ago, a favored place for lunch or dinner was the Old Spaghetti Factory, located at 5th and K Streets, an easy walk from the convention center. The wait for a table was sometimes long but if and when you could get in, you could get a pretty decent plate o' pasta for not much money. It was one of the easiest, cheapest places to grab a meal, especially if you had kids with you.

So many were heartbroken when the place tuned into Dussini's Mediterranean Bistro, serving a more upscale, expensive Italian menu in fancier surroundings. Everyone I know who went there felt it wasn't as good and it certainly wasn't as easy on the wallet. Ergo, they should be happy to see on this website that the proprietors have kept the Dussini bar area but turned the rest of the building back into an Old Spaghetti Factory. And like the Comic-Con, the Old Spaghetti Factory is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year.

In other San Diego Restaurant News: A lot of us were saddened when before last year's con, the down 'n' funky Kansas City Barbecue Company was closed by a fire. Well, it's back, too. They reopened for business last November. Assuming they haven't ruined it in reconstruction, it serves pretty good 'Q, especially the chicken sandwich. And if I had any brains, I wouldn't be posting this because now you'll all be there ahead of me, waiting for a table.

• Posted at 1:46 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

It's one of the funniest men who ever lived — Buster Keaton — in a commercial he did around 1964 for Ford vans...