In what may be the strangest pairing since Tiny Tim married Miss Vicky, The Daily Sound, fresh off of its endorsement of Dale Francisco for mayor of Santa Barbara, is endorsing Bendy White, Grant House and David Pritchett for city council.
Those off-key voices you may be hearing in the distance are those of Preserve Our Santa Barbara who's singing, "They're Breaking Up That Old Slate of Mine!"
The Randall Van Wolfswinkel backed group is promoting a slate of Francisco, Frank Hotchkiss, Michael Self and Cathie McCammon.
If you like pickles with your ice cream, cheese with your sauerkraut or think it's okay to wear a baseball cap with your tuxedo, you probably don't find anything odd about the combination that the Sound is suggesting.
But for those of us who don't like to mix and match, this is an eyebrow raising recommendation.
And just in case their mayoral endorsement of Francisco or city council member Helene Schneider succeeds in being elected mayor, the Daily Sound says they'd like to see John Thyne get the fourth open seat on the council.
And just who is making these endorsements? In theory, the endorsements of a newspaper, any newspaper, reflects the opinion of the paper as an institution. Of course in the end, it's individuals or even a single individual who makes the decision. In the case of the Daily Sound I'm informed that the candidates were interviewed by publisher Jeramy Gordon and opinion page columnist Cheri Rae who then made the joint decision of whom to endorse.
I was having coffee on the deck of the Daily Grind Monday morning when within a few minutes of each other four police units and two ambulances, all with red lights and sirens going, went flying by heading east on Mission street.
I was wondering what the heck was going on and not carrying a police scanner with me really had no way of finding out. I had my laptop with me and tried Twitter and Edhat with no luck. Then I tried the News-Press website and in the breaking news crawl I found the explanation. "Suspected suicide causes street shutdown." As far as I know, they were the first outlet to report the news.
So, let it never be said I've never had anything positive to say about the News-Press.
One of my regular readers up in the Santa Ynez Valley, John Padfield, is very excited about Wednesday's opening of the Whole Foods Market here in Santa Barbara. According to John, they have the most beautiful grocery stores one can imagine, and asks whether I'm, "going to cover the grand opening on the blog &/or Twitter?"
A guy who's idea of the perfect meal is the Double-Double combo at In-N-Out Burger shouldn't be covering the opening of a natural and organic foods store.
So no, you won't hear me gushing, "I just love the mashed yeast section here!"
© 2009 by Craig Smith and www.craigsmithsblog.com
