BlogaBarbara

Santa Barbara Politics, Media & Culture

Saturday, August 20, 2005

The Statue Speaks

Carlos de Borb�n, a king in exile, views his domain from his pedestal at the former Royal Presidio de Santa B�rbara. He looks out over the coast, and sees wandering from the Santa Ynez Valley through Santa Barbara to the hedgerows of Montecito--especially Montecito--more sacred cows than inhabit all the highways and byways of Hindoostan.

At the moment a new warship of monstrous weaponry has anchored in the roadstead, named after an actor whose most successful role was impersonating a president of the United States. We are told that aboard ship is a shrine to him displaying an inspirational video loop where he portrays a dying football coach exhorting the college team to one last victory. Missing from the exhibit is a diorama of the thousands of Central Americans murdered by his subordinates. Neither is there the more amusing tableau of his ignoring the conspiracy of imbeciles plotting the Iran-Contra hostages ransom.

Adding to the festival of those lightest of weights, the show-business personality, is the radio advice giver whose self-promoting treacle has been slathered over the local print media by our surfboard journalists as if it were actually news. A born-again yacht club member, she offered to pay the shoreboats' tax. Meanwhile, downtown, one could encounter sailors, after three months of shipboard claustrophobia, slaughtering themselves with as many tequila boilermakers as possible before reporting for duty at dawn to monitor the gauges on the nuclear reactors. Anchors aweigh!

Yo el Rey

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Average sailors age 19.5. Wage, less than the living certainly. Education, poor. Entry to military, hope for a way out. They don't know RR or Dr Laura anymore than they know JFK or Martin. Santa Barbara has become a place of intolerance acroos the idealogical board. Welcome to America.

8/20/2005 7:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hedgerows in Montecito? Hindoostan?Reagan is, of course, an obvious fool. But if we agree with that, are we obliged to join with a twit with bad literary skills?

Alameda PMS

8/20/2005 10:35 PM  

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