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