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Posts published in May 2003

Small Town Etiquette

It is a singularly small town talent, and one I lack: The ability to recognize oncoming cars soon enough to decide whether or not to wave. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize…

Deputy Gander’s Halloween Party

The two attractive, forty-something women had looked forward to the annual Halloween party at the Gualala Hotel that Saturday night, but when they arrived at the hotel a little after 8pm, the merrymakers who would…

Upcoming TV Shows

Oh, please, take pity on us poor satirists, for reality keeps nipping at our heels and increasingly overtaking us. There was a recent report that a Sunday School teacher instructed a student to write, "What…

Buying Dope in Humco

The Northern California pot growing culture is very clubby. In Mendocino and Humboldt, it's the growers against not just the cops but also CAMP. This vigilante group, the Campaign Against Marijuana Production, believes that pot…

Abating Mendo’s Wrecks

Mendocino County budgets $60,000 a year to get abandoned cars permanently put away. According to people who perform this valuable public service, Mendocino County gets off cheap. Since fiscal year 1997 Mendocino County has contracted…

Who’ll Stop the Reign?

The rains fell so redundantly this spring that I tired of checking the forecast in the newspaper. I took to wearing a green raincoat with plastic overalls on sunny days, sweating as I carried buckets…

What’s the Big Deal about Jayson Blair?

There are so many smellier corpses in the New York Times’s mausoleum, not to mention that larger graveyard of truth known as the Fourth Estate, that it’s hard to get too upset about what Jayson…

Monica’s Walk on the Wild Side

He may have been Clyde, but she was no Bonnie. She didn't want to be Bonnie, didn't really want to be with Clyde either, but he scared her into staying with him, and after awhile…

Cringing Wusses

THE FOLLOWING appeared in the April 24th issue of the LA Times. It's a lawyer-drafted response to the inevitable demand-for-a-retraction letter from Mike Sweeney of Keep Mendocino Beautiful, one of two Mendocino County garbage agencies.…

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