All photos by Matt Rosenberg, copyright 2008

Waikiki Beach was still dusted with the last night's late March snow when we arrived. That'd be Waikiki Beach in Washington's Cape Disappointment State Park, (left). A loop route takes you back out either way into Ilwaco, Washington. It's a fishing village in the state's far southwest corner, perched at the nexus of the mighty Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, on the famed Lewis and Clark Trail.

Offshore are harvested Dungeness crab, salmon and halibut, while northeast is Willapa Bay, known for fresh oysters. Big tankers going between the Port of Portland and the ocean traverse this stretch of the Columbia; and the harrowing bones of many lesser ships lie scattered in the deep, roiling waters. Ilwaco is just a few miles south of the city of Long Beach and eponymous peninsula, a worthy if overrun vacation destination favored by some Washingtonians.

After exploring the state park, hie thie to the Port Bistro at the east end of Ilwaco's waterfront promenade and prepare for a heaping slice of foodie nirvana. The intimate space is graced with water views taking in the marina and Cape, plus white tablecloths, hammered brass counters and muted pastels, with sightlines into the kitchen. Your well-behaved kids will be welcome.

A clam chowder far exceeded the serviceable yet goopy norm proffered at so many Northwest establishments. A medium-thin, fresh-made creamy broth was kissed with white wine and garlic, and studded with achingly fresh whole Willapa Bay clams cooked open in their shells, and potatoes, bracketed by thick, savory slices of garlic toast. Another fan of the bistro's chowder is Seattle Times travel writer/blogger Brian Cantwell.

But there's quite a bit more. An exquisite special of fresh Ahi was dusted with cumin, and plated astride a red pepper puree and a smooth, avocado and green chile-spiked creme fraiche. Lissome bites of halibut with chipotle sour cream, fire-roasted tomato salasa and julienned green and red cabbage informed the fish tacos, served with a white rice timbale and black beans. Our daughter's burger was savory and perfectly cooked, as were the accompanying Yukon Gold fries. A homemade truffle, sorbet and biscuit assortment - shared by all for dessert - was revelatory.

It's certain we'll find our way back to Ilwaco to delve further into Cape Disapointment's beaches, trails, Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, lighthouses (right), the town's waterfront shopping district, and the Port Bistro's menu. It features light and inventive salads with market-fresh regional ingredients, local fish and seafood appetizers and entrees, as well as meat and vegetarian dishes.

Some of the choices on the current, spring menu:

Read more on the bistro in this 2007 feature and 2006 review, both in the Daily Astorian.

We happened upon the Port Bistro en route to a week-long stay in Manzanita on the north Oregon Coast, having decided to spend the previous night on the Long Beach Peninsula in Seaview, at the Shelburne Inn bed and breakfast.

On the way back home to Seattle from Manzanita, again traversing the Astoria-Megler Bridge across the Columbia, we set off in the direction opposite Ilwaco, east toward Cathlamet, declining the opportunity shortly thereafter to eat under a mossy-roofed picnic table at the Dismal Nitch rest area, seen (left) with the bridge in the background. The spot, where Lewis and Clark's exploration party sat out a storm for six days in 1803, was later home to a dock for the Astoria ferry until it was demolished upon completion of the bridge in 1966.

Continuing east on State Route 4, we came upon Duffy's Irish Pub, a funky roadside gem. Confronted with signs announcing smoked salmon chowder and red beans and rice, plus Irish stew and homemade pie, resistance was futile.

What food! What atmo. What a back story.

Chef and owner Al Salazar in the 70s and 80s ran one of Portland's premier live music venues, the Pine Street Theater, and for 30 years operated Salazar's restaurant in Zig Zag, near Mount Hood, Oregon.

He later opened Duffy's 1.0 in Portland, but seeking the country life, bought an old and then-badly-neglected road house in tiny Gray's River, Washington, that he remembered as a vibrant joynt from childhood hunting trips with his father. Purchased by Salazar in 1996, Duffy's 2.0 finally opened in 2001 after extensive renovations and a major go-round with the Environmental Protection Agency over rendering the river's edge drainage field sufficiently salmon-sensitive.

It's a homey feel outside, what with the antique ornamental outhouse perched above the town's namesake river (below, right).

Inside are vintage lamps, wood everywhere, a pool table, Christmas lights, and on the cluttered small live music stage, Pine Street Theater rock concert posters covering ceiling and walls. They're hyping shows of yore by West Coast-based acts such as Camper Van Beethoven, Los Lobos, The Wipers and Fetchin' Bones.

Kids are allowed in the dining room, while it's adults-only in the bar, where Guinness and a host of other fine beers and Northwest wines are served. There's a back deck for use in warmer weather, looking directly onto Gray's River.

Our lunch was relished by all four in our group; two parents and our often-finicky-eater kids.

An impressive if meal-sized opener was - as at Port Bistro - a made-to-order, light-touch chowder, this one liberally studded with moist, superbly-flavored morsels of smoked salmon. Perfectly moist, freshly-baked cornbread redolent of melted butter came on the side. Also starring in the Sunday repast were red beans and rice with grilled sausage, a Reuben with mustardy, eggy homemade potato salad on the side, a half dozen breaded pan-fried Willapa Bay oysters, and finally, homemade apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream. Other choices include the afore-mentioned Irish Stew, catfish, grilled T-bone steaks, burgers, and daily specials.

Service was warm, informative, attentive and prompt. A steady stream of lunch customers kept the kitchen busy.

Everything was fresh and made to order. It's hard to recall a more satisfying yet relaxed meal out.

Places like Duffy's are exactly why you want to get off the Interstate highways and meander a while. Especially in the Pacific Northwest, where there's no better way to go local than trawling through the great landscapes and the great, off-the-beaten-path eats.

Port Bistro, in Ilwaco Harbour Village, 235 Howerton Way, Ilwaco, WA; 360-642-8447.
Duffy's Irish Pub, 3779 State Route 4 West, Gray's River, WA; 360-465-2898.

TECHNORATI TAGS: ILWACO, WASHINGTON, GRAY'S RIVER, PORT BISTRO, DUFFY'S IRISH PUB, CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT STATE PARK, LEWIS AND CLARK, COLUMBIA RIVER

Some restaurants attach old farm implements to the wall for rustic flavor. In Polebridge, Montana - a small settlement just outside the northwest reaches of Glacier National Park - the very same sort of rusty gizmos lie in a natural habitat on the grass between Polebridge Mercantile and the Northern Lights Saloon. There the menu includes buffalo tips, elk and salmon burgers, microbrews and to-die-for homemade peach-blueberry pie a la mode -- all accented by a piquant and varied soundtrack. Also strewn about outside are barstool seats liberated from their legs. A cadre of mellow, leashless local dogs, including one with three legs, and a big black fellow named Underfoot, seem to be in charge, by default.

There's a communal volleyball court; picnic tables used by saloon and store patrons; and an outdoor soundstage behind the Northern Lights, where local kids cavort in their skeleton-patterned jammies during concerts and the sound crisply pumps from Mackie speaker towers which belie the ramshackle surroundings. Between sets, you may see a tipsy urbanista find succor in, and photograph with enthusiastic declamations, a shuttered outhouse. Small wonder the "Montana Sucks" initiative is underway, though it's destined to fail. Time to walk through a nearby meadow with your beer to a campfire circle and grok the mountains looming to the north against the dusk. Electricity in Polebridge is by generator only. The roads aren't paved and the locals like it that way.

Polebridge is off the grid in more ways than one. The scenic heart of Glacier, along Going To The Sun Highway, is jaw-droppingly beautiful, as we learned last summer. But it's jammed to the gills. Polebridge is a respite along a road less travelled, 25 miles north of the main western entrance to Glacier in the town of West Glacier. During Glacier's high season last week we didn't encounter more than a few dozen people in town, and far fewer on the trailheads from Bowman Lake.

Your first stop in town should be Polebridge Mercantile, an old-fashioned general store and bakery where notoriously scrumptious cookies, breakfast pastries and sandwiches on homemade bread are made daily. Here's a picture I took of the Merc.

My wife and I stayed in a cozy cabin with a backwoods chic interior, that sleeps five. The kitchen was first-rate, likewise the mountain views from the covered front porch. The generator was on a 60-minute timer switch, to be re-set as needed. Polebridge is along the North Fork of the Flathead River, seen below in a photo I took looking north from Inner North Fork Road just above the Polebridge Ranger Station.

Six miles up the road from the ranger station is Bowman Lake, from where several hiking trails start. There's a campground, a low bank grassy waterfront, and a pebbly beach. The few visitors who shared Bowman Lake with us lazed about on the shore or idled on innertubes, reading. The latter is probably best for extending hanging out at the lake, as flies on shore in summer are big and hungry. Here's the backdrop.

Comfortable and secluded lodging options in the vicinity of Polebridge can be identified online. Two noteworthy choices for larger groups come via the Vacation Rental By Owner network, which I've used successfully a number of times. They are Lupine Meadow Lodge and this "Wild and Scenic River Vacation Home" inside Glacier. An excellent Glacier vacation resource is the Glacier Country Montana site, for lodgings, acitivites and more.

TECHNORATI TAGS: MONTANA, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, POLEBRIDGE, POLEBRIDGE MERCANTILE, NORTHERN LIGHTS SALOON, BOWMAN LAKE

In the wake of CBS's firing of shock talk jock Don Imus for calling members of the Rutgers womens' basketball team "nappy-headed hos," there have appeared a series of seemingly well intentioned op-eds, editorials and blog posts correctly noting his words of disrespect to the black women on the team pale in comparison to the sexist vitriol spewed by black rappers. Jason Whitlock wrote a widely-cited piece in the Kansas City Star. Constance L. Rice covered similar territory in the Los Angeles Times; as did S. Renee Mitchell in The Oregonian; Johnetta Rose Barras in the Washington Post; and Derrick Z. Jackson in The Boston Globe.

All well and good, up to a point. But an even greater and less easily challenged affront to African-Americans is the paternalistic liberal notion that society's machinery still comprises an oppressive force negating the power of free will and the individual, dooming many black children and families to dysfunction and failure. The forces of "white oppression" are under the microscope this week in Colorado Springs at the eighth annual White Privilege Conference.

What we really have here, now, is not racism or privilege.

It is an instrumental racialism.

That is, an enforced political orthodoxy advanced by a minority of race-hustling blacks and a larger cohort of guilty white liberals and public employee union members, which seeks to explain minority failings in education, income, crime and family cohesion in terms of "institutional racism" and "white privilege." This racialism is not merely rhetorical: it is rooted in a push for maintaining and building public employee union membership; painting modern-day American blacks as perpetual subjects of the clientized state, ministered to by variegated counsellors, intake workers, program managers, administrators and especially, "culturally competent" teachers bent on having little Arthur and Shanika rap and graffiti paint their way to a diploma. "Multiple intelligences," don'cha know?

Small wonder that recently the union representing Seattle public school teachers went Code Red on the state legislature - unsuccessfully, it seems - for failing to drop state reading and writing test requirements for high school graduation because said standards allegedly doomed minority students to failure, even with four retries guaranteed under state law.

In the aftermath of the predictably-played Imus affair, and the contemporaneous racialism of Seattle's school board and administrators, the real issue which emerges has little to do with Snoop Dogg or Fifty Cent and their blithely vituperative encomiums to hos in the hood. The central need is to dispel racialism, and stress black self-determination, which has a compelling history in America going back to the still-racist post-slavery decades and continuing up to and through the civil rights era, even as Great Society social welfare programs and racial quotas gradually proved the folly of double standards and low expectations.

Calling out the fraud of modern-day racialism in the U.S. is precisely where the post-Imus rap critics fall short.

Into this void lately have stepped a few, such as Bill Cosby and Juan Williams - and then, last weekend, Joe R. Hicks, former head of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Hick's Washington Post Sunday op-ed is simply titled, "Drop The Race Card," and should be required reading for all professing an interest in race, racism, or racialism in the U.S. today. Not so coincidentally, Hicks is Vice-President of Community Advocates, Inc., a Los Angeles-based organization with a refreshing and right-on approach to race relations.

Bearing in mind Imus' flaying and the press lynching of white Duke University lacrosse players finally absolved of race-driven charges of raping a black woman, Hicks observes:

...what links both cases is the rank racial opportunism in both Imus's firing and the Duke rape case, in which the Durham County district attorney shamelessly used race in an attempt to railroad three young men for his political purposes. Remember the Michael Richards episode? In that case, America's civil rights establishment -- led, as usual, by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton -- mobilized in an effort to sell the premise that a down-on-his-luck comedian had somehow become a barometer for our nation's race relations.

What remains of the once-proud civil rights movement justifies its existence by contending -- despite widespread progress -- that black people continue to live marginalized and victimized lives. This oft-repeated theme was the base for the ugly stew that was the reaction to Imus's slur, and it was the operating theme for Nifong as he set about attempting to ruin the lives of three innocent men.

Several decades ago, when I was head of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, I would have joined with Jackson and Sharpton with little reservation to call for Imus's demise. But somewhere along the way since then, reality intervened and I began to reject the view that America is a racist, hostile environment for people with my skin color. Further, I began engaging in the unforgivable sin -- rejecting the orthodox civil rights view of blacks as victims.

...(there is) an agenda of racial opportunism that promotes the view that blacks are powerless victims of white racism. In this view, blacks are always in need of government intervention to save them from white hostility.

....As comedian Bill Cosby has observed: "There are people that want you to remain in a hole, and they rejoice in your hopelessness because they have jobs mismanaging you. However, your job is not becoming victims. We have to rise up and fight on all levels to succeed." Amen, brother Cosby.

Hicks saliently notes prosecuting attorney Mike Nifong's re-election campaign succeeed because he played to black constituents and white "progressives" appeased by his ultimately baseless rhetoric against the white Duke suspects. In a similar though less dramatic vein, everyday white progressives in places such as Seattle regularly condone violations of the dignity of blacks by silently letting pass the loud assertions that blacks are still victims needing special dispensations from society and government.

Our nation's liberal urban centers are still a long way from eschewing the cheap hustle that is racialism. But the tipping point now comes closer at a slow, steady pace.

TECHNORATI TAGS: RACE, RACIALISM, DON IMUS, SEATTLE SCHOOLS, JOE R. HICKS

More On The School Indoctrination Plan, And The Theoretical Underpinnings

On its Web site, the Seattle Public Schools Office of Equity and Race Relations details what it expects of the students from four Seattle high schools who are being sent to the eighth annual White Privilege Conference April 18-21 in Colorado Springs. The SPS white privilege conference "expectations" document states that for student attendees, ensuing goals should include: "educate youth and people who work with youth about issues of privilege;" and, "support and develop youth leadership for social and economic justice." White privilege, as I discuss in a Seattle Times op-ed today, is about the pernicious cult of individualism and self-determination.

It's always a pleasure to work with my friends at The Times, where I published a regular guest op-ed column for three years, from April of 2001 to May of 2004. I'm using this post and the one immediately preceeding it to go a bit further than the space in the weekday op-ed allowed. Social justice, for those who haven't yet been boxed about the ears with the term, is a popular liberal ideal rooted in advocacy of equalized outcomes among different racial groups and social classes. Beneath the focus in Seattle Public Schools on white privilege and institutional racism is an emphasis on disproportionality, the crucial antecedent to demands for social justice. Disproportionality analysis crudely assumes that all racial groups should be incarcerated, disciplined in school, graduate from high school and college, own homes, earn above a certain level, and so forth - in direct proportion to their percentage of representation in the populace as a whole.

When this brittle dogma fails to comport with reality, seers and sages announce disparities as evidence of systemic bias, institutional racism and white privilege, with little or no examination of underlying behavorial and individual factors.

Following such pronouncements come loud but hollow demands for social justice, based on desires for more proportional and managed outcomes. If it sounds like pining for socialism, that's because it is. The roots of our predicament run directly to academe, and to the state's university system, among many others nationwide - where in the social sciences so-called "critical theory" pedagogy is used to deconstruct every less-than-egalitarian outcome as societally determined, and as fodder for class-based redistributionism.

Now it has filtered down into urban school systems to explain away disparate outcomes based on disparate inputs.

Politicized junk science must lean heavily on advocacy. Using school students as messengers for a racialized politics of low expectations is the last refuge of scoundrels.

But that is how things are done in Seattle right now. Accordingly, the SPS document for White Privilege Conference student attendees further states:

We are sending students to this conference with the expectation that they will apply what they learn to their school setting in Seattle. Throughout the conference we have scheduled specific check-in times to debrief what we are learning. Following the conference, students are expected to attend a workshop to discuss how to apply what they learned to projects in their schools on Tuesday, April 24th from 6-8pm, location (to be determined). Additional meetings for project planning and implementing will be set by each school group independently. In the spring, students from all of the schools will again meet to share what they’ve accomplished at an Equity Summit.

Equity is not dispensed from a bully pulpit. It is earned. By the individual.

The time spent indoctrinating Seattle Public Schools students on "white privilege" would be far better spent on remedial tutoring in core subjects for those students who need it. Of course that would involve getting foursquare behind the ideas of self-determination and personal responsibility, rather than Blaming Whitey.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SEATTLE, WHITE PRIVILEGE, SOCIAL JUSTICE, DISPARITIES, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

As David Postman first reported in the Seattle Times, the union representing Seattle Public Schools teachers has written to Seattle state legislators that they are perpetrating "institutional racism and institutional classism" by failing to drop state testing requirements in reading and writing for high school graduation, until $12 million can be secured for improved class sizes, curriculum and teacher training. State legislation is already pending to extend beyond 2008 to 2010 the state math proficiency graduation requirement. In their letter, the Seattle Education Association states:

Between 40 and 45 (percent) of children of poverty, many of whom in Seattle are children of color, are not passing the reading and writing sections of the WASL. These sections will not be set aside; these children will be denied a diploma. There is no concerted funding initiative to support the needs of the students not meeting reading and writing standards. There is currently no active bill to set aside using the reading and writing (Washington Assessment of Student Learning tests) as the graduation requirement for the 40 (percent) of the Students of Poverty and Students of Color who are not meeting the standard.

This pure and simply is the definition of Institutional Racism and Institutional Privilege. (Seattle Education Association) and (Seattle Public Schools) are working to eliminate the horror of Institutional Racism and Privilege wherever we find it. The members of SEA also are fighting for a system that provides equity in the results for children and young adults, not a system that sorts children of color and children of poverty and relegates those children to lives of poverty. Seattle legislators have long held the mantle of progressives, of liberals, of men and women who care about the voiceless people. Please find your voice again and stand with the school employees, parents and students of Seattle.

The teachers union's use of the term "voiceless people" is a giveaway: despite compensatory rhetoric elsewhere, they see underachieving students of color as mute, weak and incapable of raising their academic performance and meeting a 10th grade testing requirement for graduation for 12th grade (itself a badly diluted standard). "These children will be denied" a diploma, they write. There is no hope, no chance. Failure is inevitable.

Phew. The WASL is not a perfect test, but it is a useful yardstick and more to the point, meets requirements imposed on all states under the bi-partisan federal No Child Left Behind Act, intended to help ensure schools are making measurable progress toward imparting core academic proficiencies to students. Our state legislature has already seen fit to allow up to four retakes in any subject area for a student who fails any part(s) of the WASL. Even then, alternatives including scores on other standardized tests may suffice for meeting graduation requirements.

So, Seattle teachers and state legislators: many minority students are so incapacitated that they "will be denied" a diploma because FIVE TRIES on passing 10th grade tests in math, reading and writing for 12th-grade graduation (you read that right) aren't enough? What about the majority of minority students who ARE already passing the reading and writing WASL sections? Why not commission a study on the underlying factors in their success? I hate the term "no-brainer," but truly, there it is. So much easier to talk about failure and racism, conveniently pigeonholing blacks - especially - as helpless.

Even if our family does have to suck up the very reasonable cost of an excellent private school, this sort of moonbattery is one reason why you couldn't budge me from Seattle. The limits of tolerance are being stretched daily. I disagree with strident suburban conservatives who say the city's done; for families, and for the sane, so stick a fork in it. It will be fascinating to see the political Velvet Revolution here, if and when it occurs. The initial stages could only be a few years out. Politicized, race-obsessed dysfunction in Seattle Public Schools will prove to have been a primary cause because of its symbolic heft, but "kitchen table issues" such as police staffing, municipal pension obligations, taxes and skewed city budget priorities will be drivers as well.

As for the latest WASL dust-up: The recipe for helping struggling students succeed is fairly simple: funnel dollars paying for administrative bloat and non-competitive ancillary labor in our public schools into longer school days and longer school years for underperforming students. Establish more uniform and rigorous academic curricula. Insist on a far louder, clearer and stronger public message from the Seattle Public Schools on parental involvement, and specifically the parental engenderment of values and a home environment which gird love for learning.

To dance around these essential needs for lagging minority students - as the union and leagues of cowed Seattle "progressives" do - strikes me as a flagrantly deleterious act of institutional racism.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SEATTLE, TEACHERS UNION, WASL, TESTING, MINORITY STUDENTS

After the first five days of our San Diego sojourn last month, we headed up to Orange County; synonymous with upscale affluence, conservatism and plastic surgery. There are several television "reality" shows set in Orange County, and one ensemble drama. I am not going to link to them. However, in fairness, we should note that Hollywood, not far to the north, is known for liberalism and plastic surgery, so I think the reconstructive urge is bipartisan.

We stayed with one of my many, many sisters in-law - this is what can happen when you marry into a Catholic family (lots of sisters-in-law, not visiting Orange County). She lives in Laguna Niguel, in a lovely townhome. On our first evening there, my wife, kids, I and our gracious hostess were joined for dinner by a blogosphere friend I'd not yet met in person, Michael Brandon McClellan. He's a local guy from just up the road who came home to practice law after school Back East. Michael is retiring his current blog, but he also writes political pieces for top-tier publications such as The Weekly Standard and Tech Central Station. Much food, wine and conversation followed, and before we knew it, five hours had flown by. Get your SoCal self up to Seattle soon, Mike.

The next morning we hooked up at Dana Point Harbor with an old friend from our Chicago/Evanston days, who's been living in San Juan Capistrano for 10-plus years with her husband and three kids. She used to play jazz drums for fun and is still great to talk to; she's not too crazy about living where she does, feeling she has nothing in common with the housewives of Orange County. Upgrading is all they talk about, she reports; faces, bodies, houses, husbands.

Appearances do seem to matter greatly. (Inland) Laguna Niguel and its seaside neighbor Dana Point are planned to within an inch of their lives. In Laguna Niguel especially, I noticed lots of gated and limited access, walled communities. Everything scrupulously clean, and environmentally correct. Upscale versions of old Red folksinger Pete Seeger's famous "little houses made of ticky-tacky." The upside is it's clean and fresh and sunny and pleasant. There's a nicely landscaped county park bordering Dana Point Harbor and the ocean; and a real emphasis on systemic integration in Orange County's regional and local planning, something which bears closer examination.

Then again, a tattoo parlor with a Spanish Mission roof just doesn't feel right to me. Nor did the sign outside the chain grocery urging patrons not to sign ballot measure petitions because it will only encourage the signature gatherers. I'm perfectly capable of blowing off a petition peddler, a beggar or even a cookie-hawking Girl Scout (with a smile of course) if I so choose. I'm pro-choice, though; I don't want to be hectored about it by the local thought police. Another beef: the fancy pants grocery store sold me some butter that turned out to be black with mold around the edges. A leading California brand of butter, as it happens, which I've never found so descrated when purchased here two states to the north. Somewhere is a dairy section manager lacking in scruples, or at least competence. To paraphrase Martin Mull, I got so downhearted, I threw my drink across the lawn. (OK, there was no lawn - we were staying in a high-density townhome complex, as I mentioned).

So there we were, hanging about the bayside of the breakwater, a stone's throw from the Ocean Institute in Dana Harbor. Public visits are on weekends only. The Institute also offers excursion boat tours. Here's one coming back to port.

On the other side of the breakwater is - as you might imagine - the Pacific Ocean; that's Dana Point on the right.

Planned development there has sparked controversy. A legal challenge was mounted on behalf of the Pacific pocket mouse and the California gnatcatcher, whose habitats were thought threatened by the restless churn of capital. It turns out that luxury homes are nonetheless going up on the headlands, but not as many as originally planned. There are marvelous public beaches and parks in town; and, plenty of other cliffside homes above the harbor. As you can see. Must be fewer pocket mice and gnatcatchers there.

The surf was high when we visited.

For lunch we went to the most down-to-earth joynt you could imagine, a little takeout window place, with outdoor tables only, and had some spectacularly good and dirt-cheap Mexican food. If you're driving through SoCal, you owe it to yourself to hie thee to Aurora's Taqueria at Pacific Coast Highway and El Encanto in Dana Point. Our large group ordered all kinds of things: potato tacos with salsa verde; marinated steak, steak, roasted pork, chicken and fish tacos; pork and chicken tamales; sopes (a kind of round, recessed cornmeal conveyor of heaped goodies); huaraches, or mini-tortillas, with varied fillings; and fresh ceviche tostadas. We did not, to my great regret, sample the tortas (special Mexican sandwiches) or the coctel de camarones. Next time, certainly.

The next day we spent partly in the town of Laguna Beach, up the coast just a bit. Here's a panoramic view, one more digipic captured with my trusty Canon Power Shot A95, edited with Apple iPhoto and hosted via my Photobucket.com account.

This guy was catching his dinner.

The tide was out, and so the tidepoolers, too. This is our family's idea of a seriously good time.

Lunch at the old-timey locals' spot, Greeter's Corner, was wonderful: achingly fresh grilled sea bass. Some onlne reviewers don't like the place. Our fish rocked, as did the setting, and service. If only the Russian Mafioso at the next table hadn't kept bribing his squalling brat of a daughter with desserts. It didn't work.

Anyway. The OC, I like ya. Better than any TV show. And I'll be back.

TECHNORATI TAGS: ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, DANA POINT, LAGUNA NIGUEL, LAGUNA BEACH, TOURISM BLOGGING

Our second day in San Diego, while my wife confabbed with mortgage lenders, the kids and I explored city's western reaches, along the Pacific, far away from our downtown nest. We took a cab - but could have taken the trolley - to the Old Town Transit Center, where we caught the #28C bus to Cabrillo National Monument at Point Loma. There, from high atop the bluff you look back east across the bay at San Diego's skyline. Of course, I had my digicam.

Point Loma's history is bound up in naval defense. Still today, Pacific Air Fleet craft on maneuvers from nearby Naval Station Coronado are a constant presence. At the monument's national park complex, museum exhibits detail the journeys of Spanish Catholic conquistadores in Mexico and what's now the southwestern U.S., including the discovery of Spanish captain Juan Cabrillo and his crew by the local Kumeyaay Indians after those foreign agents of a foreign deity landed and christened San Diego as San Miguel.

Here's Juan in statuary with the city skyline to the southeast across the bay.

A nature path leads one-and-one quarter miles down the bluff side, and if you visit in your own vehicle a road leads to what's described by the park service in their brochure as "one of the last rocky intertidal areas open to the public in southern California." The bluff uplands at Cabrillo National Monument are known for gray whale sightings on the ocean side; you'll want to bring strong binoculars and some patience to the viewing platform just west of the Old Point Loma Lighthouse. That restored structure was used for its original purpose from 1855 to 1891, then fell into disrepair before being restored. It's open to visitors, with rooms rendered in authentic historical detail, and historical text and photos on early lighthouse keeper families. Here's the view looking northwest back toward the lighthouse from closer to the bayside bluff's edge.

The grandness of Point Loma is simply the place itself, where strong breezes and warm sun complement sweeping views of the city, naval base and planes, ships in the bay, Coronado Bridge, the 10-mile-long Silver Strand spit at Coronado's southern end, and the ocean. You're somewhat boggled to eventually recall you're still within San Diego city limits.

After viewing an excellent 25-minute film on tidal critters and conditions, we headed from Point Loma back past the vast hillside military graves of the nearby Fort Rosecranz National Cemetery to the San Diego hippie haven neighborhood of Ocean Beach. From the national park, we caught the 28C back to Rosecranz and Nimitz, where we transferred to the #923 bus to Ocean Beach. Along Cable Ave. we debarked at Newport Street, the palm-tree lined main drag of the neighborhood, leading right down to the beach.

Ocean Beach, or OB as some call it, is intensely laid back - if such a thing is possible. You may wander into The Newport Pizza and Ale House one afternoon, as we did, and find a bunch of young patrons with complicatedly disheveled hair engaged in a sinewy melodic jam utlizing acoustic guitar, tablas and wood flute, while gourmet pizzas pop hot out of the ovens. Yes, there's a hostel across the street.

However, even a few doors down comes a subtle reminder that even San Diego's Trustafarian Good Vibes hub is home to blatantly heterosexual carnivores lacking the PC gene. That'd be way-surfadelic Hodad's, where I ate the truly penultimate double bacon cheeseburger, and where along with walls full of vanity license plates from all over the U.S., a sticker on the counter at the cash register proclaims "Straight Pride," showing a generic man and woman holding hands.

Burgerwise, I must confess; it's just never really been quite like this for me before - and hey, I used to write about great cheap eats for The Seattle Times, so I'm no pushover. Hodad's monster sported finely shredded lettuce, ethereal bacon, cheese, sliced tomato, ridge-cut pickle slices, meaty sliced sweet onions, mayo and ketchup bracketing two fat char-grilled quarter pound all beef patties on a triple-decker bun. Spritz on some California "Just Chili" chili sauce tableside and carefully engineer your conquest. Even so, you're gonna wear some of it on your face and forearms, no way around that. Do not under any circumstances fail to order some "frings," a combo basket of superb onion rings and battered fries.

At the beach, Ava absorbed the universal aura of the Sand God. Her brother is out of the frame, building something.

Kids cavorted with kelp, as they are wont to do. Dolphins came and went; surfers surfed.

The North San Diego County branch of the Twelve Tribes (dolphins in previous lives) made a showing in their multi-hued bus.

These "mature, middle-aged ex-hippies" are unabashedly religious, communitarian, hard-working and non-materialistic. Me and my family; we need our space, our bathrooms and our personal computers. But these folks know how to breathe deeply, walk slowly, and savor a sunset, so they're probably several steps ahead of the game.

We bought some scrumptious organic grapefruit from them at the Ocean Beach Farmer's market later that afternoon, along with some transcendent strawberries from a Carlsbad vendor. Then took a long walk down the long pier, and just hung for a while.

You might even stop in at Ocean Beach Pier Cafe right on the pier for some mango pancakes, a lobster omelette, lobster tacos or clam chowder. They say the food's good, but there are flies.

From Newport Avenue and Cable Street, the #923 will take you back downtown.

You're either on the bus, or off the bus.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SAN DIEGO, POINT LOMA, POINT LOMA LIGHTHOUSE, OCEAN BEACH, SURFING, HODAD'S, NEWPORT PIZZA AND ALE HOUSE, TWELVE TRIBES, OCEAN BEACH PIER CAFE, TOURISM BLOGGING

UPDATED: Some years ago when my wife and I were in a San Francisco bookstore preparing for a trip up the coast to Oregon, I asked where to find a related guidebook and a very gay sales clerk unabashedly teased me about being non-spontaneous. He'd have clearly relished a reply to the effect that yes, I was just a hellbent and clueless tourista automaton, but I nonetheless bought an Oregon travel guide and it proved a useful orienting tool, as such volumes tend to do. So long as you don't take all the recommedations too seriously. Looking back now, and still a buyer of the occasional travel book, I realize that smart-aleck sales fella had a point.

Disintermediated tourism is the best kind. Don't let anyone set your agenda. Get a map, maybe thumb through a guidebook, and then feel your own way, always stopping to smell the breeze, watch the birds and make sand angels. That last part is learned from my especially ebullient and wonderful daughter, who just turned seven.

Communities, the land itself, and a sense of adventure are far more essential than standard tourist attractions.

Not that the latter are without merit. On a recent trip south from Seattle, I took my kids to the famed San Diego Zoo. As zoos go, it was excellent - if you don't mind paying $110 basic admission for two adults and two kids, plus dealing with serious crowds, do go. The gloriously cognizant and curious meerkats and the stolid hippo, raising its grand snout from underwater only occasionally for oxygen refueling, were my favorites. San Diego's Sea World was an utterly spectacular and fun treat for the whole family. I would highly recommend a visit, especially at off-peak times. We lucked out by going on a low traffic Monday in February, and getting freebie tix from a local friend. Normal cost for two adults and two kids age 10 or older is a whopping $204. That's the same price for season tix, but once is all you really need. Parking and food are extra.

My conclusion: consider the zoo and Sea World, but center your San Diego vacation around other than heavily-trafficked, pricey tourist attractions. Even with special ticket deals, the tyranny of crucial tourist sites should be heartily eschewed, or before you know it you'll be one of the sad, brainwashed many trudging en masse through one after another. The very concept of a "must do" excursion is akin to the claim that some or another important public policy or business decision is a "no-brainer." Such didactic terms are in fact a dead giveaway that if you were to think for yourself, you might just choose otherwise.

So, grasshopper, what is the path to true leisure time jollies for San Diego visitors? I can't truly deign to say, naturellement, but I can share the particulars of my family's unique journey.

Our first full day in San Diego, we took the passenger ferry to the Coronado peninsula from the Embarcadero promenade on the city's downtown waterfront: the ticket booth and entrance are just north of Broadway on Harbor Avenue. As we traversed the harbor the sun was shining, the breeze was fresh, and the city skyline in view, along with the U.S.S. Midway and the Coronado Bridge.

After debarking at the Coronado ferry landing, we got some excellent sandwiches at Boney's Bayside Market on Orange Ave., the main cross-peninsula artery, on which a 20-minute stroll or an even quicker shuttle bus ride leads to the swank downtown and then the Hotel Del Coronado and the Pacific Ocean. Ms. Mom had to get back to the city for work right after lunch so we saw her off at the ferry dock. The kids dug in the sand while I contemplated - and photographed - the perambulations of sandpipers. At no cost.

We finally got going down Orange Ave., toward the village, the hotel and Silver Strand Beach, first passing a plaque in front of the library honoring Coronado residents Adm. James Stockdale (1923-2005) and his wife Sybil for his heroic advocacy for his fellow POWs during the Vietnam War and for her tireless efforts stateside on behalf of Vietnam POWs. Stockdale certainly took some flack for his 1992 debate performance as Ross Perot's Reform Party vice-presidential candidate, asking - perhaps quite sensibly for an audience unfamiliar with him - "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?". The resulting kerfuffle was overhyped and reductive. Here is Adm. James Bond Stockdale's official memorial site. Click on the links therein to his bio, the photo gallery and his publications to get a broader sense of this remarkable man, who called Coronado home.

The peninsula is home not only to an upscale village, ocean beaches, and resorts, but also on the north end, Naval Base Coronado. When Orange Ave. starts to curve to the south, you'll soon see the National Historic Landmark Hotel Del Coronado and its signature red-roofed bell tower. We gravitated toward the public beach behind the hotel, where my junior partners set to work.

Later, on the hotel's front side, we stumbled past the famed 108-year-old Dragon Tree from the Canary Islands. The tree and hotel were featured - along with Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Billy Wilder in supporting roles - in the 1958 film classic "Some Like It Hot."

Here it is.

And again here in the lower right foreground, looking northwest against the splendid backdrop of the Hotel Del's front side.

The public spaces of the hotel are easily explored by non-guests. There's a beautiful cocktail lounge, and tony small shops. Get some superb locally-made ice cream at Moo Time on the lower level plaza, then head back out to the beach, where if you're lucky you'll spot a four-propeller Navy P-3 Orion flying overhead (below).

We also noticed a group of young U.S. Marines being worked over hard by two drill sergeants. Lined up in two teams, they were running a relay race in the sand: sprint; drop and crawl; sprint again; drop and do 20 push-ups; then do it all over again on the way back to the starting point before the next man in line goes.

We spent another hour-plus on the beach playing with kelp and engaging in various other feats of silliness and advanced engineering, before catching a shuttle bus to the ferry, getting back to the hotel, ordering some carry-out barbeque and falling asleep happily exhausted.

More to come - including San Diego's Point Loma/Cabrillo National Monument, the city's Rasta-fied Ocean Beach neighborhood, and adventures in bus riding.

Related: My tourism blogging portfolio, covering excursions in British Columbia, Washington State, Oregon, Northern California, Montana, Chicago, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SAN DIEGO, VACATION, CORONADO, HOTEL DEL CORONADO, JAMES STOCKWELL, TOURISM BLOGGING

Citing the defendant's mental incompetence to understand charges and assist her defense, King County Superior Court Judge Helen Halpert recently dismissed a dual murder rap against a woman who drank herself stuporous while two of her kids died of starvation and dehydration. She claims to think they're still alive. So, Leemah Carneh will have company at Western State Hospital. More uplifting news: Judge Halpert today ordered a mental competency hearing for a man who set a woman's hair afire in downtown Seattle, with lighter fluid and matches. He too may be unable to understand what he did. Apparently, it is possible to dreamily set a stranger's head aflame, and evade responsiblity.

It gets better. An Olympia man charged with raping an 11-year-old girl was acting strange at his arraignment, and - imagine - will be sent to Western State for a mental competency evaluation. Although if he is found not capable of understanding the charges against him, it will be difficult to explain why he allegedly wrote in his journal that he wanted to kick his "child hunting" habit.

A Clark County judge has also ordered to Western State for a mental competency evaluation a defendant charged with two counts of first-degree murder, who matter-of-factly phoned in his confession to 911.

Meanwhile, a Vancouver, Washington man has pled guilty to Social Security fraud for falsely pretending to be mentally ill. The Columbian reports that for two decades, at his mother's direction, he sat in the corner and picked his nose when social service workers visited, helping her scam Social Security of $220,000 for her two "disabled" children. His sister is believed to have put on a similar act, but cannot be located. It turns out the man - supposedly unable to drive - was working at an auto body shop, had Oregon, Washington and Alaska drivers licenses under false names, and lived with a girlfriend and her two kids. He was finally busted when caught on court video cogently enough appealing a traffic offense.

At least the government, nearly a quarter-million dollars later, did due diligence on this man's claims of mental incapacity. Some people will try to get away with whatever they can. Whether they are stealing money from taxpayers, killing, raping, or setting pedestrians afire, defendants need to be held accountable by facing trial. The increasingly utilized "mental competency" evaluation represents a disturbing trend, in which perpetrators become classified as victims and sidestep criminal justice.

A colleague of the sidewalk arson attack victim asks, "What is going on downtown?"

Is it open season for the "mentally incompetent?"

I blame society.

TECHNORATI TAGS: CRIME, MENTAL COMPETENCE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON STATE

UPDATED: Ah, the Super Bowl. As an official Boomer geezer I can remember the very first few, though I was but a child. Including when "Broadway Joe" Namath led the upstart AFL's New York Jets to victory over the NFL's Baltimore Colts in, lemme see, Super Bowl III, circa 1969. And as a young man living in Chicago, how could I forget my then-beloved Bears romping past the New England Patriots in the January 1986 Super Bowl, 44-10, thanks to punky QB Jim McMahon, fleet but butter-fingered wide receiver Willie Gault, and double-wide defensive lineman cum running back William "Refrigerator" Perry? Those '85 Bears: what a team. And ex-Bears tight end Mike Ditka of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, what a coach. Often endearingly cranky with the press, and a wonderful Grade B philosopher who began roughly every other sentence with the phrase, "In Life...." I'm still sorry he didn't run for U.S. Senate.

Well anyway, like the heartbreaking Cubs in the 2003 N.L. championship series against the Florida Marlins, the Bears really stunk up the joint yesterday. How they got so far with a tepid quarterback such as Rex Grossman says a whole lot about the rest of their team. But the Super Bowl TV commercials weren't all bad. This truncated AP round-up isn't much use, truth be told; but this Seattle Times compendium is much better. Here's the YouTube rundown.

Still: who can really zero in on the best of the best like your very own Man From Mars?

The following Super Bowl 41 ads struck me as most notable. I'm leaving out a lot of the ones that I thought tried too hard, or were plain trite. Plus, I take issue with some that made the cut.

Bud Light Diversity: A quite multi-hued English As A Second Language class learns how to ask for a Bud Light in various ethnic dialects. Such as East L.A.: "Yo, Homes...you got a Bud Light, man?" But if asked for a Bud Light, class members are taught to reply "No Speak English." How'd this get past the thought police? Maybe we're all a bit more tolerant of ethnic humor than we're supposed to be? Cut to the end: a very dark-skinnned Asian guy is holding a can of Bud Light, and being instructed by a compadre on how to pronounce "Bud Light." Four or five times in, he still botches it every time. Who's writing these bits anyway? Ex-College Republicans? Corrective legislation seems necessary.

Coke "Grand Theft Auto" Gone Good: Animated hero traverses gritty, dysfunctional cityscape, silently dispensing social justice and mad love at breakneck pace while drinking Coke. Great spot, great anthemic ending. But in the end: it's still about fizzy sugar water. Ick!

Bud Light - A Dog's Life: A white dog eyes a butcher shop window, and is shooed away. Then he's barked at by a nasty Rottweiler. He sees a Dalmation on a Clydesdale-drawn wagon at the head of a parade enjoying the adulation of the crowd, sparking envy. He's splashed with dirty water by a speeding vehicle, leaving Dalmation spots on his fur. He eyes himself in a store window and mutters, "Hmmmmn." Then he ambles over to the parade and hops aboard lead wagon opposite the Dalmation, winks at same, and smartly basks in the love of the cheering throng. On the soundtrack, Dean Martin comes in with, "Ain't That A KIck In The Head." Nice. Never mind - for just a moment at least - that Bud Light is a bland and watery affront to the essence of beer.

Doritos = Sex: A grotty 70s-vintage fellow with a thick mustache comes to a grocery store checkout counter, placing four different-flavored bags of Doritos on the conveyor belt, sequentially. A dark-haired, heavyset female cashier offers thoughtfully salacious commentary on each of his choices. You are what you aim to munch, apparently. With the temperature heating up, chips somehow end up strewn about; checker-gal has to exhale and straighten her glasses before soldiering on.

Chevy HHR Lady Sex Bomb: Some very foxy gals of color in a vehicle described as a Chevy HHR are swarmed at a stop light. Inspired by the Mad Sex Appeal of said vehicle, all of the guys - young and way too old - are stripped down to their skivvies, gyrating around the ride and buffing the windshields with their squeegees. Where's Rudy Giuliani when you need him? Tagline: "Guys Can't Keep Their Hands Off It." Just ill, mon.

General Motors Quality Assurance: A beak-faced assembly-line robot drops a part and has a horrid vision of getting fired, being forced to work minimum wage jobs, and finally jumping to his death off a bridge. He flashes back to reality in the stock-still GM plant as co-workers stare, and an announcer intones, "The GM 100,000-mile warranty has everyone at GM obsessed with quality." If only. GM's ongoing quality issues continue to haunt them. GM lost me in the 1970s, as I saw my Dad's Olds 88 disintegrate. They lost me again in the 1990s, as his Buick went to pieces. I'm a Honda guy, tried and true.

Fed Ex On The Moon: A manager gives a tour of a Moon space station office, with several employees in tow. Workers are floating free, papers and coffee too. Someone asks: how will we get our goods to customers? The office bunch is out on surface of moon by this point. The boss turns to "Fred" for an answer. Why, Fed Ex, of course, he replies. A Fed Ex space shuttle then awesomely swoops down to the surface for a freight pickup. A fellow gives Fred a hearty slap on the back, and Fred floats into space, murmuring appreciatively at the view. He's then quickly zapped into nothingness by a red bolt of light. A nice nihilist touch.

Emerald Mixed Nuts Mental Alert: Some say that around 3 p.m., when your blood sugar is low, washed-up 70s Vegas lounge singer Robert Goulet appears, wreaking havoc in the office. Cut to Goulet in office, shredding documents, and trashing desks and computers as sapped late-afternoon cubicle dwellers snooze. Goulet creeps up on the one standing survivor, in his office, hyper-alert and on guard, snarfing Emerald Mixed Nuts. Goulet slinks away upside down on adjacent ceiling in frustration. Nuts are an excellent source of energy, actually.

All in all, the ads proved better than the game.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SUPER BOWL, ADS, FED EX, GM, CHEVY, DORITOS, COKE, BUD LIGHT

There are several reasons Chinese citizens need intestinal fortitude to join the quasi-religious movement known as Falun Gong. One being the ruling Communist government's thought control imperative. Falun Gong adherents have long been subject to imprisonment, torture, and even execution for no greater an offense than their non-mainstream beliefs. One recent report is here, from no less a bunch of right-wing conspiracy-mongers than Amnesty International. But then, mysterious deaths of jailed state enemies in China are almost old hat now.

However, for at least five years, according to an updated report released today in Canada, some have also been forced to sacrifice their internal organs for lucrative transplants for foreign patients in Chinese state hospitals.

The Australian's Ottowa correspondents report this morning on the findings, from the new report by Canada's former Asia Pacific region Secretary of State David Kilgour, and human rights lawyer David Matas.

Mr. Matas and Mr. Kilgour's second report, released today, includes interviews with organ recipients in 30 countries and Canadian hospital staff who cared for more than 100 patients who had undergone suspicious transplant surgeries in China. "The involvement of the People's Liberation Army in these transplants is widespread,'' Mr. Kilgour said at a press conference. Like many civilian hospitals in rural China, military hospitals turned to selling organs to make up for government funding cuts in the 1980s, the report said. But military personnel could operate with much more secrecy, it said. "Recipients often tell us that even when they receive transplants at civilian hospitals, those conducting the operation are military personnel,'' the report said.

Hospitals in Canada's biggest cities - Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto - confirmed "a substantial number'' of Canadians had travelled to China for dubious organ transplants, Mr. Kilgour said. "We're in the three digits, up over 100 (from Canada each year), and the trend is accelerating,'' Mr. Matas said. To curb what they called a "disgusting form of evil", the pair asked pharmaceutical firms to stop selling organ anti-rejection drugs to China. They also asked countries to post travel advisories warning about China's alleged organ harvest, asked states to cease offering follow-up care for patients who had dubious organ transplants in China and asked foreign doctors to cut ties with their Chinese counterparts suspected of such practices.

The Epoch Times has followed the matter closely, all along. It is a Web and print newspaper with bureaus in 30 countries, and is published in 17 languages, The paper highlights Chinese human rights issues. Last week, The Epoch Times summarized earlier reports that a Chinese health ministry spokesperson admitted to organ harvesting from executed Chinese prisoners, but denied any Falun Gong ties. That article also includes links to the original Kilgour/Matas report of July, 2006. An Epoch Times story today includes a link to the updated report. The paper also reported two weeks ago here that transplant surgeons attending a January symposium in swank Marco Island, Florida got an earful from protestors about Chinese organ harvesting from live and unwilling Falun Gong followers.

I'd like to say all of this a big surprise to me, but it's not. Despite making important progress toward economic modernity and despite a slight easing of strictures against political dissent, the ruling Chinese communist regime continues to indulge in many fulsome violations of human rights. Such as Internet censorship (see here and here), denial of legal rights for plaintiffs against the government, property confiscation, use of hired thugs against reformers, and forced abortions.

The Kilgour/Matas investigation of organ harvesting for transplant by Chinese authorities from unwilling live Falun Gong detainees adds even greater weight to ethical concerns around the plastinated Chinese corpses on display in Seattle, for which no documentation of permisssion for posthumous display exists. It seems even more likely now that they too may have been Falun Gong practitioners, or political prisoners of another stripe.

TECHNORATI TAGS: CHINA, ORGAN HARVESTING, FALUN GONG

UPDATED: The film "Zoo" was well received at the prestigious Sundance festival. It seems the story inspired by one Boeing engineer named Kenneth Pinyan, who was killed being anally penetrated by a horse, is partly about how we can cruelly consign our brethren to the margins. The Seattle Times reports that the movie is:

...about Seattle-area zoophiles, particularly one who died, and how his death and the ensuing media coverage precipitated the 'excommunication' of that community.

Perish the thought that grown men who chose to regularly gather south of Seattle in Enumclaw to be mounted by male steeds, and who, according to police, there filmed each other in extremis, should be "excommunicated," shunned or otherwise marginalized by normal society.

We must resist the temptation to pass judgement.

Instead, zoophilic equine afficionados should be granted the use of public library meeting rooms for support group gatherings.

They should have special non-discrimination legislation introduced on their behalf in the state capital.

Public schools, quite apart from helping "questioning" fifth graders figure out if they are gay or lesbian, should also help them understand whether or not they may instead wish to become the sexual objects of animals.

At the University of Washington, the post-Pinyan Washington state law making sex with animals illegal will be discussed in class by humanities faculty and students within the appropriate Foucaultian sphere; that of "socially-constructed" mores intended to regulate and suppress the dynamism of the human spirit, thus serving ruling class interests.

We'll have to leave class warfare and the shunning of man-horse sex for another day, though. For now, provoked by critical acclaim of the film "Zoo," it is our duty as fully sensate, compassionate moderns to ponder why men choose to relate to horses thusly.

Naturally, it's quite complex. Here's the Seattle Times, from the same review linked above, published this past Friday:

(Filmaker Robinson) Devor and (writer Charles) Mudede (a staffer at The Stranger) splinter the focus of their film to include a broader discussion of human behavior, marginalization, the Iraq war, changes wrought by the advent of the Internet, death, family, journalism and the city of Seattle.

Bad me. All this time I had it pegged simply to continuing innovation in the field of human perversity; and the speed and efficiency with which the Internet makes available everything, whether beneficial or ruinous. I should have figured Iraq was part of the backdrop.

It's been a growth opportunity.

I learned several weeks ago in another Times article about the film that Kenneth Pinyan is Everyman. The film's New York-based distributor Mark Urman tells the paper:

"It's not a specific story of freakish behavior but a universal look at what goes on behind the façade of everyday, quotidian, normal American middle-class life. It is not salacious."....Urman sees it as his responsibility to "give people the right set of eyes" and "the proper preparation" before hearing about or seeing Devor's unavoidably controversial film. Rather than dwell on the perverse act, Urman centers his discussions about the movie on what he perceives is its universalism. While the protagonist "seems like an oddball at the outset of the movie," Devor seeks to "reveal untold amounts of information about the human capacity to do the most awful things, chart[ing] the journey of this unhappily married man who began to explore sexual alternatives, as so many do. Instead of turning back to the light, he went deeper and deeper until he got trapped in the darkness, and it had fatal ramifications."

How entirely universal. A man disillusioned with his marriage comes to feel that ameliorative succor must lie within the universe of interspecies sex.

Indeed: There but for the grace of God go we all.

TECHNORATI TAGS: SEATTLE, HORSE SEX, MOVIE, SUNDANCE

Associated Press reports Seattle-based Authentic Hendrix has licensed Beverage Concepts, a new Calabasas, California company, to market a line of Jimi Hendrix energy drinks called "Liquid Experience."

Rock stalwart Flea, bassist and leader of the venerable Red Hot Chili Peppers, is aghast at this particular use of the rock guitar god's legacy. He tells AP:

"To see his image and the beautiful feelings it has created during my lifetime cheapened by base advertising ... is very disappointing to me."

It could be worse, Flea. Wait, it already is! Leaving aside the inevitable deployment of Jimi's music in car commercials, now years old, there's much more for Flea and like-minded purists to get cranky about. Authentic Hendrix has been peddling a whole bunch of stuff that gives Jimi energy elixers a real whiff of class, in comparison. Granted, the Jimi lava lamp can't help but strike a sympatico chord. The incandescent, swirling Jimi was kind of like a lava lamp come to life, when you think about it. But if Flea thinks a Hendrix beverage is cheap and base, how about a Jimi afghan patterned after his second album, "Axis: Bold As Love"? Or the official Jimi Hendrix "Do Your Own Thing" pillow, and Jimi Hendrix "Do Your Own Thing" coffee mug? Why not then too "Do Your Own Thing" flatware, doormats, lawnmowers, blenders, towels, sheets and pillowcases?

If you'd like your kid to advertise your own hipness, there's always the official line of Jimi Hendrix infantwear - including the Jimi Hendrix "Are You Experienced" diaper cover which comes in three sizes.

That's right. The Jimi Hendrix "Are You Experienced" diaper cover.

No s***.

So far, at least, Authentic Hendrix has had the good sense to hold off on Jimi Hendrix "Doing Your Own Thing" infantwear. But I wonder: how about an "Are You Experienced" adult diaper cover line for geriatric boomers?

Come to think of it.....when I last saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers live - in Chicago, mid-80s - they were sporting diapers, shoes and not much else for most of the show.

Hmmmn.

TECHNORATI TAGS: JIMI HENDRIX, ENERGY DRINK, DIAPER COVER, SEATTLE

Globe and Mail columnist Leah McLaren nails it today: "Alternaparents" and their kids aren't nearly as cool as alternaparents think. What is an alternaparent, anyway? Basically a Gen X-er who finally settled down and reproduced, and thinks that's just so wild, dude, because, like, he used to do drugs and listen to Sonic Youth, youhearme? Adam Sternbergh described them as terminally hip "grups" in New York magazine. Breeders, please please please: don't go there. McLaren writes today:

Alternaparents think that they're the first generation who decided to maintain their identities after giving birth. They think getting their kids to rock out to the Hives is revolutionary. Except they're forgetting something. The generation before them did the same thing. Except it wasn't the Hives, it was the Beatles.

McLaren cites writer Neal Pollack's book "Alternadad" as an irksome indicator of the mindset, replete with banal monosyllabic exclamations of Pollack's young spawn. There are pages of it. McLaren says:

Seriously. Pages. Which makes it clear to me that all this talk of the importance of punk rock and downing tequila shots between play dates is nothing more than a flimsy excuse to do what self-absorbed parents have always done: Inundate everyone around them with stories about how special and cute their kids are....Even more tedious than the cute-kid stories...is the alternaparent stance of, "I'm a Dad now -- isn't that ironic?" No. It's not. I know you partied hard in your 20s. I know you made art your priority. I know you vowed to never sell out by owning a car or a house or any of that bourgeois crap. I can see how surprised you are by your own ability to do a 180 on this position and become the guy in the park with the baby jogger. But guess what? No one else is surprised. You are a mammal. Your job on this planet is to procreate. And no amount of rave-going or ecstasy-dropping was ever going to change that. Changing a diaper with a Jagermeister hangover is still just changing a diaper.

"You are a mammal. Your job on this planet is to procreate." Whew. You're very wise today to save that back-to-basics stuff for the men, Leah. Can't say that to women anymore. That'd be sexist - even from a woman, see - and judgemental and entirely paleolithic. Something tells me Leah McLaren and that troglodyte Mark Steyn must get along just fine.

TECHNORATI TAGS: ALTERNAPARENTS, ALTERNADAD, NEAL POLLACK, BREEDERS

Joel Connelly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Sure It's Nice, But Sculpture Park Isn't All That"

David Larson, Seattle Times, "The Inconvenient Truth About School Board's Film Decision""

Matt Smith, San Francisco Weekly, "Drive-by Reporting: A Primer For Out-Of-Town Journalists Flocking to The Pelosi Power Story"

Andrew R. Quinio, San Francisco Chronicle, "Young Views On Diversity: Diversity's Free Pass"

San Diego Union Tribune, editorial, "Lam's Forced Exit: Deplorable Politics Claims U.S. Attorney"

Michael Carrigan, Rocky Mountain News, "Many Republican Woes Self-Inflicted"

Glenn Reynolds, New York Times, "A Rifle In Every Pot"

Cathy Young, Boston Globe, "The Evolution Of An Antifeminist"

Chicago Tribune, editorial, "As The Duke Case Implodes"

Jonah Goldberg, Chicago Tribune, "Senator Kerry, Once Was Enough"

Andrew Ferguson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Conservatives Are Not A Selfish Lot"

Debra J. Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle, "Boxer's Hit On Personal Price"

David Reinhard, The Oregonian, "The Way We Fight"

Yitzhak Nakash, Los Angeles Times, "If U.S. Drops The Ball, Iraq Shatters"

Mackubin Thomas Owens, Christian Science Monitor, "Why Bush's War Plan Can Work"

Bashir Goth, Washington Post (PostGlobal blog), "Bush Is Right This Time"

Los Angeles Times, editorial, "Fidel Chavez? Like His Idol Castro, The Venezuelan President is Attacking Free Enterprise, Media and Political Foes"

Fadoua Benaich & Jesse Sage, Los Angeles Times, "Morocco's Serious Humor Gap"

George Will, Washington Post, "Boeing's Winning Hand"

TECHNORATI TAGS: OPINION, SEATTLE, SAN FRANCISCO, SAN DIEGO, IRAQ, MOROCCO, VENEZUELA