Category: Columns

By Ernie McCray

A hawk flies on gentle breezes outside my window, crowing away, perhaps seeking its prey or a mate, all unfolding on one of those “Reasons Why I Live in San Diego” kind of days: so lovely and warm, giving an appearance that, when it comes to weather, all is well with the world.

Then I think of the other day when my son and I ducked into the theater at the Reuben H. Fleet Museum to see “Extreme Weather,” an IMAX movie that took us on a breathtaking 360-degree tour of scenes that remind us that, climate-wise, we earthlings are in deep ca-ca.

All is definitely not well. We’ve jabbed and danced around and clowned, burning coal and oil and natural gas and bulldozed and chopped down our rain forests, backing Mother Nature up against the ropes, leaving her no choice but to come off those ropes and huff and puff and blow us and our houses down!

Restaurant Review

OB Surf Lodge
5083 Santa Monica Ave., #1F
Ocean Beach, CA 92107
619-955-5475

One of my favorite restaurants in Ocean Beach was Shades. It was my “go-to-it” place for everything – celebrations, brunches, breakfasts, dinners, romantic interludes, etc. There were a lot of us that were sorry to see it close, and hoped that a similar place would take over when the new restaurant opened. I am sad to say, in my opinion, that this is a place that I will not be patronizing again.

In the first place the noise was deafening! I was sitting right next to Eric and we could barely hear each other.

By Jim Miller

They say that budgets are moral documents, and if that is the case, then the Trump administration just released the most immoral budget in the history of the United States.

While there are many things to condemn in Trump’s depraved plan, starting with the way it pays for a completely unnecessary, massive increase in funding for the military industrial complex by eviscerating programs that help the poor, fund education, and maintain the social fabric of the country, there is still something worse than all that contained within it.

The Frustration Is Mounting!

There is no question that the results of the Presidential Election sent me into a tailspin. And I can’t help but feel that I am in an eddy, spinning, spinning, spinning out of control.

No, I am not going to do anything that I will regret – except change my party affiliation to that of a Republican in the election in 2018 so I can vote against all the “balless” people running for office. That I might regret – temporarily, but I can always change it back if I can even find a candidate that I support. (Just to throw it out – how about Robert Kennedy Jr?)

What has really pissed me off – and I use the word advisedly – is the number of petitions that have come my way in the last TWENTY-FOUR hours.

By Jim Miller

The last time I saw Hunter S. Thompson speak before he died, he threw out a good line about how in the post-AIDS world, the New Right began to flourish because people were afraid to touch each other.

And how Thompson mused, can we ever expect people to stand together in any other way when they are afraid to do that?

Now, years later, what seemed like a bit of insightful hyperbole appears to be backed up by social research.

Restaurant Review

Pepe’s Italian Restaurant
1830 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92107
619-221-1926
www.pepesitalian.com

It’s been many years since I ate at “Pepe’s.” I do not even think that I was doing restaurant reviews at that time, and I have been doing reviews for almost 8 years. When Irene called and suggested that we get together for lunch I knew just where to go. And I am certainly glad that we went there.

We were early; just a little bit past 11:00am, and there was one other diner in the restaurant. We were greeted by “Ed/Pepe” with a smile and exuberance that had us feeling good before we ever sat down.

Guess what’s coming to Sunset Cliffs? It’s Sunset Cliffs Living– a magazine devoted to Sunset Cliffs!

I just spent a delightful hour with Brenna Vega, a young, Point Loma High School Graduate, (2002) with a vision of bringing the community closer together. (Not only did she go to PLHS, she also went to Loma Portal and Correia.)

After spending time in Los Angeles, New York, and China for the past 7 years, the draw of home brought her back to San Diego where she is fulfilling a dream of a magazine devoted to our community. She deems it a “social magazine for the residents of Sunset Cliffs, and is focusing on the areas of Sunset Cliffs east to Catalina; south to the college; and Sunset Cliffs to the end at Ladera.”

By Jim Miller

Many progressives were upset after the national Democratic party leadership recruited Obama’s Labor Secretary Tom Perez to block Minnesota’s Keith Ellison in the race for DNC chair and even more dismayed when Ellison lost very narrowly in the second round of voting.

While Perez immediately made Ellison Deputy Chair and did what he could to foster unity, it was evident to numerous observers that putting in a guy who, despite a pretty solid record on policy, supported the TPP and clearly represented the interests of the Clinton wing of the party was a mistake.

Hugo’s Cocina
(formerly “Rancho’s”)
1830 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92107
619-370-1603

Coming home from a bitterly cold birthday trip to Fargo, North Dakota, I disembarked the aircraft at 11:34am. And as I was being driven home by Michael from Uber, I noticed the “Grand Opening” balloons and signs in front of the old Rancho’s. For five months I have been craving their salsa, and I was in the house for only a few minutes when I grabbed Hitomi and we drove to “Hugo’s Cochina.” But … there were no parking places, and the place was jammed, so we went home to return after the rush hour was over. And I am so glad that we did!

Fact-checking is a feeble response in a world where what we think we see and know is more important than the actual truth.

By Jim Miller

Donald Trump’s continued attacks on the American news media as “the enemy of the American people” have generated quite a stir in mainstream media circles as one might expect.

And surely there is good reason to be disturbed by this administration’s punitive stance towards the press.

But what virtually none of the analysis of Trump’s attacks on “fake news” or Steve Bannon’s assaults on what he calls “the corporatist global media,” which both he and the president label “the opposition,” note is the irony that while the new regime is attacking the power of the corporate media, they are also busy installing corporatists in nearly every position of power and pushing an agenda that is every right-wing billionaire’s wet dream.

Restaurant Review

“Noodles & Company”
3650 Rosecrans
San Diego, CA 92110
619-223-3200
Noodles.com

On this day, after a busy whirlwind trip to purchase items that I needed for my trip to Fargo this week, Hitomi and I found ourselves to be quite hungry. I hadn’t been to “Noodles and Company” for quite some time and since we were in the Midway district decided to give the restaurant a try.

It was relatively late for lunch – 2:00pm – and a few of the tables outside had patrons eating, but only one table was occupied inside. (While we were there I noticed a steady stream of take-out orders, and two Uber drivers picking up deliveries.)

“House of Blues Gospel Brunch”
1055 Fifth Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101
WWW:heretopraise.com

A Review

People that know me know that I have been extremely depressed over the outcome of the presidential election last November. Couple that with a birthday coming up this week, the depression only became deeper. And we can throw in another depressing situation in that the friend that I thought would be coming here to help me “celebrate” my birthday is unable to come after all. I have been walking around in my own “house of blues.”

However, just by chance, I happened to see that the “House of Blues” was having their monthly “Gospel Brunch” the weekend of my birthday and I called my daughter Michele to ask her whether the price of $50 included the brunch and entertainment.