DOUBLE-DISSED: Within one 24-hour period this week, I managed to get swacked across the face with a cold, dead steelhead at least twice. Maybe three times, depending how you count. The first arrived late Monday evening in the form of a blue-glittered gift bag, with plumes of sparkled tissue paper billowing forth. Inside was the ageless mini-tome, How to Grow Old — its pages alternating between English and the original Latin — written by Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero back in 44 BCE. Accompanying this unsolicited life advice was an electric nose and ear trimmer. “Gifting” me this package was landlord-developer Ed St. George, who until recently had been proposing to turn his 97-unit apartment complex at Loma Alta and Cliff drives — known for years as Harbor Heights and now more festively as Beach City — into a 1,500-bed gargantuan Über-mega dorm for City College students. These plans — and St. George’s gale-force sales pitch — galvanized white-hot opposition from some neighbors. In response, St. George announced a few weeks ago he was withdrawing the aforementioned plans even before submitting them. His critics had gone too far, he charged; they’d gotten too personal. In fact, he threatened one with libel, slander, and defamation litigation if she didn’t cease and desist. She, in turn, accused St. George of harassment and intimidation. And she denied any trash-talking other than to include a blog post describing St. George as “demonstrably unscrupulous” in an all-hands-on-deck letter mailed out to neighbors.
In Santa Barbara, all this qualifies as Big Deal news. Accordingly, I wrote about it.
I interpreted the St. George’s swag bag as a masterpiece of backhanded congeniality, a rictus smile gleaming with fresh lipstick. No doubt I had it coming. St. George is just a little older than me, and during our interview, I suggested he must have had bowling balls surgically implanted into his calves and forearms. For the record, I admit to being unduly aware of hi-def pulchritude when it comes to the calf muscles of others, and I was being genuine, sincere, and curious. But how was he to know? The nose-hair trimmer will no doubt come in handy, but I’m not so sure about the Cicero book. Based on Ed’s multiple inscriptions, he’d clearly given it away before. The first giftee, apparently, gave it back. Cicero, among other things, was the ultimate buzzkill. “Nothing is as detestable or pernicious,” he wrote, “than sensual pleasure.” Little wonder that one year after publication, Mark Anthony had Cicero’s head and hands summarily chopped off and put on public display for all to see. That, apparently, did not get the message across. Mark Anthony’s wife reportedly yanked the tongue out of Cicero’s decapitated head and gouged it repeatedly with her hairpin.