Enough to Make Me Emulate Mr. Creosote

At times Santa Barbara can seem so insular that you'd swear its founding myth links back to Noah Cross from Chinatown moving north and populating the town from his own family ("that power-broker is my sister, daughter, sister, daughter, she's my sister and my daughter!"). Not only does this chummy, cosy, heck it's not cronyism work behind the scenes, but it works in the media, too, where about 2 dozen writers have written for all the local papers in the past 10 years, and a bunch of those locals (in addition to the daily we have three weeklies and a bi-weekly in a town of 90,000) were started by disgruntled employees of one of the other papers.

But today's restaurant review (sorry, but the link only takes you to "Scene," go to page 30 to see the review) in the daily News-Press takes the cake, or perhaps that should be the dolche de leche de Carina. The writer, Arthur von Wiesenberger, has long been an area fixture, running the Nippers.com restuarant review site. But, what the article fails to point out, in a horrible lapse of journalistic integrity, is that the "brainiac fiancee" he mentions is the owner of the paper, Wendy McCaw. Now, I should watch myself as McCaw could buy and sell me several times over and have enough change to finance the War in Iraq for a few days, but c'mon folks. This is journalism 101, to point these things out.

The kicker, of course, is The Nipper's coy way to point out who his other dinner companions are. The article title, "And Now for Something Completely Different," is the first hint. That the man of the couple is referred to as, in order, Brilliant Brit, Basil, Nearly Headless Nick, Archie Leach and Donald P. Sinclair aren't just hints, they're name-droppings.

So, let's see, I wonder, I really do, what kind of treatment and service would I get if I went into a restaurant with John Cleese as my dinner companion?

And would I then think it wise to chalk that up as the ususal patron's experience?

And would I write the article without thinking "what a clever, pampered lucky fool I am"?

And would I then bill the paper to pay for my dinner? Or would I just let my fiancee, a brainiac indeed if she's in on this scam, use the dinner as a business expense, and thereby relieve herself of some more tax burden?