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Liberate Laguna  Here is the origin of Liberate Laguna: we got tired of being bullied. The “we” is Cindy Shopoff, Sam Goldstein and me. We are the founders of Liberate Laguna. We all were bullied by the city of Laguna Beach, its Design Review Board, Heritage Committee, Planning...

Kansas Cousin Darold Comes A-Visiting Cousin Darold Longhofer grew up in rural Kansas and now lives in Kansas City, Kansas.   He always is very careful to add the state name, “Kansas,” to the end of “Kansas City” to distinguish it from Kansas City, Missouri, which is next door....

Thoughts from Croatia We’re on the Island of Vis, named for the town of Vis, founded in 397 B.C. It was the first town founded in all of Croatia, mainly because of its natural deep-water harbor.  It made its money from fishing and eventually trade. I’ve rented a house for two...

The Secret My niece Mary (not her real name) and her husband John (not his real name) live in Maryland and work for companies that work exclusively for the CIA. Neither will tell me what they do except engage in “research.” We were sitting together at dinner at one of our big...

  Almost everyone already knows about the horrors of the city’s Design Review Board.  That is because anyone who has gone through it hates it with a vengeance, and they have good reason. That reason: to get a permit to build or remodel anything, you must endure the DRB and you...

The Intuitive Artist It is really hard to describe art, and even harder to describe the art of Laguna’s Jorg Dubin. Some of his portraiture images are so graphically disturbing they could be labeled pornographic. The image could be of a woman so brutally sexualized you wonder why...

The Fix Is In “A camel is a horse designed by committee.”  Anonymous “If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.”   Arthur Goldberg Laguna used to be the city of diversity, a place where strange ideas could bloom, Timothy Leary, the Boom Boom...

The Art Exhibit My daughter, Gabby, 25, and I were in Medellin, Colombia, the heart of Pablo Escobar’s former narco-drug empire, but we had little to fear. Pablo is long dead, and the city is safe, pretty, and full of towering buildings.   We were on a father-daughter bonding...

Year of the Grim Reaper 2017 was not a good year for me.   My sister Kathy, after years of illness, passed. Two months before that, my daughter Gabby and I visited Kathy at her home in Tucson. She was bedridden and in pain; she was not supposed to take more opioids, but I found...

Petra, the Hot Bot  Hello, this is Petra, the Hot Blonde. I’m not busy tonight. How ‘bout you? Wanna go get a martini at—– [Beepbeeppoppopzzzzzssshhhhhhh>>><<<—technical difficulties!! technical difficulties!! PLEASE STAND BY] Damn, glad to...

The City of No Once again I was at The Lumberyard when the Hot Blonde, Petra, stormed in. She was wearing a skin-tight red mini-dress, four-inch stilettos and a scowl. She bee-lined to me and sat on her normal stool, but something was really wrong. Petra does not exist. “What are...

The Tribes Take Over Xavier is from Puerto Rico, grew up poor, and today is a struggling young actor in Hollywood. We met by accident six years ago, became close friends and he spent the other weekend at my place in Laguna to escape the crushing heat in L.A. On Sunday, h...

Fake News  For most of us, fake news was a term Donald Trump employed to deride and discredit real news purveyors, like most TV news channels and newspapers. It was not something he invented.   He simply used it to make attacks easily picked up by right wing propaganda groups and...

The Hot Blond Returns  Oh hell, I thought. Here she comes again, but I did a double take. She didn’t look hot. She looked bedraggled and distracted. She was trying: tight jeans, heels, and a thin blouse with spaghetti straps. And it was at the same restaurant, The Lumberyard, the...

A Mystery Unfolds in Panama   There were nine of us in Bocas del Toro, a small group of tiny islands off the northeastern shore of Panama. With us were my son Harrison, daughter Gabby and five of their friends, none older than 24.   My GF Kim Bowen and I were there to...