Lifestyles

Spotlights

Abigail Thomas book signing

Muttropolis Dog & Cat Boutiques

444 South Cedros

Avenue, Ste. 195

Solana Beach

On Saturday, Sept. 15 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. join Muttropolis for an afternoon with Abigail Thomas, award-winning author of “A Three Dog Life,” selected as one of the Best Books of 2006 by the LA Times and the Washington Post. In these exquisitely written essays, Thomas reflects on how her marriage had to be reinvented after the night her husband, Richard, took their dog, Harry, out for a walk and Harry came home alone.

Proceeds from the event will benefit the North County Animal Shelter. At the event attendees can enjoy complimentary refreshments and 10 percent off all purchases while four-legged friends can munch on tray-passed dog treats and sniff out new friends.

Ever been over-looked for a promotion? Gone years without a raise? Maybe even felt like murdering the boss? In the darkly comic expressionist classic “The Adding Machine,” a number cruncher learns he will be replaced by a machine and summarily murders his boss. The Adding Machine was written by Elmer Rice and directed by Daniel Aukin.

Hometown team ready to take charge

By Dennis Green

The San Diego Chargers open the 2007 NFL regular season with six games that I believe will set the stage for the type of season they will have.

The Chicago Bears, who represented the NFC in the Super Bowl in the first game was a challenge set up by the NFL to see which of these top two teams from last year still has the right stuff. Then a trip to the New England Patriots early in the season is better than late in cold weather. The same goes for Green Bay in the fall. A Kansas City game at home in the first of three straight AFC West Division games, followed by a true test of early success in the fifth game at Denver against the always talented and aggressive Broncos. The sixth game is at home when the Oakland Raiders come to town. The breakdown is: The Chargers have six games and then the bye week with three home games and three on the road. Three of their opponents were in the playoffs last year and three were not. In fact, only six of the 16 games are against teams that made the playoffs last year, and that includes the two games against the Denver Broncos.

I am not suggesting this means it is an easy schedule, but the NFC North Division teams Chicago, Green Bay, Minnesota and Detroit, have not faired well against the AFC teams. Also, with the exception of last year’s Super Bowl champs the Indianapolis Colts, the rest of the AFC South teams, Houston, Jacksonville and Tennessee, were out of the playoff picture early.

That was then and this is now. What can we expect?

I feel that the Charger players and coaches have worked extremely hard to be a good team. Does that mean another playoff year? Probably yes, with a few words of caution. Do not worry about the record and forget about the football. Take the time to enjoy watching, cheering and supporting the Chargers throughout the season. That means through thick and thin — when things are going well and even when there might be a bump on the road and a few challenges rear its head.

I can think of more than a few teams complaining that playoff appearances without Super Bowl appearances do not mean that much.

Lately, those teams have been removed from playoff contention early in the season and long for the days when getting into the playoffs is the first step on the journey to win it all.

Of course winning the Super Bowl and being declared world champions is the ultimate and number one goal. Every team will set that goal, but for most it is unrealistic. The Chargers are one of those teams that have a legitimate opportunity to win it all. So, let’s not put the cart before the horse. Don’t be a home town loyal supporter of the Chargers only when the wins are coming on a consistent basis.

It looks like the Denver Broncos will be the one team that will challenge the Chargers. They are consistent and will have a similar schedule advantage. This will be long exciting season full of twist and turns, so enjoy all aspects of it and don’t miss any of the action.

Note: If you were looking for my wife Marie’s “Fashion Focus with Marie Green” column this week, Marie is in New York City at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Her next column will give you all of the information you will need for fashion on the horizon. So make sure you look for next week’s column and also get additional information at www.fashionfocuswithmarie.com.

Remembering the loss of a great American

By Judith Barney

The current search for a plane flown by aviator Steve Fossett that disappeared in the wilds of Nevada gives technophobes like me a sort of perverse vindication.

With all the gadgets and electronics we are urged to get acquainted with, I am baffled by the idea that an airplane can disappear. Where’s our GPS and radar and transponder, etc, etc? It doesn’t seem possible to lose an airplane.

Thinking about it, however, I was reminded of an earlier airplane tragedy that overwhelmed us all on Aug. 16, 1935, when a nation’s radio broadcasts were silenced for a half hour to commemorate the untimely death of a comedian.

Yes, a comedian! And a good deal more than that — a Broadway and movie star, a newspaper columnist, a sarcastic, down-to-earth Oklahoma cowboy who got his start doing rope tricks to amuse sophisticated New Yorkers in “The Ziegfeld Follies.”

Will Rogers could make fun of every aspect of American life and nobody ever accused him of being mean-spirited or un-American.

There’s nothing like him in our times, and I miss what he represented — small-town America and uncomplicated neighborliness.

In the depths of the Depression he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own income to relieve want. When he first saw people lined up at a soup kitchen in Arkansas, Will Rogers made a hastily arranged 13-stop tour of cities in Texas where he raised $82,000 to be distributed by the Red Cross; then he made fun of Texans’ inability to open their purses when he went back to his native state, Oklahoma, and there raised another $100,000 in one week. He was that kind of guy.

He was the quintessential American humorist, cynical about very few things other than politics, and even there he drew the line against personal attacks. Congressmen, as a species, however, were fair game.

After his first visit to Russia, he quipped that it was “so much bigger than us that we would rattle around in it like an idea in Congress.”

His material was any day’s newspaper headlines. He used his rope-twirling, he said, to “pass the time out on the stage” until he “could think of something to say.”

But nobody ever said more in fewer words than the Oklahoma cowboy about our follies and presumptions. He was probably the inventor of the one-liner. He was asked in a Congressional hearing, “What is your business?” and answered, “Well, everybody’s.”

He liked FDR personally, but, when asked about his political affiliations, he famously remarked, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

He could do so much with a single word or phrase. What he said then is timeless and, thinking back, his best lines are as true today as they were 80 years ago: “I wonder why our real big men never go into politics” was one of the best put-downs I’ve ever heard.

Will was one-sixteenth or so Cherokee Indian, and he was very proud of that. He verbally blasted the Ku Klux Klan when it was a respected organization in the state he grew up in. Pork-barrel politics were just as popular then as now, but he urged Congress to turn down a flood-relief bill that he had earlier promoted, when he found out it had been “tinkered with” to aid Californians who wanted more water allocated to them for, as he put it, “lawn-sprinklering.”

“Politics is a great character builder,” he noted, “You have to take a referendum to see what your convictions are for the day.”

We worry these days about electronic voting machines’ safety. Well, in those days there were inevitably scandals about ward heelers and dead men voting.

He may have been our nation’s first frequent flyer. He made three trips by plane around the world, and never missed a deadline. He carried a portable typewriter, and wrote his daily syndicated column pretty much ad lib, telegraphing it “collect” to his editors.

On Aug. 15 he set out with his pilot friend Wiley Post to find out if a transoceanic flight from the United States across Siberia to Europe would be commercially feasible.

Shortly after their first re-fueling stop at Point Barrow, Alaska, they took off and the plane sputtered. It coughed, banked to the right, and went down into a shallow inlet. An Alaska native saw the tragedy and ran 15 miles to the U.S. Army Signal Corps Station, “Red bird smashed!” was his report that brought a nation to its knees.

Surfing attitudes

By The Willis Brothers

A surfer complained about his surfboard having a scratch until he came across another surfer who had a surfboard with a bad ding.

The surfer who had the badly dinged surfboard complained until he saw a surfer who had broken his surfboard in half.

The surfer who had broken his surfboard complained until he saw a surfer who had no surfboard.

The man who had no surfboard did not complain at all because he had nothing about which to complain.

Moral of the story: He who has been given a lot should have little to complain about.

Personal happiness is a choice less dependent on circumstance and more dependent on attitude. How a surfer views the waves determines his view of the waves.

Two different surfers can have two entirely different views of how the same waves are breaking. The view each surfer takes determines his actions.

One surfer may look out with little enthusiasm seeing nothing but small mushy waves with little promise. This surfer decides going surfing isn’t worth it. He would rather play video games.

The next surfer looks at the same waves enthusiastically seeing great promise and good rides ahead of time. Stoked up, this surfer decides to go surfing.

Waves in themselves are neither good nor bad unless we make them so. With the right attitude, a surfer can have fun on all waves as well as face any challenge.

With the wrong attitude, a surfer will find something wrong with any wave. When it comes to challenging moments, he has no chance because he will give up before ever starting.

Success begins, and ends, with the proper attitude. A thankful attitude is a proper attitude. A positive attitude is a proper attitude. A loving attitude is a proper attitude. An attitude of “yes I can!” is a proper attitude. Time, and time again, success and happiness, simply put, come down to having the proper attitude.

Surfers can be extremely picky, especially when it comes to their surfboards. For some, the key to all happiness can be found in a great surfboard.

There was once a very skilled big wave surfer who was in search of the perfect surfboard in which he could use to ride the big waves. He was constantly getting new surfboards, testing them a few times, inevitably finding something wrong with each one. As quickly as he got new surfboards, he just as quickly discarded them.

On a beautiful sun shinning day with the surf up the same surfer took out a new surfboard. From the very first wave, he could tell he was not going to like the surfboard. By the third wave, he knew he did not like it.

Disappointed, the surfer returned to the beach complaining about the surfboard to his friends. One of his friends was curious as to why the surfboard was so bad because it looked good to him. He asked if he could try the surfboard. The surfer told him to go ahead.

The surfer’s friend loved the way the surfboard rode from the very first wave. He was able to make every drop no matter how steep the waves he took.

By the end of the day this surfer was catching all the best waves and putting on a dazzling display of surfing. Watching from the shore, the first surfer who had quickly rejected the surfboard in the first place decided to give it a second chance.

The surfer rode the same surfboard in the same waves the next day with a different attitude, experiencing different results. The surfboard he initially rejected turned out to be his most cherished surfboard — ever. It turned out that after the surfer watched his friend surf so gallantly the day before he realized it wasn’t the surfboard that was bad, it was his attitude that was bad. It was not the surfboard that needed changing, it was his attitude that needed changing.

In the end, circumstances, bad luck and misfortune are not the greatest cause of people’s woes and failures. It’s a bad attitude. It is not always easy to maintain a good attitude, but it’s a lot easier than the alternative, that’s for sure.

Attitude is everything. Whether it comes to surfing, or life, how you view it is how it is for you. Happiness is composed of the thoughts helping shape the attitudes that help shape our lives.

Regardless of outside circumstances, choose a to have an inner attitude that is positive and life will be positive. ‘Tis better to be thankful for what we have than to be disgruntled for what we don’t. Life never will hold down the man down who keeps his spirit and attitude up.

Aloha.