Goodness gracious

It might be a bit premature, but the Gardner sisters are opening a new restaurant in downtown Chico called Café Flo, right around the corner from The Pageant Theatre. I’ve watched the progression of the remodel, and it’s amazing to watch an entire family (and friends) pitch in to make a dream come true. With so much great energy leading up to its any-day-now opening, Café Flo’s success is insured. Featuring locally produced ingredients, Café Flo is going to be a hotspot for everyone who cares about keeping downtown local! Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe, for great food it’s Café Flo.

The holidays are here, and that means time to put on my Paradise Lost black sweatshirt (great for stuffing stockings and available at the specialty video store), pull up my hood, draw the strings and do my best imitation of Kenny from South Park. In other words, it brings out the worst in me, and my first response is to hide. You can call me a scrooge, but work with me here. Holiday times means that people you see around town, or in work environments, are especially inebriated and their idiocy is almost accepted because it’s Christmas time. Folks, you have somehow confused Christmas time with Miller Time. When Jack In The Box has egg nog, you’ve got to accept that the commercialization of something holy is in operation. Of course even in the ‘40s people were saying that Christmas had been bought out by special interests, and now 60 years later everywhere you look you see its effects.

Let’s cut to the meat of the matter and stop messing around. Christmas has everything to do with Jesus and nothing to do with gifts. Sure, you can tell me all about pagan gift-giving during the equinox, but we live in a Christian country, and I think it’s time our leaders (and you?) accepted the lessons of the god that y’all chose to pray to. I personally cannot wait for the Messiah to return. It’s time somebody with a vision that encompasses compassion as its highest virtue took charge.

I believe that Chico has some of the most beautiful, talented, original people I have ever met. I aspire to be as grand as some of the locals I have come to know and love here, but on the other hand there is a looming undercurrent to look cool, rather than be cool, that alarms me. So until 2003, this dude is digging deep in the back of his "hoodie" and laying low.