CHEERS AND JEERS MONDAY: Left Coast Edition!

Disclaimer:  Virgomusic's Cheers and Jeers is in no way affiliated with Bill in Portland Maine.  Any resemblance to Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers is simply the sincerest form of flattery at work. Virgomusic's Cheers and Jeers hopes it can be like Bill in Portland Maine when it grows up.

Greetings from Sunny San Diego! Join me below the fold as we discuss California politicians, the End of an Era, presidential noise music-making, and of course, pooties!

First, a C&J Roll Call of my elected representatives.

Ahnold, the Governator:
Cheers: He seems to be attempting to keep at least one of his campaign promises to address the dire problems in California's prison system. Among his proposals are some good ideas (mental health counseling and life-skills training.), some bad ideas (sending some prisoners to other states) and at least one that sounds like something from a South Park episode:

Proposals for state's prisons

-- Water

To reduce the amount of polluting wastewater discharged from prisons, limit the number of times inmates can flush toilets.

Jeers: Oh, take your pick, but my personal favorite is his veto on gay marriage. Because, you know, civil rights are graciously bestowed by the majority. (shudder!)

Senator Dianne Feinstein:
Cheers: Both my senators are women!
Jeers: Most everything else!

Senator Barbara Boxer:
Cheers: She gave a speech at YearlyKos, and I got my picture in the San Francisco Chronicle!
Jeers: Evidently still supporting Joementum

Caution: my state senator, Christine Kehoe, wants to destroy your marriage.

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By the numbers:
Median price of a single-family home in San Diego County as of  March 2006: $550,000
Median income: $64,273
(Source: San Diego Housing Commission)
Years it will take for Virgomusic to save for a down payment: 100 or so, but only if I stop eating

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Your puppy pic of the day: Is it 5 o'clock yet?

Note: I provided a puppy pic because it is traditional, and because, well, I like puppies. However, the man of the Virgomusic house would like to remind everyone who's in charge around here.

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Tears: Cody's Books, on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, will shut its doors today, 50 years and one day after the business was founded. To this U.C. Berkeley alumna, it's a very sad day that marks the end of an era. Plus, a good friend of mine works there, and I'll really miss getting his discount. Here are some things he had to say about the whole affair:

A typical shift lately includes visits by long-time customers who express shock, dismay, anger, and sympathy, as well as well-meaning but by now annoying offers to "do something to help." There is nothing anyone can do, we explain forlornly, yes we're sad too, yes, Berkeley will not be the same, Telegraph Avenue is going down the toilet. (The Avenue's descent down the toilet can be established, it has been argued, directly on the day Jerry Garcia died, when the largely mobile horde of Deadheads suddenly had nothing to follow. They decamped on Telegraph and have since had no reason to leave.)

I used to live four blocks away from the store, and honestly I don't think the neighborhood is that bad. I mean, if people are so afraid of the drug-dealers and homeless people who supposedly swarm around the area, how come it's so damn hard to find a parking space?

Everything must go, including the fixtures. When asked if the 35% employee discount on books will also apply to the fixtures, tables, and splintery old  bookcases, the management's response was no. Each case, regardless of size or depth of decrepitude, goes for $75.

The charred ended cases damaged by the Satanic Verses-inspired firebombing in 1988 will be kept by owner Andy Ross, presumably.

Ah, I remember those days. I was living in the dorms at the time. A guy I knew took to walking around campus wearing a "Hello, My Name Is" sticker, upon which he had written "Salman Rushdie." Oh, crap, I'm dating myself. Oh well, I'll always be my mama's baby.

It's pretty disheartening overall:

Nothing makes the scene more grim than the irony of the store's 50th anniversary, which is Sunday, July 9th. And what better way to celebrate 50 years in the book business than to spend $10,000,000 opening a new store in San Francisco near Union Square and then, once the staff for the new store has been skimmed off from Telegraph, cut your losses and close that dump on Telegraph once and for all?

But the saddest part of all is that my friend says the Telegraph store was a great place to meet hot chicks.

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Jeers to people who don't get the whole church/state separation concept. Now, the Supremes may be getting involved in the San Diego version of this eternal struggle between good and evil.

Speaking of which, Jeers to Episcopal Churches who want to leave the ECUSA because they can't deal with bishops who have the nerve to be gay, or female (how about both? That would really cause some fireworks!). Cheers that the church where I play the organ is not one of them.

Let's see... it took the Catholic Church over 300 years to pardon Galileo for saying the Earth revolved around the sun. It took the Lutheran Church over 400 years to repudiate Martin Luther's anti-Semitic writings. I guess by the time everybody calms down about homosexuality, we'll be living on a desert planet, drinking water reclaimed from our own recycled urine. What would Jesus do?

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Finally, I wanted to include something music-related, in honor of my username profession. All y'all have done the mental iPod thing so well, I won't even go there. I will simply leave you with a few thoughts:

• Somewhere out there, there is a recording of the presidential jazz duo consisting of Bill Clinton on sax and Vaclav Havel on piano. I know because I saw it for sale at a jazz club in Prague when I visited there in 1995. I could kick myself for not buying it.

• Richard Nixon played the piano. I don't really like to contemplate the implications of that.

• Ditto for Condi.

• John Adams was an amateur flautist, but apparently didn't love music unconditionally, according to this anecdote about his courtship of Louisa Catherine Johnson:
  

  Adams had first met her in France when he was twelve. For months, Adams visited her family nightly, always leaving when the daughters sat down at the piano to play and sing -- he hated the sound of the female voice in song. Despite his taste in music and the reservations of his father, the President, who did not think his son should have a foreign-born wife, the two were married in 1797.

So, my darlings, what are you cheering and jeering about today?