Mailbag: Purple prose and the yella bros of Texas

In our self-flagellatory column about being an idiot with regard to our brush with Prince in 1981, we asked only one thing of readers: “No emails or calls or reporting in other media about how stupid we were. No sharing on Twitter or Facebook. This is strictly between us and you. We’re invoking columnist-reader privilege.”

So, right off the bat, reader Isadora Johnson dogpiles on us as being “disrespectful, writing negatively about (Prince) so soon after his death.”

“When a great artist dies, or even a person of mediocrity, it should be a time of reverence, not disrespect,” she wrote.

It reminds of the time when we set the then-new newsroom carpet on fire when we were a copy boy and, as we bravely fought the blaze, we begged the couple of reporters who saw it to keep their traps shut. “We screwed up but we’ve got this, just don’t say anything.” They nodded, then a woman who just couldn’t hold it together, shouted, “Grobaty spilled glue on the carpet and then set it on fire!”

In our column, we called Prince “a brilliant genius,” which now strikes us as a terribly redundant phrase. We’re not sure if there’s a better guitarist, vocalist or all-around performer. It was us who we were showing disrespect for, not Prince.

OK? To recap: Prince: Genius. Us: Moron. Don’t make us say it again. And don’t tell anyone else.

Readers were totally on our side – and why wouldn’t they be? – when it came to our feelings about Texas and some of its farther-right-wing cowpersons’ low-falutin’ plans to secede from the otherwise United States of America.

“If the right is so convinced and presumed qualified of taking charge of the country, a rational place to start would be ‘Let’s Make Texas Great Again’,” writes Thomas Cappaelli from the faraway land of Santa Catalina Island.

“If they can accomplish that, then they may have a voice in the national narrative.”

James Richardson is also cool with relieving the U.S. of Texas. He sees, as an immediate upside, “a decrease in the number of paleolithic conservative politicians trying to impose their ignorance on the rest of us.

“I am an old reconstructed Califoia liberal,” says Richardson, who is now our pal. “But in this case I am all for the secessionists in Texas. They have been living under the onerous yoke of our sophistication for too long.”

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Leaving Texas now, reader/diner Mark Stackhouse wonders what the sam hill is going on with dining-out events in Long Beach.

“I see we have a Long Beach restaurant week begiing on April 23. Didn’t we just have one in March? What’s up?”

War, Mark. That’s what’s up. Or at least fiercely pitched inteecine battles between restaurant-week factions.

The result is we now have Dine Out Long Beach (the most recent one of which was held Feb. 28-March 25) and Dine LBC (which began Saturday and runs through May 1). The latter event was formerly Eat LBC, you may recall.

One glorious day peace may once again reign o’er the epicurean world, but till then, enjoy the spoils of war by dining at participating Long Beach restaurants twice as often as you’re accustomed to doing.

Contact Tim Grobaty at 562-714-2116, [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter.