San Diego Magazine / March 2010 / Tiger and Other Tales ...

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Tiger and Other Tales ...

APRIL 5, 2010

CHEW ON THIS: With the bloody drug wars raging across our border, this may not be the perfect time to be heading south to have your cavities filled. But Mexico-based DentiCenter is heavily promoting something it calls “dental tourism” — U.S.-quality dental work at a third the cost of equivalent care here (with offices in Tijuana, Mexicali and Reynosa). So maybe your bodyguard needs a root canal?

THE POKING NOSE: With San Diego still struggling to stem the riptide of red ink, the city is “desperately trying to ‘refinance’ its debt,” according to one City Hall wag. “In other words, some want to stretch payments out longer for short-term savings. Sounds familiar,” she says. “Very much like underfunding the city’s pension yesterday to pass on the debt to our children tomorrow.” ... Another one bites the dust? San Diego Social magazine has apparently stopped the presses. Calls to its listed phone number are going unanswered ... City Council offices are buzzing about the recent abrupt departure of Councilmember Marti Emerald’s chief of staff, Xema Jacobson. (Former policy chief Don Mullen has replaced her.) A colleague says the departure is related to a new ethics complaint involving Emerald’s office, but Emerald says no. “Why would anyone start a rumor like that? Xema and I have been close friends for 20 years,” she says. “She made the decision to leave as part of a realignment of the office.”

PACKAGE DEAL? It was surely coincidence, but the other morning our daily newspaper offered up what comes close to perfection in product placement. In the sports section, adjacent to an Associated Press story about Tiger Woods taking ownership of his sex addiction, were advertisements for the Body Shop (“Total Adult Entertainment”), Fantasy Shots photos (the “Adult Gentlemen’s Studio”) and a medical center promising treatment for erectile dysfunction.

SAN DIEGANS’ INK: Yes, there are still jobs for struggling journalists out there. David Moye, who opted for PR (Anthology supper club) after losing his writing gig, is back. He’s taken over the “weird news beat” for AOLNews.com, covering everything from the comeback of the Rubik’s Cube to Dumpster-diving in a down economy. That kind of weird ... Charger Jacques Cesaire, the son of Haitian immigrants, is just back from working on relief efforts in Haiti — in time for the Downtown YMCA’s annual Good Friday Breakfast at the Doubletree in Mission Valley. Cesaire and former TV anchor Carol LeBeau will speak ... Bill VanDeWeghe, the 2002 Republican nominee for the San Diego congressional seat now held by Democrat Susan Davis, has joined the law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge. His long-winded title: Senior Strategic Advisor and Independent Consultant for the San Diego office. The firm is apparently nonpartisan; former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean shares the title.

QUOTEWORTHY: Jack O’Brien, the Tony-winning director who honed his craft at our Old Globe Theatre, has been in London where his latest directorial effort, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies, opened this month at the Adelphi Theatre. But his thoughts are with his dear friend and mentor, Old Globe legend Craig Noel, who died Saturday at 94, after a long illness. “No one played in the dappled, insistent sunlight of San Diego with more joy, more affection, more consistency than Craig Noel,” writes O’Brien. “I learned, I observed, and I ‘went to school’ in my early days. And, I pray, I learned my lesson well. There are many kinds of giants in the theater. Some tower. Some intimidate. Some even roar with their egos alit. And then, there was Craig! And that made, as the playwright says, ‘all the difference.’”