San Diego Magazine / October 2004 / All in the Game...

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All in the Game...

HOPE SPRINGS: This season’s Chargers Kickoff Luncheon at the downtown Hyatt Regency was a surprisingly upbeat affair, with more than a thousand fans on hand despite the home team’s dismal 4-12 record in 2003. Instead of showing a highlight film from last season, the Chargers wisely opted for a bloopers video. All four quarterbacks were in the room, with only mild applause going to rookie Philip Rivers, who held out for bigger bucks through most of the preseason. In fact, the biggest ovation was for 41-year-old veteran Doug Flutie, who’s likely to see little action this fall. And the second-biggest round of applause went to a Padre—Padres owner John Moores, who came to the football luncheon to accept the San Diego International Sports Council’s Bob Brietbard Award. Acknowledging that most pundits don’t expect the Chargers to do much better this year than last, head coach Marty Schottenheimer was nonetheless optimistic. “When I hear people say it’s going to be a long season for the Chargers, I take that as a positive,” said Schottenheimer. “To me, a long season would mean three or four playoff games.”

LIKE NO BIZ: Josh Ellis, director of communications at La Jolla Playhouse when Harmony had its world premiere there in 1997, caught the workshop production of Bruce Sussman and Barry Manilow’s Broadway-bound reworking of the musical last month in New York. Ellis’ judgment: “They have a winner!” The play, based on the lives of the Comedian Harmonists —a group of Jewish musical performers who faced persecution in Nazi Germany—opens on Broadway in the spring. And the show’s focus is stronger, the libretto is tougher, and the payoff is greater, says Ellis. Much of Harmony’s new intensity is credited to Brian D’Arcy James, who plays the rabbi. In the workshop staging, “an amazing nine separate musical numbers stopped the show cold. I haven’t seen anything like that in years,” says Ellis, a veteran Broadway publicist. “When the Harmonists did the finale, ‘Stars in the Night,’ the air-conditioning was turned off, and you could hear people sobbing loudly,” he says. “The audience congratulated themselves just for being there. It was that kind of event.”

GIRLIE MAN? The suspect in a Chula Vista murder, an activeduty Navy sailor captured in Virginia, had refused to waive extradition. So when San Diego district attorney’s investigators Mike Howard and Robert Marquez went to the Norfolk jail to pick him up, they were armed with a governor’s warrant. The Virginia jailers were matter-of-fact about the business at hand—until one of them noticed the warrant was signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Look at this,” he cried. “The Terminator signed this.” When word spread that the Governator had sent two cops all the way to Virginia, the deputies asked permission to make copies of the signature for everybody. Even airport police were awed by the warrant. The only one who didn’t seem particularly impressed by the autograph was the suspect. “He writes like a woman,” he sneered.

SO THEY SAY: The Oakland Raiders play the Chargers in Qualcomm Stadium on Halloween this season. “Which means,” says Phil Osgood, “that Raiders fans will be able to come as they are.” . . . It’s all in how you look at it. A San Diego transplant in New York in time for the anti-Bush rally during the GOP convention had fun comparing the crowd count from four daily newspapers. The New York Times’ estimate: 500,000. The Washington Post estimated 200,000; the New York Post, 120,000; and The San Diego Union-Tribune, 100,000 . . . San Diego’s escalating fiscal calamity and the political ramifications are finally getting some attention from the East Coast media. The Washington Post headlined it this way last month: “San Diego Snarled in Web of Financial Woes—Mayoral Race Heats Up.” For another story, in The New York Times, our Mayor Dick Murphy declined to be interviewed. But Mike Aguirre, who wants to be city attorney, had plenty to say. “The basic story is that San Diego has become a thoroughly corrupt community in which the power players cut the deals, you don’t ask any questions, and everybody gets what they want,” opined Aguirre. The Times’ headline put it this way: “Sunny San Diego Finds Itself Being Viewed as a Kind of Enron-by-the-Sea.”

WINNERS: Sarah Reinertsen, a 28-year-old San Diegan, will be in Kona, Hawaii, this month to compete at the Ironman World Championships. She’s been training 20 hours a week for the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run—under something of a handicap. She only learned to ride a bike and swim a year ago. Sarah, whose right leg was amputated above the knee when she was 7, is the first-ever amputee to compete in the Ironman championships.

THE NAKED CITY: Last month’s police blotter brought yet another reminder of just how much of a jungle it is out there. Sheriff ’s deputies and highway patrolmen combined forces to chase down a woman who’d sped away from an accident on I-15. They were able to catch her by using a spike strip, and took her into custody. The suspect was unharmed, but the arrest was not without casualties. In the process of making the co-op bust, the sheriff ’s police dog bit the CHP officer.

Listen for Tom Blair’s Friday reports on KOGO News Radio (600 AM) at 7:25 a.m. You can also hear his radio column at sandiegomag.com. Items for the magazine or radio may be e-mailed to tblair@sandiegomag.com.