Squid Fry 04.28.16: Happy Ending…

HAPPY ENDING… There are a few movies Squid can watch over and over again. There’s the 1956 classic take on Moby Dick, where Squid’s sea-dwelling brethren wins. Squid tears up every time Free Willy gets freed. (Squid didn’t say they had to be good movies.) There’s also the recent real-life tale of Inky the Octopus, who escaped from a New Zealand aquarium tank, presumably scooted across the floor, and squeezed back out to sea via a 150-foot drainpipe. (He didn’t even leave a goodbye note.)

Squid’s been watching outgoing Carmel Mayor Jason Burnett taste similar freedom as he prepared to step down as mayor. (His successor, Steve Dallas, was sworn in April 27.) But Burnett isn’t going anywhere quite so fast: Dallas asked the Monterey Peninsula Regional Water Authority, the mayors that mull water supply solutions, to retain Burnett as a “liaison and advisor.”

“His absence from the Authority would leave a void not easily filled,” Dallas wrote in an April 25 letter. And sure enough, on April 26, the authority agreed to keep Burnett, working pro bono, as a liaison. Squid was hoping for a more film-worthy denouement to Burnett’s tenure as a public official – a cry of “freedom!” as he, his wife Mel and their son Sebastian rode into the sunset – but Squid can’t help but tear up a little at this alternate cheesy ending: Burnett and Dallas, sworn political enemies for a while, now playing for the same team.

MUSIC ROYALTY… Outside of Squid’s pooch, Rosco P. Coltrane, and shrimp popcorn, there’s not much Squid loves more than Fleetwood Mac and wine.

As a cephalopod, Squid has what humans consider evolutionarily primitive ears – not much more than a grain of calcium in a liquid sac lined with vibration-catching hairs. But Squid can detect sounds at 500 hertz, which pretty much captures the entire dynamic range of Fleetwood Mac’s music.

Recently, while oozing around the Monterey courthouse, Squid saw none other than Fleetwood Mac founder Mick Fleetwood’s name on the docket. His vanity wine label, Mick Fleetwood Private Cellar, is suing the now-defunct Chateau Julien in Carmel Valley for failing to pay royalties on the more than 1,000 cases they sold under his label. The former winery has a tab of $172,090.80 with the musician’s company. The suit also claims the winery used grapes of lesser quality than agreed upon.

While the winery was sold for $12 million in July 2015 and renamed itself Folktale Winery, former president Robert Brower Sr. filed bankruptcy last year – and creditors are acting like creditors and claiming he lied about his finances and are demanding millions.

This is gonna be messy. Squid thinks you could get in line, Mick, or collect your royalties elsewhere, pour a glass of wine and go your own way.