SQUIDFRY 07.07.16: Pig Roast…

PIG ROAST… Squid has always been a good neighbor, sticking close to the lair, munching shrimp-flavored popcorn with Marvin Gaye tunes playing quietly in the background. Squid’s low-key lifestyle made Squid think Squid would be compatible with the Pacific Grove way of living, but in the midst of a neighborly controversy, Squid’s not so sure.

The drama revolves around a pet pig and whether Lisa and Mark Hanes – who have a city-issued permit to house Bruiser – are picking up after him. Their retired neighbors, Ray andCarol Magsalay, say the overpowering stench negatively affects their time in the garden and at home.

City officials are now tangled up in a mess that’s muddier than a pig pen, with plenty of porcine name-calling. It started when City Manager Ben Harvey used the terms “pig people” and “pig-sty neighbors” to refer to the Haneses. Then P.G. Councilmember/Republican congressional candidate Casey Lucius’ husband, Robert, testified at a city hearing on whether Bruiser should stay or go, and Councilman Dan Miller questioned what made Robert Lucius a “pig expert.” (A quick Google search shows he works with pigs at Humane Society International.)

Squid just wants Pagrovian neighbors to get along. Maybe Squid will play some soft tunes and take Bruiser and the Haneses over to Carmel Beach for a relaxing walk.

D IS FOR DUMBFOUNDING… Occasionally, Squid comes across an indulgence – a picture book for grown-up cephalopods. D is for Dump Trump: An Anti-Hate Alphabet, a self-proclaimed “picture book for adults about a man-child,” is just such a book, with 26 poems and 20 cartoons. It’s by a Monterey couple, writer Brad Herzog and illustrator Amy Herzog, who launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their book project. They intend to donate $1 of each book sale to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Like good Americans, the Herzogs have a genuine love of RV travel, and for 17 summers, worked as traveling spokespeople for the RV Industry Association, crisscrossing the nation and talking about the virtues of doing so in a gas-guzzling house on wheels.

Greg Gerber, editor of the RV Daily Report, got wind of their book project and went on the offensive. “While I support the Herzogs’ right to free speech, one has to wonder why these California liberals need other people’s money to publish a book,” Gerber wrote June 28. “It seems rather odd that RVIA would turn a blind eye to such a divisive book in this politically charged environment.”

Within 24 hours, RVIA terminated their contract, because the book “distracted from our core values of political neutrality,” spokesman Kevin Broom says. The Herzogs once won the association’s national Spirit of America Award – ironic considering political speech is perhaps the only thing more American than road-tripping.