What’s patriotic, cuddly and orange on top?
Channel surfing late at night, Ann Watson came upon an ad for the Trumpy Bear, who wears a long red tie, has “a mop of unruly blonde hair ... and stuffed inside is an American flag blanket.” The commercial for this product, which costs about $40, is on YouTube where you can watch and listen to testimony of a Marine, who rides a big bad motorcycle with a stuffed grizzly bear propped on its front, or a golfer who has this stuffed animal in his cart because “when I ride with Trumpy Bear, he makes my golf game great again.”
Watson’s wondering if “a Melania bear in stilettoes is far behind.” She also notes that it’s hard to figure out whether this product, made in China, is a parody or real. But just reading the comments attached to the commercial can provide hours of enjoyment. “I am disappointed with the size of its paws,” says one buyer.
The food and wine community is pitching in. The Emeril Lagasse Foundation of New Orleans has given two $250,000 grants to the Napa Valley Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of Sonoma Valley to help in fire recovery efforts. Chef Lagasse said “so many of our winemakers, donors, sponsors and friends” had been affected by the fires. “... We’re honored to be able to pay it forward and give back to those in need in the Napa Valley and Sonoma regions.”
Tom Waits, his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and actor Bill Pullman had a birthday dinner for Waits at Boulevard on Thursday, Dec. 7. The restaurant staff, tipped off by Waits’ assistant, presented him with a card.
Donna Sachet says her holiday show, performed last week, is her final holiday show. It was terrific, said man-about-theCastro Mark Abramson. Sharon McNight, Abramson emailed, was “getting a little verklempt while recalling the past 25 years of Donna’s shows and other fundraisers she’d done for the AIDS Emergency Fund and Positive Resource Center. Starting to tear up, she said, ‘Oh no, now the eyelashes will fall off. Let’s face it, the only thing we owe Korea is good eyelashes.’ ”
Honor Roll: Theatre Rhinoceros Artistic Director John Fisher has won a best actor award at the United Solo Festival in New York for his “A History of World War II: The D-Day Invasion to the Fall of
Berlin.” Fisher says he developed the show, which played as part of the festival in New York in October, at Theatre Rhino. Hung Liu and the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley (which is showing Liu’s work) are being honored by the city of Berkeley at ceremonies in the City Council Chambers on Tuesday, Dec. 19. And Alice Waters will be the honoree innovator at this years FOG Design + Art Fair luncheon.
The ever-fascinating Haight neighborhood NextDoor listings included a plaintive note from a driver who says he was stuck for at least 45 seconds at the corner of Haight and Central when a woman dressed as a clown and a man carrying clown paraphernalia got into a car that was picking them up. When that car finally drove away, the driver says he proceeded through the intersection ... upon which he was issued a ticket for failing to stop at the stop sign. The driver, apparently determined to fight the ticket, was looking for witnesses to the incident. Seems to me that’s like looking for a dewdrop in a rainstorm. There are folks dressed as clowns getting in and out of cars all over the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Lyndi Brown reports that NextDoor in Penngrove carried a listing for three lost “Beef Cows, one with yellow ear tag #11,” the bovine equivalent of the three little kittens who lost their mittens.
Dire Warnings Gazette: According to a report in missionlocal.org, “To coincide with the start of the holiday shopping season, when auto burglaries tend to spike,” the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management began to sponsor ads and announcements promoting Make the Right Call, “a campaign aimed at reducing unnecessary — and unintentional — 911 dials.”
The department says almost a third of the calls to 911 are butt dials. Callers often hang up, but dispatchers must follow up, and in 2016, staffers spent about 5,000 hours doing that. Furthermore, if your car gets broken into — unfortunately a common occurrence in San Francisco and particularly during shopping season — don’t even think of bothering the police about it. The city wants you to call 311. And a Merry Everything to you.