SCHOOLYARD BULLY

RACIAL, gender, and most forms of prejudice are widely (and properly) condemned around here. But for some reason, there are some forms of mindless prejudice that seem to be considered acceptable or even amusing.

Take DiCinzo's cartoon (print version, May 31) and Fred Geiger's letter to the editor this week (Letters, May 31). The message is clear: If a person is in business, he/she is automatically bad and out to destroy the character of Santa Cruz. Nothing else about "those people" matters. Don't even think about any particular qualities or principles that a business person might have--each one is a greedy bastard that doesn't care about the rest of us or the community.

This is ignorant or stupid--or both.

Which reminds me, could somebody at Metro Santa Cruz explain why DeCinzo is so nasty toward so many people? Were lots of people mean to him when he was a kid? I know that's what makes me the jerk that I am.

Bruce Britton, Santa Cruz

HIGHWAY TO HELL

WHAT hooey--no wine on the "Highway." Beer and wine gardens are for the yo-yos in SoCal. After seven years tolerating this crap in SoCal we moved back to Half Moon Bay last November. I never saw that corraling people in "beer & Wine Gardens" ever made a difference. Ever. We found that people just went there and chugged beer & wine in the "corral" because they couldn't sip as they walked around and ended up more tipsy. This is sooooo misinformed and sooo self-righteous I can't believe a place as cool as Boulder Creek is putting up with it. Move the festival off the highway and do your own thing. Who needs CalTrans telling us what's "good for us" anyway.

Susan Guarino, Half Moon Bay

INSIGHTFUL INSIGHTS

I WOULD like to agree with Isabelle's letter about von Busack's review of The Da Vinci Code ("Veni, Vidi, Da Vinci," Film, May 24). More to the point, I wish to take issue with your paper's general critique of movies in general. We get it already. Your reviews are pretentious and cynical. You are smarter than us. We don't get all those insights and smart things that you have to go to college for to understand. Sometimes we just like to watch a good movie and have fun, and walk out of a movie theatre thinking, "Wow, I am glad I came today, I had fun watching that movie."

I realize that if it doesn't play at the Nick, then RvB won't like it. And I have watched more than a few movies than I would have if not for some of his insightful insights. Whatever that means. But come on, take the cynical out of your reviews. And I know it's not all RvB, it's on your page of all the movies. They are an opinion of a cynical teenage mind. I still laugh at how your paper first panned movies like The Big Lebowski, and now that they make their midnight round, you praise them like you thought they were great (as they are) all along. You are a bunch of intellectual band-wagoners. Your review of X-3 is just more of the proof. I could go on forever about how you are wrong on that one, but I am sure you have heard enough on that already.

All I wish for is that you (and your competitor, as I read both and compare) just get off your high horse, and tell us if a movie is good enough or not. Quit trying to impress us with your knowledge of art.

Michael Cotter, Soquel

Richard von Busack listed 'The Big Lebowski' in his Top 10 the year it came out.--Editor

FRESHER FISH

OK, here's an example of the problem with DeCinzo. It's not a matter of whose ox is being gored. It's a matter of irrelevance. I am a great fan of pointed satire, parody and irony. Emphasis on "pointed." Too often, I look at DeCinzo and say, "Huh?" Yes, I know about the salmon crisis. However, I am unaware of any local restaurants being accused of serving food under false labels, and mammal meat could hardly be passed off as fish. I can easily think of funnier versions of this cartoon, such as a smug kid in front of a fish bowl labeled "Goldfish 50 cents" with the label crossed out and replaced with "Nouveau Salmone $5 each."

Satire works because it takes a reality and reflects it in a funhouse mirror to enlarge it and emphasize some aspect. Too often, what DeCinzo does is merely theater of the absurd, with little or no connection to reality. He ends up skewering victims seemingly at random.

Shari Prange, Bonny Doon

Send a letter to the editor here.