I Saw Santa Kicking a Klutz With a Briefcase Full of Bucks

Signs of Christmas, San Diego style.

* The front of the Christmas card has a drawing of a barefoot Santa delivering a martial arts kick to the gut of a nerdy guy in a blue suit.

Santa is wielding nunchakus and has swords and a grenade in a bag marked Toys. The nerdy guy’s briefcase has burst open, with money flying every which way.

The card is signed: “The Frega and Tiffany Gang.”

It helps to know that Patrick Frega and David Tiffany are big-time San Diego litigation lawyers (malpractice, personal injury, product liability). Frega is also a martial arts expert.

He says the card symbolizes his firm’s style:

“To get justice from insurance companies, manufacturers and bankers, you have to use commando-type tactics. We go to war for our clients.”

* When Great American Bank was in its prime, the Christmas tree in the lobby of its headquarters in downtown San Diego was always a thing of majesty: 25-feet-plus, bursting with ornaments.

Now Great American has been bought by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo. This year’s tree is nice but much more modest.

A spokesman explains that all 78 Wells Fargo branches, including the ex-Great American HQ, get the same treatment: a 10-foot tree.

“It’s a different corporate culture,” spokesman Dan Conway says. “Wells prefers to put its money not in decorations but in charities for children.”

* The oddball rock group smART Teens plans a food drive-concert (bring cans) at 6 p.m. Dec. 22 at the Chabalaba coffee house near San Diego City College.

Among the offerings will be a medley of songs from “bad Christmas television specials for children.”

Also, “O, Come All Ye Faithful” done disco style and sendups of Sammy Davis Jr., Mel Torme and Burl Ives.

* Jeanne Gorman of Escondido likes to develop her own Christmas cards, and this year she wants to include concern over the recession and the plight of migrant workers in North County.

The card shows a Latino wanna-be elf looking for work. His bicycle is in the driveway. He knocks on Santa’s workshop door.

Santa answers: “No trabajo, jo jo jo.”

Good Riddance

There is always a local angle.

A woman who formerly lived in San Diego and has since moved to Florida reports encountering an “absolutely smug and arrogant” young man on an airplane.

She’s 53, an executive with a big computer firm. Here’s her story, as relayed by her daughter, who lives in San Diego and is active in public life:

The woman boarded her flight and found a young man who looked familiar sitting in her assigned seat. She asked him politely to move, but he didn’t say a word.

Again she tried. Again silence.

A flight attendant was called to mediate. The young man stayed mum but flashed an identification card.

The attendant decided that, yes, the young man was in the woman’s seat. Still, she asked the woman to please take another seat and leave him undisturbed, as if he were some kind of VIP.

The former San Diegan, a dedicated feminist, agreed to comply. But she also gave the young man a parting shot, quite loudly: “I know who you are. You’re that rapist!”

She had spied the name on the I.D.: William Kennedy Smith.

Scoop on the Scam

Here’s one for people who collect urban legends: Those things that never happened and are happening again.

San Diego companies have been warning employees who carry pagers that a scamster is calling and leaving a number that, when called, acts like a 900-number and soaks the caller $55 for nothing. The supposed scam number has a 212 (New York) area code and 540 prefix.

News coverage helped spread word of local concern.

There are some problems though.

First, 540 is indeed a pay-per-call prefix in New York, but it can’t be called from outside the 212 area.

Second, sleuths from AT&T; and New York Telephone have been unable to find any “victims” outside New York City or the source of the scare story that the con job is sweeping westward.