Which One Do You Think Is the Company’s Top Dog?
Business, briefly.
* Like a lot of companies these days, Pacific Bell is downsizing (read: reducing the number of employees).
Which leads to a bit of edgy humor among the rank and file.
The word at Pac Bell in San Diego is that the company has decided it can run just ducky with only Sam Ginn (chairman/CEO of Pac Bell’s holding company), a computer and a guard dog.
Why the guard dog?
To keep Ginn away from the computer.
* Bad news for HomeFed Bank of San Diego.
It’s listed near the bottom in this year’s ranking of companies by Fortune magazine. On a list from 1 (most admired) to 307 (least admired), HomeFed was 305th.
The survey polled 8,000 executives, directors and analysts. HomeFed got slammed for quality of management, use of corporate assets and investment value.
“I don’t care about those rankings,” responds Tom Wageman, HomeFed president/CEO. “They’re irrelevant and immaterial to what we’re doing. . . . I wouldn’t even get excited if we were Number 1.”
* Larry Richman, president of Heritage Security Services of San Diego, has been appointed by Gov. Wilson to the state Advisory Board on Private Security Services. His firm does security for the trolley.
* Perennial candidate Floyd Morrow looks like a no-show for this year’s mayor’s race.
Too busy working on his new invention, a collapsible-expandable travel trailer, and leading weekend jaunts to beachfront RV parks in Rosarito Beach and Ensenada (“We Drive So You Can Party!”), $120 per person, double occupancy.
* A Vista firm, Tactyl Technologies Inc., announced that it has developed a latex-free condom, made of a new synthetic.
Lots of men are allergic to latex and suffer rashes, itching and shortness of breath when latex hits their exposed tender parts.
The Food and Drug Administration is testing the Vista condom. Don’t ask me how.
And don’t get impatient. This innovation in lovemaking won’t be in stores for up to nine months.
Lots of Signs of the Times
Words, words, words.
* The tabloids “Inside Edition,” “A Current Affair” and “Hard Copy” engaged in a bidding war to get an exclusive interview with Elmer Vess, father of the slain Vickie Eddington.
The winner: “A Current Affair” with a $5,000 offer.
Vess, who lives in Idaho, will use the money to come to San Diego to follow the trial of his ex-son-in-law, Navy Cmdr. Leonard Eddington II, accused of killing and burying Vickie near their Jamul home.
* New sign being held by perennial demonstrator at C Street and 5th Avenue in downtown San Diego: “Arsenio Hall Doesn’t Have a Telephone Answering Machine!!!!”
* Wherever the President goes, the press mob follows.
Four San Diegans were recruited by the White House to tend to the needs of two planeloads of reporters during President Bush’s brief stay: publicists Anthony Ott and Cole Davis, former Assemblyman Jeff Marston, and Dan Greenblat, special assistant to Sheriff Jim Roache.
* The press corps arrived ornery but left happier.
On Thursday in Cleveland, reporters and cameramen had been required to trudge up six flights of stairs for the daily “photo op” and then were kept at bay.
In San Diego, everything was one-story and cozy.
* North County bumper sticker: “The Most Dangerous Place to Live in America Is a Mother’s Womb.”
* If voters are looking for a mayor dedicated to gender-neutral language, Peter Navarro may have the inside track.
He told a United Jewish Federation forum last week that politicians shouldn’t go looking for a “whipping person .”
* Headline in the opinion section of the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Japan Nips Creativity in the Bud.”
* The American Youth Hostels movement runs hostels in Point Loma and Imperial Beach.
An official says there’s no age limit for hostelers: “You just have to act immature.”
Computing the Odds of a Disaster
Spotted along California 78: An older fellow driving at a good clip, typing furiously on a laptop computer.
