Beachcombing

Jay Beeler

We are off and running with the second phase of our Best of Long Beach contest to determine which restaurant, entertainment attractions and retail stores are held in high regard by our readers. This popular contest is now in its 17th year, started one year after we acquired this newspaper exactly 18 years ago.

There’s a saying that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” The daily Press-Telegram newspaper started copying our idea several years ago and has been quite successful using it as a marketing tool. The main difference between our contest and theirs is $10,000 in gift certificates that we award to participants.

But copying us is okay, because P-T columnist Rich Archbold brought it to my attention many years ago that they had a columnist named Malcolm Epley who used “Beach Combing” in the middle of the 20th century, retiring in 1971.

Originally this paper was called the Los Altos Neighbor by former publisher John McNaughton. Since my objective was to expand the distribution throughout the city, a new name was researched and “Beachcomber” was not being used by another California newspaper – just some bars, motels and hair salons. Malcolm Epley’s column never surfaced in the quest for a new name.

 

Our online reader poll is very interesting. We are asking readers to rate Donald Trump’s performance to date. Never before in our polling have we seen such strong results. They either love him or hate him with very few in between.

He’s rated “excellent” by 36 percent, “good” by 14 percent, “average” by 2 percent, “poor” by 6 percent and “failure” by 43 percent among the 93 persons voting so far.

In my opinion he seems to be getting the positive responses from those who give him credit for doing exactly what he promised to do, if elected. From a public relations perspective, he is a train wreck.

These past 18 months have been both entertaining and wincing. Will he (or we) survive another 30 months? Does he have a snowball’s chance in hell of being re-elected? Time will tell.

 

An aphorism is a short, pointed sentence that expresses a wise or clever observation or a general truth. Hopefully I haven’t used any of these before (It gets harder to remember after 18 years).

1. The nicest thing about the future is that it always starts tomorrow.

2. Money will buy a fine dog but only kindness will make him wag his tail.

3. If you don’t have a sense of humor you probably don’t have any sense at all.

4. Seat belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.

5. A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you’re in deep water.

6. How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?

7. Business conferences are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.

8. Why is it that at school reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?

9. Stroke a cat and you will have a permanent job.

10. No one has more driving ambition than the teenage boy who wants to buy a car.

11. There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.

 

 publisher@beachcomber.news

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Beachcomber

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