BRASS ONES… Squid envies the human male only one thing, and that’s exterior testicles. So many opportunities exist for scratching and rearranging that Squid sometimes longs for a pair of Squid’s own. It would also allow Squid to compare sizes with John Davies of Santa Barbara-based Davies Public Affairs, because Squid guesses Davies’ are big.


Squid has discovered that Davies is the Marina Coast Water Agency’s top choice for public affairs representation. The contract hasn’t yet been signed, but as the agency deals with being smacked around by its partners in the doomed-to-fail Regional Water Project, it’s decided to spend a few hundred bucks an hour to try to neutralize the fact that the Regional Project’s doom is mostly its own fault.


Davies promises to do just that. According to his website, “We minimize damage by managing the message, and the messengers.” The site adds Davies has the power to “make NIMBYS and Naysayers irrelevant.” Hear that, naysayers? You and your damn concerns about cost, water sourcing and former county water board director Steve Collins’ conflict of interest troubles are going to be minimized.


Squid’s guessing Davies has never seen Marina Coast’s board in action – the miracle of board members Ken Nishi and Jan Shriner scrapping and Howard Gustafson glaring while agency general manager Jim Heitzman rocks back and forth and silently screams “Nothing to see here.”


If he had, Davies probably would have run in the other direction, testicles retracted.


BLACKWATER LIGHT… Earlier this month, Squid traveled behind the lettuce curtain, where the good ‘ol boys and girls of the Oldtown Salinas Association were holding a meet-n-greet featuring the heavy-duty presence of those young rebels known as the Salinas Jaycees and updates on possible downtown projects (Taylor Farms) and forever stalled downtown projects (Gerry Kehoe). But Squid’s favorite part of the wine – and bruschetta-fueled bash was the guard at the door.


Wearing a black suit, an earpiece and a badge straight out of junior spy school, the guard belonged to Tony Vincent’s Executive Security Agency. And he was there to serve one purpose: Keep the guests from reaching the sidewalk with their wineglasses. Maureen Wruck, who babysits the County Planning Department for Chevron, made it past him with chardonnay in hand, making her that much tougher than construction magnate Andrew Ausonio. The look on Ausonio’s face when the baby-faced bouncer told him he couldn’t take his vino outside was somewhere between bemused disbelief, and “someone find me a backhoe so after I kill this kid, I can properly dispose of him.”