OIL AND WATER… A love of saltwater and inherent distrust of magic didn’t stop Squid from partaking in a rain dance this winter, a last-ditch effort so successful that Squid takes full credit for forcing the cancellation of a tour of Chevron’s San Ardo oil field. That was back in February, when Squid was feeling particularly piqued after a colleague got axed from the tour’s guest list, which included County Supes Simon Salinas and Jane Parker, and planning consultant Maureen Wruck. 


A quietly rescheduled virtual PowerPoint tour happened last week at the County Planning Department. There was no agenda posted, but public places are, um, open to the public; Squid was hysterical, then, that Chevron PR manager Carla Musser tried to dissuade Squid’s compatriot from attending. (Best way to get PR reps from big corporations to return your calls? Crash their meetings.)


Squid’s word to the wise: When scheduling wannabe private meetings in public buildings, remember that Squid has the largest eyes per body mass of any creature, land or sea. 


TALL ORDER… Squid’s patient wait for bronze immortality alongside fellow area statues of John Steinbeck and Kalisa Moore is getting tedious. Maybe Squid should borrow a page from the playbook of a fellow good-looking local legend-in-the-making, Monterey native Jamie Solis, whose family long ran Monte Vista Market. The lady lives large. And can dance.


Between stints touring North America with her world music band Hamsa Lila and studying dance and voice in places like Europe and mainland Africa, the lanky and shapely Solis (who now goes by “Deja”) built a mini-ranch retreat in Yuba County, Nev., and generally wowed everyone she met with her pipes, firedancing and general fearlessness. She was last in town for a significant stretch of time to work with sculptor Marco Cochrane at his downtown Monterey studio on a project that has now drawn multiple reports from a range of Bay Area TV stations: a 40-foot-tall, steel, nude statue of Solis, all wired to an iPad that allows Cochrane to tweak the glowing colors from the LEDs embedded in its body.


“Bliss Dance,” which first appeared at Burning Man but survived the burn-after-enjoying ethic, was officially installed on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay last weekend. It’s visible from the Bay Bridge headed north. “I’m just happy people like it,” Solis told one of Squid’s colleagues. “I just want to put my prayer out in the world.”


Squid’s immortality project, meanwhile, is getting old quick, so to speak. Maybe some nudity and prayer would do the trick – and are much easier for Squid to muster than a decent dance move.