Arts DEVO

Whining Monday: There’s nothing that quite caps off a day spent staring at a computer and typing to the rhythm of engine blocks dropping from the sky (which is what I assume PG&E was doing on the street outside CN&R H.Q. all day) than coming home to a fridge full of warm food. Turns out shoving several pounds of cherries on top of the groceries you just bought might make the refrigerator door stay open, which in turn sends moist fuel to your refrigerator coils for creating an arctic wasteland in the back of the freezer, shutting down all other cold production. Thankfully the Summerfest was safe in the mini fridge.

And another thing … After 35 years of serving the west side, Burger Hut’s flagship location on Nord Avenue will be closing its doors on May 31 (the other two Chico stores will be staying open). First Rob Blair, now Burger Hut?! If bad things come in threes, what Chico icon is going to be next?

And another thing … I really enjoyed spending this past Sunday morning with Mrs. DEVO and Honey dog harvesting the cherries (to be crammed into the fridge) from the two big Bing trees that we inherited in our back yard, but it wasn’t all sunshine and pink fingers. Did you know cherries can be an extremely effective diuretic? I did. But that didn’t stop me from eating the fresh, sweet fruit for breakfast, lunch and dinner all day long and then capping it off with a healthy serving of homemade cherry cobbler. Let’s just say that my Monday was even noisier than I let on earlier in this column. (I regret nothing!)

And another thing … I purchased the vinyl version of the new Vampire Weekend album, Modern Vampires of the City, online early this morning, which included a free digital download of my most anticipated album of 2013, and eight hours later my order has yet to process. I’ve had to type this column without any sunny Afrobeat-influenced preppy pop to guide me. (You can see why I’m so cranky.)

Party like Bob Regular readers already know that CN&R O.G. Editor Bob Speer is retiring at the end of this month, and by the time many of you read this we will have had our official company send-off, which in true News & Review fashion means we drank and danced in the sunshine and maybe raised a glass or three to the man of the hour. In preparation for the party I’ve been compiling an mp3 mix filled with the kinds of music I think Bob would enjoy. My criteria for the bulk of the play list is: groovy dance music, funky dance music, and worldly dance music.

You see the pattern? Bob loves to dance. And that’s one clue into the thing I admire most about the guy who I’ve worked with for most of the past 10 years: He enjoys life. He has a few decades on me and is way more active than me, is as plugged into the community and local culture as I’ve ever been, and is 10 times braver than me on the dance floor. I have no clue how old he actually is. He doesn’t seem to have aged at all in the time I’ve known him, and I’m sure that his zest for life is part of what’s kept him from aging. And I’m convinced that the sharpness that comes from that kind of active and open world view has served the CN&R and its readers well for the 36 years (give or take a year or two) that he’s been committed to our community’s newspaper.

To be continued …