Sensitivity Topic… Squid knows what you’re thinking (like usual): Squid is incapable of the finer emotions – tenderness, love and compassion. Not so. Squid fell in love just the other day, in fact, with Surf Hound Studio in Moss Landing. It had a young entrepreneur in Andrew Dolan, a funky film-art-music-surf personality and a community short on such spaces stoked to have it. Their “grand opening” was a jam session, a retail success and a good time. A month later: poof. Not even a break-up text (c’mon: “C u” is two letters). A Squid colleague called Dolan. He offered this. “It was like a comet through the atmosphere.” Cute. And this: “It kind of maybe could have gone on longer if it had more support during the time it was open.” He then conceded that one month was pretty much his plan from the start. Landlord Kim Solano acknowledges Dolan was without a plan, and didn’t quite get that the space was zoned for retail and not live music and drinks. That sucks. And love stinks.

Big Dough… Customers at Parker-Lusseau Pastries got more of a treat than they may have anticipated on Dec. 3, when a nattily dressed woman hung out at the Hartnell Street shop for a few hours and paid for the purchases of everyone who walked through the door. Co-owner Anne Parker reports the anonymous do-gooder ended up spending about $600. “She kept giving $100 bills to the ladies behind the counter and saying ‘Buy their stuff, buy their stuff’… in this day and age, it’s kind of nice to see.” One semi-regular customer says she went home and wrote a large check to the food bank in the spirit of “paying it forward.” Squid will be hanging out at Royal Seafood next weekend and caging for some gratis mackerel if anyone is interested in replicating the process.

Quite Rightly… Squid’s just mad about Saffron, and Saffron’s mad about Squid… sing it, now! It’s true, Squid is a fan of the greatest hits of the 1960s, and “Mellow Yellow” by Donovan is no exception. But Squid just about fell off the loveseat and upended a perfectly good bowl of shrimp-flavored popcorn when an ad featuring a group of fresh-faced youngsters singing to the tune of the hit song appeared on television last week. Only instead of the words “mellow yellow,” they substituted the words “Monte Vista.” That’s right, Watsonville-based Monte Vista Christian School, which attracts students from all over Monterey County, conscripted the 1966 song for its advertisement. Catchy tune, cute kids – but Squid wonders if the ad agency that put the spot together realizes the song refers to a battery-powered adult toy? Ah, the power of research: The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll tells the story.