SLANKETED APOLOGY… The man Squid recently busted for daring to abscond from a white elephant party with a much-coveted Snuggie before anyone could “steal” his choice (a clear and breach of pachyderm party etiquette) has made amends.


When he was last seen, Dean McAthie, co-owner/president of Carmel Roasting Company, was fleeing the white elephant event thrown by Aqua Terra Culinary’s chief Dory Ford, a choice deluxe Snuggie in hand. This wounded Squid. 


And then, last week, a vision appeared: A woman entered the Weekly office with a package and a note that read as follows: “After careful study of white elephant rules, Dean McAthie understands his faux pas and begs Squid’s forgiveness.” 


Squid couldn’t resist slipping into the Snuggie immediately for a little test run, only to find the dream isn’t so dreamy. The thing is huge, surprisingly uncomfortable to keep on the shoulders, and tricky to walk around in without tripping. One of Squid’s fellow Snuggie connoisseurs pointed out that folks might be better off wearing a robe backwards so they have a belt to keep it on. Like local redevelopment agencies about to receive the painful end Gov. Jerry Brown’s new budget, like local Oprah cult members finding out Stedman is coming to Seaside for Martin Luther King Jr. day instead of her, Squid will just have to learn to live with disappointment.


OLDTOWN BLUES… Some things, Squid discovers, just aren’t true. Like the rumor going around that girls who want to go stag (or accompanied by a same-gender friend) to Notre Dame High School dances have to sign a … “sexuality-preference waiver” of some sorts. (“I’ve been hearing that one since I got here,” says a weary principal Andy Bedell. “It’s not true.”) But one thing that is true: the demise of Oldtown Salinas’ Lumpia Hut appears to be a fait d’accompli. Owner Rod Daquioag has been quietly shopping his three-year-old business on Craigslist (asking price $100k or best offer), but received a lease termination notice from landlord Cleo Burks via her attorney, Ted Cominos, sometime over the weekend. Plastered to the Lumpia Hut’s front door (along with a large amount of graffiti), the notice gives him until Jan. 18 to vacate the premises. Squid’s three hearts go out to Daquioag, a caterer much-favored by the Filipino community. He spent more than two years and nearly a half-million dollars launching the place. The recession did him no favors, and he did a lot of tussling with the city as well. In a 2007 interview, when he was still trying to get the doors open, Daquioag said to a Squid colleague: “Had I known what I would go through, I would have never done it. I had a comfortable life.”