We began our vacation in 103-degree weather visiting family and entertaining East Coast family in the state’s capitol. It’s interesting to see things through someone else’s eyes, because California is the most populous state in the country (39 million residents) with the largest state economy in the country ($2.4 billion) with a gross domestic product as large as the country of France. That makes us the sixth- or seventh-largest economy in the world, but still our capitol looks like it could be in Kansas or New Hampshire. Back when they were building state capitols, they probably did it with plans from Sears Roebuck — as it was called in those days — which appeared to sell a one-size-fits-all state capitol building and, despite our size and wealth, the state’s capitol is quite modest with lovely gardens and is well worth a visit.
In Malibu, we live by an ocean, and oceans are always explosive and energetic, whereas Sacramento sits alongside a couple of rivers, and in summertime in the heat, rivers just seem to meander, just like in the song, and everything slows down with it. One hundred years ago, Mrs. McClatchy, the doyen of the family that owned the Sacramento Bee newspaper and a chain of other newspapers all over the state — in that lovely time when there was no competing media and newspaper publishers were all very, very rich — decided that Sacramento needed trees. So they planted lots and lots of trees everywhere, some say close to a million in total, and now many of those trees are still around and there is a cooling canopy of green cover over the capitol and much of the surrounding neighborhoods. Frankly, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Malibu to plant more trees.
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Part of summer vacation means taking it easy, going to a real movie theater and buying snacks at a real movie candy stand. It also means paying $4.69 for a one-dollar bottle of water, which totally took my breath away. We actually saw the new Jason Bourne movie that, despite the good reviews, kind of felt like a cut-and-paste job to me. A chase from this movie, a fight from that movie, put it all together and it has already rung up $59 million domestically and $110 million overseas — and Matt Damon produced it. It’s got to be hard to turn your nose up at those kinds of dollars, which explains all these sequels of sequels.
But something is changing, not in the movies necessarily — which have all gone worldwide, which means less dialogue and more action, and doesn’t require much language translation. What’s changing is the movie theaters, with their skyrocketing candy, soda and popcorn prices. We pay less than $10 a month for Netflix, and that’s ultimately got to hurt movie attendance.
Theaters raising candy stand prices reminds me of when newspapers started losing classified advertising to Craigslist. Initially, they tried to cover the loss of income by raising the prices on their classified advertising, but ultimately all that did was accelerate the move to internet classifieds. I’m predicting that 10 or 20 years from now, there are going to be a lot fewer movie theaters and first-run movies are going to be distributed directly to our homes as they are released.
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These days, no column would be complete without a few words and a mention of Donald Trump who is running the most unusual political campaign I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s become apparent that he simply cannot say, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake,” and then just move on.
To run for president these days, you have to have a hide like a rhino and not attempt to return every ball hit at you. Maybe, in some ways, the best test for a presidency is a candidate’s ability to decide what’s important and not let other people set their agenda. Our president has to decide coolly and reflectively which fights are worth fighting and which ones are not. Every president has a slew of advisors who would get the country into everything and the president has to listen and be the one to say, “Yes,” or “No.” In order to do that, they have to know themselves and keep their emotions and pride out of it, and not let themselves get baited into something that won’t work for the country. It takes great personal discipline.
It’s tough to do, and Mr. Trump has serious problems with self-discipline.