Best of Santa Barbara® 2016: Media

Dear family and extended pack mates,

The time for action is now. There is a decades-old injustice in this town, and we canine folk must help right it. My beloved Aunt Trixie, that bright-pink and well-informed poodle with an attitude, has been hammering away on her keyboard (emphasis on “hammering”) and churning out the Angry Poodle Barbecue column for The Santa Barbara Independent for 210 years (or three decades in human time!) yet has never been crowned “Best Columnist” by the voters of this burgh. This must change, and 2017 will be the year to do it.

Of course, Trixie would be the last one to support such organizing on her behalf. She is, after all, an angry poodle. But justice demands our proxy. Politicians and business owners alike fear her, for she is a titan of the Santa Barbara media landscape and a howling example of the Fourth Estate done right. Of course, it is never going to be easy when squaring off against the likes of a witty and raucous word wizard like Starshine Roshell, but square off we must.

This is a community of nearly 100,000 bipeds and untold scores more when you factor in the tail-waggers among us, all of them drooling for media. The modern rock and real live deejays at KjEE rule the airwaves, and the late Peter Sklar’s Edhat.com is tops for breaking regional news, colorful tidbits, and S.B.-centric gossip. Everyone calls him “The Palm” , but that man with the mustache and million-dollar smile that seems to always be in three places at once is both the No. 1 Twitter account to follow around these parts and the No. 1 local celebrity despite being up against big-dog, big-bark humans like Oprah or Katy Perry in that department. Clearly, Santa Barbara values its media types.

Please join me in mobilizing mutts and mongrels of all ilk for the campaign to end all campaigns. It is Trixie in 2017 or else!

Wet noses and solidarity, Dug Daug