The idea of Castoria seeking to offend anyone seems odd for an attorney whose work calls for skillfully defusing situations. Nor does it quite jell with his soft-spoken, self-deprecating, gentlemanly air.
But it fits like a glove when you think of Louie Castoria the funnyman, whose weekly "Quip Tide" humor columns in the Review have brought chuckles to Coastsiders for 10 years now. This week marks his anniversary with the paper.
 'Writing a column is an island of sanity in a sea of people being jerks. It's also a lot cheaper than therapy.' By Louie Castoria, Review humor columnist |
His pieces run the gamut. Sometimes they are short parodies, when he pokes fun at anything from Harry Potter to the "Lord of the Rings" to anything else that is in the spotlight of popular culture.
Another Castoria favorite target is pomposity. "I like lampooning pompous people," he says. "Those big inflated balloons you want to stick a hatpin in."
But if you're a Coastsider given to occasional bouts of pomposity, don't worry: Castoria makes clear he will not use his pen to figuratively lance anyone local - without express permission from the subject.
"It's too small a town," he explained.
All in all, he said, his favorite columns "are the ones people talk to me about."
"I appreciate it when somebody - often a complete stranger - says they enjoyed the columns I wrote about, fill in the blank," he said, thoughtfully. "It keeps me from missing deadlines, that maybe five people out there read my columns."
Not so much self-deprecation but perhaps humility fuels comments like that one. Castoria admits he never had much to do with writing; beyond a few humor pieces for his college newspaper and resumes for potential jobs, "I never did anything to satisfy the writing itch."
Instead, he poured eloquence into his legal work.
Raised in New Mexico, he attended law school at Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1980. He spent 11 years practicing law in San Francisco while living in the East Bay, until commuting over the Bay Bridge "really got to me after a while."
He and wife Susy decided to relocate to the other side of the bay, ideally to a place with some land.
"We wanted to find a place within a residential community without having to cross a bridge, and with the possibility of living on some land where we didn't have to listen to the neighbors shave in the morning," he said.
He and Susy got a map of the area and used the compass technique: placing the center point in San Francisco and describing a circle of possible communities within an hour of the city. Looking at the resulting circle, they decided that "Half Moon Bay was the best option at the time."
They settled on the Coastside in 1988 and "it's been great ever since."
Their daughters grew up here. Elizabeth is now 26 and living in Half Moon Bay while working as an associate magazine editor. Younger daughter Sheila, 23, recently married to Kevin Longacre and well known to Coastsiders from behind the counter of MCoffee, is finishing school at Notre Dame de Namur University with hopes of becoming a teacher.
Castoria himself works for the Wilson Elser law firm in the city, in civil case defense, or in insurance defense. His work involves determining the extent of coverage under the insurance policy and under the law and defending professionals. Occasionally, he says, humor figures in the work - particularly when depositions get tense.
Ten years ago he got the idea of proposing a humor column for the Review, and approached then-managing editor Marc Desjardins, who met the suggestion with graciousness, he said, but pointed out that there was a difference between a humor column and a letter to the editor. The editor asked for five samples,
Castoria brought him 15 possibilities, and Desjardins gave the go-ahead. Castoria's first humor piece appeared in the issue just before Thanksgiving, 1997.
"And I haven't missed a deadline since," Castoria says.
Part of the reason why might lie in what Castoria gets out of his work.
He has two aims as a humor columnist, he says.
"I want a little mental vacation," he said. "I want to think about something completely trivial."
Secondly, he wants the same for his readers.
"For reader(s)," he said, inserting the parentheses himself, "I want them to get a chuckle. I want the same vacation for them, to look for one spot in the paper they can have a joke without being offended."
And the fun also balances his legal duties.
"Writing a column is an island of sanity in a sea of people being jerks," he said. "It's also a lot cheaper than therapy."
He has a message for readers; "Thank you for letting me share my ravings with you, and I hope you continue to find them enjoyable. If you have any ideas, let me know. I do take requests."
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ALL BARK AND NO BITE
As consistent a presence in Louie Castoria's humor columns as the author himself is that "somewhat doglike substance," Silver the Weenus.
For the 10 years Castoria's been writing is column, the female Weimaraner has been his faithful sidekick. He and wife Susy have had her for all 10 of those years.
Castoria has this to reveal about Silver: She can't be as dumb as he makes her out to be in his columns - "but she does her best to come close."
And she's unique - in her own special way.
"She's an unusual creature," Castoria says of the pooch, claiming that even her vet, Dr. Laurie McKinney of Half Moon Bay Veterinary Hospital, agrees.
Silver has bones that are unlike conventional canine skeletal forms, he said. She even has an extra rib, unattached to her rib cage and just "floating around."
"She is a bit of a medical mystery," Castoria admitted.
But there is no mystery about the fact that Silver is opinionated.
"She has very precise ideas of how things should be," he said. "If you vary her schedule she will get upset. She will vibrate like a tuning fork."
Silver shares her humans with two other dogs: daughter Elizabeth Castoria's chocolate Labrador, "Lola," and "Maple," a "pound puppy" that Castoria's wife, Susy, lost her heart to. Information on Maple from the pound suggested that she was part German shepherd, but Louie Castoria says no way.
"She's a teacup bull mastiff," he said.
Silver doesn't seem to mind sharing her humans with the other dogs, perhaps because she has her own celebrity. Castoria says that readers often mention columns about Silver.
"She doesn't mind too much," he said.
- Stacy Trevenon
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