We did it, folks! The year's half over, and we're all still here. Why, I bet from this point forward, the rest of 2026 will be a cakewalk.

<Looks at the headlines, wrinkles nose as if smelling week-old fish>

Hmmm. I don't like the looks of that at all. What say we just distract ourselves with some ranty nonsense, huh?

When the missus and I want a quick getaway, our go-to destination is Sonoma County. More specifically, we head to the banks of the Russian River and the small, unincorporated towns that sprang up along the river. We simply like to be there at any time of year.

There's plenty of reasons for this. For one thing, it's pretty eye-catching, thanks to the river, nearby redwoods and lovely coastal views where the river meets the Pacific Ocean at Jenner. For another, it's not all that crowded. You either need to drive up Highway 1 or take a turnoff from US-101 to get to the best parts of the Russian River, so the drive weeds out casual motorists. There are times the area can get crowded — last summer, we happened to roll into the famously LGBT+-friendly town of Guerneville during what turned out to be Lazy Bear Week (kids, ask your parents) — but with the abundance of tiny hamlets dotting Highway 128, you can pretty much count on finding a place all your own to unwind at your own pace.

Or at least, we used to be able to. Because lately, a lot of people are blabbing about the place my wife and I head to when we want to get away from it all.

Recently, the San Francisco Standard published a travelogue for Monte Rio, which just happens to feature our favorite Russian River beachhead. Whoever's working the phone lines on behalf of Monte Rio has been doing a bang-up job as of late, because Sonoma Magazine ran a rave review of the town's new pizzeria. We're one more write-up away from invoking the Three's A Trend protocol. (Editor's note: Too late.)

Our struggle is not unique to anyone who likes to wander off the beaten path. You find a place that fits your vibe nearly perfectly, and you hope that it continues to thrive in a sweet spot: successful enough to keep delivering the experience that drew you in the first place without becoming so successful that it becomes a victim of its own popularity. 

In the end, there's not much you can do about the rest of the world encroaching on your special find except to adjust your expectations accordingly and maybe find new pleasures as your old favorites evolve.

So in the spirit of adjustment and discovery,, I'd add my vocal endorsement to the Monte Rio beach and Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve. Readers with extensive recall of past newsletters will remember my previous raves for the Russian River Pub in Forestville and Cafe Aquatica in Jenner. Other eateries I enjoy in the greater Guerneville area include the Main Street Bistro for pizza, Pat's for a very good reuben and La Bodeguita #2 if you've got Mexican food on the brain. (You’ll find La Bodeguita #1 in Bodega Bay down Highway 1 a bit.) The salsa verde is exquisite.

See? I'm sharing my knowledge with the wider world — well, with five dozen or so people at any rate — even if it means my own little slice of paradise gains a little more foot traffic. At least Lassen Volcanic National Park — our favorite out-of-the way national park in California — isn't going to find itself the subject of any glowing profiles encouraging an increase in visitors.

Wait, what? DAMMIT!

It's another week where I've got a big project bubbling in the background and a couple of other things that should see the light of day soon enough, so if you want more of me, but in audio form, there's a new Magnum Podcast episode. This one centers around... A Very Special Episode like the ones that TV series liked to do in the 1980s? Oh man, hard pass.

Instead, let's hop into the wayback machine for an older series of articles from this time last year that I helped edit, in which my Tom's Guide phone team pals and I tested the AI features on mobile devices. It's the sort of editorial package I excel at shepherding from the "we should do this" moment in a meeting to the moment we hit the publish button in the CMS, and if you're looking for the kind of person to bring stories like that to life, you have my deets.

I'm going to assume you're familiar with the particulars of the Dianna Russini/Mike Vrabel contretemps, but just in case it passed below your radar, here's the 90-second summary. Dianna Russini had been a high-profile sports reporter, covering the NFL. Mike Vrabel remains the head coach of the New England Patriots. Photos surfaced of the two canoodling, which perhaps surprised their respective spouses. Russini quit her job at The Athletic, a move that did not stop the New York Times from publishing an investigation into how one of its employees conducted herself. Vrabel remains in the employ of the Patriots, because that's how these things work.

What Russini and Vrabel got up to in their spare time is something for them to hash out with their families. But I have no problem wading into the ethical questions here since Russini and I share a common profession, if not an equal moral obligation to industry do's and don'ts.

I've always been wary of being seen as too chummy with anyone I write about, to the point where I sometimes wonder if I could stand to be a touch more cordial with the people I encounter professionally. So you can imagine how I feel about a journalist being extra-special-chummy beyond even the loosest definition of friendliness. It's not just a no-no, it's a death sentence for your reporting career. All you have in this business is your credibility, and there's no rebuilding it after taking up with the people you cover. 

But that's not the part of the New York Times story that stood out to me, nor is it the opening anecdote, possibly exaggerated, in which Russini identifies with another head coach so that she can impress a cop into letting her out of a traffic ticket. No, it's the part where the Times casually notes that Russini pulls down around $800,000 for her NFL reporting, which I can assure you is unusual for the majority of us ink-stained wretches.

Hey, I'm all for people grabbing that cheddar when offered, but forgive me for wondering what about Russini's reporting merits that kind of take-home pay. Up until the end of her employment, she had been billed as an NFL Insider, meaning the vast majority of her work meant breaking injury news and reporting on trades before they became official. And while the New York Times story highlights a few of her noteworthy scoops, I think even more rabid NFL fans than myself would have a hard time remembering when Dianna Russini was the first to report that Thad Goodchin was dealing with a strained glute or that the Panthers were about to ship Boomer Max-Trunkjunk to Kansas City for a draft pick. The Pentagon Papers, the NFL beat ain't.

And maybe that's the whole scandal of this affair — that media outlets consider that kind of sportsball tittle-tattle to be worth $800K per year. Because it tells you who the press is really catering to: the only people who benefit from such ephemera are gamblers looking to grab some inside dope before the betting lines move and fantasy sports addicts unsure of who to pick up in their waiver wire. Betting addicts are who newspapers have decided are their most important audience, and it explains why this business, which has never been a cakewalk when it comes to making a living, has turned so grim as of late.

I've got at least one more Oakland Roots visit in me this season, but that could mark my last visit to the Oakland Coliseum. The Roots are in the process of trying to get a temporary stadium approved not far from where I live while they hash out plans for a permanent home with Oakland. And that's just as well, since the people running the stadium have indicated they're not booking any more events there past 2026.

That's not a surprise really. The arena next door to the stadium may have found an extended life as a concert venue, but the lack of an anchor tenant for the Coliseum itself means it's just taking up space that could be devoted to just about anything else. (Ideally, affordable multi-family housing, but I'm sure some developer has some other plans for the site.) 

Realistically, the NFL's never returning, and if Major League Baseball does bring back a second team to the Bay Area, they'll put it in San Jose. 

I'll still be sad when the Coliseum goes away, as it's been the place of plenty of happy memories, even for seasons that ended in disappointment (which would be the vast majority of them). Having read the book Hella Town, I'm conditioned to think that whatever development the city pursues will likely not go according to plan. But you live in hope, which is more than what the Coliseum will be doing in the very near future.

Speaking of living in hope, who doesn't feel a little flutter of anticipation when clicking on my recommended reading for the week? Enjoy:

I generally don't care for the director's cuts of movies. Except for films that are cut to ribbons because a studio wants to achieve a certain run time — hello, original release of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West —most of the time, film editors know what they're doing, and it turns out editing for length and clarity results in a better finished product. 

Which brings me to Apocalypse Now Redux.

There was a time when Apocalypse Now was a Top 10 picture for me. I still think it's an expertly shot picture with a lot to say, though the overall movie suffers from having no idea how it should end. (Francis Ford Coppola concedes this in Hearts of Darkness, a documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now that will make you wonder how any picture ever gets made.) But even spending the final 18 minutes of its runtime indulging a mumbling Marlon Brando doesn't erase the impact of the first half of Apocalypse Now, even if it never quite reaches the heights of the two Godfather movies and The Conversation.

The Redux director's cut, which my wife and I watched recently, is another matter altogether. It takes scenes that someone wisely sliced out of the first movie, then crams them back into a picture that already meanders. At their most harmless, the excised scenes — Capt. Willard stealing Col. Kilgore's surfboard, an expolitative encounter with the helicopter full of Playboy bunnies that occurs after they evacuate the USO show — don't really add anything to the movie except runtime. At their worst, they cause Apocalypse Now to grind to a halt.

The biggest offender is a French plantation scene where Willard and his crew encounter some holdouts from the French occupation of Indochina. There is a lot of talking, most of it nonsensical, but can quickly be summed up as "Colonizers hate giving up their possessions." But this sequence stuffed with blather occurs just before Willard arrives in Col Kurtz's compound — yet another set piece where the dialogue has only a fleeting connection to the narrative. It's stacking one incomprehensible monologue on top of another.

Most director's cuts do nothing but confirm that everybody had it right with the theatrical release. Apocalypse Now Redux makes you re-evaluate what you ever saw in the original to begin with.

And that's the Phil for this week — thanks for reading. It seems to me that instead of going up river to terminate Kurtz, Willard would have had a much better time going up the Russian River to find some New York-style pizza. That's what I've read in the travel mags anyhow.