Photo courtesy joinarnold.comWEDNESDAY Sept. 1 TV governor Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks to the delegates of the Republican National Convention and in a speech reminiscent of great healers such as Lincoln and Robert Taft suggests that anyone who doesn't agree with his party is a man who enjoys having anal sex with other men. Oh, snap, political dis-coarse. The line he uses, of course, is “girlie men,” which everyone seems to forget is not his line, but from the Hans and Franz skits on Saturday Night Live that made fun of the two's homoerotic idolization of Schwarzenegger. And though these are the same Republicans who rail against Hollywood, they seem like they would go all the way with Arnold if he would just ask. The same people questioning John Kerry's patriotism can hardly control their bladders for a Schwarzenegger who went AWOL from the Austrian Army—yes, there is one—so he could compete in a bodybuilding competition. “I didn't care if they locked me up for a whole year,” he said in Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder. “It had been worth it.” Apparently so. Oh, he's also a liar. He claims he remembers seeing Soviet tanks in his homeland. Never happened. They were gone two years before he was born. Though the stuff about him taking drugs and taking part in orgies is all true. Is this guy a Taft clone or what?
THURSDAY Sept. 2 Huntington Beach City Councilwoman Pamela Julien-Houchen, under investigation for illegally converting apartments to condominiums, resigns. She is the second Huntington Beach city official to come under legal scrutiny and then resign after an investigation by the Weekly; the first, Mayor Dave Garofalo, quit after it was discovered nobody liked him. On a personal note, I had nothing to do with any of this, but if you're a local politician, I sincerely suggest you not mess with our news dudes—Arellano, Moxley and Schou. Bob Dornan did, and now he's doing kids' birthday parties and first communions. Larry Agran is getting a little something-something right now. And, dude, if you're a politician from Huntington Beach, I would sincerely consider sending these boys a muffin basket, you know, and hope the Angel of Death passes you over. If they do come calling, you answer your question, cop to anything and thank them for their time. It's like I told this guy Jeff, who was getting his head rammed into a car bumper by my best friend Dom out by the convent. “Stay down,” I told him. “Take your beating and stay down.” It wasn't like he didn't have it coming. He clearly blew the palming call in the finals of the St. Raymond's intramural basketball league; Dom had to do something. We should have easily romped over the team of Dave Domenici, who everyone knew always took an extra step to the hoop, but Jeff conveniently missed that while calling palming when what he had seen was in fact an optical illusion stemming from my superior hand and foot speed, which I told Jeff before, after and during his beating. The point is Jeff was clearly responsible for slamming his head into the back of a car—which, in those days, were made of steel—his biggest mistake being trying to get up. And so it is for you, corrupt H.B. politico. When the Weekly boys come calling, answer their questions, please them any way you can, resistance is futile. Who knows? You may get lucky and catch us in a Best of OC cycle, when they'll be distracted. Otherwise, there's a bumper with your name on it.
FRIDAY Sept. 3 You hot? Seems hot.
SATURDAY Sept. 4 Walking around a Borders bookstore, I'm stopped by the paranoid If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on Itand see that the author is none other than Orange County's Hugh Hewitt, whose previous book was In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition. Apparently, one of Hewitt's ambitions was to sell books and someone told him you didn't do that by following the compassionate example of the Nazarene, but that of the Romans who crushed Him. Hewitt, if you don't know—and why would you?—is on some talk-radio station you can only get if your tuner has clear access to fear and bile. The book seems pretty big talk from a guy who looks like Richie Rich's bachelor uncle and who got his ass handed to him by Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe the other day on the air. Several people told me Hewitt was going on about the swiftboat “issue”—as a man who never served in the military; Hugh is In, But Not Of the military—when McAuliffe called in and commenced crushing Hugh, who, stuttering, sounded like a kid having his head bashed into the back of a car. “He who didn't serve, got served”: Jesus said that . . . or was it that dude in Electric Boogaloo?
SUNDAY Sept. 5 Cal State Fullerton professor Jarrett Lovell e-mails his friends to let them know how he spent his summer vacation. “I was arrested in Times Square at approximately 5 p.m. while standing peacefully on a sidewalk. The police surrounded us with the now (in)famous orange 'net' and subsequently arrested more than 100 individuals indiscriminately. An officer pulled my shirt collar, ripping the shirt and forcing me backward, at which time I (allegedly) fell on him as a result. He claims to have been injured while arresting me, thus I've been charged with a felony assault on an officer. I suffered minor cuts and bruising. I was held for 37 hours and released on $2,000 bail—cash.” Lovell is one of those people of principle who stands up for what he believes, whether it's peace or to inform people at the Newport Beach Public Library that under the Patriot Act, the government could now check what they were checking out. So you can see he certainly had a crushing coming his way, and some guy in uniform did the deed, demonstrating the guiding principle of Hewitt, Schwarzenegger and most of the Republican Party in these—and previous—tough times: “Let somebody else do it.”
MONDAY Sept. 6 Labor Day. This is a joke, right?
TUESDAY Sept. 7 It's that time of the month for the Diocese of Orange: pedo-spinning! Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported that church officials settled a sex-abuse lawsuit last year against Father Daniel Murray for $500,000. Church spokesman Father Joe Fenton defended the non-disclosure of the settlement—which violates a 2002 vow taken by all Catholic bishops in the United States to reveal all sex-abuse settlements—by claiming the alleged victim wished to avoid publicizing the case, a claim quickly repudiated in the article by the victim's attorney. Meanwhile, all was silent at St. Boniface Church in Anaheim, where Murray served as priest from 1983 to 1994. Weekly writer Gustavo Arellano said there was no announcement on the Murray settlement at this past Sunday's Mass, despite Thesis No. 6 of the diocese's “Covenant with the Faithful,” which pledges to be “open, honest and forthright” regarding all sex-abuse settlements. Instead, a prayer was offered for the fifth straight Sunday that “everyone involved—victims, lawyers and judges—reach a fair and equitable settlement in their lawsuits against the diocese for sexual abuse.” Those three are the last entities for which the faithful should be lighting votive candles—how about a tire fire for the soul of Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown?
