A handful of upstart publications have made rather determined efforts over the years to compete with the Weekly during our 13-year existence—I'd stick yet another fork in the rancid corpse of the Register's embarrassing Squeeze OC right about here, except at this point its bones have rotted down to a fine powder. These days, though, it seems there are more out there than ever, none of which can even get close enough to us to (insert potentially offensive gratuitous sexual metaphor of your choice here).
But hey, I'm biased.
One of the strangest of these recent rags has to be a thing called Live OC, a glossy, slick-papered monthly published out of one of those myriad office parks under the John Wayne Airport landing path. I first started seeing it about two years ago (they also re-brand it as Live LB for their Long Beach market; that one sucks, too), and was struck by the amateurishness of just about everything, from the high-school-freshman-quality writing (that is, when its writers aren't essentially reworking blowjob press releases) to the lack of original art to the mystifying story selections, which can be found in many other, better forms. (The current issue features a fall TV preview—yawn—a bare-minimum event calendar, “news” briefs about Hurricane Ike and Paul Newman's demise, and several celebrity interviews with folks like Seth Rogen, who've never had anything to do with Orange County ever in their lives.
There are also a bunch of ads for cosmetic dentistry, rapid weight loss clinics, laser hair restoration and frou-frou restaurants, meaning that perhaps Live OC considers itself to be the gateway drug for future Orange Coast readers…..no, wait, can't be—not a single plastic surgery ad here…..
Then there are the reeeeally bad mistakes. Take the current October ish, where writer Tyler Andrews previews the MLB playoffs, with paragraph-length blurbage on the Angels, White Sox, Rays, Red Sox, Cubs, Phillies, Mets and Dodgers. Just one thing: the Mets? Either this was some extremely wishful thinking, or Andrews was too much of a dipshit to pick up a paper or log on to a web site to know that it was the Brewers, not the Mets, who made this year's Elite Eight.
Seriously, how could anyone fuck something up this badly? As Andrews writes, “Frankly, if the Mets win in the Playoffs (sic) they'll need seven games to do it.” And the whole of next season, too.
*UPDATE: Should've known better than to trust Live OC with spelling abilities. That Seth Rogen cover story and interview? They spell his last name wrong throughout, even on the cover—ouch! (It's R-O-G-E-N, not R-O-G-A-N). I spelled it wrong, too, when I posted this originally yesterday, but I was basing my spelling off the Live OC spelling. Sometimes Wikipedia is true!
