Letters

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Not So Sheltered

Illustration by Bob AulAVERAGE ORANGE COUNTY APARTMENT LOCATION: Varied OCCUPANTS: Many RENT: $1,026 per month, split 10 or 20 ways Here at the Shackled Arms—just your typical big-as-an-18th-century-cargo-ship apartment complex—the news that the average rent for an Orange County apartment has reached $1,026 per month didn't rattle anybody's cage. “And thank goodness for that,” whispered …

The End Times?

There was hope that a journalistic renaissance at the Orange County edition of the Los Angeles Times would follow the gaffe-filled reign of editor Bill Nottingham. But in the 18 months since Nottingham was—to put it delicately—transferred to a less influential position, the Times OC has continued to collapse as a viable threat to The …

Discounted Democracy

Photo by Keith MayStanding on the hot, dusty sidewalk along Talbert Avenue, staring through the chainlink fence at acres of parched-hard earth and huge cracked slabs of weed-clogged pavement and a distant huddle of low-slung bungalows with boarded-up windows and faded paint—well, out here, a man's eyes can play tricks on him. “This is going …

Orange Countys 31 Scariest People

Photo by Myles Robinson1. RICHARD NIXON'S HEAD Walt Disney's cryonically chambered noggin was once the scariest severed head in Orange County, but that was before the Richard Nixon Library, Birthplace and Deathplace unveiled sculptor Robert Berks' terrifying Richard Nixon's head on Aug. 14. Disturbingly wide-open eyes! A shit-eatin' grin! And—scariest of all—pockmarked skin designed to …

Y2Carlin

Try to pin down comedy legend George Carlin on his personal politics, and he offers this philosophical nugget: “Everybody's fucked.” “I don't have any personal politics; I have beliefs,” Carlin said before hitting the road for a tour that stops by the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Sunday. “I don't see any sense in …

Wipe Out

Photo by Myles RobinsonFor at least one day during July's U.S. Open and Gotcha Pro surf contest, county officials allowed surfers to enter the waves at Huntington Beach, even though water tests showed bacterial levels at the beach exceeded state limits. Water-quality reports obtained by the Weekly show that on July 27, Orange County Sanitation …

With Friends Like These

No, it didn't feel right, lying facedown on the floor wearing nothing but my underwear and the blindfold I'd tied myself. Weird? Sure. But weird I could handle. Weird is standard operating procedure for sorority initiations. Already that week, my pledge class had been forced to sing and dance on tables while fraternity guys let …

An Incomplete History of Gay N Lesbian OC

3 MILLION B.C. The Pacific Ocean begins sculpting Laguna's famous gay West Street Beach. LATE 1700s Over 130 North American natives are documented to include among their tribes berdache, androgynous people classified as neither man nor woman—cross-dressers, basically, but in a spiritual sense. Berdache are plentiful among the Native Americans living at the missions that …

Forbes Play

A colleague at the Weekly World Headquarters had been surfing the Web, looking for the site of presidential hopeful Steve Forbes, when he stumbled upon a site put together by UC Davis students for the 1996 presidential primaries: PEP 96 (moby.ucdavis.edu/ GAWS/pep96). There, he found all sorts of links to Forbes' official 1996 campaign page. …

The Phantom Menace

On a humid March afternoon, U.S. Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) found herself in a rather uncomfortable position:squatting in the heat of a mosquito-filled jungle clearing in Cu Chi Province, a rugged, forested area located a few hours northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's sprawling southern metropolis. Sanchez hadn't come …

Kat Killers

It has been a month since officials of Orange County's troubled Animal Control department promised to end a highly controversial method of cat euthanization that often had horrific results. But recent reports from inside the shelter indicate that any rejoicing might have been premature. One shelter veteran described to the Weekly watching the recent euthanization …