Staff Infection

We're a small staff—not midget small, but smaller than we ought to be; I don't know, could be diet—so whenever world-class supermodels cancel Weekly photo shoots at the last moment, staffers step up and take a shot for the team.

FROM LEFT: (1) Former production editor (and food critic, now UCI PR guy) Tom Vasich's broad back provides the canvas for Steve Lowery's story on high school sports agents. (2) Art director Heather Swaim's daughter Emma works the camera at a local Sav-On for our 2001 holiday gift guide; she's totally faking. (3) Art director's oldest son Austen modeling for Steve Lowery's story on designer Mossimo's move to Target. (4) Advertising rep Julie McCallson sucks on an orange for our 2000 Best of OC. (5) Before he moved to Maui Time Weekly, Rudi King was our production manager, a man capable of putting odd shit in his mouth (see No. 11 below). (6) Executive editor Matt Coker, as himself—the man who infiltrated the GOP in 1996 and came out smoking. (7) The Weekly staff departs for the 1996 Republican convention in San Diego. (8) Media writer Greg Stacy defending TV on TV. (9) Editor Will Swaim slugs Tom Vasich for a cover on a gay bashing in HB. Vasich: not gay, but happy anyhow. (10) Swaim as a spook for Nick Schou's series on relationships between the CIA and international companies based in OC. (11) Former production manager Rudi King in ball gag and blindfold in a cover that set much of the world afire, and left the rest of it smoldering. (12) Art director's nephews frolic for a 2001 story on censorship at an Anaheim junior high school. (13) Art director's son acting up for 2000 holiday gift guide; fist grabbing hair in upper right-hand corner is older brother, not acting. (14) Rudi King with nothing in his mouth, pretending to be a gangster for a series on Big J. Mo, the teen rapper who went to jail in part because of his violent lyrics. (15) That's the Weekly's bulldog media attorney Alonzo Wickers and his partner, Casey Bloys, on the cover of last year's Big Gay Issue. (16) Matt Coker and (17) Will Swaim, dead. (18) Advertising rep Jennifer Besheer on the cover of May's summer issue: so hot she carries her own fire extinguisher. (19) A former staffer, now a school teacher, with what may be God's proudest effort where great lips are concerned. (20) Rudi King, Robbie Kennett, Arrissia Owen-Turner, Mike Nieman and a willing friend of the Weekly fronted the Pocket Clowns, Stanton's greatest band—ever.