Has It Been a Year Already?

Well, looks like I made it through 2007 without John Moorlach calling for my resignation. That's gotta count for something in these parts, right?

Look, I'm going to keep this brief so we can move on to our news team's reflections on another wild and wacky year in this county: R. Scott Moxley and Gustavo Arellano on covering our two cover boys; Derek Olson on (barely) earning the trust of campus Muslims; Nick Schou on being bizarrely lampooned in the Vietnamese-language press; Daffodil J. Altan on run-down schools in swanky neighborhoods. Luke Y. Thompson's take on the year in movies in general, and horror flicks in particular, lurks in the Film section.

Also, managing editor Rich Kane muses about returning to the Weekly after all that madness that happened at the paper early in the year-which led to my getting this job in the first place. He's far more qualified than I am to sound off on that topic because all the folks who were going to leave the newsroom had left by the time I got here—except Matt Coker, gentleman and top-notch journalist, currently afflicting the powerful in Sacramento. So long, and thanks for all the bowling balls.

One of our New People did bolt: art director Joey Santos got his ass poached by the Los Angeles Times in August. [Shakes fist in general direction of First and Spring.] Fortunately, we replaced him with Kelly Lewis, who is like Joey in many ways (a pleasure to work with; really, really good at directing art), and unlike him in others (looks a lot less like a Mexican Peter Jackson).

I'll close with this. At a meeting of the Orange County Press Club in November, Rick Reiff asked me what it was like to succeed the founding editor of the Weekly. Here's a pithier distillation of my response, now that I've had a month and a half to mull it over: I don't waste time thinking about filling shoes or standing on shoulders. I'm too busy standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the talented writers, editors and artists in this newsroom; championing truth, beauty and weirdness; and battling greed, sleaze and banality.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got Lil Wayne's lawyers on line 2. AGAIN.