Letters may be edited for clarity and length. E-mail to le*****@oc******.com, or send to Letters to the Editor, c/o OC Weekly, 1666 N. Main St., Ste. 500, Santa Ana, CA 92701. Or fax to (714) 550-5908.
HOUSE
Kudos to Rebecca Schoenkopf on her no-holds-barred piece about the Orange County housing market from a real person perspective [“Welcome to Stanton!” Jan. 5]. I'm a single mother with two children who, like 84 percent of Californians, cannot afford to buy a house. I have been in the mortgage industry for more than 15 years, and although I see first-time buyers going into zero-down mortgages, with interest-only payments all the live-long day, I would not take that risk myself. The only hope I still have is that Alan Greenspan's nightmare comes true: all those high-risk, creative-finance mortgages the banks are holding and can't sell will end up in foreclosure, when the borrowers have to make a fully amortized payment at the end of two to five years. Now that's the American Dream: hoping for a windfall on another's downfall. The thought of their American Dream ending in disaster and making mine come true. Nice!
Kelli Kreis
Long Beach
I helped my friend move to Wisconsin and met one of his neighbors. He was a state corrections officer in his 20s who was living in his fiance's house. He had owned a house near the prison, and after they got married, they were probably going to buy a home near there. Here were two people in their 20s who were already living in their second house and considering buying a third!
John John
Via e-mail
Rebecca Schoenkopf writes, “Stanton is the place the rest of us here in Orange County make fun of when we're tired of mocking Fontana.” Just who are these other “rest of us”? I think quite a few people around Orange County would disagree with you that Stanton and Fontana are places to mock. You go on to write, “Stanton. Beautiful, beautiful Stanton.Home of Venus' live nude ladies, theaters that feature bruised, hollow-eyed girls waving their clean-plucked naughty bits in the air, and a plethora of pawn shops where I like to do my Christmas shopping.” You might check out the other cities around OC as well for comparison. I think you'll find higher concentrations of these types of businesses all over town than there are here in Stanton. It appears you're uninformed about the upcoming redevelopment coming to Stanton. In just a few years the city will be even more desirable than it is already. Given the opportunity that you have to move here, it appears your elitist attitude has gotten the best of you. I really hope you and the “rest of us” consider making the investment we Stanton residents have made. It's well worth it.
Jerry Duarte
Stanton Planning Commissioner
KILL DATE
Gustavo Arellano called an incident in 1890s Santa Ana “California's last lynching” [“The Year in Mexican Bashing,” Dec. 29]. In fact, a pair of kidnappers (Anglo, I believe) were taken from a jail and hung in a park in downtown San Jose, perhaps Santa Clara; St. James Park, I believe, in the 1930s, 40 years after the date you mention.
Matt Uelmen
Via e-mail
Editor responds:Thanks, Matt, our bad. We should have said it was Orange County's last lynching.
Gustavo Arellano, sometimes when reading the “Ask a Mexican” column, I've wondered where you're coming from. But in your column “The Year in Mexican Bashing,” you lay it on the line: “Polite folks nowadays cloak their vitriol under the guise of opposing illegal immigration.” Well said!
Gila Jones
San Juan Capistrano
TAYLOR MAD
Editor's note: The following letter is in response to a line in Ella Taylor's review of Woody Allen'sMatch Point. The line is, “In his early films, Allen would have been all over this crew, lampooning their snobby ways and introducing a disruptive Jew with no social graces to foul up the quiet elegance.”
I am a disruptive Jew with no social graces who has spent a lifetime fouling up the quiet elegance of others. I have turned to several professional therapists to remedy this affliction, and I can proudly say that I am now rather well-compensated. I have learned to avoid social situations that might run afoul of my chronic condition. Everything was sailing along remarkably smoothly until I stumbled across Ms. Taylor's vile comments. She is constantly doing this sort of thing, mocking the infirmities of others. I think she is a mean, nasty person.
Lawrence Wuppertal
Anaheim
I got about halfway through Ella Taylor's article before I had to look at who wrote it [“2005 in Film,” Jan. 5]. I just knew it had to be a chick to watch all those stupid movies and then say that Sin City sucked.
Frank Rojas
Via e-mail
DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS
In our Jan. 5 edition, Gustavo Arellano's “Ask a Mexican!” urged readers to “go to Spanky's and rent a scheizer [German poop porn] film.” Though Spanky's does sell a wide array of smashing films featuring all manner of naughty bits doing all manner of fun things, it does not sell the aforementioned German import.
In other fuck-ups, Felicia, the life-size sculpture of a glistening naked woman that we called Les Enfantes Terrible [“Art Finds a Fiend,” Jan. 13], should have been credited to Ken Perdome. We regret the error.
CONFIDENTIAL TO
MONDAY'S ANONYMOUS PHONE CALLER: Must be good to get the day off and have so much fucking time on your hands that you can random dial poor saps like us to see if we're working. So, yeah, we were laboring on Martin Luther King Day. But that isn't hypocritical at all: we spent the entire day figuring out new ways to further emasculate white males. Yes, we have a dream.
