MONDAY, Aug. 19 The Jew-hatin', Alta California reclamation-promotin' La Voz de Aztlan—which bills itself as a “totally independent news service”—announces that its website ranks among the top on the Internet, beating out most other Latino, Chicano, Hispanic and Mexican-American sites in popularity. Which either means there must be a lot more anti-Semitic reconquista knuckle-draggers who know how to use a computer than we thought, or that those who actually foster a fear of a brown planet—your Glenn Spencers, your Barbara Coes, your Harald Martins—regularly visit Whittier-based La Voz de Aztlan's site. Or both. The World Wide Web-ranking service Alexa.Com used the number of hits and links to www.aztlan.net as its basis for charting La Voz near the top. “The ranking . . . shows that La Voz de Aztlan website is more popular than many of the well-funded national Hispanic organizations' websites such as those of NCLR and MALDEF,” boasts publisher Hector Carreon, referencing the National Council of La Raza, which is the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights group, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “Also, we are particularly proud that we outranked in popularity the across-town website of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.” La Voz certainly has a bug up its culo when it comes to our Hebrew brethren. A recent posting characterizes Jewish groups that ensure products are kosher as engaging in a “Kosher Nostra Scam” that is squeezing millions in “protection” money out of corporate America. La Voz blames zionists for recent U.S. intelligence failures and for a California appeals court's ruling to omit “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Closer to home, La Voz smears prominent Orange County Latinos who criticize La Voz's rabid anti-Semitism (see Gustavo Arellano's “La Voz de Pendejos,” July 12). We just clicked on this most popular of websites and downloaded an article that accuses the Walt Disney Co. of insensitivity toward Mexicans. They illustrate the piece with Mickey Mouse wearing a yarmulke and holding a Star of David. To build its case against “super Jewish mogul Michael Eisner,” La Voz lifts nearly word-for-word from an article published by the Holocaust-denying, Newport Beach-based Institute for Historical Review (A Clockwork Orange, June 28). You know what they say: one no-good hate group deserves another.
TUESDAY, Aug. 20 Toilet paper maker Kimberly-Clark of Georgia sends How Original Gallery of Laguna Beach a year's supply of its Kleenex Cottonelle tissue to thank the art space for its toilet-bowl exhibit. “We like to support projects that celebrate toilets and toilet paper,” explains Jan Gottesman, tissue-category manager for the Kimberly-Clark Professional division, in a Reuters news service story. The “In the Toilet” exhibition of hand-painted toilets debuted at How Original in June and went on to the recent Southern California Home and Garden Show in Anaheim. Gallery owner Loretta Alvarado reportedly conceived the project after admiring the beauty of a leaky toilet bowl she'd set on her porch after removing it from her bathroom. “After spending all this time exhibiting these beautiful toilets,” Gottesman says, “we thought the gallery would appreciate a care package of high-quality toilet paper.” Swell, but did we mention Clockwork's inaugural “Salute to Gold Bullion” exhibit?
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 21 Finally, Orange County district attorney Tony “Baloney” Rackauckas is thrown behind bars. Unfortunately, it's not a real jail he's hauled to in connection with the various corruption scandals swirling around him; it's a phony pokey erected in the tony Clubhouse restaurant at South Coast Plaza to raise money for Jerry's Kids. Once a year, the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) rounds up local civic leaders and businessmen, places them in a playpen, and awaits “bail”—in the form of donations to the MDA—before releasing the incarcerated. Perhaps fearing that the act is wearing thin, the MDA this year adds realism to the event by taking a cue from recent abuse allegations lodged against Orange County jailers. The celebrity “inmates” are giddily crammed into the smallest space possible to re-create the overcrowded conditions at Orange County Jail. A “psycho crew” of jailers beat, verbally abuse and arrange in-fighting among the “prisoners.” (The bout between Rackauckas and public defender Carl “Don't Call Me Larry” Holmes is reportedly one for the ages.) Female inmates get special spa treatment that includes being forced to shower and use restrooms while their male jailers gawk. The gals' section is also infested with rats, but these aren't the big, fat, juicy sewer rats that allegedly infest the Orange County women's jail. These are specially raised varmints genetically altered to bear chinchilla fur used to fill in coats sold in the kind of upscale boutiques that dot South Coast Plaza. Membership does have its privileges.
Marvin Chavezcan only wish he's headed to a cushy MDA jail. The California Supreme Court today declines to consider the Orange County medical-marijuana activist's appeal of his 1998 pot-possession conviction. The 48-year-old Santa Ana resident originally got six years for providing medical marijuana to undercover cops who used a fake doctor's note to get the weed. Chavez was freed on $25,000 bond pending an appeal but could now be forced to serve the remaining 21 months on his sentence. “The question is when do I go back to state prison and how long?” he soberly tells supporters.
THURSDAY, Aug. 22 We told you recently about Aliso Viejo-based Fax.comcallously promoting its “proprietary broadcast fax technology”—translation: junk faxes—as a way to save lives in the wake of the Samantha Runnion tragedy (A Clockwork Orange, Aug. 2). Today, a coalition of activists files a $2.2 trillion—that's right, trillion, as in the federal deficit—set of lawsuits alleging that Fax.com's unsolicited faxes are slowing business, fucking up communications and possibly . . . wait for it . . . endangering lives. Boo-yah! Fax.com president Kevin Katz reportedly brands the litigation “unfounded and absurd.” In fact, he'd have faxed an angry letter to his congressman about it, but his machine was clogged with junk faxes.
Worker Dionicio Garcia, 21, admits in court that as a joke, he scrawled “antrax”—he meant “anthrax”—on a bucket of rotten beans in the kitchen aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach last October. He gets 92 days in a non-MDA jail. The judge should have thrown the book at him—as long as that book was a dictionary.
FRIDAY, Aug. 23 It's FRIDAY! FRIDAY!! FRIDAY!!! and promoters of Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill “The Swindler” Simon's brief appearance with George Dubya Bush try desperately to attract more party faithful by slashing ticket prices from the initially announced $1,000 to $250. And if you act now, you get a free pay phone—once owned by a drug dealer! Hurry as supplies will soon be transferred to an evidence locker.
These are among the signs protesters against the wars on Iraq, drugs and civil liberties tried to get somewhere close to Bush as he blazed through Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort N Spa in Dana Point:
“HAIL TO THE THIEF: YOU ARE NOT MY PRESIDENT.”
“SON OF BUSH: LOUSY SEQUEL.”
“GULF WAR II: LOUSY SEQUEL.”
“GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL. DO NOT PASS THROUGH ORANGE COUNTY, DO NOT COLLECT MONEY.”
“U.S. CONSTITUTION: EVER HEARD OF IT?”
“STOP ARRESTING SICK PEOPLE.”
“U.S. DRUG POLICY IS UNHEALTHY FOR LIVING THINGS.”
“ARREST TERRORISTS, NOT PATIENTS.”
“HUNT ANTHRAX, NOT MEDICAL MARIJUANA.”
“END PERPETUAL WAR—STOP THE DRUG WAR.”
“ALL THESE WARS ADD UP TO WAR ON LIBERTY.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.