If you're one of those tech heads who can set their TiVo with a cell phone, make it record SoCal Connected at 8 tonight on KCET/Channel 28. For appearing in that episode (which repeats 6 p.m. Saturday and 6:30 p.m. Sunday) is the Weekly's own Gustavo Arellano. Further worldwide domination of ¡Ask a Mexican! is not on Arellano's mind. Well, not tonight. Well, not tonight in this particular episode. It's a truck that's got Gus' pantalones in a bunch.
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Gustavo's papi used to drive his truck every day to the Port of Long Beach. That's every day as in seven days a week. Then the Los Angeles Port Authority made an air-cleaning policy change that only allowed “clean” trucks to work the port.
Bigger trucking firms grumbled but were ultimately able to absorb the change. However, independent operators like Papi Arellano were driven out of work. In the piece, the Weekly's Mexican faces his own personal inconvenient truth, which pits his concern for the environment against his concern for his father, who suddenly finds himself in desperate need of a second career.
The piece is just one story told in SoCal Connected's “Downward Mobility” episode. Other segments offer 10 tips for job seekers during these tough times, personalize unemployment and underemployment trends in Southern California and look at enterprising Angelinos making money by putting their homes “on camera” in movies and TV shows.
Elsewhere on the dial (yes, I still have a dial), Dianna Kinnamon of Arellano's hometown of Anaheim is a contestant on CMT's The Singing Bee at 9 p.m. Friday.
And someone out there in Viewerland can get on the tube in April, when HGTV's Bang For Your Buck films Orange County homes that have had $20k-$140k backyard outdoor living renovations in the past three years. This includes lanais, summer kitchens, pools, gazebos, decks, fire pits/fire places, fountains, ponds, recreational areas and my stray cat deep fryer (outdoor version). Visit the website for details.
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.