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THERE ARE NO INNOCENTS
Nick Schou's response to my letter only adds to the point I am making: he really does not know what he is talking about (Letters, Aug. 25). I can prove without any question that most police-brutality lawsuits are filed by the “criminal element of society.” Research the numbers and print the truth. I dare ya!
Russell Reinhart
president
Huntington Beach Police Officers' Association Nick Schou responds again: Reinhart buries himself deeper still with this letter. Even if his assumption about lawsuits and criminals is correct, it blithely assumes that criminals don't have constitutional rights. They do—just ask the guys in LA's Rampart Division.
ROADKILL
Being in the taxidermy business, I search the web daily for information pertaining to my business. As a first-time reader of your online publication, I was surprised to see an article about taxidermy, the art of mounting animals (Anthony Pignataro's “Taxidermy,” Aug. 25.). I was even more surprised after reading the article to see that it had nothing to do with taxidermy. Instead, it was about taxicabs, automobiles used for transportation. I'm not sure what the author was thinking when he decided to use this title.
Lora Bourdon
Bob's Taxidermy
Fullerton
WE SELL OUT
Maybe I missed the joke or you guys missed the bus, but Jack Chick is a right-wing religious lunatic who preaches anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Islam and anti-homosexual messages in his disturbing little pamphlets (Jack Chick's “The Mad Machine,” Aug. 25). While I agree that most of them are hilarious, I think it's in poor taste to print anything with his name on it, no matter what the content. Was that comic supposed to be funny? Either you morons were making fun of alcoholics, or you were supporting that fuckwit. Which was it?
Mr. Ecks
Aliso Viejo
HIGH CRIMES
Re: “The Unbearable Burden of Lightness,” Aug. 18: while Rebecca Schoenkopf has a right to her opinions, however uninformed and misguided, she has no right to commit errors of fact: Chris Burden's “A Tale of Two Cities” has not been shown at the museum for 11 years.
Beverly Bain
docent
Orange County Museum of Art
THEY LIVE!
For Buddy Seigal to say that the Dead simply sucked after he got his fun out of them is simply wrong and, of course, arrogant (“I Was a Teenage Deadhead,” Aug. 18). Yes, they made horrible records at times (Shakedown Street is a great example) but they also made a few good ones, such as In The Dark. There were years and tours that were bad, but many were brilliant.
Hugh Southard
via e-mail
Buddy Seigal responds: That's what I said. Except for the part about “brilliant.”
REBECCA: DAD CALLED
Needless to say, I read Rebecca Schoenkopf's article with great interest (“Daddy Dearest,” Aug. 25). Three things come to mind: (1) I'd drop the tag line “You're only as sick as your secrets.” It manages to be both pedantic and trite at the same time. (2) You seem to have omitted the three ice cream cones I bought you that fateful year. (3) If I had known you were going to write about me, I'd have been nicer to you. I love you, too, dear.
Jerry Schoenkopf
Malibu
MISTAH WHO? HE DEAD
Thanks to Pete Townshend's candid interviews before the tour, we already knew we weren't going to see the “Real Me” during the Who concert at the venue formerly known as the Irvine Meadows. But Rich Kane missed some great opportunities to slam the gig on Pete's terms (“Fooled Again,” Aug. 25). Here they were:
1. Pete has always been known to improvise blistering solos, giving each audience something a little different. Those were gone. When the crowd roars over windmill-chopping chords, why bother?
2. Local boy that I am, I took his self-flattering reference to being “exquisitely bored” in California personally. Keep it for your next rehashed and lame solo album, Pete.
3. When a band has more than three decades of material, a big part of the fun is anticipating what tunes they'll play. The tourmeisters killed that by having their staff hand out marketing cards for people to buy custom CDs that included songs by either the Who or Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes. These cards were complete with full set lists from previous concerts on the tour. So the only surprises onstage were what they didn't play. I was really unstoked that I didn't get to see Entwistle sing “Boris the Spider.”
4. The other notable downer was having to sit through the opening act, the thoroughly unoriginal and underwhelming Unamerican. Before that, we got to see the much more interesting and provocative alt.-folky Philadelphia band Marah get the usual indifferent response at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater's underpowered pavilion satellite stage. They were a blast at Steve Earle's concert at the Sun Theatre two weeks before. Had these two groups' sets been switched, rock justice would have been served. On second thought, maybe the Who should have opened for Marah.
Tom Graves
Long Beach
