OC’s Sexiest People

Rueben Martinez
We dig Rueben because he's one of the county's best movers and shakers. And by mover and shaker, we're not referring to the fact that he founded and runs one of the best bookstores in Southern California-Martinez Books and Art in Santa Ana-or that he has a zeal for teaching and a zest for life that make a positive difference in the community. We're referring to the fact that he has a great butt. Nice arms, too. The guy has always been into fitness; in his younger days, he used to do up to 1,000 sit-ups per day. Now in his 50s, he's still in great shape and has waves of salt-and-pepper hair, a kind yet intense face, and a manner that makes you feel you're the most important and interesting person in the world. And, you know, the butt. Mitigating factor: He's perfect. Ever try to live around perfect?Jennifer Davis
We don't know much about Jennifer Davis. We once saw the KOCE reporter at a political function; she stood out graceful and lithe among the electronic hairspray, coffee and kvetch crowd. We could tell you that she exuded an intrinsic beauty, an unspoken elegance amidst that bluster, but mostly, we were staring, mouth agape, wishing (as Morrissey put it) to be tied to the bumper of her car and driven over a series of speed bumps to prove our devotion (mmmm-bumps). Mitigating factor: Local Democratic chairwoman Jeanne Costales then started screeching over the microphone and broke the mood completely. Stacy Leff
The Heidi Fleiss look-alike is the media-relations director for county Supervisor Todd Spitzer. Never mind the killer smile, the basketball player's legs, the runway-model physique. Working full-time for the supe, Leff still manages a solid B as a first-year law student at Whittier Law School. Raised in Holland, Leff was schooled in Fullerton and loved throughout OC. Mitigating factor: Leff's favorite book is Ayn Rand's dunderheaded “philosophical” novel, The Fountainhead. But we could change her. . . . Chuck Finley
Tall and strong with rough-hewn good looks that hooked the likes of video vixen Tawny Kitaen, Chuck is the kind of guy who's hip without knowing it (he was the first guy on the Angels to dye his hair white). With his sly grin, strong chin, and aw-shucks manner and drawl, he's like the forbidden fruit harvested from a Vegas weekend shared by Elvis Presley and Sandy Koufax. Oh, did we mention that he's left-handed? You know what those people are into. Though, when it comes to hands, we're more attracted by how small the ball looks in Chuck's very expansive, very, very LARGE hands. Mitigating factor: Mo Vaughan makes lots mo' money. Susan Deemer
This reporter for the Orange County Business Journal is as long as June 21 and twice as hot. She's in her mid-30s, but she looks as though she's in her mid-20s-but we like older women (see Ruth Ko). Deemer once toured the country as a Harley Girl, but she now writes about business for one of Orange County's Scariest People of 1997, Business Journal editor Rick Reiff. Raised in Toronto, she was seasoned in Orange County: while working at a local newspaper, her short skirt revealed legs long enough to inspire a theocratic revolution-short skirts were banned and Deemer's wheels temporarily fendered. Mitigating factor: We're scared of leather, motorcycles and girls in leather on motorcycles. But not too scared. Christina Shea
The mayor of Irvine looks like a typical Orange County housewife, the Everymom who spends most of her day driving kids to and from school in her Bradley-troop carrier of an SUV. She's got short hair, looks comfortable in jeans and a polo shirt, and has a ready laugh and a thrice-weekly aerobics physique. She's cute. What makes her sexy is the palpable feeling of power you get when you're around her, that when it comes down to brass tacks, she gets what she wants (mmmmm-tacks). She can talk tough, talk football or demur and charm, whatever it takes. She may not be large, but she is in charge, the energetic, unrelenting daughter of a CIA man. Basically, she can kick your ass nine ways to Friday and you will like it. Oh, yes. Mitigating factor: Rumor is she knows nine ways to kill a man without leaving a mark. Jonathan Thomas
The owner of Ocean Avenue Brewing Company in Long Beach is drop-dead gorgeous: young, well-built, smells good. He has a smile of about 500 watts, a sexy smirk that suggests he's about to say something provocative even though he never does. Thomas oozes self-confidence and looks too good in Levi's. But what do we find most attractive? It had to be his comment in the days leading up to the Super Bowl. Now, he's male, young, athletic and owns a bar, so we asked, “Who do you like this Sunday?” His response: “Who's playing?” Mitigating factor: In the U.K., “John Thomas” is a euphemism for a man's, er, well . . . Ruth Ko
The publisher of Orange Coast magazine is power, madness, money and beauty all rolled into one. Sly and diminutive, with dark eyes and an equally dark aura, Ko's the favorite of the over-50 crowd-and several of us under 30. She runs the county's magazine for trophy wives without becoming one herself. Plus, she sells ads for sexy hair removal, sexy breast enhancement, and sexy boudoir photography -the very whiff of which makes us think “procreation.” Mitigating factor: Ko was ranked No. 22 in OC Weekly's 1997 “Orange County's Scariest People.”Evil Queen
The robes that cover her from the top of her evil neck to the soles of her evil feet. Her pale, snow-white evil skin-so smooth, so evil. Her face, beautiful, held just so, like she's been holding back a sneeze since before she was evil, which is a long time because she's always been bad. Evil, I tells ya! Eeeeevil! She's into whips, chains and tainted fruit. It's everything you've dreamed: the domination, the disdain, the disrespect, the small punishments. You haven't known a woman this perfect since you left Catholic school. Mitigating factor: She's stuck-up. Carlos
There are rumors of Taco Mesa, Orange, groupies-women who bicker over whose name goes on the food ticket in hopes of winning the opportunity to have the sexy counter guy titillate them by calling out over the speaker, “Mellissaah” or “Shelleee” (names have been changed to protect the innocent). The tremolo of his croon cuts to the nerve, sending a cold shiver down the spine of lunch-time ladies getting their spicy fix for the day. We all agree he is destined for better things: modeling or soap-opera sex scenes that could give Antonio Sabato Jr. a lickin'. Ahhhhh, yeah, and that conjures up images. We're bad. Very bad. We find reasons to go back up to the counter. Hell, we go there when we're not hungry. Just hungry for sweet love through a microphone. Mitigating factor: We can only eat there once a day without seeming like stalkers.Cleo
He's a wage-earning guy at the Taco Mesa in Costa Mesa. We're not sure if this guy is even legal. He's on the young side, but there's no law prohibiting drooling. His creamy complexion coupled with his gold-flecked brown eyes complemented by his girlish eyelashes-he can't help but flirt with those gems. We make a desperate dodge for the table with the salsa splatters so he has to come and clean it, conjuring up images of us as Venus with our young Taco Mesa Adonis fanning us and feeding us chiles as we lounge inside the Parthenon. “Did you see him batting his lashes at me?” “You?! I don't think so. He was looking straight into my soul.” We sprint to the salsa bar as he refills it. We think he is a marketing ploy to make women want to eat there. It is so cruel. But oh, so effective. Mitigating factor: Threat of possible jail time.Mario Barmosca
He's all about love, and he has enough for everybody. He's a tormented bad boy with a Byronesque flair. While strumming his standup bass with Johnny Jones and the Suffering Halos, his mimicked sexy-tiger faces seduce us. His hands move everywhere, escaping a stinging slap to the kisser. He can even charm the dames with a Dean Martin drawl-while acting like a chauvinistic lech. For example, we present his four laws for the female sex: “Rule No. 1: isolate them from friends and family. Rule No. 2: make them completely dependent on you. Rule No. 3: make them think they're completely crazy. And rule No. 4, and I don't know why they didn't make this rule No. 1: when the hand goes up, the mouth goes shut.” Mitigating factor: Like any good aspiring rock star, he's emotionally unavailable.Snow White
An old-fashioned girl with some modern attitudes and just the right amount of sweet gullibility-shit, how many times did she fall for the Evil Queen's poisonous plans?-there's not much for a guy not to like about Snow White. She's a farmer's-daughter type, the down-to-earth girl who never forgets she's a woman-sure, she wears a lot of clothes, but imagine sitting through the unveiling. She's satisfied by the simple pleasures, but she's got culture, too; this chick sings and dances better than anything on cable. And she loves animals. Most important, of course, she loves men-lots of men. And her taste in guys goes past appearances. Snow White seems to understand that not every dude is gonna live up to the tall-dark-and-handsome standard-and that some perfectly nice fellas come attached to a less-than-desirable trait or two. Sleepy, for example. Or Grumpy or Bashful or Dopey. Okay, so she ends up with a handsome prince-hey, this isn't a fairy tale. At least the rest of us get our shot. Mitigating factor: White may be a little overhyped-the Mirror on the Wall only rated her as fair.Long Beach
Fisticuffs almost broke out in the office as two staffers fought over which member of Wink Musselman's Quartet of Shame was sexiest. Which got us to thinking: we could refer to Mario Barmosca as a member of Johnny Jones' Suffering Halos or Bourbon Jones instead of the Quartet of Shame. And we could use Wink Musselman as a member of the Fauntleroys. But then we started thinking about all the other members of those bands, like Chris Hanlin and Mikey Meyer and Johnny Jones and Billy Blaze. And we started thinking about the concentric circles of the bands they're in-every Long Beach musician worth his salt is in at least half a dozen-and their friends' bands, and then, hell, we started thinking about the bartenders where the bands play, like the crusty yet oddly intriguing Hank at the Foothill, and the girlfriends of the bands, and the audiences of the bands. And then we started thinking about cream-skinned bassist Greg Coates, and we forgot exactly what it was we were supposed to be thinking about. Mitigating factor: You wouldn't really go out with a musician, would you?Wink Musselman
His mom calls him “Anson,” and he's gay! gay! gay! But if there were ever a gay man we wanted desperately to convert, it would be the granite-dimpled, bronchial-voiced Wink. Sit in the front row of one of his always badly received shows and just wait for him to pull you onstage with him, drop his face into your cleavage like Fonzie, make out with you shamelessly, and croon about being molested. He's all about love, and he's the most fabulous celebrity we know. He's also a terrific kisser and the most action we've been getting in quite some time. Mitigating factor: Hello! We already said he was gay, even if he does have a woman once in a while (not us) “just to share the love.” Todd Spitzer
The OC supervisor with the insouciant golf togs-just like Gatsby!-looks like a Kennedy or a Law N Order detective. (Not Jerry Orbach.) Compare him to every other thick, shriveled politico in the county, and it's easy to see why reporter babes like Jean Pasco line up to fawn over him. Mitigating factor: Our love was almost demolished when Spitzer expediently decided that welfare mothers aren't getting beat up quite enough by the Establishment and showed us Rambo-like just how tough he can be. What, illegal immigrants were already taken? Maybe teachers' unions are next?Martin Wiscoll
He works for The Orange County Register and yet is terribly attractive: he's tall, dark, handsome, relatively plugged-in, youthful and smart. He's got an air of command and professionalism that's titillatingly detached. Beneath the sobriety, we just know there beats the heart of a tiger. Mitigating factor: He works for The Orange County Register, and sometimes it shows.Jon Halperin
Halperin was a social worker until last year, when Vegas Records, his Newport Beach-based indie label, started taking off. Social work requires you to get into the minds of people, to delve into their consciousness, to resolve disputes as diplomatically as possible-which is always kinda sexy. The place for which Halperin's label is named conjures up images of anything-goes, open-all-night palaces of glitz, depravity and sin. Names of local bands on Vegas include Teen Heroes, who are required to have tons of sex appeal, and 4-Gazm, which needs no explanation. Mitigating factor: Running your own biz-especially one that deals with the music industry-means Halperin stresses a lot, which is not usually sexy. Unless you're into that.Tim Hill
Hill runs Chain Reaction in Anaheim, which in one year has pretty much become the all-ages rock club in the county, usually booking music up to five nights per week. All-ages means lots of high schoolers take first dates here, so there's always a thick aura of does-he/she-like-me-or-does-he/she-not? sexual tension and uncertainty lingering in the air. Nights when the place is packed are a good time for an “accidental” body rub against that hottie you're admiring. Hill's other job: supplying parts for old custom cars. Old cars are eternally sexy. Mitigating factor: His club is in Anaheim, which, after Stanton and La Habra, is the most unsexy city in OC.DJ Danny Love
The first time we saw him, our hearts skipped a beat. Someone leaned over and whispered in our ear, “He's DJ Danny Love.” We thought to ourselves, Of course he is! We considered becoming club kids just to be closer to that infamously sexy, perfect head of hair. Our minds drifted as we imagined running our fingers through that mane of lust. (And we hear he spins records or something, too.) Ahh, we love a man with talent and good genes. His Don Juan features are currently starring in a fantasy in which Mr. Love sets up his turntable in our bedroom, wearing nothing but a Zorro mask and plenty of hair gel. Oh, yeah, and did we mention we love his hair? Mitigating factor: We hate men who are prettier than we are.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *