Orange County's Leading Source Of News, Culture And Entertainment
Orange County's Leading Source Of News, Culture And Entertainment
A local author, historian and former OC Weekly editor/columnist discusses a subject that is very much associated with your favorite Orange County-based alt.-rag that debuted in 1995: the 1964-1966 “British Invasion.” ] Jim Washburn, Former Weekly Music Editor, Brings Stellar Guitar Grouping to OC (for Free) Actually, there is an OC twist to Jim Washburn's …
It’s that season again, when your time is rapidly draining into a pool of desperation as you realize you can’t do everything. What’s with the carolers and Christmas-tree lots? Didn’t the fireworks stands just come down? Isn’t there enough year-end stuff to worry about—such as wondering what brand aspirin to get instead of Obamacare in …
“Why should I vote in this dumb election?” you may be asking yourself. It’s a primary for chrissakes; there’s not even one president in it. And there are more damn people running for governor than there are superheroes in Avengers, Infinitely Good Crumbling Riddance to the Damned Lot of You. (Spoiler Alert: You just read …
Continue reading “Uncle Jim’s Last-Minute Voting Guide: Vote Like your Ass Depends on it!”
Send in the clown . . . so he may be sent to prison for 10 years for admitting to raping a 12-year-old girl. That's the sentence an Orange County Superior Court judge ordered Wednesday for Jose Guadalupe Jimenez right after the professional clown known as “El Tin Marin” pleaded guilty to, in full clown …
Amazingly, it was not our fearless leader Gustavo who shamelessly solicited a plug for an event he was participating in, but the Weekly's pre-millennium No. 2 man Jim Washburn–and justifiably so. Because Chautauqua!–which I can't say and can barely spell–sounds very cool indeed. While most of the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa is off limits …
Continue reading “Washburn, Arellano and Chemerinsky Are Ready to Get All Chautauqua! on Your Ass”
Jim Washburn–the Weekly's first executive editor, longtime “Lost in O.C.” columnist and lead music critic to boot–parlayed his fantabulous “The Orange Groove” Orange County rock 'n' roll history exhibition at the Orange County Fair in the summer of 2003 into the fantabulous “The Orange Groove” exhibition at Fullerton Museum Center…
Photo by Davis BarberProbably because most of what I own was bought used or at a drastic discount, I tend to think that products haven't truly filtered into our society until they turn up in a swap-meet heap or on a remainder table. So I can barely express the sense of paternal satisfaction I felt …
There’s a lot of ugliness in the world, but it’s hard to see it all at once—thanks then to Jim Washburn, who presents here far more than the promised 100 most-awful album covers in the history of music. Collectors like Deke Dickerson pitched in to locate missteps by Dylan (The…
Hard, fast, and loud. That was the way Mike Boehm wrote about every crack and crevice of the Orange County music scene for over a decade. From the oddball years of the late ‘80s through its storied sonic boom in the ‘90s, Boehm’s reporting reliably narrated the chronicles of OC’s mutation of punk, metal, country, …
Continue reading “Mike Boehm Remembered: The Former LA Times Critic Gave a Voice to OC Music”
I fixed a television set. I’ll repeat that: I fixed a television set. These days, that’s tantamount to slaying a dragon. Fifty-six years ago, were you quite so old, you would have been sitting around watching Peter, Paul & Mary sing “Puff the Magic Dragon” on Ed Sullivan, and if the family’s black-and-white TV suddenly …
If you lived in the Highland Greens condo tract in Buena Park in 1967 and answered your door on Halloween night to the pasty-white sight of the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Adolf Hitler holding out their candy bags, that was my friend Dave and me. For some now-unremembered sin, my stepdad wasn’t going to let …
A couple of Saturdays ago, a friend was walking his dog and had to call me: “Dana’s having a yard sale!” His neighbor, our former congressman Dana Rohrabacher, was even selling his surfboard, he said. This was mid-afternoon, and by the time I drove by, there was nothing left but a heap of detritus pushed …