SATURDAY, Aug. 24 Five days before the cover of OC Weekly shows a gentleman pulling a bag of pills out of his crotch to depict the manner in which one smuggler successfully sneaks prescription drugs out of Mexico (Jerome Weir's “Confessions of a Prescription Drug Smuggler,” Aug. 30), a woman in Canada turns such stealthiness on its ass. The unidentified woman arrives from the Caribbean island of St. Maarten when Canadian Customs officials at Toronto's Pearson International Airport notice something isn't quite right with her butt. After forcing the woman to a secondary-screening area, they discover that compartments sewn into her tights contain 2.2 kilograms of cocaine. Why do you think they call it crack?
SUNDAY, Aug. 25 The only thing this tanned and rested timepiece carries in its crack upon returning to OC today is fluffy white sand from a small Central California beach town we won't name lest it turn into yet another overcrowded beach town (like the ones we left). We'd tripped up the coast in the dark of night, so heading back home in daylight, we're struck by the amount of development that's gobbled up the coast between San Luis Obispo and the Ventura County line. No wonder they fear Orange County-ization up this way.
MONDAY, Aug. 26 The cities of Brea and Yorba Linda agree to cut a $1 million check to the family of slain 17-year-old drug informant Chad MacDonald. It represents one of the largest police payout in Orange County history, reports the Los Angeles Times. MacDonald's death spurred a bout of nationwide soul searching over the use of juveniles as undercover informants and produced a new state law restricting such tactics. After a January 1998 arrest for meth possession, MacDonald agreed to wear a wire to snare local drug dealers. At a Norwalk drug house two weeks later, where MacDonald had gone with his girlfriend to stock up for his personal use, he was robbed, strangled and beaten to death while his girlfriend was raped, shot in the face and left for dead near Angeles National Forest. MacDonald's lawyers allege the gangbanger suspects—who got life without parole—retaliated against the boy's snitching services.
TUESDAY, Aug. 27 Days after we boost the clean, smooth-tasting Sam Adams Light (A Clockwork Orange, Aug. 23)—free samples of which we dutifully chugged in the name of journalistic (hic!) research—Boston Beer Co. chairman Jim Koch apologizes for his company's participation in a national radio show that featured couples getting it on near parishioners at New York's St. Patrick Cathedral. Koch was in WNEW-FM studios during the Opie and Anthony Show's live “Sex for Sam” promotion on Aug. 15. Pub owners in heavily Catholic Boston, where Sam Adams is HQ'd, responded by boycotting Koch's foamy elixir and asking New York bars to do likewise. The show was later canceled and the DJs canned. Koch was left reevaluating his radio promotions. What needs reevaluating, in our humble opinion, is lavishing live sex on radio programmers while giving us ink-stained wretches a measly six-pack.
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 28 Ingenious Taiwanese scientists have solved Orange County's sewage-outfall dilemma, Clockwork learns today upon reading the New Scientist (www.newscientist.com). A team from I-Shou University in Kaohsiung County devised a process to use sewage sludge to bulk up ordinary house bricks. Just think of the implications if this new technology comes to OC: for years, we've been sending three Edison Fields' worth of feces daily through outfall pipes four miles off the Huntington Beach shoreline. The poopage increases with new development. But if we mold the dooty into the stuff holding together the very homes, office towers and industrial complexes that create extra craploads, we'll reduce the need to send so much out to sea (which also involves spending millions to make it, uh, less shitty). Sounds gross? You betcha! But at least thank Taiwan's eggheads for helping answer the eternal question: Where does the term “built like a brick shithouse” come from?
THURSDAY, Aug. 29 Unleashing anxiety over a dream season seemingly on the brink of being wiped out by a players' strike, Anaheim Angels fans chant, “NO STRIKE! NO STRIKE!” throw back foul balls and litter Edison Field with debris during the late innings of a 6-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Who knew our formerly comatose Rally Monkeys possessed such passion for the national pastime? “This would have been the last place I would have expected this to happen,” Halos first baseman Scott Spiezio tells The Orange County Register. Negotiators talk through the wee hours after the game before coming to an agreement that averts a strike, and some pundits credit the Anaheim ugliness with getting the players and owners to realize they'd better settle their differences and play ball. As the late Mel Allen used to say, how about that?
FRIDAY, Aug. 30 The Register reports that authorities have discovered a second videotape that was in the possession of an alleged terrorist showing surveillance footage of Disneyland, which by now must be spinning this into a thrill ride. Mr. bin Laden's Wild Ride, anyone? Meanwhile, a tape that showed a suicide bomber speaking of being part of a five-person attack on the Tragic Kingdom this coming Sept. 11 is deemed a hoax. Jose R. Dominguez II, the Santa Ana man who delivered America's Unfunniest Home Video to the LAPD, is held without bail for filing a false statement. He contends in court that he was working as a freelance undercover reporter for Fox 11 News. Considering the outlandish crap Fox passes off for news, it's the only part of Dominguez's story that sounds credible (though Fox officials deny it).
SATURDAY, Aug. 31 Thanks to a story broken by the Weekly's pesky R. Scott Moxley (“Simon Flip-Flops, Woos Gays,” Aug. 23), the gay-hating Campaign for California Families outlines for its members Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon's off-again/on-again love affair with gaydom. Simon tells the Campaign for California Families that Moxley's story is “liberal media lies,” but the group (and the Weekly) obtain Simon's answers to a questionnaire from the gay GOP group Log Cabin Republicans in which he supports gay adoption, state recognition of gay-pride parades, tougher hate-crime laws, prohibition of sexual-orientation discrimination in state employment, domestic partnership benefits for UC employees, continued government funding of AIDS research and domestic-partnership recognition for gay couples. After calling Moxley a liar for reporting as much, Simon supported those views in a live radio interview in San Francisco. So Slimin' Simon tells the family-values crowd one thing and gay Republicans and listeners in the gay-friendly Baghdad by the Bay another. Who does this guy think he is? Gray Davis?
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.