Illustration by Bob Aul How the hell did actor John Stamos scrounge up $30,700 to buy the old Disneyland sign on eBay? Aside from being married to the gorgeous and no doubt fabulously wealthy supermodel Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, what has this guy got going for him? To recap, the present-day show-biz importance ranking of former Full House cast members is as follows: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Bob Saget, the chick married to Mossimo, the hockey-player comedian, any other kids from the show and then Stamos. We're not knocking Johnny; former OC boys who grow up to become Disneyphiles are the coolest! “It was one of those things,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune on Nov. 21. “I said, 'I have to have this!'” Then again, a huge galvanized-steel sign is actually a smart investment. It'll make great shelter.
LOVE STINKS The Orange County Register's former education reporter recently got popped for plagiarism, according to a column in the Nov. 22 Sacramento Bee. Dennis Love, who was with the Register from June 1997 to February 1999, was covering the presidential campaign for the Bee until editors reportedly discovered quotations and a passage from an Electoral College story were lifted without attribution from U.S. News N World Report. We're amazed he was caught, considering who the hell reads U.S. News N World Report? But backtracking editors say they found another recent story with a source and quotation allegedly made up by Love, who the Bee says admitted his mistakes, apologized and was fired. Clockwork has no reason to suspect Love was up to hanky-panky at the Reg, but if we'd been on the wrong end of an education story between June 1997 and February 1999, we'd certainly be checking it out about now.
DID SOMEBODY SAY McLAWSUIT? Register reporter Greg Hardesty is a fine chap who would never stoop to plagiarism or making up sources. That's why we're confidently giving the Clockwork once-over (we like to think of it as full-frontal plagiarism) to his Nov. 23 story on Anaheim resident Rhonda M. Fodah's lawsuit against McDonald's. Fodah claims she was served cleaning solution instead of soda. The 29-year-old alleges she was in an Irvine Mickey D's on Nov. 21, 1999, when an employee behind the counter handed her a refill of her Mr. Pibb. After Fodah took four sips, she allegedly felt a severe burning sensation in her throat and complained to employees, who, she says, informed her she'd mistakenly been served McD Sanitizer—which actually goes great with the Filet O' Fish; ask for it by name! Fodah went to emergency, was out of work two months and now wants payback. We'd just like to know why it would take four sips to discover you aren't drinking Mr. Pibb.
SHELL GAME Huntington Beach musician/activist/RV enthusiast Joey Racano may have lost his recent election bid to the City Council, but he won his fight to preserve the tiny Little Shell wetland. A council majority had backed paving over the city-owned wetland for a developer's project that includes much-needed shops and townhouses and the extension of the Waterfront Hilton resort. But the California Coastal Commission, which had previously cleared the builder's plan to fill in Little Shell, halted development permits when staff members discovered problems with project maps. To get everything back on track, the City Council hammered out a Little Shell preservation plan on Nov. 20. Racano, who led daily protests to save the wetland, once confided to us that he made up the name “Little Shell” to give people a cute name for an ignored marsh teeming with wildlife. Now his beloved city wants to restore the wetland and turn it over to a conservancy. They should rename it after Joey while they're at it.
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.