Wednesday, Feb. 21
Three Seal Beach Jail workers are arraigned on charges they stole a Sony PlayStation from an inmate. Victor Calzada, Fred Madrigal and Michael Navarro are accused of taking the item in September 2006 from an inmate who was being transferred from Seal Beach to the Orange County Jail. It's a shocking, shocking story, one that shows what we've degenerated into in this post-Abu Grahibworld of our creation. I mean, a Sony PlayStation? What, they couldn't find his paddleball to rip off? A PlayStation? Not a II or III? I mean, talk about torture. The controls are sluggish, the graphics muddy, the action uncouth. The only people who have plain oldPlayStations are poor kids and those people mired in irony. People, it is well said that a society is judged by how it treats its prisoners' game consoles. I mean, what's next? Waterboarding? And if it is to be waterboarding, will it at least be the superior Tom Clancy's Waterboarding: Terror Recon Ghost Cell(for Xbox) and not the weak-ass Tom Wolfe's Waterboarding: The Bonfire of the Kandy-Kolored Acid Test?
Thursday, Feb. 22
Counting.
Friday, Feb. 23
UC Irvine drops a suit against the widow and son of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The suit was looking to secure the papers of Derrida, the developer of Post Modernism, a school of philosophic thought that says a bunch of stuff that nobody has any idea what it's saying, which apparently is the whole point because post modernism holds there is no absolute truth, which doesn't so much sound like a philosophy to me as it does a divorce. Anyway, Derrida, who taught part time at UCI, had promised the university his scholarly papers, but the relationship soured between philosopher and school when UCI demoted Derrida's friend—Russian studies professor Dragan Kujundzic—for having sex with a post doctoral student. The female student has claimed that Kujundzic took advantage of her and coerced her into having sex while Kujundzic says the sex was completely consensual. Who knew Kobe Bryantwas a post modernist?
Saturday, Feb. 24
Today, I buy shelves.
Sunday, Feb. 25
The Bowers Museum opens its Dorothy and Donald Kennedy Wing, and uses the occasion to announce that it will now charge 19 bucksto get inside a place nobody wanted to get inside of when it cost a quarterof that. For those of you who don't know, and that's probably most of you, and by “most” I mean “all,” the Bowers is that thingyou pass on Main St., just across from the El Pollo Loco, on your way to the Mainplace mall. The raise is incremental, you know, the way Vesuvius was incremental, the admission price going from $5 to 19, a percentage increase of—um, let's see, carry the two, sometimes Y . . . well it's a lot. In fact, the Bowers is now the most-expensive art museum west of the Mississippi. In fact, the only American museum charging as much is New York's Museum of Modern Art, which charges $20. The MoMA charges so much because it has what is considered the greatest collection of modern masterworks by the likes of Picasso, Pollock, and de Kooning. The Bowers charges 19 bucks because it has a collection of California plein art, which I believe were painted by that Joy of Painting dude with a righteous 'fro. Also, the Bowers validates parking. Wait. . .
Monday, Feb. 26
Theo Douglas—who is wearing a pair of pants made within the last five years; this is, for Theo, known as his “mod” period—takes the latest in a series of calls from Nevine Tadrous, whose ex-boyfriend Steven A. Sears, was the subject of last week's cover story “Eight is Enough.” Using court records and interviews, Theo was able to isolate the fact that Sears has eight children with four different Irvine women—including Tadrous—none of whom knew about each other. (Though we're guessing they do now.) Tadrous tells Theo he should also let our readers know that she was Sears' partner in their business—doing estate planning, minimizing people's taxes—beginning in 1999, and he says something I can't quite make out. That afternoon, after Theo's left to telecommute from his home office/sofa, he gets an e-mail from our receptionist Leslie Aganto the effect that a young lady named Nancy has also read the cover story and is waiting in OC Weekly'slobby to see him, so he calls Leslie and has her put Nancy on the line. Nancy says she read the part where Theo quotes Tustin attorney Phillip A. Putman—who is suing Sears to recover his client's $5,000 retainer for work that allegedly wasn't performed—as saying Sears “is exactly what Christianity is all about and against. And all the other religions are against it, too. They all frown on and shun those kind of people.” (Putman is a born-again Christian, the story notes.) And Nancy, who writes Christian poetry, wonders if OC Weekly publishes same. Theo gives her driving directions to the Orange County Register.
Tuesday, Feb. 27
News hits that an autobiography scheduled to arrive in bookstores Thursday will claim the likes of Bruce Willis and former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda used the services of an infamous Hollywood madam. Jody “Babydol” Gibson claims as much in her new book Bald and Fat Dudes Need Love Too . . . But They Have To Pay. Willis and Lasorda claim that they have never heard of Gibson. Lasorda, who lives in Fullerton, has threatened to sue if the book makes its way onto bookshelves. Also mentioned as a client was former Sex Pistolsguitarist and current Indie 103 DJ Steve Joneswho, when asked if Gibson was correct about him being a client, said, “It's possible. I crossed paths with her back then. She was a madam, but if I remember right, she wanted to be a singer in a band.” O bla dee, o bla dah, life goes on . . . Unfortunately, it does so with us now thinking of Tommy Lasorda, not only naked, but having sex and perhaps moaning or making cooing sounds. And you are a horrible person if you are now going “I am the walrus—koo koo ka choo.”
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