Hi, it's Vince. No, I'm not going to try to dump 389 ShamWows on you for $19.95. Today I have something far more absorbent–or is that pronounced exorbitant? Whatever. It's the Orange County Fairgrounds, which the state of California has officially put up for sale.
Are you getting this, camera guy? We're talking 150 acres of prime Costa Mesa property, which you must bid on by January 8. What's that? You don't believe me? You don't believe the state would be so short-sighted and cash-poor that it would unload this cultural jewel? Well, feast your eyes on this Request For Proposals (RFP), my friends.
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Why, this is the deal that put the sham in ShamWow!
Like Joan Rivers with her QVC jewelry collection, Suzanne Somers with her inner-thigh stiffeners and my ol' pal the late great Billy Mays
with whatever the hell he was screaming his fool head off about,
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is bartering with the highest bidder for this
state property.
Go ahead, take a big whiff of the horse stables. Peel off some leftover deep-friend Snickers baked into the Midway pavement and pop it in your mouth. Watch as I dump a glass of water on Centennial Farms and pound it into submission with my whore-smacking knuckles.
Thump-thump-thump . . .
See, it all disappears like a Sacramento rainy-day fund. We're talking about the highest-value property listed in the
July 24 budget bill that authorized the sale of state assets, estimated to fetch between $96 million and $180 million. This land is so hot that Orange County elites . . . I mean . . . simple-minded fair-loving folks are pushing for the sale to a foundation they will form to take the property off the state's hands dirt cheap so they may keep it the same as it has always been in perpetuity.
Whoa, what's that? You've been listening to that OC Unfair crowd that claims the fix is in for the supposed “non-profit” to buy the land for pennies on the dollar, then let
their friends at AEG turn the fairgrounds into LA Live South? That they'll have the place generating even more traffic, noise and commotion, only now there won't be a public board and agency for pissed-off neighbors to complain to? That the same fair officials and board members advocating the sale “for the people of Orange County” are actually going to wind up with plum positions with the eventual buyer?
Whatever, Fox Mulder. If these people are so convinced an end-around, reach-around is in the works, why don't they cancel their Skinamax subscriptions, throw the savings in a huge pot and buy the thing out from under the Fair-ees. If that's not enough to raise the $96 million to $180 million, they could always sell their valuables.
I know the perfect salesman.
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.