Straight Outta Stanton

Photo by Jeanne RiceThere's no sign of a show tonight at the Loose Moose Saloon, even though a standing-room-only crowd is gathered anxiously around the venerable club's small stage, which is stocked with guitars, drums, keyboards, turntables and a lone microphone that is drenched in a white spotlight and draped with a weirdly familiar paper …

Play Harder

For one bright, blue, shining moment in 1998, Viagra united us in a way Mark McGwire only thought he could. Pumped up on the drug's sales, Viagra's manufacturer, Pfizer, slipped past Merck N Co. on some stock traders' lists to become the No. 1 pharmaceutical company in the nation.When major insurers (including PacifiCare and Kaiser) …

Never Die

But the shaman's visit made Fretty turn his vision inward to look for his soul instead of his eyesight. Recently, Fretty has been delving into hypnotherapy with Susan Han, a certified hypnotherapist. I've watched as she puts him in a massage chair, reclines it, and covers him up to the chin in a pink blanket. …

Group Therapy

Some friends moved from Austin, Texas, to Orange County recently, and they asked me for house-hunting advice. I gave them only one piece of information: whatever you do, don't buy in South County.My advice was kindly meant, but I later regretted it. It was like acknowledging that the twerps who want to plop El Toro …

Diver Down

Disneyland revealed on July 29 that it will close its 39-year-old Submarine Voyage ride after Labor Day weekend and not reopen that section of the theme park until 2003. Disney Imagineering is apparently kicking around plans for a Lost City of Atlantis adventure to possibly replace the subs. Clockwork's advice? Screw Atlantis, boys, and devise …

Life of Riley

Faced with image-scarring revelations about Ronald Reagan's dubious ethics and competence in 1986, the president's worried National Security Advisor John Poindexter astutely observed, “We have some tidying up to do.” In Orange County last week, the Feb. 19 death of Thomas F. Riley, 85, caused the local establishment's real-estate developers, politicians and reporters to tidy …