Invisible Enemies

A few weeks ago, an FBI spokesman offered The Orange County Register a less-than-dramatic news flash: the bureau is monitoring the activities of communist agents in Little Saigon. The news that the FBI monitors foreign agents and that some of those agents might operate in Little Saigon should surprise no one. But in the context …

The Ho Story

Thirty years after his death, nobody remains more loathed on the streets of Orange County's Little Saigon than Ho Chi Minh, the frail-looking Vietnamese nationalist who led his country through three wars of independence-against Japan, France, and ultimately the United States. When Westminster businessman Truong Van Tran tried to hang a photograph of Ho Chi …

Stand by Your, er, Dick

Reporters,” Richard Nixon asserted in his 1990 memoir, In the Arena, “are not the only con artists.” The late ex-president was certainly an authority on cons. Throughout his political career, the Yorba Linda native surrounded himself with every sort of scoundrel known to man: Spiro T. Agnew, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, G. Gordon Liddy, Chuck …

Prescription for Disaster

Twenty years ago, on the morning of March 28, 1979, an explosion as powerful as several 1,000-pound bombs shook the Pennsylvania countryside. A hydrogen bubble inside a Three Mile Island nuclear-power-plant reactor had almost blown through the containment wall. Hours earlier, plant engineers had identified the first warning signs of a total meltdown; before long, …

Shopping Mauled

A year ago, retail employees at the Macy's department store in South Coast Plaza decided to contact organized labor in the hopes of conducting an on-site election that might bring with it a new union contract. At first, the plan to unionize seemed promising; with just a few months before the scheduled election, a majority …

Hustled

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt's controversial national campaign to expose political hypocrites in the on-going impeachment of President Bill Clinton might snag at least one powerful Southern California Republican, the Weekly has learned. According to a source with knowledge of Flynt's months-long multimillion-dollar pay-for-dirt investigation, a ranking Republican lawmaker may be unwillingly outed for his homosexual …

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. …

Snoop Doggy Dad

“When I tell people I'm Snoop Doggy Dogg's daddy, the first thing they say is I look too young to be Snoop Doggy Dogg's daddy,” says Vernall Varnado, grinning as he puts down his cigarette and his bottle of beer and reaches into his back pocket. “I tell 'em, 'Go ahead and look here in …

Local H.

Journalists get used to crank mail. I used to work at a magazine where we would routinely get handwritten missives accusing us of spreading Satanism or blaspheming God. But my favorite letter was the guy who wrote in saying he was a successful businessman who loved the magazine, but he had trouble meeting women. He …

Let's Get Mikey

In this issue, Machine Age columnist Wyn Hilty mentions a Dec. 17 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The civil rights group's report documents the CCC's ties to white supremacists. Well, guess who pops up in the report? None other than Michael Collins Piper, whose inclusion …