Illustration by Bob AulA media kit for the new Clarendon House autobiography Wally George: The Father of Combat TV arrived last week at Clockwork World Headquarters, located in the OC Weekly building. George has hosted a right-wing yukfest called Hot Seat for more than 15 years on Irvine's KDOC/ Channel 56. What really gave us a hoot was this “testimonial” for the book from KIIS-FM morning man Rick Dees: “What can I say about Wally George that hasn't already been said about Saddam Hussein? As a broadcaster, Ifeel Wally serves a vital purpose, which is to see Rush Limbaugh in a better light.” Later in the week, Clockwork received a copy of the book jacket with Dees' quote, but it had been altered after the opening Saddam zinger to read: “Wally George is a man of hidden talents . . . at least I assume they're hidden. Jokes aside, I speak from the heart when I say I love Wally. I really love him.” Did Wally figure out the original wasn't a testimonial? Or did he fear legal reprisals from that big, fat idiot Limbaugh?
SPEAKING OF RIGHT-WING NUTS WHO NEVER GO AWAY . . . You loved him as a child; you trusted him as a mother. And now Robert “B-1 Baggage” Dornan is being mentioned as a candidate for the congressional seats held by his former GOP aisle mates Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and Ron Packard (R-Oceanside). How serious? So much so that congressional Republican power brokers are propping up Darrell Issa, the Vista millionaire who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 1998, to stave off Dornan should Packard pack it in, according to an Oct. 26 Copley News Service item. The—how does R. Scott Moxley refer to him? Oh, yeah—bitter, defeated ex-congressman has previously threatened to go gunning for Rohrabacher because in Dornan's twisted mind, Rohrabacher didn't provide enough support to Dornan in his unsuccessful 1998 rematch with Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana). Clockwork doesn't care who Dornan takes on, so long as he wins. We figure the longer Poppy's around, the longer the Weekly's assured of solvency. COKED UP Coca-Cola is considering introducing vending machines whose price per can or bottle will escalate as temperatures do. That may seem mean and twisted and utterly contemptuous toward the poor, but it's really . . . uh . . . what were we saying? Proponents of the plan say that the world's largest soft-drink bottler is simply applying the principles of supply and demand to street sales. Kinda like crack dealers—only this Coke makes you burp instead of sell your baby. One beverage industry exec reportedly remarked, “It's another reason to move to Sweden. What's next? A machine that x-rays people's pockets to find out how much change they have and raises the price accordingly?” A machine that x-rays people's pockets to find out how much change they have . . . say, he may have something there. Wonder if he's got a patent? COKED UP II Does this mean Huntington Beach, whose official beverage is Coca-Cola, will jack up the number of quarters we'll have to pump into those damn parking meters, depending on how badly we need a space? COKED UP III You'll recall that earlier this year, Huntington Beach agreed to let Coca-Cola slap its logo on city-owned trash cans, lifeguard towers and basketball backboards in exchange for $300,000 per year. Hot on the heels of that deal, Garden Grove got $100,000 over 10 years for an official-beverage deal from Pepsi. After setting up a bidding war between the bottlers, San Diego is currently hammering out a pact in which that city will get from $6.7 million to $23.6 million over 12 years from Pepsi. Now that's a lotta quarters. Sounds like Surf City went to the well—or, in this case, the soda dispenser—too soon.
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.