A look back at the last week and the snark that came from it all.
FEB. 11: Whitney Houston dies in Beverly Hills, and a shrine goes up in . . . Laguna Hills? It's at the home of Mike and Mahi Pasha now, but in 2006 the legendary singer rented the place to be closer to her drug counselor. What We Learned: At the former Fullerton apartment of Houston's The Bodyguard co-star Kevin Costner . . . crickets.
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FEB. 12: After years of backslapping, glad-handing and fake back-and-forth, construction finally begins at One Broadway Plaza, developer Mike Harrah's Santa Ana skyscraper that is destined to become Orange County's tallest building. And here is Gustavo Arellano's photographic evidence of that new construction:
What We Learned: At this rate, we'll be 90 before this sucker is finished.
FEB. 13: A pervy guy with a cell phone camera shoots a student doing her business in a women's restroom stall at Cypress College before being chased away. The next day, Steven Anthony Sender, 42, of Santa Ana, is arrested for allegedly sneaking a peak in an Orange Coast College ladies room. What We Learned: Neither victim could spare a square
FEB. 14: Gay and lesbian couples spend Valentine's Day at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana, symbolically seeking marriage licenses in the wake of Prop. 8 being overturned by a federal appeals court. Linda May sums up the feelings of many of her Orange County Equality Coalition colleagues: “I'm a little more optimistic that we might get gay marriage this year.” What We Learned: We'll never be the best-dressed at a gay wedding.
FEB. 15: Harry Welch, head coach of the state champion Santa Margarita High School football team, is reinstated after a three-week suspension brought on by allegations he pushed or shoved an Eagles player. The Catholic school/Diocese of Orange probe of the coach, who has gone 22-5 in two seasons, also revealed three of his assistant coaches have been let go for pot possession raps. What We Learned: To imagine the outcome had Welch gone 5-22.
FEB. 16: A San Luis Obispo pilot who flies into airspace restricted because President Barack Obama is being helicoptered from Corona del Mar to Los Angeles gets an escort by F-16 jets to the ground, where it's discovered 40 pounds of marijuana were also aboard the private Cessna. What We Learned: Coupled with the recent busts of mules from Mexico, the price of weed is about to skyrocket higher than a completed One Broadway Plaza.
FEB. 17: Chad Martin Jurjaks is sentenced to two years and
eight months in state prison for yelling “Fucking Mexicans” at a
42-year-old Latino man and his 26-year-old nephew before punching them
outside a 7-Eleven in Costa Mesa last March. What We Learned: Costa Mesa's next mayoral race had a new candidate.
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.