Lovable Weekly contributor Greg Stacey, er, Stacy just sent us the following...

Last week I was at the local Fatburger, paging through the latest LA Weekly, when I read the blurb featured at the top of an ad for the new indie picture Ten 'til Noon and damn near spit out my turkeyburger:

"Best movie since Pulp Fiction" - Greg Stacey, OC Weekly.

Talk about mixed feelings. I've always wanted to see myself quoted in a movie ad, like I was Roger freaking Ebert or something. But unfortunately that quote was taken completely out of context, giving the impression that I consider Ten 'til Noon to be the very best movie, of any kind, since Pulp Fiction. Well, I absolutely do not. I saw this Tarantino knock-off at the 2006 Newport Beach Film Festival and quite enjoyed it, jokingly suggesting in my review that Tarantino himself secretly directed it and that this was his best film since Pulp Fiction. In other words, I thought Ten 'til Noon was better than, say, Jackie Brown... which is a long way from calling it the best movie made since Pulp Fiction in 1994. The really nutty thing is that there were plenty of legit quotes they could have pulled from my original review, the thing was basically a rave. Whoever put this ad together is a sleaze or an idiot... or maybe both.

Oh, and they spelled my name wrong.

Just as children's thoughts begin to turn to visions of a friendly rabbit bearing gifts of chocolate, jelly beans, and peeps, Garden Grove is gearing up for a mass killing of bunnies.

Since Easter-- both Christianity's most sacred celebration, and the religion's leading bunny-themed holiday-- is almost here, perhaps the county's anti-rabbit strike force should use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. (Of course, the use of blessed munitions may raise separation of Church and State issues.)

Instruction from Brother Maynard on how to use the rabbit-killing relic here, via You Tube.

Jonathan Lansner has an interesting column in today's Reg on how the meltdown of Irvine's subprime mortgage monolith, New Century Financial (here's yesterday's New Century bad news, and here's today's fresh New Century bad news), is effecting other financial institutions with similar names. There are unrelated banks named New Century in Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. The Irvine-based stench of failure has wafted over all of them, but so far it's only caused embarrassment and the urgent need to explain to customers that they have nothing to do with New Century Financial.

And so we are reminded that just because the name's the same, it doesn't mean that any other characteristic is shared. Something to keep in mind if you read this Capitol Weekly story on the split between the California Medical Association and the California Association of Physician Groups over physician assisted suicide. Especially when you get to the seventh paragraph, and learn that the president of the California Medical Association is Dr. Frankenstein.

Really.

Dr. Frankenstein.

He must have a helluva reassuring bedside manner to overcome a name like that.

The president of Riverside's Golden State Fence Company, and the company's manager, were sentenced yesterday to 1,040 hours of community service and three years of probation, after pleading guilty to knowingly hiring workers illegally in this country. Both also received six figure fines.

A construction business in California knowingly hiring undocumented workers? Happens every day, right? How is that news? you ask.

Simple.

As the AP notes, Golden State Fence "once helped build a fence to keep illegal immigrants from crossing the Mexican border".

Apparently all those jokes about using Mexican laborers in the U.S. to build a fence to keep Mexican laborers out of the U.S. are true. Still not funny, but true.

"Wild" seems to be the word of choice among headline writers to describe yesterday's weather. The LA Daily News bucked the trend, going with "Crazy", but for the most part, editors across the country agree, it was wild.

Of course, in the impressive natural events category, yesterday's weather, wild as it was, is nothing compared to what happened on March 27 forty-three years ago: the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964.

At magnitude 9.2, it was the largest North American earthquake ever recorded. Following the quake that day were 11 aftershocks of magnitude 6.0 or greater. Lesser aftershocks continued for months. The effects of the earthquake were noted as far away as Florida.

115 Alaskans died in the quake, and the tsunamis that followed. And just after midnight, forty-three years ago today, tsunamis generated by the earthquake reached Crescent City, California, 1,400 miles south of Alaska.

Ten people were killed, and 29 city blocks were severely damaged. 289 homes and businesses were destroyed. Total property damage is estimated to have been $7.4 million.

When the waves reached Los Angeles, they were greatly diminished but still had enough power to sink three boats, and tear many others loose from their moorings.

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So while it can in no way compare to what happened in March of 1964, yesterday's weather was a little reminder of how little control we have over nature, when it turns dangerous. (Which is why it would be a good idea to address this, before the situation gets any worse.)

Your favorite wab invades bookstores nationwide on May 1 with the hardcover version of ¡Ask a Mexican! (pre-order your copy on Amazon now). What can you expect? Here's Publisher's Weekly take on it:

In Arellano's popular Orange County Weekly column "¡Ask a Mexican!" now widely syndicated and gathered in this acerbic volume, he answers serious, curious, and sometimes hateful but mostly irreverent questions about Mexicans. This book compiles what are presumably the best question-and-answer exchanges over the past two years, under topics including language, sex, immigration and food. Arellano wittily defuses bigotry and mocks stereotypes with his often well-researched replies. To the inquiry on the authenticity of flour vs. corn tortillas, he explains that the Spaniards created the former. "Why do Mexicans wear their clothes when swimming?" is a recurring question among Arellano's readers; his answer: good manners. In response to the vitriolic "What is it about the word illegal that Mexicans don't understand," he points out that U.S. employers don't understand the word either. The author's relentless irony and reclamation of derogatory terms (e.g., "wab," the Orange County version of wetback) is not for the faint of heart, but this approach is a welcome reprieve from common tiptoeing around the fraught subjects of race relations and immigration.

Here's the link (The Mexican is the seventh item down). In the meanwhile...pre-order the book!

A variety of stories lurching forward this morning…

It looks like the most special of all special elections is finally over, and Janet Nguyen is the new First District Supervisor, winning by a total of 3 votes.   Superior Court Judge Michael Brenner rejected Trung Nguyen's claim that the election's recount was performed in an illegal manner.  The winning Nguyen is scheduled to be sworn in tomorrow at the Board of Supes weekly meeting.  There are dark rumblings that the losing Nguyen might appeal Judge Brenner's ruling, making the most special of all special election even more special.

Reversing polarity and following the flow of power from a legislative chamber to the courtroom, the Assembly has approved a bill revising the state's sentencing guidelines.  The U.S. Supreme Court struck down California's Determinate Law back in January, declaring, as Justice Ginsberg wrote, "any fact that exposes a defendant to a greater potential sentence must be found by the jury, not a judge, and established beyond a reasonable doubt, not merely by a preponderance of the evidence".  The Associated Press reports, is that,

Law enforcement officials estimate the Supreme Court's ruling could allow 10,000 California convicts to seek new sentences.

So even without further business from Trung Nguyen, the courts are likely to be busy for quite some time.

Unlike those convicts, the state's prisons secretary is unlikely to be complaining about his situation anytime soon.  Thanks to the governor's intervention, Secretary James Tilton is now one of the highest paid state officials.   Yesterday, we noted that the governor was looking to boost spending for his personal office.  Today, the Times reports on another increase at the upper end of government.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has quietly given substantial raises — some exceeding 23% — to top state administrators, claiming they deserve increased compensation to keep pace with the private sector and local government agencies.

Last year, the governor used a new state law to raise the salary of his prisons secretary to $225,000, a 71% increase that made James Tilton among the highest paid officials in California state government. Now Schwarzenegger is approving hefty pay hikes for 49 other officials.

Cabinet secretaries, for example, will receive up to 22.7% more, and department directors up to 12.2%.

Rather entertainingly, the pay raises are scheduled to take effect April Fool's Day.

Of course, there are always pessimists when it comes to such pay raises.

The governor is raising salaries of some of his top political appointees at a time when the state's budget picture is grim and may get worse. Elizabeth G. Hill, the state's nonpartisan legislative analyst, said California could face a shortfall of billions of dollars under Schwarzenegger's budget if the Legislature balks at proposed spending cuts.

And some lawmakers are not enthusiastic about cuts championed by the governor, including proposals to reduce welfare programs by hundreds of millions of dollars and slash public transportation aid by more than $1.1 billion.

But local boy Dick Ackerman isn't among the doubters.

"If you want to get good people in there, you need to pay them commensurately with what they can get on the outside," said Senate Republican leader Dick Ackerman (R-Irvine).

Fittingly enough for the Enron era, that logic is confined to the executive levels.

At state government's lower levels, salaries are not rising as fast, union leaders said Monday. Earlier this year, a group of about 25,000 managers and supervisors received a 3.5% pay hike, their first increase in six years, said Tim Behrens, president of the Assn. of California State Supervisors.

Perhaps those less exalted employees should follow the example of local Congressman Gary Miller (R-Most Corrupt), and realize they shouldn't rely on the government for their income.  That is, they shouldn't rely on their government salaries-- since, as Miller's career shows, there are other, much more lucrative, ways of getting government money.

Back in December, and then again in January, we noted Miller imaginative approach to combining his private real estate dealing with public sector dollars and tax breaks.  Some, like the FBI, find Miller's deals suspicious.  Especially a deal in which Miller claimed that the city Monrovia forced him to sell the city a piece of land he owned.  Others claimed that Miller pressured the city into buying it.  Now, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has gotten a hold of the video tape of the city council meeting in which Miller's sale is discussed.

Greg Sargent has the video and some more background material posted at TPM's Election Central.  If Miller ever tries to claim in court that this evidence of him being "forced" to sell his land, he'll probably fare about as well as Trung Nguyen did.

If you belong to one of the groups targeted for a good squeezin' called on to sacrifice in the governor's budget plan-- college students, public school teachers, families on welfare-- rest assured that the truly needy will still be well taken care of.

Kate Folmar reports in the San Jose Mercury News:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to boost spending on his personal office next year by more than 5 percent, even as a lean budget prompts him to limit welfare grants and ask college students to pay higher tuition.

For the second year running, the Republican governor seeks to peg spending on his 185-person staff to an inflationary formula that dictates spending for the state Legislature and some courts.

In and of itself, Schwarzenegger's proposal wouldn't break the bank - adding only $1 million to the $103 billion state budget.

But the notion galls some observers because it smacks of the formula-driven "autopilot" spending Schwarzenegger railed against in 2005 as he campaigned for the power to make unilateral budget cuts.

And, Schwarzenegger's budget simultaneously expects others - notably welfare recipients and public university students - to take hits. California's revenue projections are cooling due to lackluster home sales and lower-than-expected tax payments.

The call for more spending in the governor's office leaves Mike Herald, a legislative advocate for the Western Center for Law and Poverty, "dumbfounded."

"They don't think a cost-of-living adjustment is appropriate for the poorest people in the state, but it's perfectly fine for the people making $100,000 in the governor's office?" he said. "I just can't reconcile that."

Some members of legislature are described as "diplomatically skeptical" regarding the boost for the governor's retinue, but skepticism, especially of the diplomatic kind, isn't the same as opposition. Folmar quotes Assembly Budget Chairman John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), who says, "I'm sure we'll work something out to everyone's satisfaction."

I suppose that depends on one's definition of "everyone". But members of legislature don't have time to worry about little things like that. These days, there's "a lot of activity" in Sacramento.

According to Jim Sanders of the Sacramento Bee,

A modern-day Gold Rush has erupted over $43 billion targeted for California public works projects, with legislators crafting dozens of bills to affect how the money is spent.

Voter passage of the record bond package last November has spawned a frenzy in which communities and their officeholders are fighting for a piece of the massive pot.

[…]

Lobbyists are counting on a windfall from intense jockeying over bond funds.

"I think it's safe to say that there's money being spent, and there's probably a great deal more money to be spent as the bonds are let and the monies become available," said Don Burns, a veteran lobbyist. "There's no question but that it does spawn a lot of activity."

Of course, all involved assure Sanders that every decision is being made with solely the greatest public good in mind, and with a purity of heart that would put a vestal virgin to shame.

Others may be excused if reading the news this morning, they hear the less virginal Billie Holiday singing some familiar words, Them that's got shall get...

Honestly, sometimes it all seems like a mutant Agatha Christie novel, in which the party guests disappear one by one.  It started quietly enough back in October, when art director Heather Swaim left, politely declining to discuss the why's and wherefore's of her decision to leave.  Lately, the body count has skyrocketed.  And now the Weekly has lost one more:  editor, blogfather, and all-around mensch, Matt Coker.

Matt is leaving to become the editor of the Sacramento News & Review (not just News, not just a Review, like Certs, it's "Two, two, two mints in one!").  Unlike most people faced with relocating to Sacramento, Matt actually seems to be looking forward to it.  And why not?  In addition to being the state capital, Sacramento is known for… for… give me a minute… for being the hometown of Sherwood "Shakey" Johnson, founder of Shakey's Pizza, America's leading chain of palsy-themed pizza parlors.  (Sorry, Matt.  It was the best I could do on short notice.)

The N & R's pursuit of Matt is certainly understandable-- great editor, exceptional writer, excellent human being-- and now that it has him, the results will no doubt be brilliant.  It's about time there was something in Sacramento that could be described as brilliant.

Judging by this photo, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Not at all Drunk in the Photo) would not make an attractive woman, but apparently the good folks of Bush administration disagree. It seems some of them find him so evocative of things feminine that they have trouble remembering what gender he really is.

Back in January, we noted that Congressman Rohrabacher was feeling emasculated by the arrogant behavior of the Bush White House. Now it looks like the Bush Justice Department has decided to finish the job. On March 16, the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Affairs (whose only job is to work with Congress) sent the Surfin' One a letter. A letter that begins,

Dear Congresswoman Rohrabacher:

Wonkette has a copy of the letter, if you want to see the gender reassignment in its original cold hard print. The Hill has a predictably angry reaction (one that once again echoes the emasculation fears, "Are we really persona non grata already?") from "Rohrabacher spokeswoman Tara Setmayer". Is The Hill sure about that ID? A first name with four letters, two A's, two consonants-- I probably would have gone with "spokesperson" just to be safe.

(thanks to Victor Infante for the tip)