This is not a look back at disgraced Sheriff Mike Carona, the Little Sheriff, the Debs, the Little Debbie Snack, the Freeway Complex Fire, Rick Warren, Wiley Drake, any lantern-jawed preacher with the last name of Schuller, pedo-priests, the 241 toll road extension, Proposition 8, fluctuating gasoline prices, the mortgage meltdown or the havoc that phenomenon wreaked. No, these are 15 stories from 2008 that may have fallen through the cracks were it not for the wonders of online archives and slow news cycles.

 

1) Anaheim burger magnate Carl Karcher died on Jan. 11. Ironically, his passing was not parlayed into a stupid commercial where a 909 reject/Paris Hilton/a backward-capped bro lovingly slaps/washes/ dribbles burger juice on the Carl's Junior founder's corpse.

 

2) Mensa escapee Dana Welch was arrested on May 22 for allegedly pointing a laser pointer at three commercial jets and a police helicopter. When asked why he did it, the 36-year-old Orange resident explained he was bored. Ironically, if you lived in Orange, you'd understand.

 

3) A member of the Scottish Parliament in July tried to get Glasgow Prestwick Airport renamed after Robert Burns in honor of the poet and lyricist, saying, "I remember flying into John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, and the fact it was called John Wayne was a big tourist attraction. I don't see why we shouldn't exploit the Burns brand here in Scotland." Ironically, government officials passed, realizing, yeah, right, like Robert Burns was as culturally significant as John Wayne. As if!

 

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"All [California lawmakers] know how to do is spend, spend, spend . . . Then they realize they are spending too much and so they tax, tax, tax. I will not raise your taxes. I will not cut education."

--Arnold Schwarzenegger in October 2003, while campaigning to unseat then-Gov. Gray Davis in a recall election because Davis wanted to raise taxes to end an $8 billion budget crisis. Fast forward to today and Gov. Schwarzenegger, the liar, has proposed raising taxes by a whopping $14.3 billion and cutting education to deal with a $41.6 billion budget gap created on his watch.

--R. Scott Moxley

You might not have noticed, but just before Christmas, two Orange County cops confessed to bizarre crimes. On Dec. 16, Joshua Wendall Blackburn, a six-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol (CHP), admitted that he broke into a CHP evidence locker in Santa Ana and stole 64 kilograms of cocaine, worth more than $1 million on the street, according to prosecutors. Blackburn hid 62 kilograms in his father's shed in Riverside and the other 2 kilograms in the attic of his Murrieta home. He'll be hiding in a California prison for the next five years and eight months.

Three days later, on Dec. 19, another cop fell hard. Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Richard Rodriguez confessed to molesting, photographing and threatening Santa Ana prostitutes while on duty. He'd originally claimed innocence, but he changed his plea in exchange for a 16-month prison sentence.

But it wasn't just those two events that tainted OC law enforcement. Consider five other headlines written not by journalists, but by the Orange County district attorney's office in recent press releases:

• "Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy to be arraigned for molesting 15-year-old daughter of terminally ill friend in hospital," Dec. 9.

• "Off-duty police convicted of fracturing man's skull by throwing him down stairs at Anaheim baseball game," Dec. 3.

• "Orange County Sheriff's Deputy convicted of filing eight false police reports in DNA property crimes project," Dec. 3.

• "Cop to be arraigned for assaulting ex-girlfriend and two friends with firearm and shooting into the air after car chase," Dec. 2.

• "Orange County Sheriff's Deputy to be arraigned for punching jail inmate in face with keys in hand," Dec. 1.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

The Register's Greg Hardesty has the scoop on 38-year-old Irvine attorney Sandeep Baweja admitting to burning through nearly all of a $2.7-million settlement that was supposed to be shared by about 1,000 plaintiffs he represented in a class-action labor lawsuit.

According to the story, Baweja played the dumb card, saying he invested the money in the stock market without knowing what he was doing, apologizing for his knuckleheaded conduct in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and remorsefully vowing to notify prosecuting authorities and the State Bar of California of his actions and comply with their investigators. Disbarment and criminal charges have yet to be filed, but he could face both. His Baweja Law Group has offices in Irvine, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Baweja was on the Weekly's radar during the days, weeks and months leading up to Irvine's November city elections. At the urging of then-City Councilman Sukhee Kang, who was campaigning for the mayor's seat, the council donated $1 million in taxpayer funds held in reserve to the Irvine Public Schools Foundation, ostensibly for cash-strapped schools. Baweja sits on the board of the foundation, one of the largest education non-profits in California. After the city grant, the foundation was set to host a campaign fund-raiser for Kang and his council colleagues Beth Krom and Larry Agran. Media exposure over the inappropriateness of a nonproft holding a political event killed it.

During the campaign, Councilwoman Christina Shea, who ultimately lost the mayor's race to Kang, called on the foundation to immediately release the city funds to schools, something she alleged had not yet been done. Kang deflected those concerns by labeling himself the education candidate (and now education mayor) and Shea and others as being anti-schools.

If a fellow who now essentially admits to mishandling $2.7 million in other people's money being that close to $1 million in taxpayer money directed to a nonprofit is troubling, get a load of this: Baweja was listed as the TREASURER!!! of Irvine's Yes on R and S campaigns. More >>

Brazilian Style New Year's Eve Party, 9 p.m.

Painful but oh so smooth. $25

The Rhythm Lounge, 245 Pine Ave., Long Beach, CA; 562-435-4288

'80s New Year's Eve, 9 p.m.

It's like a combination of fun and funner! $25

Club Addiction, 9559 Imperial Hwy., Downey, CA; 562-688-8128

Christian Singles' Giant New Years' Eve Dance Party, 8 p.m.

A Jesus approved celebration. $50

Cal State Fullerton, Titan Student Union, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton, CA; (714) 278-2468

Part I at 4 p.m.: Downtown Los Angeles walking tour of lynch spots! Interview with the man behind this ultimate tourist trap, Scripps College Professor Ken Gonzales-Day.

Part II at 4:20 p.m.: Southern California ethnic news aggregator LA Beez.

Part II at 4:40 p.m.: Your calls regarding your favorite Southern California news sources--blogs, radio shows, newspapers, random guys walking down the street. Full list on this blog tomorrow!

***UPDATED***

As former Weekly reporter Derek Olson mentions in this piece, recent UC Irvine graduate Reut R. Cohen keeps tabs on the campus' controversial Muslim Student Union on her blog. But, understandably, it's been all Gaza, all the time in recent days.

Cohen (left) provides video "inside a Hamas meeting" and of Benjamin Netanyaho delivering a Gaza statement in English. She also provides links to the latest news reports out of Israel.

 It's the same story over at Little Green Footballs, which has also been critical of the MSU but is currently preoccupied by YouTube allowing the removal of videos embarrassing to Hamas, a "Palestinian shill" getting space to rant in the Washington Post and "wacko ex-congresswoman" Cynthia McKinney's failed mission to rescue Hamas.

Nada mas at Red County. 

Meanwhile, the Anteaters for Israel website is offline, and Orange County Hillel Foundation, which links to groups at UCI, Chapman and CSUF, has only general info, nothing about the current situation. And the MSU site is also Gaza-less [UPDATE: The following is wrong!], although it does mention a regularly scheduled "current events" talk on the UCI campus today at 1:30 p.m., so you can bet that topic will come up. [A sign on the door of the Cross-Cultural Center, where the talk was scheduled, informs the facility is closed through the new year. The event listing on the MSU site was obviously auto-generated--or part of some dastardly a secret plot!.] 

 

 

According to Travel Mole, "the online community for the travel and tourism industry," visiting Israel is at an all-time high amid the bombs raining down courtesy of the Hamas theme park:

Despite the Strife, Tourism in Israel is at an all Time High

Perhaps it's the 60th anniversary as more visitors came to Israel in 2008 than in any year since the independent State of Israel was founded in 1948. "This is the first time ever more than 3 million tourists came to Israel in a single year," says Arie Sommer, Israel's Tourism Commissioner for North and South America, "and this underscores Israel's attractiveness to travelers of all nationalities, faiths, ethnic backgrounds and interests."   Travel Mole identifies the top-draw countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia and France. Over the weekend, a feller on the teevee mentioned that Rwanda is now a happening travel destination. Because nothing screams family fun like a land recently wracked by genocide. Hell, why not add Sadr City and Kabul to the itinerary?

Washington Post TV columnist Tom Shales has the scoop on the new incarnation of one of Time magazine's top 100 shows ever, Mystery Science Theater 3000.

For those unfamiliar with the Comedy Central program, which premiered -- this can't be right, can it? -- 20 years ago, creator Joel Hodgson's theme song set up the premise: In the not-too-distant future, a guy working in a satellite loading bay becomes stranded in space with robot pals created from odds and ends found on the spacecraft. A mad scientist who controls their environment from Earth forces them to watch terrible old movies. To remain sane, the spaceman and his robot crew openly ridicule the movie on the screen, as you and your buddies would an episode of The McLaughlin Group.

No, it ain't Shakespeare, but MST3K was regarded well enough to be awarded a Peabody and spun off into a 1996 theatrical motion picture version (minus Hodgson, who'd left the franchise several seasons before--not to pursue other projects, as he told interviewers at the time, but, as he reveals to Shales, creative differences with others brought aboard well into the show's run).

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