With the smell of spring training fresh in the air around the old ballpark, it's been the best of times and the worst of times for Matt McCarthy. The 30-year-old 28-year-old medical intern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City has seen Odd Man Out, his recently published book based on his minor league pitching career in the Angels organization, excerpted in Sports Illustrated, hailed as the farm-league equivilent to Jim Bouton's polo groundbreaking major-league tell-all Ball Four and compared quite favorably to Bull Durham, which--who knows?--could mean a movie deal will one day be in the offing.

But fans, former teammates and the Orange County Register are lashing out at McCarthy, a hard-throwing lefty who the Angels drafted out of Yale in the 26th 21st round of the 2002 Major League Baseball draft, which was held during the height of what has become known as the Steroid Era and the same summer Anaheim won the World Series. Halo diehards are miffed McCarthy did not give a heads up to former teammates he wrote about before the salacious excerpt-and now book-was published. A coach's interactions with players should remain confidential, like confessions to a priest or revelations to a therapist, others have honked.

Former player Heath Miller Luther had not read the book but, based on what he'd heard, complained "99.9 percent is not true. The .1 percent that is true is the fact that most of the American players don't speak Spanish, and most of the Hispanics don't speak English." That was part of a long comment he left on the online version of the Reg story, where Sam Miller writes, "it's a book that, if we're honest about it, makes . . . the Angels look bad." Many within the organization told Miller they knew nothing of the many incidents McCarthy detailed that showed oversized boys will be boys.

I must make two confessions: I'm an Angel fan, and I loved the book. For a physician and washout pitcher, McCarthy has one hell of an ear for fascinating stories--or, if his Halo critics are correct, quite the wild imagination. He's got a pretty decent writer's touch, too.

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Just got off the phone with V. James DeSimone, attorney for a man who says pedo-priest Denis Lyons molested him as a child during the 1990s. They have settled their civil suit against the Catholic Diocese of Orange for an undisclosed amount. "Our client is pleased with the settlement, and looks forward to working with the district attorney's office," to bring criminal charges against Lyons, who has cost Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown more than $4 million in civil settlements. No personnel files will be released, per the judge's order and Brown's eternal gratitude. More to come Monday...

The "Manny on the Street" segment of KISS-FM's Ryan Seacrest Show is scheduled to come to Aliso Viejo's favorite "community-based lactation destination" between 7 and 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

"Expectant and breastfeeding couples, family and friends are invited to attend, have fun, win prizes, see what we have to offer and learn some of the great things breastfeeding can do for families, including saving them money," says Jennifer Ritchie, Milkalicious Breastfeeding Boutique president, in the firm's all inclusive press statement.

"This is our way of bringing awareness to the importance of breastfeeding--socially, emotionally and economically," adds Jennifer Kusmier-Smith, the Milkalicious co-owner and vice president of business development. "We wanted to foster the idea that breastfeeding is not 'weird,' but rather the cultural norm and the green choice, with a fun event."

First, breast milk is green? B) What could be weird about having Seacrest's little Filipino dynamo--or Filipynamo--reporting live from an event where breast pumps are doled out as prizes? There certainly must be a joke in here somewhere about breastfeeding and diminuitive American Idol host Seacrest.

If you've been following the self-destruction of the LA Times throughout the past year or so, you probably know that next week, the paper is killing off its "California" section, the paper's increasingly anemic attempt to convince readers it actually cares about local news.

As its name suggests, the California section really just combined a few local stories with state budget coverage from Sacramento and assorted briefs from flyover country. Years ago, the California section was called "Metro," and really did include lots of local news. At one point, in the glory days of the mid-to-late 1990s, the paper even had a bunch of so-called Times Community News bureaus spread throughout OC, so if you read the paper here, your local news was really, really local. And until this week, if you picked up the Times in OC, Dana Parsons was your local columnist, sort of the Steve Lopez of Santa Ana's Civic Center.

Starting in March, what remains of local news coverage will be folded into the paper's front page section. No more room for the ruminations of Parsons, who'll switch to a staff writing position, although word is Lopez, the paper's star columnist up in LA--think best-selling book and movie deal-- will get to keep his column.

Over the years the Weekly has bemoaned Parsons for his wrongheaded carping about the moral culpability of the Haidl gang rape victim but also paid tribute to his more courageous coverage, like his expose of the shoddy police work and prosecutorial indifference that led to the wrongful arrest, conviction and imprisonment of an innocent kid named Arthur Carmona. As Weekly freelancer Bob Emmers wrote here, Parsons was the first person to pay any attention to the facts.

"Parsons then proceeded to do something astonishing--particularly for Orange County and its often lackluster journalism scene: he began his own investigation of the case. He read the entire 700-plus-page trial transcript. He attempted to interview witnesses, police officers, investigators, attorneys, experts in eyewitness testimony. And then he wrote a series of nine columns questioning Arthur's conviction."

Thanks in large measure to Parsons' refusal to stop writing about Carmona, the kid eventually saw his charges vacated. Sadly, Carmona perished in February 2008 during a late-night road rage incident in Santa Ana. We already miss Carmona and we'll miss Parsons too, even if we didn't always agree with his columns, but we're glad there will at least be more room for stories about Britney Spears' dad.

Orange County Register: A tip-of-the-knit cap back at the Reggie, for acknowledging Weekly news breaker R. Scott Moxley's 2001 cover story on a nurse's allegations that famed Dr. Steven Kooshian dispensed watered-down AIDS meds. At the time, Kooshian, other media and Orange County's gay community tried to discredit Moxley's investigastion. When will they ever learn? As the Reg reports today, Kooshian pleaded guilty to multiple counts of health-care fraud and lying to investigators. Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grouse, whose White House-with-a-watermelon-patch email drew calls of racism, says he will resign. A confused public reacts: Los Alamitos has a mayor? . . .  Mickadeit: I took jewelry over to one of those cash-for-gold outfits for "Aunt K." So that's what he's calling his cigar-with-heroin-chaser habit. . . . Lanser: OC new-home sales run 87 percent below average. Ouch.

Los Angeles Times: A not-as-enthusiastic tip-of-the-knit cap back at the Times, for acknowledging Weekly news breaker R. Scott Moxley's 2001 cover story on a nurse's allegations that famed Dr. Steven Kooshian dispensed watered-down AIDS meds. Unlike the Reggie, the Times failed to link to Moxley's piece. Parsons: Columnist the Weekly once dubbed the best journalist in Orange County to readers: buh-bye. He'll now be just another California section writer. The Coen Brothers have created an ad that ridicules "clean coal." President Obama set an August 2010 deadline for most U.S. military forces to pull out of Iraq. In a related story, U.S. Military Forces Airlines schedules a buttload of flights from Iraq to Afghanistan.  

Man met bril / Flickr / Creative Commons

Spotted on the commute to Weekly world headquarters today: a brown Dodge pickup whose back window read, in blue electricians-tape lettering, "TAX REVOLT!"

Spotted on Red County and Orange Juice Blog: recall fever against all the Republicans who supported the state's recently passed tax-hiking budget.

Spotted at Irvine's Atrium Hotel from March 13 to 16: Freedom Law School's 2009 Health & Freedom Conference. The conference, which has been held in Orange County since 1988 according to outreach coordinator Max Hawthorn, features a diverse slate of speakers who will address topics ranging from "Cure for Tooth Decay" to "What Really Happened On 9/11? But bread and butter of the conference, and the "law school," is tax protest. As defined by the Anti-Defamation League:

The tax protest movement is a relatively long-lived anti-government movement rising out of opposition to federal income taxes. Tax protesters generally believe that either the income tax laws are in some way invalid or that they do not apply to most citizens; therefore, they believe they have a legal and moral right not to pay taxes. Many tax protesters suspect that the government covers up the "truth" about the income tax in order to continue oppressing the people and taking their money. Tax protesters engage in a wide variety of tax evasion strategies that range from simple refusal to pay taxes to complicated schemes using onshore and offshore trusts in order to hide income from the government. Tax protesters are also violent on occasion, attacking IRS agents or property or others charged with enforcing the law. 

Hawthorne told me a few weeks ago that the conference generally attracts between 200 and 400 participants. Perhaps those numbers will swell with a few at-wit's-end converts from the new ranks of GOP-ers who want to see Abel Maldonado's head on a pike and who don't read Steve Lopez.

A location scout for a spy movie could not have picked a better location for my late December meeting with Craig Monteilh: a table outside a restaurant in a bustling Irvine shopping center. A lensman would appreciate the shadow-erasing clouds hovering overhead on the warm winter morning. And central casting could not have found a better leading man: Monteilh is tall, intense, talkative, with a shaved head and the kind of cut body one would expect from someone who is now a fitness instructor. All that was missing was the story, which Monteilh was just itching to tell.
"I'm looking forward to getting my name back where it should be," he said.

The gist of 46-year-old's tale: that he had taped Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis espousing radical ideas and in some cases plotting terrorism in Orange County. Not quite trusting the source--for a variety of reasons, which will soon become clear--we sat on his story.
 
Then, at dawn on Feb. 20, federal agents arrested 34-year-old Afghan native Ahmad Niazi at his Tustin home. Something about the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the arrest sounded familiar.
 
Looking at my Monteilh interview notes with fresh eyes, I saw that I only scribbled down one name as he had been talking about alleged terror plotters:

Ahmad Niazi. More >>

During my lunch break today, a nice lady with the Orange County Sheriff's Department dropped by the Weekly's offices looking to serve me with a subpoena. I won't go into the myriad possibilities of pissed-off people who crossed my mind, but suffice it to say I assumed this was some crazy or disgruntled person I've written about harassing me with legal paperwork. So it was to my great surprise when, an hour later, the sheriff's employee returned again, and handed me a a subpoena to testify next month in the criminal trial of Steve Rocco, the ex-Orange Unified School District trustee.

The last time I wrote about Rocco, he'd just been busted for stealing a ketchup bottle from a cafeteria at Chapman University. He's fighting the charges, of course, and has a criminal trial scheduled to begin at 9 AM on March 18. I'll be there, but it's doubtful I'll be testifying. All I know about Rocco's arrest is what I wrote in that aforementioned blog post. But my guess is Rocco doesn't want me on the stand to talk about stolen ketchup, he wants me to tell the world about "The Partnership," the evil cabal involving Albertsons, Kodak Film and Smokecraft Sausage that secretly controls Orange County government.

As I've previously noted here and here, Rocco first encountered and exposed the dreaded Partnership in 1981, when cops busted him for stealing several rolls of Kodak Film and a sausage from an Albertsons Supermarket. For years, he valiantly struggled to end the group's tenebrous stranglehold on power and avoid their almost imperceptible efforts to assassinate him. In Orange a few years back, Rocco struck back at the cabal when thousands of parents--acting on Rocco's voters guide self-desciption as an 'educator' smartly voted him onto the school board.

Sadly, Rocco's reign as an educator has now ended and sadder still, the Partnership has once again set Rocco up for stealing food items. The Ketchup Advisory Board could not be reached for comment, but I have a feeling they have something to do with the Partnership. Either way the Weekly promises to be there in court on March 18.

Stay tuned...

Cal State Fullerton communications student Elizabeth Heath contacted the Weekly about a contest her Brand Campaigns class has entered to come up with the best advertising campaign for the Nissan cube.

The cube is a car. It looks like a boxier Toyota Scion. Like the Scion, it is meant to appeal to young drivers who have no use for your rounded corners, sports-car looks or capital letters, maaaan!

Heath has obviously taken a long beer-bong gulp from Nissan Springs.

"This versitile, hip and technologically advanced subcompact will be marketed primarily towards college-aged youth such as myself," she writes. "Consequently, it is crucial that our team generates as much pre-launch buzz as possible in order to most effectively reach our target audience."

Crucial . . . pre-launch buzz . . . effectively reach our target audience. WTF?!? It's bad enough the a big corporation like Nissan has college kids whoring out their products on the cheap. But to get them repeating their adver-babble is . . . well . . . whatever happened to toga parties, panty raids and sleeping through 8 o'clock classes?

But wait, there's more.

"With that said, I was asked to contact you in regards to pitching the idea of featuring a press release for the Nissan cube in your publication," Heath writes. "Your paper typically reaches the hip and young professional demographic so this would be a beneficial opportunity for our team to reach our target audience first hand."

Whoa, whoa, your paper typically reaches the hip and young professional demographic? You mean, the kids dig what we iz laying down? That changes everything.

Fer shizzle my nizzles! This is DJ Cokehead comin' atcha with the 420 on 5150s in the real, real O.C., aaaiiight? I want all my homies and Lisas to check out the cube from my peeps at Nissan, or as I like to lay it down, Nizzshizzle Zanizzle, see ut I'ze sayin'? With $2,500 of cake, my main G's and beeotches at Cal State-izzle Fullertonizzle are mershing hard yo to get 18 to 20 year old hot messes into the stylin', engineericatin' and lifestyle-itatin' of the all new Nissan cube. Word up! Nah, lookie here: don't try to capitalize cube, fool, lest you be gellin' for your great-grand daddy's Buick or sumptin,' see ut I'ze sayin'?

Peace out!