Orange County News Blog

​Citizenship applications that have been backlogged in Santa Ana for years must be processed in the next six months under a settlement announced today.

The agreement also covers cases in the Los Angeles and San Bernardino areas. 

By David Shankbone/Wikipedia Commons

Dave Eggers at the 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival.

​A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius author Dave Eggers will be presented the 2009 "Courage in Media" award at the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' 13th annual banquet Saturday at the Anaheim Hilton.

Anaheim-based CAIR-LA is honoring the Pulitzer Prize nominee for his latest novel Zeitoun, which is about a Muslim American man who volunteers to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina but is mistaken for a terrorist, detained by FEMA and subjected to a series of humiliations and detention at the hands of his own government.

Pretty!

​The serious reconsideration of expanded nuclear power amid our uncertain energy future can mean only one thing: the resumption of serious protests against expanded nuclear power.

With the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS) so close, and a public workshop and hearing about the plant's operations coming up tomorrow, someone had better get Jackson Browne, Martin Sheen and Harry Dean Stanton on the horn again.

​"I can't believe there hasn't been any stories in regards to the foul odor that is covering Mission Viejo, CA like an airborne bacteria," writes a reader named Cori.

"(Well . . . actually, in this Prozac laden city of Stepford, I'm surprised when anyone notices anything outside the 'norm.') The only information I've found about it is from a local blogger."

The local blogger would be Finky the Kid, who writes (the bold emphasis being his): "Mission Viejo, CA stinks. I mean, it reeks to high heaven. There is a sulphurous odor so malignant and intrusive, it has enveloped the neighborhood and penetrated the walls of my house for nearly 48 hours."

Finky and, uh, Mrs. Kid first noticed the smell a couple days before Halloween near the intersection at El Toro Road and Rancho Santa Margarita Parkway. The farther they drove, the worse it got--and it even followed them home! They pulled their car into their garage and closed the door to escape an odor they likened to rotten eggs.

The fact that Finky was able to post something after the fact confirms he shut off the car's engine once they reached the inside of the garage. But you wouldn't blame him for at least contemplating doing himself in based on his search for stinking answers.

Rachel Leeson

Bulldog in space.

​We know--we always say we hate when dogs are shoved into clothing... but even we can appreciate a good costume every now and then. Your Schnauzer as Yoda? Faaaaan-tastic. After the jump: Our top picks from the 2008 Haute Dog Howl'oween Parade in Long Beach.  

The 2009 Haute Dog Howl'oween Parade and Pet Adoption Fair: 2:30 p.m., Sat., Oct. 31, Livingston Park, 4900 E. Livingston Dr., Long Beach. www.hautedogs.com.

​As the Federal Communications Commission meets today to develop some "rules of the road" for the Internet, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Sarah Palin) has thrown up a roadblock.

The bitter, defeated presidential nominee today introduced legislation that would block the FCC from creating new "net neutrality" rules.

​They are an old-fashioned device that could save household energy as well as machine-damaed and worn-out clothing.

Unfortunately, they are also banned in several U.S. communities.

Just try installing a clothes line in Irvine or any Orange County gated community and see what happens. Torture is allowed and encouraged for even thinking such a thing.

"Futuristic concept cars, eye-popping exotics, pre-production models, interactive ride and drives and the latest alternative fuel options" are promised at the OC Auto Show, which opens for a four-day run at Anaheim Convention Center this afternoon.

Swell.

When will our flying Jetsons cars roll off the line?

Continue reading " What Do Futuristic Cars, Hooters"...

Don't forget Bowser.

​As Orange County readies for its participation in Thursday morning's "Great California ShakeOut" earthquake drill, actor and animal activist Leo Grillo is working feverishly to ensure animals are included in mock rescue efforts.

Grillo is founder and president of D.E.L.T.A. Rescue animal sanctuary and Horse Rescue of America. He's offered his services up and down the state to be included in the disaster drill. His medical and administrative staff will "Drop, Cover and Hold On" at 10:15 a.m. like other humans participating in the exercise.

But Grillo also wants folks to think about the critters.

John Woo

​Chinese master action film director John Woo, who achieved cult status with Dip huet seung hung (The Killer) before taking on Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II and other American projects, makes a special appearance at the West Coast premiere of his new film Chi bi (Red Cliff) Thursday night at Regency South Coast Village Theatre.

 

​Shitty economy? Schmitty schmeconomy.

Halloween sales are forecast to reach a record-breaking $6 billion in 2009, up 4.2 percent from the $5.77 billion retailers generated last year.

​A Los Angeles to San Diego high-speed train proposal that's picking up steam (sorry) would bypass the traditional Amtrak Surfliner route down the coast through Orange County and instead head eastward from LA through the Inland Empire.

The state plans new tracks for 220 mile-per-hour trains from Los Angeles to San Diego via Pomona, Ontario, Riverside, Murrieta and Escondido. Trains would make the trip from LA's Union Station to downtown San Diego in one hour and 18 minutes. Amtrak's Surfliner from LA to San Diego via coastal Orange County currently takes nearly three hours, while driving it in a car can take up to six days.

At least it seems to take that long.

​

Hi, it's Vince. No, I'm not going to try to dump 389 ShamWows on you for $19.95. Today I have something far more absorbent--or is that pronounced exorbitant? Whatever. It's the Orange County Fairgrounds, which the state of California has officially put up for sale.

Are you getting this, camera guy? We're talking 150 acres of prime Costa Mesa property, which you must bid on by January 8. What's that? You don't believe me? You don't believe the state would be so short-sighted and cash-poor that it would unload this cultural jewel? Well, feast your eyes on this Request For Proposals (RFP), my friends.

Kirby Dick is coming to Irvine to screen "Outrage," his documentary on closeted gay politicians.

​UC Irvine's Film and Video Center was late in releasing details of its fall program because the FVC's tiny and tireless staff was unsure whether there would even be a program. (Thank you, UC system across-the-board budget cuts!)

Not only will the show go on, it will feature an impressive lineup of new, classic and experimental fare. Included are a 41st anniversary screening of the late, great Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Orange County premiere of The Yes Men Save the World, a brief residency by Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, an appearance by the leading exponent of Taiwanese Second Wave cinema Tsai Ming-Liang and a documentary on closeted gay politicians introduced by its Oscar-nominated writer-director, Kirby Dick.

Best of all, in these budget-crunched times, it's cheap! Admission to Dick's Outrage and afternoon seminar-screenings with Costa are free, while per-screening tickets to the other evening shorts and features range from a measly $3 to $6. Series passes to all nine evenings are only $15-$25. Full details on the program, tickets and locations follow after the jump . . .

On the move.

The struggle to save a crazy-colorful fountain sculpture created by the internationally recognized Marlo Bartels has been resolved, according to the Laguna Beach artist's wife.

The whimsical-but-functional fountain was unveiled in the Irvine Regional Hospital lobby upon the facility's 1990 opening to great fanfare. After all, Bartels' sculptures grace parks, museums and the inside of rich people's homes around Southern California and the world. "Marlo is clearly one of the most important contemporary public sculpture artists to be working on the West Coast," Laguna Art Museum director Bolton Colburn stated in a letter urging the saving of the fountain.

The hospital's previous owner abandoned the sprawling complex along Sand Canyon Avenue near the 405 freeway in December 2008. Shortly after leasing the space in February, Newport Beach-based Hoag Hospital decided the large art piece didn't fit with a redesign aimed at upgrading the medical facility to today's standards.

Not only that, the fountain simply did not work--and when it did, overspill created a slip hazard in a heavily trafficked area, a Hoag spokesperson told the Weekly in May.

By Ellie Scharf

​Photographers displayed in the countless galleries and museums of Laguna Beach are now on notice: you've not only got stiff competition, but that competition is getting younger.

The photo above by Ellie Scharf is one of two taken by 13-year-olds from the Boys & Girls Club of Laguna Beach that won the Image Makers 2009 National Photography competition. The shots will now tour to various venues and events, including the Boys & Girls Club of America's national conference.

The other photo singled out by the Image Makers, which was made by Savannah Coinon, follows after the jump . . .

Made in OC. Why?

​You can't pick up a virtual copy of OC Weekly these days without . . . tripping . . . over . . . yet . . . another . . . instance . . . of hate.

Guess it's on our genes.

So, what's up with that? How did we get here? This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! Well, rather than letting the days go by, Orange County's second annual "Conference on Hate Crime" hopes to get to the bottom of our nagging little problem.

UPDATED WITH PHOTOS FROM THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS MEETING . . .

Photo by Keith May

County Supervisor Bill Campbell, whose district includes the Irvine Co. land in question, is amused by a speaker at Tuesday's board meeting in Santa Ana.

​
He's got a gift. Donald Bren, the secretive, aging multi-billionaire who chairs The Irvine Co., has an undisputed gift for preservation. He sets aside, and preserves, and then preserves yet again the mostly steep, landslide prone, unbuildable portions of his sprawling ranch lands, which stretch from the Pacific Ocean more than 20 miles inland to the Riverside County border.

By Kathryn Hyatt

Don Bren: giver

​ Time and again, company press releases have trumpeted the dedication of thousands of acres of pristine open space by the chairman of the board. Limestone Canyon has repeatedly been dubbed Orange County's "Grand Canyon" and "crown jewel." And over nearly two decades, Bren has also used the open space set asides to cut development deals in endangered species habitat, win the largest conservation easement tax breaks in U.S. history, and wreathe himself and his legacy in laurels from federal and state parks officials.

Now, the Irvine Co. chairman really wants to give it to the people of Orange County. This time, the press releases proclaim that he is ready to turn over, once and for all, 20,000 acres of rugged wild lands at the county's eastern edge to the public.

Not so fast, says the county's conservation community. Like Bren, some are now in their late 70s, and they've been battling him as long as he's been bulldozing sage scrub for master planned tract homes. For them, any gift from The Irvine Co. is worth examining closely to see what strings might be hiding under the tidy bows and shiny wrappings.

Dr. Peter Karpawhich, a Detroit area physician, plays a Bolshevik lieutenant firing a pistol at American soldiers as another re-enactor takes aim in waist-deep snow in "Voices of a Never Ending Dawn."

​Voices of a Never Ending Dawn, a documentary on the 5,500 young American soldiers who were unexpectedly chosen to fight the first Communists in Northern Russia while the rest of World War I was being waged in France in other parts of Europe, makes its West Coast premiere Wednesday at Chapman University's film school.

It's the latest project from filmmaker Pamela Peak, whose award-winning documentary Colorblind airs on the public television stations KOCE/Channel 50 of Huntington Beach and KCET/Channel 28 of Los Angeles.

​On The Politics of Culture from 2:30 to 3 p.m. today on KCRW (89.9 FM), host Jonathan Kirsch talks with religious scholars and others about "The Cartoons That Shook the World--Without the Cartoons."

It involves Yale University publishing a book in November about the controversial cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper depicting the prophet Mohammed--you know, the ones that resulted in worldwide Islamic protests, riots and deaths in 2005.

But the book itself will omit any and all images of the prophet Mohammed.

Remember John Wayne in this get-up as you look for his ghost in the following photos.

​To preview the Lido Boat Show, which brought out John Wayne's old yacht Wild Goose for four days of tours before coming to a close Sunday, Clockwork related a tale from the Weekly's past about "Psychic to the Stars" Kenny Kingston promising an encounter with the Duke's ghost, which was said to haunt the vessel.

That post drew a quick response from someone in Golden, Colorado.

"I have some very interesting pictures that I took at night of the Wild Goose," wrote Lynn LeClere in an email. "I also have other pictures of what I believe are John Wayne's image, or ghost. I would love to email those to you because I think John Wayne does visit his boat."

Prepare to have your mind blown.

Hyatt Regency hotels Huntington Beach (top left), Irvine (top right), Newport Beach (bottom left) and Orange County in Garden Grove.

It's not because they fired all the housekeepers and replaced them with private contractors at three Hyatt hotels in Boston that should make you want to boycott dining at, drinking in, staying at, participating in functions at and having visiting family stay in the Hyatt hotels in Orange County shown above.

It is good enough reason to stay somewhere other than a Hyatt if you are traveling to Boston on business or to watch the Angels, though.

No, the reason you should withhold your Hyatt dollars locally and anywhere else is because before the housekeepers were canned, they had to train their replacements. Many maids tearfully claim they were told they were instructing vacation fill-in help. 

Hyatt denies it here and reacts to high-profile calls for a boycott here.

Toilet paper only accounts for 5 percent of the U.S. forest-products industry. Paper and cardboard packaging makes up 26 percent of the industry, although more than half is made from recycled products. Newspapers account for 3 percent.

Still, environmentalists say 5 percent is too much, and they are pushing tissuers to switch from the ultra-soft wipers to their recycled counterparts.

Or what you may know as sandpaper.

I am iron man!

​If you hopped into a way-back machine to the very early days of the OC Weekly, you could scan the advertisements from a fellow who went by the handle Ki Master. You'd immediately zero in on these because of the accompanying photos, which showed a middle-age man dangling a Sparklett's bottle-sized weight from his ding dong, much like the chap in the picture above. I wish I could link you to the Lost in O.C. column the Weekly's witty and amazing Jim Washburn wrote after he bravely gave the Ki Master's program a try, but the best I can do is get you to the 10th anniversary excerpt found here.

Those ads and Washburn's reporting came to mind when I was reading last week how Dr. Gary Rheinschild, who faces possible state discipline that could range from a public reprimand to loss of his license over allegations he botched several penis enlargement surgeries, advises using weights to guarantee dick-lengthening success.

Now, less than a week after that, I'm really thinking about the Ki Master as I learn Costa Mesa firefighters just had to saw through a metal dumbbell ring to extract a guy's penis that was stuck inside it.

It was previously reported here that Capitalism: A Love Story, the latest Michael Moore documentary, would open Friday at Irvine's Edwards University.

However, officials at the theater that has presented the Orange County premiere of each of the polemic filmmaker's movies dating back to 1989's Roger & Me now say Capitalism won't screen there until Oct. 2.

As noted previously, what SFist lovingly refers to as Moore's "latest love letter to communism" was financially backed by cable magnate and unabashed capitalist John Malone.

​When the Orange County Great Park Corporation Board meets Thursday morning at Irvine City Hall, directors will consider a $93,000 "feasibility study funding agreement" with mega concert promoter Live Nation Worldwide, Inc. for an amphitheater at the former El Toro Marines Corps Air Station.

Los Angeles-based Live Nation bills itself as "the world's largest live event company" as it owns, operates and/or has booking rights to more than 150 venues worldwide and produces thousands of live events each year. House of Blues Entertainment is a division of Live Nation.

Photo by Jennie Warren

Are certain fair board elements taking Orange Countians and state taxpayers for a ride?

Some anonymous Orange County Fair employees have created a website that channels their displeasure with the proposed sale of the state-owned fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.

OCUnfair.com takes particular aim at: Steve Beazley, the Orange County Fair president and CEO; David Ellis, a Newport Coast resident who serves on the governor-appointed Orange County Fair Board of Directors; and Richard "Dick" Ackerman, the former state senator and longtime Fullerton-area public officeholder who OCUnfair.com accuses of helping Beazley and Ellis to engineer an ill-advised land sale.

Indeed, the overriding theme of OCUnfair.com is that Beazley and Ellis are working behind the scenes on a deal that helps two people the most: Beazley and Ellis.

Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc.

Boo! It's the Wild Goose.

​John Wayne's onetime yacht the Wild Goose is being trotted out to drum up interest in the 31st annual Lido Yacht Expo in Newport Beach Sept. 24-27.

Don't blame organizers for pulling out all the stops. Are there really shoppers for yachts these days? Or catamarans? Or electric Duffy boats?

Probably so. Remember, there's always someone making money off everyone else's misery. But even bigger crowds are a lock since tours will be offered on the 136-foot, World War II-era Navy minesweeper haunted by the ghost of The Duke.

That's right, the movie star's spirit roams the vessel. Kenny Kingston told me so.

​If you missed the last Critical Mass bike ride in Laguna Beach, the sight above is just one of many you missed.

The next drop-in ride, which is open to all, is Saturday.

​Santa Ana artist Skeith De Wine was victimized by gay bashing on Sept., 18, 2008, in front of what is now Belsito Roche Fine Art Gallery on East Broadway in Long Beach.

Exactly a year to the day after the hate crime that left De Wine with severe dental damage, a nose broken in two places and a fractured skull and jaw, a show featuring some of his works opens in the new art space.

"The location of this show or night of the event were not planned," De Wine says in an email to friends and art supporters. "This is a strange coincidence and I don't know what to think of this quite yet."