THURSDAY, MAY 15
●Unusually slow week in Reggieville. The best action is online—nothing like a gay marriage legalization to send the Reggie’s Nutjob Nation a-spewin’. But there’s plenty of gold in today’s print ish, starting with the front-page list of the rag’s “must-read” stories, one of them being “Duel of the Davids.” That would be a tease of the Page 2 brief penned by poor, poor Peter Larsen on who made the final round of American Idol. A “must-read” story? Really? And if we don’t read it, what exactly are the penalties? Will we be forced to read the gawdawful Mom Blog—or would that qualify as cruel and unusual punishment under the Geneva Protocols?

●Got something for Eugene Fields to do—he of the probing, sure-to-win-a-Pulitzer expose of Orange swinger spot Club Amnesty: consider why, in the massage ads of your paper’s Sports section, an establishment named Physical Therapy would be hawking “young exotic Latinas” and “sexy Cindy.” Now, why would the attractiveness of the nurses—because, y’know, the joint is called Physical Therapy—seem to be such a selling point? Could something more insidious be going on at Physical Therapy? Something involving rock-hard man-parts, perhaps? And hey, Eugene, while you’re at it, find out for us why so many of those massage parlors have grand openings all the time.

●The Juice after three weeks? Oh, god . . . it’s not just a car crash, it’s a full-on SigAlert pile-up with intestines and brain matter spread out across the freeway. We could quite easily transform this blog into the Juice-O-Meter . . . and we just might, at least a little, after we return from vacation June 7.

TUESDAY, MAY 6
●A click-up of the Reggie’s website today, and what do we see? Pretty much the most-commented-on headline in Reggie history: MAN SHOOTS DAD IN BUTT.
Well, it certainly grabbed our attention. Surprisingly, not one of the Reggie’s citizen pundits were offended, though it did annoy one wag, who asked: “Did the Register lay off the headline department? It sounds like the punch line from a 7-year-old’s joke.”
Ahhh, fuck that—the Reg-O-Meter loved the headline, as it captured the basic essence of what the story was about, enticing readers to actually, you know, read it.
Unfortunately, two days later, when the Reggie published a print version of the story, the paper’s editors totally lost their balls, as the headline was changed to the far-less-controversial MAN IS ACCIDENTALLY SHOT AT SMOKE SHOP.
Reggie eds, you're a bunch of asses.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7
●What kind of idiot would be offended by the word “gringo” when it’s used to describe hot sauce? A Gordon Dillow fan, of course.

●Now that the Reggie’s pathetic, embarrassing cat contest is over, the paper has moved on to exploiting other defenseless animals for cheap publicity. This time, it’s a horse that’s involved, a two-year-old filly cursed with the unfortunate name of Register To Win (that moniker alone has us Googling up the number for the closest SPCA office). As described in today’s Sports pages, the winner of this latest contest will become the third partner in Register To Win, joining owners Robert Allred and Reggie sports columnist Jeff Miller in an attempt to earn some $25,000 worth of prize money this racing season at Los Alamitos, which the Reggie will then donate to charities the paper sponsors.
We’re not sure what exactly the prize is for the winner, other than the chance to say they own a horse—the contest is only open to Reggie subscribers (they still have some?) who are members of The Insider, their special-folks club which also hawks chintzy Reggie logo keychains, commuter mugs, and other crap. But we also couldn’t help wondering what if the same, sad fate that befell Derby runner-up Eight Belles happens to Register To Win? A horse named after the Reggie, having to be put to death so it won’t have to suffer anymore? We’re already going batshit crazy with the metaphors . . .

FRIDAY, MAY 9
●We just looooove the house ads in today’s local section that depict a couple of grinning guys with pictures of flashy cars and sweet cribs hovering in thought bubbles over their heads. “Dreaming of a new home?” and “Dreaming about some new wheels?” reads the accompanying text. Why, sure, Reggie! Please explain to me how I can fulfill my fantasy of buying a new house and a new car!
“Make money as a Register Independent Carrier!” the copy blurbs.
(Little secret: That’s what they used to call paperboys.)
Wonder if all those editorial associates who were recently cut loose from the Reg were offered these positions as part of their going-away packages.

SATURDAY, MAY 10
●We've scrawled about those dumb-ass, pandering insta-polls that Reggie columnist Martin Wisckol runs before, back on March 29. But apparently ol’ Marty still hasn’t gotten the message, evidenced by Monday’s “Buzz” column, which we hadn’t got around to reading till today. On Monday, Wisckol announced the results of the poll that asked if Rev. Jeremiah Wright should have apologized. “Three out of four ‘conservative Christians’ said Wright should have apologized,” Wisckol reported, “but three out of four self-described ‘progressive Christians’ said he should not have apologized, and nearly half that group said they agreed with Wright’s comments.”
Once again, Wisckol doesn’t bother citing the numbers of people who actually voted, but thankfully those figures are readily available on the poll site itself. So today, five days after Wisckol’s column runs---which also means five days have passed where people could click up more votes than the totals Wisckol bases his column on---we find that a whopping 21 “conservative Christians” and an astounding 23 “progressive Christians” participated in this earth-shaking poll.
Well, at least the poll gives Wisckol something to do besides play Scrabulous at his desk all day.

●We’ll dispense with the usual rundown of all things eye-rollingly wretched in the Reggie this week—our way of being nice, what with the new round of departures at OC’s largest-circ fishwrap just announced. So we won’t even get into that intellectually-challenging poll where the Reggie asked its dwindling readership what they thought of the new hot sauce at Del Taco. Or letter-writing idiot Norman Abbod of Lake Forest, who was offended by Jen Burke’s first-person shaggy dog story—literally, that’s what it was—and took time out from busily waiting for death to complain that Burke’s piece was “full of bad language” (apparently “poop,” “fart” and “loogie” hold a kind of blood-boiling power over certain curmudgeonly Reggie readers). And we won’t even complain about those obnoxious full-page, sometimes full-color house ads in the paper we see for Daybreak OC, the Reggie-sponsored mourning show (what’re you trying to do, Reggie—make your loyal readers even stupider by steering them to Daybreak, roost of that living cardboard cut-out that calls itself Pete Weitzner?). And we’ll just steer clear of commenting on the Reggie dipshit who branded Avril Lavigne a “punk-rock starlet.”

Right. What we’ll do instead is pontificate on the debut week of The Juice, the Reggie’s new daily three-minute . . . umm . . . v-cast? News report? Product placement circle-jerk? Fuel for a lunch-hour wank, since horny men will undoubtedly be choking the chicken while ogling hyper-perky host Jennifer Galardi?

The Juice is a little bit all of that, and, shockingly, not as wretched as we first thought it'd be. It’s still totally useless fluff, but Galardi is a professional fluffer par excellance. Juice producers even made her submit writing samples as part of her job interview, since only the bestest jurnlists can work for the Reggie!

Okay, let’s not be totally mean here. So what we get are five extra-short, blink-and-you-miss-it blurbs crammed into three minutes on whatever’s hot and trendy in OC (or not: Friday’s Juice had stuff on Diddy in Hollywood and Iron Man). A number of these segments feel more like commercials, though, which left us wanting to follow the money to see if anyone’s getting bought off, like those pseudo-stories on that Audi dealership, that yoga studio, that new Red Bull drink, and those two pieces that just happened to name-drop the Montage. Something on the dog beach at Huntington whizzed by so fast, we still aren’t sure what it was trying to communicate.

Other flaws: Thursday, where Galardi ran off a bunch of concerts going on this weekend, but the who-what-when was totally lost, and the accompanying Ticketmaster link was broken. And that segment where Galardi goes and gets her hair done at “Orange County’s hottest salon?” Maybe it would’ve helped if they had actually mentioned the salon name and where it’s located. (Gods & Heros in Costa Mesa, and feel free to thank us anytime for doing your work for you, Juice!)

Still, compared to other OC talking TV heads like Ed “The Corpse” Arnold and Pete “The Disney Automaton” Weitzner, we’d rather watch Galardi any day. But that’s kind of like having to choose which flavor of spray-can cheese you want shot up into your nose.

Also: that Juice-posted interview with Galardi on the Real Orange? HER NAME IS SPELLED WRONG, Reggie peeps.

No, really, thank you.

MONDAY, APRIL 21:
●What’s the big news today from the Reggie’s crack team of community reporters? In Yorba Linda, “A 4- to 6-month old black puppy was found on Arroyo Street the afternoon of April 15.” Ummm . . . any sleazy goings-on out in Rancho Santa Margarita? “A local homeowners association is holding a royal tea party.” Okaaayyy . . . how about over in scandal-a-minute Newport Beach—there’s gotta be something there in OC’s most Republican ‘burg, right? Naaah . . . “A Newport Beach Boy Scouts troop will hold its annual rummage sale fundraiser.”

●Also today, dominating the Life section: five full pages of cute puppies and kittens. And it’s not even time for the final results of the Reggie’s laughable cat photo contest.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24:
●Clearly, the future of in-depth, take-no-prisoners news coverage at the Reggie involves reporters writing about themselves. (And we’re old enough to remember when we’d hear non-stop bitching from the Grand Ave Mausoleum that that was allll the Weekly was about.) The latest sign of Reggie staffers making busywork to keep the Blackstone boys at bay: a new wine column that starts in today’s ish, scrawled in awkward script form by married peeps Paul Hodgins and Anne Valdespino. Now, wine is a very good thing, but we can’t help wondering where this will lead: Gordon Dillow blogging about his bathroom habits?

●Better still—howzabout getting Reggie staffers to exploitatively write about their children’s bathroom habits? Already happening! That’s exactly what Nick Brennan does in his “Bath Time Isn’t Always Fun” post on the Reggie’s Dad Blog (not to mention all the shit and piss and exploding diarrhea references found over at their Mom Blog).

●More on the Mom Blog, where Reggie bloggers actually have serious debates on whether or not to use the phrase “MILF”: why does it seem that everyone who posts responses to these blogs are either fellow Mom/Dad Blog contributors, or relatives of them? Because it’s true. (Enough from Ben Wener's granny, already!) If the Reggie wants to solicit posts from real people on the Mom/Dad Blog, perhaps they should do the obvious and post some videos of their goddamn kids being conceived. Memo to Blackstone: a guaranteed revenue-generator!

●Oh—also today, the Weekly breaks the Reggie sex scandal story!

FRIDAY, APRIL 25:
●Some 45 cars belonging to Canyon High students are towed for being parked illegally in a nearby shopping center. Do you care--unless, y’know, you’re one of the law-breaking towees? Whatever--the Reggie says it’s a "must-read" story, right there on the front page of their Local section, just above another "must-read" story about a food fight at Trabuco High. We could not make this shit up.

●COMING NEXT WEEK: The Reggie website finally debuts its sure-to-be-hysterical new TV show, Juice. But will it be as guffaw-worthy as Daybreak OC?

Our weekly anal probing of the Orange County Register continues...

MONDAY, APRIL 14:
● Not that we’re in the habit of making fun of old people, but strangely, 70-year-old columnist Jane Glenn Haas sure is. Haas, whose beat is chiefly comprised of the same curmudgeonly senior citizens who pen crazed, delusional Letters to the Reggie Editor, spends her space in today’s paper whining about people who tell old-people jokes—and then, to get her point across, she tells a couple of them (neither of them very funny, but not because they’re offensive or anything, they’re just not funny—one is a crack from was-he-ever-funny? Jay Leno. Hey, Jane—you forgot to include the one about tits so saggy that they look like a pair of fried eggs nailed to a wall. Thing here is, Jane should knock off the finger-wagging—she has no problem with elders like her, so long as they don’t go around looking like old people, considering that she penned several columns last year that were all about her facelifts and plastic surgery procedures—y’know, that thing people usually do when they’re in total denial about getting old.

TUESDAY, APRIL 15
● Who’s that little girl pictured at the bottom of the Reggie’s front page today? Oh, wait, that’s just the very little-girl-looking Reg reporter Greg Hardesty as an 11-year-old (boy, we assume). Hardesty pens a story all about his youthful crush on Little House on the Prairie actress Melissa Sue Anderson, something Reg readers are supposed to think is cute. The Reg-O-Meter’s verdict? Torn between GAY and STALKER.

THURSDAY, APRIL 17:
● It’s a small brief in the Life section, a section almost always filled with fluff and insignificance. But the headline just makes the whole of the Reggie seem even more so: "MARTHA STEWART’S DOG DIES OF KIDNEY FAILURE."

● The Reggie’s real coup-of-the-day is getting Club Amnesty shut down, and you can read more about that right here. We’ve said our peace for now, but we couldn’t help but wonder why the Reggie and its triple-threat team of crack reporters Eugene W. Fields, Doug Irving and Joshua Sudock aren’t doing the obvious follow-up by personally visiting every single massage parlor that advertises in the Reggie’s sports pages? We’ll even help you kids out by handing you some freebie questions. Like, don’t you think that the one in Costa Mesa that advertises AMERICAN GIRLS ONLY is being a tad discriminatory and racist in its advertising practices? And what, exactly, goes on in those “cozy private rooms” with the “pretty Asian masseuses” at that one in San Clemente? Get to work--it’s a Pulitzer waiting to happen!
(This just in! OC Weekly uncovers steamy sex scandal in the Reggie’s Grand Avenue mausoleum! But you’ll have to wait till Thursday’s Weekly to find out the dirt.)

FRIDAY, APRIL 18:
● The quarter-page house ad in the news pages plugging the Reggie’s cat photo contest—oh-so-creatively dubbed That Darn Cat!—has inspired us to have a contest of our own. We'll call it That Darn Pussy! Loyal Weekly readers: Is your pussy a simpering Saavedra, a despicable Dillow or a milquetoast Mickadeit? Send us your photos! On second thought, don’t. We have better things to do ‘round here, like real journalism and stories that don’t kowtow to the lowest common Reggie reader denominator.

● Club Amnesty addendum in today’s ish: Swingers clubs don’t bother nearly half of more than 2,300 voters who weighed in on a Reggie online poll. See, even uptight Reggie loyalists think screwing between consenting adults behind closed doors is a God-given right, and even more people said the existence of a swingers club is none of their goddamn business. So by hopping into bed with governmental bodies, the Reggie only succeeded in pissing off its readership. Great work!

● Leave it to the hyper-hypocritical Reggie to publish a six-page special ad insert in today’s issue about . . . Earth Day! “The Earth is precious, perishable and the future is in our hands!” the ad copy declares. Yet to be determined are how many trees died to produce this—hey, Eugene W. Fields, Doug Irving and Joshua Sudock need something else to do . . .

SUNDAY, APRIL 6:
Gustavo Arellano posts this blog about Reggie reporter Tom Berg’s ink-stained blowjob of a story on OC developer (and pedophile protector, and valued Reggie advertiser) William Lyon, who's about to fly a B-17 aeroplane from Orange County to Washington DC. Berg follows it up Friday with yet another piece—that’s a lot of swallowing, Tom; your tonsils must be awfully sore—on Lyon’s DC arrival. So if Dillow is the Bootlicker, does this make Berg the Lyonlicker? We're just asking!

MONDAY, APRIL 7:
In a huge two-page spread—slow day in the Life section—the Reggie announces a new staff-written blog for moms, and a companion blog for daddys, which we think is this, but we could be wrong. We check both of them out, and it's what we expected: lots of sappy, emasculated stories about how wuuuunderful everyone's stupid, spoiled brats are, occasionally veering off into what the Reg thinks is "edgy" (i.e., lots of poop and exploding diarrhea references), and everything so sugary-sweet that people will get diabetes just from reading. Bonus: easy grist for future Reg-O-Meters!

TUESDAY, APRIL 8:
The Reggie runs this Lisa Benson cartoon on its editorial page, so completely-batshit-crazy-insane that it verges on Mike Shelton territory. Because, as you'll see after the click, nothing will gain you easy entry into the blessed, peaceful kingdom of Christian heaven quite like deadly munitions….

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9:
Gordon Dillow actually apologizes for gratuitous bootlicking. I’ll defer to R. Scott Moxley on this one, who should be posting shortly. Moxley? Moxley?

THURSDAY, APRIL 10
What’s more depressing—the fact that the latest question asked in a Reggie online poll is “Do you think Priscilla Presley’s face is fabulous, fake, forgettable or fine for a 62-year old,” or that, as of this writing, 387 Reggie loyalists who clearly have nothing better to do with their sad, sorry lives actually voted in it?

And yet, it could be worse. At least the Reggie hasn’t lately been so desperate to fill the space between their erectile dysfunction and hooker ads that they would resort to that hoariest of journalistic clichés—the story on the death of the World’s Oldest Living Person. (Newsflash to Reggie eds: THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A WORLD’S OLDEST LIVING PERSON! THERE’S A FUCKING INFINITE SUPPLY OF ‘EM!) No, as much as we snark, the Reggie would never, ever stoop . . .

AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

SUNDAY, MARCH 30
•Gordon Dillow totally calls us out in his column. The graph in question, with translations:

“And then there were the blog comments from a certain Orange County ‘alternative’ weekly newspaper . . .”
[Translation: OC Weekly, though if I have to actually say/write their name, I’ll burst into flames/lose bowel control/grow hair.]

“. . .whose writers routinely claim that any columns I write about guns—or cops or the military or whatever—are rife with what they call ‘homoeroticism.’”
[Translation: Uniform fetishes and phallic symbols? Hot.]

“Of course, I'm just a simple country boy . . .”
[Translation: You know, like the gun-toting hillbillies in Deliverance.]

“. . . so I'm not sure exactly what that means . . .”
[Translation: Those hogs and sheep sure are purty-lookin’.]

“. . . but I think they're saying that I . . . that I'm a . . . well, I think they're suggesting that I'm playing for the other team. And after a lifetime of loyal service . . .”
[Translation: The sores went away after a couple weeks.]

“. . . to my naturally assigned side, you can imagine what a terrible shock this alleged revelation is to me.”
[Translation: I’m hung like a Ken doll.]

TUESDAY, APRIL 1
•The Reg is holding a contest. Here's the extremely overexcited copy as printed in today's ish, scrawled with all the enthusiasm of someone whose lifelong dream is to snag that coveted Associate of the Week parking space: “The game is simple. You take a cat photo. You upload it. You vote for the coolest cat. Then, at the end of it all, we'll print some cat photos in the paper.” Craaaazy!

•How hepped up on ‘roids are readers of the Reggie’s sports pages? (And yes, there really are words in the sports pages—it’s those things that decorate the section’s hooker ads). A reader poll asks “Who will win the NL West this season?”—and 32 percent pick the Barry Bonds-less Giants. Elsewhere in sports today, a bevy of homoerotic photos (strangely, none of which depict Gordon Dillow in nipple clips or riding a butt plug). Really—there’s Dodger Jeff Kent copping a feel of Andruw Jones' left titty; there’s Angel Mike Napoli's head shoved up between the legs of the Twins' Adam Everett; and there’s a couple of UC Irvine baseball players acting out some photo editor's nude-Jello-wrestling fantasy.

•Frank Mickadeit writes today's column about Carm's Coneys in Costa Mesa. Gee, I wonder what could've given him that idea?

•Zany old Kimberly Edds’ question of the day (which she asks herself, then answers) in her “Safety” column: “How can I survive being kidnapped?” And isn’t that something we all worry about whenever we’re in Brea?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2:
•Frothy-mouthed Reggie loyalist Shari Carter of Orange can patronize her favorite Home Depot once again, and she has Orange mayor Carolyn Cavecche to thank. What did the mayor do for Carter? Did she donate a kidney so Carter could live? Did she build Carter a house with her huge man-hands? Did she offer to chauffer her around on a frenzied Orange Circle antique-buying spree? Hells no!
“Mayor Cavecche . . . did our town a great service when she helped us move day laborers off our streets: I once again can go to Home Depot. Thanks, Mayor Cavecche.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 4
•Letter of the Week: “. . . the life-or-death issue of abortion is a social suicide far more devastating to our nation than the entire history of slavery . . .” Thank you, Charles N. Marrelli of Irvine!

•Excerpt from a Barry Koltnow interview with actor Abigail Breslin, even though, judging from all the bold type, it appears that Barry did most of the talking. Some of Koltnow’s Mike-Wallace-in-his-prime attack-dog interviewing technique:

Koltnow: Do you have any pets?
Breslin: I have two dogs, two cats and a turtle.
Koltnow: What kind of dogs?
Breslin: German shepherd and dachshund.
Koltnow: What kind of cats?
Breslin: Siberians.
Koltnow: What kind of turtle?
Breslin: Russian tortoise.

Fuck yeah, Barry! Make the little bitch sweat! Or just do everyone a favor and take the next buyout, wouldya?

[Reg-O-Meter staff memo: With yet another entry this week of the name “Gordon Dillow,” the Reg-O-Meter, after being in operation a mere three weeks, incurred a major, possibly fatal technological malfunction—goddamn Radio Shack parts. Until repairs can be made, the Reg-O-Meter has been shut down. So instead, please enjoy the following slices of bad Reggie behavior from the past week you may have missed, sans highly scientific calculatin’ and shit.]

SUNDAY, MARCH 23
The Weekly’s R. Scott Moxley posts this steamy-hot, leather-clad, ball-gagged POV on Gordon Dillow’s latest I-love-a-man-in-uniform column. Just in case, you know, you missed it.....

MONDAY, MARCH 24
Hey, Marty Wisckol! Look, man—I don’t know what it’s like to work for the Register—oh, wait . . . yes I do!—but it’s gotta be hard coming up with fresh material for your political column there at the Grand Avenue mausoleum.

Today, though, in “The Buzz”---how much market research was done before the Reg mucky-mucks thought that name up, anyway?—your sense of quiet desperation became terribly obvious. We know how you have to make your job there seem as relevant as possible to your bosses, even though it ain’t. Especially when, like today, you start off your column—headlined “Race makes some wary of Obama”----with the line “If you have any doubt that race remains a significant issue for many voters, check out the OC Political Pulse poll last week on Barack Obama’s ‘race’ speech last week. A quarter of GOP respondents said that Obama had an ‘underlying black agenda.’”

The OC Political Pulse is an online Register poll that’s just as ridiculous and insipid as the Reggie’s old daily telephone polls they used to run in print in an attempt to engage readers—stuff like “Do you like cats? Vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’” (well, maybe not that insipid, but pretty damn close).

But back to that first graf of Marty's story . . . race a significant issue for “many voters?” Based on your cute li’l fuzzy-faced poll, Marty? As much as we suck at it, let's do the math: The total number of Republicans who responded to your loaded Obama question—and I’m writing this a week after the fact—is 42. And, as you say, a full quarter of that number comes out to . . . a whopping 11. But a headline blaring 11 REPUBLICANS THINK OBAMA HAS AN UNDERLYING BLACK AGENDA just ain’t really sexy, is it? About as sexy as the picture of you that stares at me from your column, Marty . . . you with your creepy Manchurian Candidate/Scientologist's gaze and Charlie Manson grin.

So your whole column is based on the results of a completely batshit poll, and then you go and give it an air of legitimacy by printing the equally batshit rantings of one Sharon Bush, who basically thinks that Obama is a slobbering, sword-carrying, blood-drinking, child-eating Muslim who's trying to take over the country and enslave Christians.

Lovely.

TUESDAY, MARCH 25
Some 7 years after the Weekly first scrawls about very, very OC artist Aaron Kraten—
we’ve even put his work on our cover. Twice!—the Reg finally discovers him and runs a piece on Kraten's new iPod skins. Better late than never, though seven years practically is.

It’s another edition of our occasional chronicle/critique of the Orange County Register, using highly-detailed, top-secret scientific research crafted in the sub-basement of the OC Weekly DataLab®.

Every week, we start the Register off with a generous 100 points. Then our expensive-ass computers (the same ones used to coordinate BCS rankings, control space shuttle launches and animate Daybreak OC’s Pete Weitzner) add or subtract points based on the quality of the Register’s print edition, their website, and anything else Reg-related. If the end tally meets or exceeds 100 points, we’ll officially proclaim the Register as The Greatest Newspaper That’s Ever Existed In The History of Recorded Information, and immediately discontinue our monitoring. But if the final number freefalls to zero or below, well . . . we just keep on going.

This week’s Register-culled info entered into the Reg-O-Meter©:

SUNDAY, MARCH 16
•It’s a glorious, sunshiney day—time to break out the BBQ grill! We’ve got shrimp, hot dogs and chicken, and our XM tuned to Bob Dylan’s show. What could possibly go wrong? Especially since, just six days earlier, the Register’s Gary Robbins scribbled blurbage on the front page of his fishwrap’s Local section, a story headlined “The Prediction is a Rain-Free March.” To support this claim, Robbins interviewed one Stan Wasowski, described as “a veteran weather forecaster,” which, for all we know, could mean that he was born with the uncanny ability to look up at the sky. Turns out Wasowski sucks at forecasting, and that goes doubly for Robbins, because later this afternoon, we’re left staring out our patio window with a plate of ready-to-char meat in our hands—hoping the goddamned rain will go away. Register! Why do we bother trusting you?!?

DON’T TAKE GARY ROBBINS TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS: minus 43
Reg-O-Meter Subtotal: 57 POINTS

MONDAY, MARCH 17
•March Madness! And who’s showing up for the Big Dance? Holy crap—it’s Cal State Fullerton, who haven’t made it to the NCAA basketball tourney in 30 years! Sure, they’ll be knocked out in a first-round game later on this week, but still, things don’t get more local than that. So how does the Reg play the big news in their special tournament section, as well as on the front page? With color photos of UCLA’s Kevin Love (relative of total fucking douchebag asshole Mike Love, of what’s left of the Beach Boys) and USC’s O.J. Mayo. Let’s see . . . UCLA is, what, 35 miles from Orange County? And USC is around 20 miles? Oh, wait, there’s the CSUF story—on page 8 of the special section, teased by teeny-tiny type that reads “Titans all over the map.” Just not all over the Reggie.

•Nutjob Letter of the Day Prize goes to Jack Van Auken of Yorba Linda, who thinks Dilbert is Satan. “For three days the Dilbert comic strip has made fun of the name and person of Jesus Christ. Has the Register gone crazy to allow this? . . . The Register should apologize to the Christian public . . . This is way over the line.” Only Reg readers could find offense in Dilbert—other than the usual way Dilbert offends in being totally not funny. But these strips actually made us smirk. Go here and start your clicking with the March 8 strip, then move on to March 10-14, and see if you agree.

•Actual excerpt from today’s column by Teryl Zarnow, who writes about family stuff:

“Did you take my pen?” I ask my husband.
“No,” he says, engrossed in one of the Sudoku puzzles he completes as relentlessly as I used to chew my No. 2 pencils.
“I can’t find my yellow pen from the desk,” I say.
“Don’t know,” he mumbles.
“You’re using my yellow pen!” I shout in discovery.
“Oh, yes, I have a yellow pen,” he answers.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18
•Nutjob Letter of the Day Prize goes to—wait for it—B.J. Vetter of San Juan Capistrano, blurting about a Reggie story on veterans and young folks coming together, but not in that way: “Our veterans are an inspiration to our young people. This program deserved the front page of the local section, not page 7, and deserved at least as much of the front page as the coverage of . . .”
What? What story could possibly be so upsetting to B.J. that it dared displaced proper coverage of his/her beloved wrinkly men in uniform?
The impending 100-year Iraq War?
The coming sequel to the Great Depression?
The housing crisis?
The Carona trial?
Catholic preacher boy-buggering?
Not even close.
“. . . the 88-year-old lesbian.”

•New massage ad in the porn-o-rific sports pages, boasting a price of “$1 for 1 minute.” Gee, that doesn’t sound like much time for getting properly kneaded. What sort of pleasure can one possibly derive from a massage lasting only a few minutes? Seems it’d have to be an awful quickie one...

THOSE DARN LESBIANS: plus 27.1
REGGIE HAND PARTY: plus 8.2
Reg-O-Meter Subtotal: 67 POINTS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19
•“Gordon Dillow is taking the day off . . .” plus 84.4
•“His column returns Sunday.” minus 208.7

REG-O-METER GRAND TOTAL: NEGATIVE 57.3 points.

Better luck next time, kids!

It’s another edition of our occasional chronicle/critique of the Orange County Register, using highly-detailed, top-secret scientific research crafted in the sub-basement of the OC Weekly DataLab®.

Every week, we start the Register off with a generous 100 points. Then our expensive-ass computers (the same ones used to coordinate BCS rankings, control space shuttle launches and animate Daybreak OC’s Pete Weitzner) add or subtract points based on the quality of the Register’s print edition, their website, and anything else Reg-related. If the end tally meets or exceeds 100 points, we’ll officially proclaim the Register as The Greatest Newspaper That’s Ever Existed In The History of Recorded Information, and immediately discontinue our monitoring. But if the final number freefalls to zero or below, well . . . we just keep on going.

This week’s Register-culled info entered into the Reg-O-Meter©:

SUNDAY, MARCH 9
•Woo-hoo! The Mini Page! Still the only thing in the Sunday Reg worth reading.

MINI PAGE MADNESS: add 27.7
Reg-O-Meter Subtotal: 127.7 POINTS

MONDAY, MARCH 10
•Actual headline of story written by actual Reg staffer Annie Burris: “Puppies begin to learn soccer skills.”

•We flip to page 8 of the family-friendly Sports pages, where the Reg’s hook . . .um, prosti . . . uh, “massage” ads are laid out for us to peruse. Let’s see . . . do we want “cozy, private, hot magic hands, massage, pretty Asian masseuses,” or do we go with “relaxing touch, pretty staff, private rooms, free table shower?” Or is this kind of like having to choose between herpes and gonorrhea?

PUPPY POWER: subtract 10.1
VENEREAL DISEASE IS THE NEW BASEBALL: subtract 18.3
Reg-O-Meter Subtotal: 99.3 POINTS

TUESDAY, MARCH 11
•The question of the day in Reg columnist Kimberly Edds’ Safety column goes like this: “My new neighbor seems a little creepy. I have small children and now I’m a little worried about letting them play outside. Is there anything specific I should be looking for that would tell me my gut feeling is right about this guy?”

Kimmie then lights her torch and immediately starts hunting down the nearest Frankenstein monster: “If your gut is telling you he’s creepy,” Lil’ Kim answers, “then he’s creepy, at least to you.”

Edds then goes on to call the unnamed creepy guy—who we assume she’s never met; for all she knows, he may not even exist—a “schmuck,” then advises to “keep your kids away from Mr. Smith’s backyard kiddie land.”

Goddamn! Of course, the unnamed person asking the question (if they even exist; there’s no plea for reader questions anywhere in the column, so Edds just may have yanked this one out of her ass) doesn’t provide any details as to why he/she thinks the neighbor is creepy. Is he creepy because he’s Mexican? Black? Gay? A Trekkie? An Obama supporter? Gordon Dillow? We don’t know, but we do know that if Kimberly Edds ever moved next door to us—judging by the photo of her that runs with her column, which is a lot more info than Edds had to supply an appropriate answer—we’d think she was a tad on the creepy side, too, in that really-bad-drag-queen kind of way.

•Letter-writer Brent Adam pulls his head out his ass to rant about the douche who got killed trying to rob that jewelry store at the Shops at Mission Viejo. “The story was quite a shocker to all of us in south Orange County. No one expects something like this to happen here . . . now it is in our back yard.” Adam smells like a blood relative to every naïve, bubble-dwelling idiot who pops up whenever unexpected violence/weirdness occurs and blurts sentences like “He seemed like such a normal, nice guy.”

All we know is, we lived in a supposedly safe gated community in Irvine for four years, and we never had to call the cops more often there than anywhere else we ever lived (and we used to live near downtown Long Beach). Like the time that couple was smacking each other around. And the coke dealer who took up residence in a condo because he rightly figured people wouldn’t suspect a thing (yep, just like on Weeds!), and—as we always point out—the psycho nutjob who got busy with a machete at the Albertson’s down the street. So grow up, Brent—stupidity doesn’t care about geography.

EDDS WITCH-HUNTING EXPEDITION: minus 44.2
ALWAYS-ENTERTAINING REG LETTERS: plus 18.1
BRENT ADAM’S EXISTENCE: minus 9.3
Reg-O-Meter Subtotal: 63.9 POINTS

Today we begin an occasional chronicle/critique of the Orange County Register, using highly-detailed, top-secret scientific research crafted in the sub-basement of the OC Weekly DataLab®.

Here’s how this works. Every week, we start the Register off with a generous 100 points. Then our expensive-ass computers (the same ones used to coordinate BCS rankings, control space shuttle launches and animate Daybreak OC’s Pete Weitzner) add or subtract points based on the quality of the Register’s print edition, their website, and anything else Reg-related. If the end tally meets or exceeds 100 points, we’ll officially proclaim the Register as The Greatest Newspaper That’s Ever Existed In The History of Recorded Information, and immediately discontinue our monitoring. But if the final number freefalls to zero or below, well . . . we just keep on going.

This week’s Register-culled info entered into the Reg-O-Meter©:

MONDAY
•Jennifer Galardi, a Pennsylvania native currently working as a dancer and choreographer in LA—who isn’t?—wins the gig hosting the Reggie’s new TV show, The Juice. There’s video of Galardi posted on the Reg website today. She’s bubbly! She’s outgoing! She’s blond with dark roots! She also has the tits of a 10-year-old boy—kudos to the Reg for going against the big-boobed-bottle-blond-beach-bimbo OC stereotype. Segments of The Juice (the name is obviously swiped from Led Zeppelin’s “The Lemon Song,” where Robert Plant commands his woman to “squeeze my lemon till The Juice runs down my leg”—perhaps this will be the show’s theme song) are also slated to air on KDOC, and Galardi’s effervescence should at least make Pete Weitzner look far less corpse-like.

•Some, however, aren’t too pleased about Galardi, as Gorgeousgirl posts on the Reg web site: “Based on the lack of comments here, it appears no one cares about a Pennsylvania prostitute who was a backup dancer for Idol assclown William Hung.” Ooohhh . . . SNAP! Now that’s some good snark!

•Hey—look at who got suckered into writing the news story (which, of course, isn’t a real news story) on Galardi’s hiring: none other than longtime Reg scribe Peter Larsen. Dude . . . are things that bad over there? Or were the interns—also known as “community news reporters”—all out sick?

•Front page of the Local section. Gary Robbins and Mark Eades team up to write a 316-word story about . . . wind. “At Hart Park in Orange, two children gave up on trying to fly a kite. ‘It’s too windy and keeps blowing it down,’ said Juan Garcia, 8, of Orange.” If the Reg-O-Meter had eyeballs, they’d be rolling.

•Main news section, page 12. A quarter-page in-house ad. “Could you be the face of Orange County TV?” Christ on a bike, it’s a month-old blurb announcing that the Reg is holding auditions on February 9 for the new Juice hosting gig—running the same day Galardi gets hired. Unless Galardi’s already been fired, which actually wouldn’t surprise us.

GALARDI HIRING: +18.3 points
GORGEOUSGIRL SNARKINESS: +17.2 points
POOR, POOR PETER LARSEN: -47.9 points
BREAKING WIND: -22.7 points
GALARDI FIRING: -10.8 points
Reg-O-Meter Subtotal: 54.1 POINTS