THE Orange Juice Blog Congratulates Gustavo Arellano!

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Arellano and two shots of guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark

Gustavo Arellano before becoming OC Weekly's Editor (left), his apparent official photo (center), and at right an artist's conception of how Gustavo may look when he finishes his tenure as the Weekly's Editor. Best of luck, AskaMex!

The news has come forth from the horse’s mouth that Ted B. Kissell’s almost five-year tenure as Editor of Village Voice Media’s OC Weekly will end at 5:01 Friday, at which point police may or may not declare his editorship illegal and remove his tents from the building.  Kissell will be replaced by Gustavo Arellano, who was last seen (by this author, anyway) in a video from PBS explaining why, even though he is a fiscal conservative and his parents are both fiscal and social conservatives, he would not be voting Republican in the 2012 elections, no way, no how, just because the Republican Party apparently thinks that he and “his kind” (I’m adopting Republican usage there) are what is wrong with this country and must be stopped, stopped, stopped!  (Seriously, it’s a good video.  Check it out.)

Arellano, depicted above in his celebrated role as the Gestapo officer with most of the instructions for building an Ark of the Tabernacle burned onto his palm — and THE Orange Juice Blog admits that the discrepancy in ages makes this a bit hard to believe, but take a look, the evidence appears to be absolutely compelling — is inter alia the redoubtable author of the Ask A Mexican! column, for which he has achieved both local and possibly interplanetary acclaim.  (And we gabachos like it too!)

Our website has its own “Ask a Mexican” commentary — mostly from commenters who want to Ask Mexicans why they don’t leave the country and those of us who are aghast at them — but when you climb into the mosh pit of OC politics you don’t have a chance to ask each other for proper ID, let alone a passport.  So we will continue to enjoy our wealthy cousin publication — or so we presume, as after all a movie star like Arellano can’t come cheap — from our own digs and look forward to providing the best political and cultural commentary of any OC blog not owned by Village Voice Media.  Yet.  Hopefully ever.  We look forward to reading the competition and to providing our own.

Yours for better journalism, real and imagined,

Gustavo Diamond, Imaginary Managing Editor, THE Orange Juice Blog

P.S.  Your comments on the OC Weekly, its coverage, and the accession of Arellano are welcome below.

P.P.S.  ONE MORE DAY to enter the free t-shirt competition!  ONE.  MORE.  DAY.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)