Can’t we all just get along?

Pedroza is the worst. In his own mind a relentless Ahab but in the eyes of the world a rabid badger, he pursues grudgematches long-since meaning-drained to others, with a passion only matched by his canine devotion to whoever is his latest can-do-no-wrong heroine. These days, with his other recent idols shattered (and eager to vaunt his nonpartisan independence when he knows that all roads of logic and morality these days would lead him into the arms of the Democratic party) he busies himself tirelessly and without pay apologizing and covering up for every sin of his queen Janet Nguyen, from her ethical lapses to her disgusting pandering to the frothing anti-Communist fringe of the Viet community. Bets are being placed on what month – May, June – he will notice what a typical Republican scumbag she is and no longer be able to bring himself to carry her water, and bets are being taken on who his next flawless idol will be.

In an attempt (successful) to make himself appear sane and balanced he has brought on a co-blogger, Sarah Michele Spinosa, who shares with him an unquenchable resentment against the county’s one other half-reasonable blog. Arriving at the OJ with a trailer-truckful of personal issues, and calling herself “Purple Pagan Sarah” until the ridicule became unmanageable, she has tried to set herself up as some kind of “centrist” which apparently means exactly whatever she decides it means on that given day. I do know it includes her opinion that gay people should have no rights to get married just because she doesn’t particularly feel like being married herself, and claims to be gay, like David Bowie.

And those are my two friends, for Christ’s sake.

The right wing of this blog is ably flanked by caped crusader Thomas Gordon, whose single-minded fixation on Santa Ana’s graffiti has apparently finally caused his head to explode, judging by his last Wagnerian cri de couer. Fortunately he is able (in league with his fellow Republican Larry Gilbert when he’s not writing unreadable turgid tomes randomly bolded) to divert himself by posting funny-looking photos of the Democratic candidates, accompanied by such bombshell exposés as how OMG the Clintons have made a lot of money since Bill was President! (So, like John Edwards, they couldn’t possibly care about poor people.)

Larry, who likes to refer to himself in the third person like a pro wrestler, shares the geriatric ward of the blog with the weird, quaint Winships, whose Slacker-structured musings resemble the free-associative storytelling of your greatgrandfather, and provoke comparable headscratches and yawns. Now that the hopping bird that apparently used to perch on their “enter” key giving their ramblings a visual resemblance to bouquets of haiku has evidently shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the choirs invisible, their anecdote-rhapsodies have morphed into morasses which none can navigate. But not to worry, these four scriveners are balanced off handily on the left by Claudio and Luis, whose difficulty with spelling, grammar and punctuation seems to bely their claims to English as a first language.

Still, THIS place is better than the predictable partisan pep-squads known as the Red-Faced County and the Liberal OC. More fittingly called “Dem Apologist Central,” the latter blog has recently snatched up Sean “Look Ma, I’m a commissioner and I can shill all I want for my council buddies and Art can’t touch me” Mill. (By the way all you illiterate morons, the word is SHILL, when you write SHRILL as a noun you sound hell of STOOPID) Now we can all sit on the front porch and watch Art and Sean straining on their just-short-enough leashes as they spend all day attempting to maul each other but only succeed in spraying spittle across the local blogosphere.

Other great reasons to visit the Liberal OC would be to check out the latest amazing breaking story of how Bush hasn’t actually been a very good president, as breathlessly revealed by either the humorless Chris Prevatt or Dan “surname cannot be typed but only copied and pasted” Chmielewski; or little Andrew “Candide” Davey‘s latest wide-eyed exclamations followed by a happy face; or Heather‘s latest Norman-Rockwell watercolor of the domestic tranquility at the Pritchard homestead being unkindly ruffled by a dispatch from the troubled outside world in this morning’s Register; or Gila Jones … um… I’ll think of a way to insult Gila, just give me some more time.

But nothing can possibly be more tragically pathetic, in a laughing-hysterically-till-your-entire-torso-hurts sort of way, than the contortions our Republican partisan friends have to put themselves through daily to justify the murder, lying and thievery of these last seven years and how dearly they would love it all to continue. Getting into mocking the Snake Jubal and his cohort of petty thugs and chickenhawks is “too starved a subject for my sword” (Troilus and Cressida, I 1), but they do yeoman’s duty keeping this County the simian-wing-of-the-zoo that the rest of this great nation likes to gawk at.

And this is the menagerie of fat bastards, androgynous homunculi, and strident self-obsessed skanks with whom I’ve been condemned to share air.

Can’t we all just get along?


About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.