The OJ’s Top Ten stories of Oh-TEN!

.

.

.

Art tells me it’s that time of the year, when I should be figuring out our top ten stories.  But looking at all these numbers, it gets kind of complicated..

First, we should disqualify:

• All the faux “John and Ken” stories.  This began with the real John and Ken’s 2009 Special Election Guide, which Jill Puich put up in April of that year, and which this year alone got almost 19,000 hits.  That was nothing but the two immigrant-bashing radio stars telling everyone to vote NO on all of Arnold’s “budget reform” proposals – LAST YEAR.  Noticing that as each election came up thousands of J&K fans would click on that link again dying to find out how J&K wanted them to vote  (and also that the real J&K weren’t bothering to make any more election guides) our editor Vern began putting up his own election guides, dedicating them to people he knew called John and Ken, and calling them John and Ken’s June 2010 Election Guide (which got OVER 19,000 hits) and “John and Ken”‘s One and Only Nov. 2010 Election Guide” (which got 13,500 and resulted in KFI demanding that we take down J&K’s images and make it even clearer that this wasn’t really done by them.)  We figure that joke has gone far enough (especially as J&K did eventually come up with their own Nov. 2010 guide) and that the whole ruse disqualifies Vern’s two stories from this competition.
• OLD STORIES from before 2010 that just KEEP ON getting thousands of hits a year, because of either an image people want to see or something in the title, for example:
• Art’s June 2008 “Angelina Jolie is Not a Democrat” (12,500 hits this year)
• Vern’s Xmas 2009 “True Story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (Vern likes to think 6,682 people read his great story this year; Art says they were just looking for the Rudolph pic)
• Larry’s July 2008 “Discussion with Huell Houser” (5800 this year; can someone explain that?)
• Two old Massage Parlor stories by Art for 5200 and 3500 (makes sense)
• Humberto Caspa’s July 2009 “Aztecs Playing Basketball in Costa Mesa?  Maybe Not“ for 3800;
• Art’s 2008 “McCain Knew Sarah Palin’s 17-year old Daughter Was Pregnant” for 2200;
• and Larry’s July 2009 “Will Tax-Generating Marijuana Tolerate the Drought?” for 2,161.

Those are old stories that people just keep clicking on for God-knows-why, but hey, it keeps our traffic up!

“Why do you keep clicking on me?”

The Orange Juice Blog’s Top Ten Stories of 2010 (by number of hits)

1. Red Vixen’s classic Santa Ana Unified School District Corruption Thread (12,806) which never gets old at 1512 comments right now, and leads to gems like this month’s “Wrath of Cole” (973)
2. Art stepped into an unexpectedly passionate controversy between members of the deaf community with his April story “Sign Language Lobby Wants to Limit Educational Choice For Parents of Deaf Kids” (3,492 hits, 138 comments.)
3. In March, at commenter Anonster’s request, Vern re-posted and illustrated Russell King’s “Open Letter to Conservative Americans”, leading to buku controversy, a big thank you from the author, and an unexpected 3,227 hits.
4. Always knowing a hot issue when he sees one, Art followed up his first Deafgate story with “AB 2072 Passed by the Health Committee” which got another 2,172 hits.
5. I imagine people who were trying to figure out who this guy running for treasurer was came across this as one of the very few stories about Keith Rodenhuis: Art/Admin’s  “OC Deputy Treasurer Rodenhuis Beats Political Opponent’s Frivolous Lawsuit.” 2100. As I remember we all became Freidenrich fans though.
6. Sean hit 1900 with his May story “Kobe’s Wife:  Do I Look Illegal?” , mixing Arizona-SB1070 controversy with celebrity and pulchritude.  That’s still getting hits for some reason, and I predict it will rival the longevity of the Angelina post.
7. Remember all that hullabaloo down in the Capistrano Unified School District this year?  The strike, the recall, Larry taking the side of the Board, Vern taking the side of the teachers and insurgents?  Well, the biggest story to come out of that was Admin’s even-handed “CUSD Parents Going on Strike Tomorrow!” with its 1836 hits and 59 comments.
8. The biggest story from Zorro, the Latino avenger who may have sometimes been Art, sometimes Vern, was May’s “Protest Against SB 1070 and Phil Jackson at Staples Center” with 1767 hits and 87 comments.
9. More Arizona controversy from Zorro in July:  “Governor Brewer Under Investigation for Ties to Private Prisons that Could Benefit from SB 1070.” 1541 hits.
10. Rounding up the top ten was Art’s election results post: “Sanchez Beats Tran.” 1532. Well, that wasn’t very exciting.  Let’s keep going.
11. OOO!  Our old wingnut Terry Crowley with his March, projecting, “Hate and Fear – Where Leftists Tread.” 1380, and it keeps getting hits every day for some reason.  It’s chock-full of ugly photoshops of alleged “leftists” and the usual fights with Vern in the comment section.
12. Larry, in March, did “Bankrupt City of Vallejo Cuts Firefighter Pensions,” which got 1357 hits from pension-cut fans, but seems to be contradicted by a more recent Over-But-Not-Out story.
13. Larry, in February, did the first story announcing the “Recall of CUSD Trustees Winsten and Maddox” which would later become a pet cause of Vern.  This story got 1314 hits, and included a poll eventually taken by 505 OJ readers in which 81% supported the recall – quite prophetic as it turned out!
14. Ah yes, where would we have been without Larry’s handy guide to Orange County’s “April 15 Tax Day Tea Party Locations?” 1,253 of you checked that one out.
15. Art sure got a lot of people riled up in September weighing in on the Brea Firefighters struggle:  172 comments and 1,237 hits on his Story on that Topic with too Long a Title.
16. “Live-Bloggin’, Get Your OC Elections Results Live-Bloggin’ Here” was put up as “Admin” by Art and Vern taking turns on the night of the June Primary Elections, and ended up getting 1,161 hits.
17. In June Art returned to Deafgate one more time, getting 1100 hits for his “ASL cultists invoke Hitler as they fight against parental educational options for deaf infants.”
18. Wow, another announcement of the April  CUSD teachers’ strike, this one from Brother Larry entitled “CUSD Teachers to strike on Thursday April 22,” nabbed a big 1,068!
19. Finally some good Vern stories:  September’s “Capo Recall: The John Alpay Interview,” which got 1046 hits, 93 comments, and a couple of lawsuit threats.
20. And, from May, Vern’s  “Worst. Public Administrator. Ever.  Vote OUT John Williams!” which, despite getting 1024 hits, failed to prevent the re-election of this wasteful, incompetent buffoon.

Will this picture draw as many clicks as Angelina?

I know what you want to do now, let’s figure out:

The top ten by Vern the Editor this year!

1. “Capo Recall: The John Alpay Interview” (Sept, 1046)
2. “Worst. Public Administrator. Ever.  Vote OUT John Williams!” (May, 1024)
3. “The Wrath of Cole: Willard’s ‘Jaguars For Jesus’ Principal Bans ALL Student Clubs” (Dec, 973, 95 comments so far)
4. “Vern’s 2010 Election Picks” (Oct, 809)
5. “A Capo Recall Primer” (July, 792)
6. “The Great Fairgrounds Swindle pt 2:  Meet the Pirates!” (July, 778)
7. “Capo Unified Throwdown:  Alpay & Pritchard Take On Extremists Winsten & Maddox” (757, 111 comments)
8. “The Company Bill Hunt Keeps:  Now, Michele Bachmann?” (May, 745)
9. “Scumbag Fail!!!” (about the ACORN pranksters getting busted;  Jan, 600)
10. “The Great Fairgrounds Swindle pt 1: How Allan Mansoor sold us all out to his Campaign Contributors” (July, 549)

Surprised not to see up higher, but deserve honorable mention:

• Tony & gang’s revelation of Matt Cunningham’s hypocritical work on the Children & Families Commission, which helped win them Blog of the Year from the OC Weekly;
• Art’s & Vern’s Arpaio/Hunt/Arizona protest coverage;
• Larry’s big Lance MacLean recall stuff from early in the year.
• Any of our hard Proposition 19 work!  And the DREAM Act. And against Prop 8.
• Our feud with the Liberal OC, which always seemed to get lots of hits at the time…

Happy New Year, you ain’t seen nothing yet!