Weekend Open Thread: Brea Summerfest is Here, Adam’s Interesting Interview, and the Girl From Ipanema!

By
Greg Diamond
– May 30, 2014Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice

Yes, yes, the Election is next Tuesday — but we have plenty of other posts about that elsewhere in the site.  So long as you’ve read our Primary Voters Guide and used it to fill our your sample ballot, you’ll be fine.  Of course, if you’re a candidate, like me, you still have to work this weekend — even if you’ve been sick for a week and have started coughing up mucus the color of John Boehner — because this county is clearly not going to take care of itself!  So let’s lighten it up a bit, shall we?

So: I’m driving down Imperial Highway earlier this week when I pull up alongside some big clown with his shoes off riding on a truck with bucket seats:

Carnival Coming

Meet this guy and his fellow contraptions at St. Angela Merici’s Church, corner of Walnut Ave. and Fir St. in Beautiful Bounteous Brea, Friday from 5 p.m. and noon forward on Saturday and Sunday!  Visit summerfestbrea.org for details!

Yes, that means that Brea Summerfest is here!  Brea Summerfest, the Summerfest with Zest!  And tribute bands out the wahoozie, too!  And rides and food you could happily die for — and possibly from!

If you come by there and see me — so long as they let me, I’ll be wearing a “Diamond for District Attorney” button (printed at home by Brian Chuchua and donated to the campaign!) — I will give YOU one of those buttons, while they last!  And I will not go on a ride with you!  I’m sick enough already!

As if that’s not enough, the new bride of Adam Elmahrek has posted a video of his interview with Rick Rieff — I was happy to give up my interview spot to him (if that’s what happened, which I highly doubt) — and it was really very much worth watching, especially if like the OJB staff you are a fan of our local newly 30-year-old future Pulitzer Prizewinner.  Adam is the son of a Palestinian Muslim father and a Jewish Israeli mother, so he knows a whole lot about Middle Eastern policy!  I can’t embed it, but you can click on the link: http://video.pbssocal.org/video/2365256501/.  Tell ’em in a comment that Orange Juice Blog sent you!  (No, seriously, don’t do that.)

Also, since we’ve been sharing youtubes of Boss Vern playing his favorites and yours, here he is doing his medley of Jobim’s bossa nova classic “The Girl From Ipanema” going into Chopin’s beautiful D-flat Nocturne.   Vern sings Ipanema in the original Brazilian (I know, I know, Portugese) because he finds the popular English version (which has no relation to the original) to be “pukeworthy.  ‘Tall and tan and lovely….each one she passes goes “AHHHH”…’ – Gag me with a spoon.” (This medley is also on his new CD “The Sun Sessions,” if’n you want it…)

This is your Weekend Open Thread: talk about that, or anything else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of decency and decorum.  And before you see us here again, you had better have voted (if you can)!

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.)