OJ’s Lean Year – Still Your Favorite Local Blog!

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Vern here, preparing the Orange Juice’s usual best-of-the-year post.  Between my rehab and Greg’s stroke, this was our lean year, no gainsaying it, but we are bursting with great ideas for the new year that you’ll just have to wait and see.  And even this year, we have an output to be prouder of than that of The Liberal OC or The Anaheim Blog – defenders of the powerful just don’t have the same je ne sais quoi, you know?

Vern says:  I have fortunately been exposed, in the place where I have been ensconced, to fine literature I otherwise would not have run across.  For example, the “Transmetropolitan” graphic novels of Warren Ellis, which feature a wild crusading journalist of the future named Spider Jerusalem (right.)  And the moment I started the comics, I said, “This is Hunter S. Thompson, thrown into the future!”  And my friends said “It’s YOU, too, that’s why we gave you it!”

​And in the first issue, returning to his loved/hated city, he gets wind of a riot of “transients” (folks who are in the middle of transitioning between species and feel oppressed) – and determines that the riot has been started by a couple of paid-off agents provocateurs so that the police would have an excuse to beat up and kill these transients.  As he sits on a roof-top live-blogging the carnage (although this futuristic piece was written in the early 90s and Ellis knew not of “live-blogging”) he is puzzled to see the police leave before they are all done beating everybody up.  Much to his surprise and satisfaction, he learns that they’ve received the order to retreat precisely on account of public outcry due to his own live-blogging!

Later walking home he gets jumped by a gang of the same police, who beat the hell out of him and warn him never to interfere with them again.  As he staggers home afterwards, deep in thought, he gradually begins to laugh to himself … then laughs louder and louder … and shouts into the night, “The more you try to shut me up, the more I’ll keep telling the truth, you bastards!”  And I found this story inspiring.  And my friends were all like, “Yeah, duh.  That’s why we gave it to you.  Isn’t this what YOU do?”

So, here are the most-read stories of our LEAN YEAR:

• ​Greg Diamond (as Admin) put up our most-read story of the year by far in February, “Trump Administration Pushes Bill to Defund Public Schools, Eliminate Free School Lunches, End Aid to Disabled Kids​.”  Over 6000 hits!  Seems people were ready by then to hear what horrors the new Administration had in store.
• ​In May Greg penned the second-most-read story of the year, “What I’ve Heard About Eric Bauman, Pedophilia, and the Politics of Personal Destruction.”  (Vern didn’t really follow that controversy and doesn’t know what to say about it;  it seemed somewhat unpleasant.)
• ​In June Vern wrote the third-most popular story, “OC Now Has Only THREE Majority-Republican Cities – Guess Which Ones They Are?“  Well… if you don’t know you’ll have to click that link to see!  The Republican Party continues to shrink despite their national successes, and the Democrats continue to grow … but not as much as the Decline To States!  (Oh, and it would be nice if non-Republicans remembered to vote more often than once every four years.)
• ​Here’s a very deserving story from just a month ago that deserves to get many thousands more readers over the coming months:  Tim Houchen’s masterful “Top Thirty Homelessness Myths, Versus the Realities.“
• ​Next up was Vern’s July toll-road piece, “Abuses of TCA:  Stopping the 241 Extension is ALL our Fight,”  although the author thinks his September “Sachs of BS:  Shooting Down the Toll Roads Propaganda” was even better.
• ​Fortunately a lot of people – hopefully just about everyone who saw the original Facebook slander – were able to read “The Truth About Lorri Galloway And Her Libel Against Me.“  The mayoral candidate did manage to get a little attention and sympathy with her original charges, but she was never able to counter all the points Vern brought up, and her candidacy is back down in the dumps;  and now that her Eli Home has received such a huge donation care of her Democratic opponent’s father, she’ll be leaving the race any day, so Vern’s upcoming Lorri Galloway series will be a little bit less timely and relevant, but it will still be fun and interesting reading.  And all true.
• ​This was a good and scary one Vern did back in March about his old town, which got a lot of attention:  “Helicopter Rides: HB Trump-Right Yearns for South American Genocides of the 70’s!“
• ​Ah, it gave Vern joy to be able to write, back in May, “Supreme Court gives Manuel Diaz a Victory over Anaheim’s Moses Johnson and Nick Bennallack,” though again last month’s sequel “Excessive Force:  Fire Officer Nick Bennallack!“ was even sweeter.
• ​Honest Democrat Greg Diamond kept us apprised of inner-Dem shakeups with his February “Agranista Old Guard Swept Out of Power…“
• ​Just a couple more.  Either Vern or Greg as Admin proudly shared the DPOC making the right move in February’s Christian Dorscht case, with March’s “The Kids Are All Right:  DPOC Weighs in on Lawngate.“
• ​Brand-new Brea controversy from Greg with “To Protect Manley and Royce, Brea Council Offers Tuesday Sneak Attack on Most of the First Amendment.“
• ​OK, we’ll end with a couple of darkly funny (but true) ones:  Greg’s March “Ravenous Attention Vampire Lenore Albert Sheridan to Run for CDP Chair to ‘Unite the Party’ … IN LAUGHTER!”  And…
• ​Vern’s news-breaking “Travis ‘Hot Dog’ Allen to Run for Governor:  Who will be North HB’s Next Assemblyperson?”  We’ll be continuing our coverage of Travis’ vain quest over the coming year, as well as the race for his replacement (whom we HOPE does not turn out to be Tyler Diep, but the silver linings there are: he’s no worse than Travis was, and Westminster will be sort-of rid of him.)

​Then, of course, there are always the “chestnuts” – the Orange Juice pieces from previous years that thousands of people continue to read.  The biggest of those this year… WERE …

• ​Vern’s “Huntington Beach’s Mobile Home Uprising:  Which Side Are You On?“ remains relevant to folks all over Southern California as the trend to corporatizing mobile home parks and jacking up the rents unreasonably continues three years later, as do the resistance movements fighting back – the author continues to get calls from beleaguered home owners all over the southland.
• ​Our old Occupy friend Mike Laux sent us a story late last year that continues to get mega-hits well until the present, a timely and local story of his neighborhood, “A Mall in San Juan Capistrano’s Los Rios District?“  Hey, any of you-all can do like Mike and send us a timely local OC story, we love that.  I’ll edit and illustrate it, put it up on Facebook, the works.
• ​Inge‘s old review of “Homeless:  The Motel Kids of OC” continues to get lotsa hits every year, and the comments section remains a poignant meetup place for folks who say “Hey!  I was one of those kids!”
• ​The stories nobody gets tired of:  Pedroza’s Columbus Day 2010 polemic “Christopher Columbus Was a Murderer, a Terrorist and a Pirate!“  Guy Fawkes’ “Are Litterbugs Tea Partiers or Progressives?”  Pedroza’s perennial “If You Were Mayor, What Would You Do to Improve Your City?”  Larry Gilbert’s “Doolittle’s Raid: the Untold Story.“  Vern’s scabrous “‘Anyone who is a Believer Will REGRET it if He or She Does Not’ Come to see MAN HEE LEE at the Crystal Cathedral this Saturday!”  And finally, what we were looking for…
• ​One of Vern’s most popular pieces ever, “Appeal Filed for Jesus Aguirre, the Buena Park Teenager Serving Life in Pelican Bay,”  read so far by over 17,000 readers – which has finally (along with a lot of other tireless activism, and reforms we’ll be mentioning) has resulted in Jesus’ being freed!  

Jesus at home this week with family and friends… (Jesus in white t-shirt, center;  wife Yolanda second from right;  father and mother to his right and behind)

Well, Vern says it’s good to be free, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of you this year, you can count on it!

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