Out here on Screech Owl Road, east of Twentynine Palms you can see things pretty clearly. Sometimes the heat causes shimmer mirages; sometimes the wind kicks up some devilish sand storms – the kind that can strip the chrome off your Hummer. But most of the time you get used to seeing a long way. Even as far away as my former home, Fullerton.
Pudding cups!Banacek called. He wants his clothes back.
The City Council race of 2010 is already over. You will re-elect the brain dead sea cucumber known as Don Bankhead – pension spiker, staff stooge, abysmal decision maker. And you will also elect Pat McKinley – poster boy for pension abuse, supporter of the hideous Ackerwoman, repuglican de-jour, and yet another retired cop. And it won’t even be close.
Bankhead, Dick Jones, McKinley; please contemplate that triumverate of septuagenarian, lint-headed, RINO back washers and tell me why you aren’t in deep shit. Can anyone say gerontocracy?
In the two-year seat Bruce Whitaker has a chance, but let’s face it: he’s up against a bankrupt and a carpetbagging food poisoner. Really, I don’t see how he can pull it off.
Aw, none of those folks died...
Fullerton, the Education Community, has a special knack for electing the weak, the feeble-minded, the incomprehensible. Jeez, do I have to draw you a diagram? Molly McClanahan, Buck Catlin, Julie Sa, Peter Godfrey, HeeHaw Jones, Mike Clesceri, Leland Wilson, Pam Keller. This rougues gallery of incompetence even starts to make Jan Flory look good. Well, no, cancel that.
And now, because you deserve it, we present another slow, mental unwinding by everybody’s Southern fried favorite, F. Richard Jones. Here he holds forth on the subject of coyote miscegenation, apparently an area of special expertise. Of course I couldn’t imagine mating with a wolf, at least not without a step ladder.
Remember Friends: when the coyotes attack your home, be sure to obey their commands and avoid eye contact!
Those thousand posts have taken us from the ridiculous to the sublime; from the arid steppes of Kharakhastan to the steaming jungles of Tanzanisha; into the squalid precincts of the Poisoned Park; through a sad litany of humiliating Redevelopment failures.
Friends around the world have darkened our blogstep, including irrepressible Barney Wewak, the Papuan Highlands tribal headman and 1974 Troy High School exchange student.
We have shared the serial nonsense of the Yellowing Submariners at the decrepit and irrelevant Fullerton Observer. We noted the vacuousness of the local mainstream media.
We have blasted unscrupulous carpetbaggers – from the revolting Linda Ackerwoman to the comical Lorri Galloway and the even more comical #2 – Hide and Seek Harry Sidhu whose phony residence at the now infamous Calabria Apartments must rank as the stoopidest stunt ever pulled by an OC politician.
As the Fullerton Redevelopment bureaucrats like to say: much has been accomplished, yet much remains to be done. With the perpetual misbehavin’ and idiocies of our electeds to provide us constant inspiration, we seemingly will always have job security!
Well, they’re at it again. Another on-line “article” in the Register by a Fullerton guy named Dennis Bode who is listed as a “columnist,” but who is, in reality, a local realtor making a sales pitch. They tried that before. Apparently I didn’t sufficiently chastise them.
The piece starts out by belaboring the obvious: termite inspections are helpful and then morphs into an advertisement for Mr. Bode.
The appearance of an ad masquerading as a news story must violate every precept of professional journalism, but hey, times are tough! And I’m just a dog. What do i know?
Every week they insult my intelligence all over again. Why do they do that?
I really thought the OC Register/Fullerton News Tribune had gone about as far south as was humanly possible. I was wrong. Yesterday they produced an on-line “piece” by a “columnist” named Dennis Bode.
It was dressed up to look like an article about remodeling your house – which is about as newsworthy as tulips in the front yard. Pretty soon the article started talking about house prices and foreclosures and REO’s, etc. Upon closer inspection it turns out the thing is nothing but a real estate come-on by Bode who, it turns out, is a real estate agent.
Sweet Emancipator, are they joking? Was this an infomercial that somehow missed the “advertisement” label and got put in the news tab, instead? Or has the Register/News Tribune descended to printing ads under the guise of news? Other ads on the page are clearly labeled “advertisement.”
Did Mr. Bode pay for that ad? I have to wonder.
This is beyond incompetent and lazy. This is unethical. But what do I know? I’m just a dead dog with a bust-up eye socket and a bad under bite. Arf.
This past week our State Assembly frittered away its time discussing two resolutions that are just about as big a joke as you could imagine.
The first item National Spay and Neuter Your Dog Week, and the second National Gambling Problem Awareness Week. I’m glad our assemblyman Chris Norby voted no on both, especially that first one (shudder), and I hope he can help put an end to all the time wasted on this useless drivel. While our State is broke the State Assembly continues with business as usual. Arf.
Just in case anybody thought the Fullerton News Tribune might somehow become more, you know, relevant, with the departure of Barbara Giasone, they had better think again.
Let us contemplate this week’s edition. In a week when the City Council held a special meeting to discuss millions in projected budget deficits, the Thursday News Tribune’s big story (by a guy named Bruce Chambers), was about – drum roll – tulips.
Okay some guy grows tulips in his front yard, and that’s great. Tulips and daffodils are pretty and I love digging up flower beds. But is that news?
I don’t think so, but, what do I know. I’m just a dog.
Well Friends, here they are – the 2009 Fringie Winners. You don’t really deserve this sort of punishment inflicted on you, but…well, hell, maybe you do! The competition was spirited in many of the categories. And by spirited I mean mind-numbingly depressing. And I’m just a dog! I had to take long breaks several times during the nomination and judging to water the fire hydrants along Brea Boulevard.
It was like getting hit with a broomstick all over again...
1. In the category of Least Distinguished Journalist it really wasn’t even close. The OC Register’s Frank Mickadeit took it going away for his complete lack of journalistic integrity. In the end the judges just didn’t feel that Sharon Kennedy or Barbara Giasone even really qualified as journalists. Martin Wisckol was given credit for showing up on the blog even tho’ it was merely to defend his embarrassing whoring for Ackerman, Inc.
2. In the category of the Worst Bureaucratic SNAFU, the judges were clearly impressed by not only the scope of thePoisoned Park disaster and its ongoing potential for more o’ same, but by city staff’s ability to avoid any and all responsibility for the multi-million dollar mess. Bravo, Mr. City Manager, you’re finally catching up with your predecessor, and that’s saying a lot!
3.Worst Vote of 2009. Bankhead, Jones, and Kellerfor the win of course, with their undying support of the Redevelopment expansion. And by win, of course, I mean disastrous loss for everyone outside the Redevelopment Department.
4. In the category of Scariest Ghost of Fullerton Past, we had an eerily close call. Yet despite the frightening surprise visitation from my former broomstick-wielding mistress Jan Flory, the judges were absolutely horrified by the noxious vapor of Linda LeQuire, conjured up by Ackerman Inc. out of some fetid and accursed burial ground, to smear Chris Norby. It didn’t work, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
5. In the category ofStupidest Statement Made in Publicwe again had a tough decision. In a year when Dick Jonessaid so many idiotic things and Pam Keller claimed (with a perfectly straight face) to be a “fiscal conservative,” a dark horse nominee grabbed the brass ring. And by dark horse nominee I mean the daffy, loud-mouthed nincompoop member of “Pam’s Posse”and her crazy-funny “why Pam should be mayor” rhetorical ramble through the brambles. Go ahead and watchit. We dares ya!
6. In the Government Small Change Adds Up category the award goes to the Roscoe’s Famous Nuisance Noise Study, a wonderful example of ill-conceived bureaucratic waste on a small scale that makes us really worried about the big stuff.
7. The Most Entertaining and/or Disturbing Image of 2009. Barney Wewak for the win. Aw, c’mon, was there ever any doubt? The picture even has a dog in it. Arf!
The Friends For Fullerton's Future Have Friends Around the World...
8. Best Vote 2009. This one was pretty easy for the judges since by the time they got around to this category they had inhaled copious amounts of medicinal weed acquired from the Dick & MaryJane Jones Dispensary. Our old friendSharon Quirk-Silvagets a double victory for seeing the proverbial light on the God-awful McDonald’s relocation; and also for opposing that fraudulent Redevelopment expansion.
9. Our final category is theMost Awful Political Candidate of 2009, and it goes to none other thanChris Norby for his abortive County Clerk campaign. Rarely had the judges seen such a blatant fixation on public sector job preservation and such a mismatch of skill set to position. The campaign slogan “Preserving Your Vital Records” was so insipid and so lame I have to lift my leg on it. Again. There. Clean up in aisle #9! Well deserved Fringie, indeed!
Finally, the Judging Committee decided to award three special Fringies in 2009 in order to recognize excessively, aesthetically unattractive behavior on the part of some of our political personalities.
10. Special Fringie #1. The call by Pam Kellerfor a City-run blog – with no bloggers – was such a wonderful monument to fatuousness and political tone-deafness that as a statement and an act it really was in a class by itself. You can enjoy our original post here and listen to Keller’s statement. Well done, Pam! You excelled yourself.
11. Special Fringie #2. Well of course we had to acknowledge Linda Ackerwomanwhose scampaign in the 72nd must be considered positively evil (yes the judges said evil!) by any normal person. This creature did not qualify in the most Awful Political Candidate category since the whole operation seemed more like a jail break than a campaign. Who knows how many hundreds of simoleons per vote this cipher and her Sacramento-organized goons wasted. Oh well. It least it wasn’t our dough!
12. Special Fringie #3. The judges believed that they would have been remiss without a tip o’ the Fringed cap to Congresscritter-for-life Ed Royce, the rat who managed to swim away from the giant suction-vortex of the sinking S.S. Ackerman and happily scampered up the waiting rope ladder onto the S.S. Norby. Well done little rodent!
And so friends, that concludes the 2009 Fringie Awards. We hope you have enjoyed them as much as we have enjoyed bringing them to you. And if you didn’t, tough.
Here’s looking forward to a new year filled with wonderful material from our favorite folks in Fullerton!
During 2009 several disturbing apparitions were detected haunting Fullerton. Friends, be assured, this is not a task we undertake lightly, for obvious macabre reasons. Here are the spooky nominations in the Fringie category of Scariest Ghost of Fullerton Past.
1. Former City Council woman and my former owner Jan Floryappeared out of nowhere in January to persecute innocent lads on bicycles. She failed but caused the City to waste $20K in needless code enforcement costs. Brrrrr.
2. 2009 saw the reappearance of Linda LeQuire, Fullerton City Council’s original Queen of Spleen in the 1980s, who despised renters and Democrats with a weird hate lust, and who was aptly mated with her equally dim welder-husband, Roy (see below). LeQuire popped up right on cue to smear Chris Norby early in the 72nd campaign with allegations of having done something bad, sometime, somewhere, as verifiable by the now-dead former City Manager. Shriek!
3. Andwhat should reappear during the summer, but the emanation of former one-term Council person Leland Wilson, who still has apparently failed to learn that you can’t make everybody happy by trying to be all things to all people. In August Leland joined an e-mail string attacking an OC Register editorial against Fullerton’s fraudulent Redevelopment expansion. His statement that “I’ve never seen so much BS in an editorial in all my life” was sent to such luminaries as Marty Burbank, Linda Ackerman, Peter Godfrey (see below), Roy LeQuire (see above), and Buck “Big Government” Catlin, among a wider assortment of staff stooges and pro-Redevelopment parasites.
Well of course the boys in the white van got hold of it! We didn’t post about it at the time because it seemed more annoying than significant. The frightening thing is maybe Leland Wilson still thinks he’s got a political future by parroting the self-interest pro-Redevelopment blathering of the Chamber of Commerce City Hall lackeys. If so, he’s wrong. Oooh. Stop it, Leland, you’re scaring us.
4. Good Lord! A Peter Godfrey sighting. This former Council member from the 1990s materialized at a City Council meeting to pitch the Redevelopment expansion. Who asked him to show up, and why anybody thought his opinion on any subject mattered at all, still remain a mystery, but not one hard to solve. Godfrey was an ineffective midget while on the council, and the years have done nothing to enhance his stature. The fact that Peter’s wife, Lois, kicked in a Big One to the Ackerwoman (see above) scampaign speaks volumes. Eeeeeek!
We use a lot of graphics here at FFFF, and some of them are entertaining and some even a bit, well, disturbing. To recognize the more engaging pictures on our site we nominate the following in the category of Most Entertaining and/or Disturbing Image of 2009.
Can someone please open a window?
1. Matthew J. Cunningham, who actually posted this picture of himself on his own blog. We borrowed it often and mercilessly.
Suddenly I was on the floor looking up at Officer Rubio.
2. From the News Tribune’s ace reporting aboutChief McKinley’s vest, we present Officer Rubio. Say, Rube, can you get a matching handbag for that?
Nothing says "screw you" like a beer bottle in the face.
3. This gem was mined from a youtube clip showing the confrontation of CBS/KCAL reporter Dave Lopez and our old pal Dick Ackerman. The gift that keeps giving!
Gut punch on the way...
4. 2006 Miss Fullerton & Don Bankhead. She would soon trade in her tiara for a set of brass knuckles.
Bon appetit!
5.This tasty little morsel was served up in the final post about the City Lights SRO debacle. It is now a staple in the Dick Jones pantry.
Friends Around the World...
6. Here’s a family portrait of Papuan Highlands Headman B’rni (Barney) Wewak, a foreign exchange student at Troy High School in 1974. We have been favored with several posts by Barney in 2009 and look forward to more in the year ahead.
It's a bird, it's a plane...
7. Finally, we round out our nominees with this image of Jan Flory, my former mistress. I wish she had always been in such a good mood. We gave her cooking sherry for Christmas.
