Tues | APR 17 The Huntington Beach City Council votes to study an ordinance that would mandate residents spay or neuter their pets and implant them with a microchip. The spaying and neutering is, of course, to quell the exploding pet population while the microchip is, of course, to quell exploding pets. Damn you, Betty White!

Wed | APR 18 Speaking of organisms bereft of balls, newspapers are dying. And I say die! Die! Die! I don’t want to hear any crap that newspapers are dying because people don’t read. Newspapers are dying because they have come to represent the worst qualities of both namby and pamby. This not only makes them boring and stupid but dangerous—or weren’t you around for the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? The latest wuss on the scene is the Press-Telegram’s new Coastal Scene magazine. If you couldn’t guess the direction of this bit of sugar from the cover headline on its first issue—“An Ocean, An Espresso (and maybe a free puppy?”)—you’d get the gist from Editor Joshua Stecker’s My Little Ponyesque “Letter from the Editor” (with annotations for those of you not fluent in Wimp):

“First off, we’re a ‘good news’ publication; you won’t find stories on crime and violence or anything truly negative or hurtful towards others in these pages. [1] We’ll leave the ‘If it bleeds, it leads’-mentality to the newspapers. [2] You also won’t find biased political reporting or ‘hit pieces’ on local people. [3] (Sorry, [4] we’ll leave that to the ‘alternative weeklies.’)[5]”

Thurs | APR 19 A 50-year-old Fountain Valley man walks into Long Beach City Hall and sets himself afire prompting officials to evacuate hundreds of workers from the building. For more information, check out Coastal Scene’s piece, “Local Man’s Spectacular Light Show Offers Thrills, Day Off! Everything Awesome!”

Fri | APR 20 Judge Gibson Lee is served, kinda, with a notice demanding his recall from the bench. Lee is the guy who sentenced nine kids to house arrest and probation after they were convicted of severely beating three young women. Relatives of the victims, along with Assembly candidate Michael Jackson attempted to serve Lee with the notice but had trouble finding him and finally, after hours of searching had to hand the notice to the clerk’s office. The Los Angeles County Probation Department had suggested Lee sentence the kids to six- or nine-month terms in the county juvenile camp, but Lee gave them the lighter sentence. The judge has seven days to respond to the notice, and is expected to request a lesser penalty, perhaps cake.

Sat | APR 21 Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald dies of colon cancer. The congresswoman, who was 68, was elected to seven terms. Now, she was tough. With her husband Jim, she raised a family of five. At age 40 she went back to college and earned her B.A.; she became a teacher. My only run-in with Congresswoman Millender-McDonald came right after journalist Gary Webb’s stories alleged the CIA had introduced crack into low income urban areas that the congresswoman represented. She organized a community forum to discuss the charge and brought with her CIA Director John Deutch. She was was immediately set upon by critics on both sides of the issue—those who thought she was over-reacting and those in her community who believed she wasn’t doing enough to find out the truth. This meeting was hot. People were yelling—I mean pissed. I remember sitting in the middle of all of this scoping out the exits. I can’t say it was the congresswoman’s finest hour, it wasn’t like anything she said calmed the crowd or made them feel any better, but she stood her ground, let them vent and tried to get some information out of Deutch. It was useless, of course. He made a brief speech, basically told everyone to mind their own business, and said everything was fine. I don’t know what happened to him. Probably went into newspapers.

Sun | APR 22 The Lakers lose Game One of their playoff series to the Phoenix Suns. Am I the only true Laker fan who was rooting for them to miss the playoffs—they got no chance—in hopes of a shot at Greg Oden or Kevin Durant?

Mon | APR 23 Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin dies. Yeltsin, who became the first freely elected president of Russia in 1991, was seen as both a champion of and obstacle to democracy. While most people will likely recall the image of him sitting atop a tank during the raucous street rallies that marked the ultimate victory of democracy in Russia, just two years later he ordered tanks to storm the Russian White House to oust barricaded deputies who refused to leave after Yeltsin dissolved parliament. He was, to say the least, a complicated figure or, as Coastal Scene observed: “Boris Yeltsin Is Alive and Just Super! No One Ever Dies! Ever! Ever! Ever!” In other news today, Russian democracy is dead.

[1] First off, this sentence embodies an ethos that is deeply troubling, even, “hurtful,” pointing up the philosophical problem inherent in any “good news”—i.e., the subjectivity of pain, i.e. what’s good for the goose is bad for the gander who just wanted to get some sleep. [2] Newspapers like the one that owns Coastal Scene? [3] Yes, nothing nasty about people—unless they live somewhere else. [4] Josh is not only a hypocrite, he’s passive aggressive. [5] Were we just the target of biased reporting? Do I now have diabetes?

Tags: coastal scene, juanita millender-mcdonald