In memory of Mike Conley

You shouldn’t learn about the death of someone you knew at a birthday party.

Last night, I was at my friend Fern’s 40th birthday party, held at eVocal, a local venue/art gallery that is one of her spiritual homes, a place where she regularly reads her work. It was my first time there after having heard much about it, so I was wandering around, looking at everything, when a flyer up in the window caught my eye.

MIA playing around here? Thought she was at Coachella. Maybe she’s at the Detroit Bar…oh no wait, it’s the band M.I.A.

I moved closer.

With Jello Biafra and Kevin Seconds, huh…wait, hold a minute, M.I.A. had broken up years ago. Something doesn’t make –

Then I read more of the flyer and something hit me:

For the family of Mike Conley…Mike’s dead?

Mike’s dead?

I didn’t know who to ask but Brett, one of eVocal’s main folks, was around, and I walked up to him and asked. I vaguely remember feeling shocked. Brett confirmed it and we talked a bit about it — I could tell it had hit him hard as well.

Was this huge news? How had I missed this?

As the party started filling up the venue I withdrew to the side and started scrounging for information via the iPhone, and found stories like this one, written by my editor at the OC Weekly, Dave Segal, some days after it happened — which makes my ignorance of his passing until now all the more inexcusable. The actual event and initial reports had happened on the crazy-full weekend of my birthday and good friend Stripey’s and my mind was very much elsewhere, but to have missed Dave’s story on it a few days later in a paper I write for…self-pity isn’t an attractive quality, but I was damn ashamed of myself, angry at myself, to have blanked on this, still am. I will say no more on that front.

But I searched for a few more stories, read some comments, and quietly, I began to grieve.

—

In late 1992, as part of my initial arrival at UCI, I sought out both the radio station KUCI and the student newspaper, the New University, the latter with a vague idea to do some sort of regular music coverage. I had barely any review experience or interview experience as such, but I knew I wanted to do something, even while going to grad school — it was an interest I really wanted to pursue for some time but, in my own fairly slack way, I hadn’t sensed how best to do it. (The idea of doing a fanzine on my own or the like never occurred to me — I think in the end I am and remain someone who finds larger contexts to work in.) But since the New University, unlike UCLA’s paper, didn’t require you to be part of the journalism program one way or another — handily, since in fact UCI had no such program (for better or for worse!) — I pretty much walked in, indicated my interest, and was immediately made an intern. I can live with that.

How it happened I’m not sure — I must have mentioned I was interested in music and all — but shortly thereafter, not on the first day or anything (I think), this had arrived in the New U mailbin:

You can find my thoughts on this release, Naked Soul’s debut EP Seed, at the All Music Guide, but those were written many years later — at the time, I knew of M.I.A. a bit and in reading the press guff that came with the CD I learned the connection and was intrigued. I forget how it happened — my interest, the label’s, my editor’s — but I arranged to do an interview with Mike and Jeff Sewell, Naked Soul’s bassist, near UCI.

You won’t find the story anywhere online to my knowledge — though if it has surfaced, I’d be pleased to know. I was still months away from hearing the term ‘web browser’ for the first time and the New U wouldn’t fully go online until the mid-nineties, and its archives start from around that time. So I have no story to refer to, beyond guessing it’s probably an embarrassment of an effort on my end, fairly obvious in its line of questioning and general approach. There’s a lot of woodshedding I’m content to ignore.

But that means instead my memories are about that first meeting — dim, but for a reason as I’ll explain. Jeff was cool enough, but I remember Mike being very friendly, a warm and heartfelt guy. He matches well in my memory with someone else I interviewed and first heard soon thereafter, O from the band Olivelawn, who had just started his own new band fluf around that point. Two different people but both allied to anthemic and heartfelt rock and roll that had grown out of the 80s punk/alternative/whatever you want to call it scene they’d grown up in and been a part of. The world had turned — slightly — towards their musical view on life and they were out to make the most of it.

The point is, though, that I sensed Mike was a good fellow, from the start. Nothing earthshattering about this, nothing that changed my life in a singular fashion, just that you knew, here was a good dude. I’m sure he spoke a bit of his happy pride in his young daughter, pictured there on the cover — surprising to realize now that she’s 18 years old — and what he hoped things might lead to. He’d already done a lot so he had no illusions I’m sure — he just wanted to make music and see what would happen. And in combination with the interview and the EP, I became a Naked Soul kind of a guy — for me, Mike was identified with that, not with M.I.A.

The story doesn’t end there, though. Now let me stop and say this right now: I will never claim to have been Mike’s friend at this time, close or otherwise. But we were friendly — over the next couple of years, we struck up an acquaintance, built in part by circumstance and in part by luck. He lived and worked nearby, and I got to know him in the same way that I got to initially know someone like the Detroit Bar‘s Chris Fahy, say — someone on the scene and getting involved while I was off torturing myself over obscure theorists. But I played Naked Soul’s music on my show and covered it for the New U and while I showed nowhere near the focus on local things that I could have done, there were folks I did follow a bit and shows I did see and people I talked to, and Mike was one of them. I remember seeing a Naked Soul show up in LA — the first time I think I saw them do their killer cover of the Replacements’ “Answering Machine” — and played cuts on my show from the EP.

Some months later, they ended up booked to play a show at UCI’s old Pub venue, now somewhat resurrected in the new Student Center there. At this point the show booker for a lot of things at UCI from 1992 to 1994 was another KUCI DJ — my friend Jen Vineyard, who was able to get in a huge number of stellar acts on the road during those years, big and small. That’s a story in and of itself, and I can talk about everything from seeing Tiger Trap doing an afternoon show in the Pub to the Melvins blasting a huge wall of noise across campus to seeing the final Unrest tour with an opening act on their own first American tour…Stereolab. And more, and onward — but the point was that Jen also kept her eyes and ears out for local bands all the time, booking them in for shows, and so Naked Soul got their own headlining gig one night.

Now, I don’t remember how this happened. I don’t even remember why. But I think — maybe — that Mike had always remembered the story I’d written and thought it was really nice, and we were all talking before the show or something. Again, I don’t remember — when I say things are dim from that first meeting, it’s that we met often enough than things blend into each other, and that I can’t be sure of what was talked about at each time. But he really wanted me to introduce them that night at the Pub.

I’m sure I was pleased, flattered, but also surprised and maybe a touch nervous. But I remember agreeing, and I dimly recall stepping on the stage, looking out to the crowd and into the stagelights (and thus not seeing the crowd), saying…something and happily introducing the band, I trust. And then I got off there as quickly as I could! Hey, they weren’t paying to see me.

As it turns out, there’s a video of a performance from that show on YouTube. Just one cut, but a good one — their fine rip on the Who’s “So Sad About Us”:

I wonder if there’s more of the show out there somewhere. Hopefully so.

I kept running into Mike after that, very randomly — and bless his soul, he always seemed to recognize me first. I only just remembered that, typing this now. I remember running into him at Lollapalooza 1994 at the water tent, he was all smiles, having the time of his life — god knows what we talked about, but I have that memory of him just having a ball, totally up. I want to say there were a couple of other encounters along the way too, out and about.

I think I recall the final time we talked, though, and I’m going to have to do some scrounging later to see if I still have the tape. What happened was that Naked Soul had released their full album, Visiting Your Planet — and as this AMG review says (not by me, but by a fellow fan), it’s a secret treat of an album, not earthshaking but sounding great still. I ought to know, I’m playing it just now.

Anyway, we had agreed to set up an interview…for the paper? for KUCI? I don’t recall now, I don’t even know if it was tied into the album release at all. It was just Mike this time, because the band had either gone through a lineup change or was in some instability — there wouldn’t be anything else from the band in the end beyond a small-release single, so perhaps it was all just starting to wind down. One thing I do remember, though, is that I’ve got the interview on tape somewhere — I’ve got a big mess of random tapes like that and I really should go through one of these days and digitize them. I don’t think they’re any great classics missing in them, but they might be of interest (and I know that among them is my Ian Crause interview but that’s very much another story).

I can’t say I recall much about this interview but I remember Mike being a little more reflective, not quite as up — not depressed, I should say, just simply reflecting what had to be a stressful period with the band, possibly with the label, possibly something else too. But it wasn’t a bad conversation or interview, so I hope, and he was as friendly as ever; given I was going through my own ups and downs around that time I wouldn’t be surprised if I came off as a bit mercurial to him in turn, reading things through our own lenses. We ate some pizza as we talked, parted with a handshake and hopefully a promise to catch each other as we could.

To my knowledge, that was the last time we spoke. Somewhere in 1995 or so, I’m pretty sure.

I don’t mention this to speak of it in a dramatic sense, though I’m sure it comes off that way. Rather, I think from there we just carried on as we did, busy with our own lives and own experiences. He had the eventual breakup of Naked Soul to deal with, not to mention the daily living of family and fatherhood and the workaday world to address; I was only a short year or two away from the decision to pull the ripcord out of grad school and, as a result, stopping my writing work for a bit until a fortuitous exchange of e-mails with Steven Thomas Erlewine led to the All Music Guide work and all that followed after it. My knowledge of local bands grew a bit hazier as my interests went elsewhere, I put down deeper roots of friendship with others…a not-unfamiliar path.

And Mike? He kept on keeping on — and learning that he did and I somehow missed it all, well, like I said, I’m trying to avoid self-pity, but again I’m kicking myself a bit, just for simply not being aware, not knowing or asking or putting the pieces together — we were, after all, in the same area still. But among other things, he started a new band, Jigsaw, and once again took to the road and stage and studio doing what he loved. Here’s the video for their song “Sour”:

Meanwhile, he made a hell of a mark in recent years via his ownership of a great bar that I don’t go to often enough, the Avalon Bar. Located near the Detroit Bar (and eVocal), it’s a dive in the best sense — not scummy, but comfortable, the type of place that has its own feeling and loyal clientele. But again, I don’t go there often enough, obviously — because if I did, at some point I would have found out he was the owner, or run into him even. Now I’ll never claim he would have recognized me again then out of the blue, after so many years. But if he had — well, I wouldn’t have been surprised. And that would have been great.

It really would have been great just to say hi again one more time, that’s all. It would have given me the chance to apologize for losing touch, to say something like, “Man, I am a TOTAL goof, I didn’t even know you ran this place!,” to ask after everything. It would have been fun.

But there again, I protest too much — because, after all, those who did know him far better than I, his friends — his family — those are the ones who truly want to say hi to him again one more time, and more. Because you don’t expect to see your buddy, your boss, your husband, your dad go off on a trip somewhere for work and wish him well and then get a phone call or a message…

No, you don’t expect that. You just don’t.

—

The birthday party was a blast and I concentrated on the moment. There was music and poetry and catching up with friends who showed up later on in the evening and more. Fern had a wonderful time and it was a pleasure to meet her children and her family and friends. Yet in a weird and slightly reversed way, I thought of how I was now in a reverse position from three years back, where I came to London on a long-planned visit only to have it happen the day after the Tube bombings, and for me to find out that an acquaintance who was a dear friend of many of my friends there was one of the victims. As I sadly and ruefully summed it up at the time, I came out for a party and ending up crashing a wake.

But this time around the wake was in my head, and the party was all around me.

The Mike Conley Family Fund has been set up to take donations — there is a memorial T-shirt available for purchase, and as that flyer notes up top, there’s a show coming up a week from Monday — and that’s one amazing lineup.

For now, though, simply this, belatedly and with honest sorrow: thanks Mike. The memories are warm and I always knew you were ‘good people,’ as they say. From everything else I’ve read so far over the last twelve hours, it only just reconfirmed that. It’s a little comforting to know that whatever else my faults in learning too late and all that I’m not the only person who thought that about you, and knew it, and said it.

Rest well.

I could talk about…

…political scandals.

…the torching of an embassy.

…that…tape…thing.

But, instead — and I regret not actually saying more about this in detail, but I’m feeling a bit frazzled and out of sorts — I direct you to the passing of a young man who was a victim of a great injustice here in Orange County not long ago, a case which I followed quite closely at the time.

Read Arthur Carmona’s words from last year here. An initial report on news of his passing is here, with links to earlier stories and discussions; a fuller one has just gone up.

He would have been the first to say he was not a plaster saint, and it does his memory no disfavor to note that. But let this from the end of a blog post elsewhere about this serve as a memory:

His family told reporters that Arthur had turned his life around finally. “When he got out of jail, he went through a lot of ups and downs,” his mother said, but “he had found purpose and he was finally moving on.” His uncle told reporters “He was doing very well. He was a joyful, outgoing kind of guy. He was always happy and had lots of friends.”

Let this serve as a reminder to all of us that despite the national races and international conflicts (and the general trashy news of life) that there are important — and cruel — things that happen in our own backyards. We should not be blind to them.

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In which Michael Carona’s chances go from slim to none

Likely enough. Carona’s humiliating collapse from OC sheriff to private citizen very likely to end up serving time is far from complete — the court case doesn’t even begin for a few more months — but the hole he’s in ended up in sunk a little deeper yesterday:

Transcripts of secretly recorded conversations show former Sheriff Mike Carona apparently plotting with confidant Don Haidl to align their stories about cash and gifts if subpoenaed by federal prosecutors.

At one point in the obscenity-laced conversation, Carona emphatically says that money he received from Haidl is “completely untraceable” on his end, according to the transcripts.

At another point when the two men were discussing gifts, Carona says, “unless there was a pinhole in your ceiling that evening, it never (expletive) happened, because it never (expletive) happened Don. It never (expletive) happened,” the transcripts says.

This all surfaced because Carona’s defense invoked a rather convoluted argument:

Carona’s defense team objected in a motion last week to the propriety of wiring Haidl to secretly record conversations with the sheriff.

The 50-page motion by Carona lawyer H. Dean Steward alleged that federal prosecutors used “sham” grand jury subpoenas as a starting point to elicit incriminating statements from Carona.

The strategy violated legal ethics because investigators knew at the time that Carona was represented by an attorney, Steward alleged.

I can *kinda* see this as an argument but I’d have to squint. Word is that this argument isn’t likely to fly with the judge, and the prosecution basically called a bluff by posting the excerpts.

You can read the whole thing here — I think the bit about Don Haidl being a ‘stand-up motherfucker’ is my favorite part. (Hey, runs in the family.)

The comments on the article are even more interesting, actually — a lot of venting going on about an OC GOP power structure now deeply out of sorts (and as R. Scott Moxley’s story the other day shows, less of a defining characteristic of this county than might be guessed). Many of the comments aren’t exactly what I would call polite or allied with my own viewpoint — ie, complaining about the supervisors et al as being, and I quote, ‘no different than any of the illegals or any other degenerate that we chastise for their feloneous behaviors’ — but then again plenty of OC folks view the GOP as just a sellout of conservative principles, so take that on board.

Perhaps my favorite, offhand:

And now the Board of Supes answer to rid the county of all this nefarious corruption is to spend over a million dollars of our money a year for an Office of Independent Review (OIR) in which a bunch of government bureaucrats from law enforcement agencies pick a group of attorneys to oversee our sheriff’s department. haha. That’s like allowing Frankenstein, Dracula and the Mummy to select an oversight committee to monitor the Mayor of Transylvania! Not only that. The OIR will have no authority whatsoever. It will depend upon the voluntary cooperation of OCSD! Imagine that! An oversight committee having no authority over the agency it is overseeing and we are getting tagged for over a million buck a year to fund it! That’s like telling the IRS to collect taxes but not giving them the authority to seize bank accounts! More wasted taxdollars! Does this insanity have no end?

No. That would make too much sense.

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And speaking of music and politics — and OC history

I only just got around to this last night, but the cover story of last week’s OC Weekly was another unsurprisingly amazing piece from Gustavo Arellano. After my exhaustive post just previous to this one I feel a bit zoned — though lunch has helped — so all I’ll say is: read it. But here’s the opening section:

If the coffee that Maria Daniel spilled had landed directly on the tape player, this story might not exist.

Daniel was relaxing one recent Tuesday with her aunt Elisa Carr and uncle Emilio Martinez Jr. at Carr’s Stanton home. Rain clouds were sweeping overhead, so Carr offered her niece and brother some coffee to fend off the cold. Before she rose to make another pot, Carr turned on a tape player, the rectangular kind with piano-key buttons and a sturdy grip handle that went out of popularity around the Carter administration.

Out of a tinny speaker rumbled a deep, gravelly voice singing about a beautiful woman. A guitar strummed in the background. It was Carr’s father, Emilio Martinez, playing just one of the hundreds of corridos he penned during his 85 years.

“It’s so nice to hear his voice,” Carr remarked, as Daniel and Emilio Jr. nodded silently. She poured her niece another cup. But as Daniel raised her mug for a sip, the coffee splashed across the table.

Carr quickly snatched the tape player from the scalding liquid. The coffee only touched the machine’s side. Her father continued to sing.

“That was really close!” she exclaimed, laughing. Carr turned off the tape. The coffee glimmered on the table. “Too close,” she sighed, putting the tape recorder away and getting up to find some towels.

History is a fragile, incomplete thing, especially when documenting minorities in the United States, and few local cases are more telling than the story of Emilio Martinez. Many of his compositions offer a vital glimpse into the county’s Latino past, one ignored by Orange County’s major historians for more than a century. The man wrote about some of the most crucial events in the county’s formation: the 1936 Citrus War, the Great Flood of 1938, discrimination battles, the reign of King Citrus. He even made a couple of records.

Yet only Martinez’s family and friends are aware of his place in the Orange County saga. Historical ignorance is one factor, but part of the problem is Martinez’s incomplete legacy. Notebooks containing his tunes are missing; recordings are rare. His only full-length interviews with non-family members were with professors researching other topics. More important, Martinez’s Orange County no longer exists: the tight-knit communities that flocked to his performances, tuned in to his many appearances on radio and sang Martinez’s corridos over bonfires and picket lines are gone, and the new immigrants he so loved to document and fight for don’t concern themselves with the past of their predecessors.

In another place, another time, Martinez would’ve been a folk treasure, the subject of dissertations, Smithsonian restoration projects and tribute CDs. Another scrap in the proverbial dustbin.

To say that the story of Orange County is more than watching The OC and Arrested Development is patently obvious. This is the kind of writing that reminds how deep — and how moving — it really is.

Sunday in San Juan Capistrano

This past Sunday I ended up down in San Juan Capistrano, one of the more enjoyable spots in OC (though not without its problems). It’s been a long time since I actually visited the place so taking the opportunity to go down there with a friend (and catch up with other acquaintances who lived there now and/or came down as well from elsewhere in the county) made for a lovely day out. A couple of photos — and yes, there’s a petting zoo near the center of town:

OC sheriff fun round 3 — he’s kinda stepping aside!

Kinda.

Yesterday, one Michael Carona appeared in court, along with his co-defendants, to plead not guilty. It was all essentially theater but it was theater with a purpose — the steps have to be made, rules have to be followed, etc. This was further heightened by Carona’s first full-on media appearance since it all went down, with even a heckler along for the ride:

On Monday morning outside the federal courthouse in Santa Ana after his arraignment, he vowed once again to remain in office and asked the public and the media to remember that he is innocent until proved guilty.

“I am not happy that I am in this legal proceeding,” he said. “I am very excited the American justice system allows me to have my day in court.”

L.J. Guillory, of the watchdog group Ombudsman International, loudly interrupted Carona as he read from a prepared statement and asked why he was not resigning. Carona asked Guillory to let him finish. Then Guillory followed the sheriff and his wife to a waiting car, shouting that taxpayers would not stand for him remaining in office.

“He should step down,” Guillory said as Carona and his wife drove away. “We’re going to keep asking the public to ask him to step down.”

The trial itself is supposedly set for Dec. 18 but pretty much the guess is this will start no sooner than next summer.

Meantime, yesterday provided more general moves among the Board of Supervisors as they tried to figure out what was next — Moorlach still wants Carona fully out on his ear, Campbell is more wait and see. There wasn’t much to say beyond that, at least in terms of what was publicly known.

Today, however, has been a double whammy — first, Carona’s employees, the actual sheriff’s deputies, told him in a statement to please pack sand:

Sheriff Carona’s serious legal issues have become a growing distraction to the
day to day operation of the Department. His issues have caused an erosion in the public’s
confidence in our ability to provide services to the citizens of Orange County.

The AOCDS Board of Directors unanimously believes that it is in the best interest of the
community, the Department and our membership for the Sheriff to resign immediately or
take a leave of absence until this matter is resolved.

The hard working men and women of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs
wish to assure the citizens of Orange County that they will continue to receive the high
level of law enforcement service that they deserve and have come to expect.

In otherwards, ‘please go so that people will stop laughing at us and being mean’ — which is not all that far from the truth, as I’ll note in a bit. The department managers are meant to be drawing up a similar statement later today, by some accounts.

Within an hour, Supervisor Chris Norby read out a principled statement from the sheriff — he’s going…for two months:

Carona proposed that during his absence Undersheriff Jo Ann Galisky would be in charge.

“I will be taking a 60-day leave of absence in order to devote my full time and energy towards battling the untrue and baseless charges made against my wife, Debbie and me,” Carona said in his statement. “This was not an easy decision for me to make, given that I know that the charges against me are without merit.”

It’s all very sweet sounding and proper — and it needs to be. Carona, interestingly enough, has learned a lesson that someone like Roscoe Conkling never did: if you actually resign and leave the office, you are then by default on the outside, regardless of whatever connections you have made. Holding on to it as long as possible, even by means of this glorified fig leaf, gives him an anchor, just. Also, as was noted over at the OC Register:

By using 60 days, Carona sidesteps the ordinance that says if an elected official vacates his or her office for 90 days, they can be formally removed. So this way, the sheriff gets to keep his job.

The possible technicalities involved here are amusing to contemplate. What happens if Carona comes back for a couple of days and then decides to take a second leave of 60 days, for instance? Might sound conniving but then again, consider who we are dealing with. In any event, Bill Hunt, the former deputy who had led the most open revolt against Carona from within the department in recent years, summed it up perfectly:

“It’s appalling to me that he has no intention of doing the right thing,” Hunt told me. “He’s going to use the office as a bargaining chip as long as he can to increase his options in negotiating a plea deal.”

And thus things hang for now. But to go back to my bit of snark earlier — if this one blog comment is legit, and there’s no reason to necessarily doubt it, morale inside the department is hitting rock bottom:

Corona needs to step down and prevent further embarassment to the people of the department. Employees are constantly getting badgered, questioned and joked at as a result of the antics of this weasel. Employees within the department are inconstant fear of retaliation and retribution by his group on the “inside” should any of us say anything in the negative tense regarding him, his wife or mistress. Please, for the sake of God, leave us now.

Doesn’t seem like this’ll be ending any time soon.

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The OC sheriff saga — already in farce mode

Really, this couldn’t get any more ridiculous now than it already has been. And it has.

As I mentioned back on Halloween, current OC County Sheriff Michael Carona — an elected post, it’s important to note — was indicted for all sorts of fun things. The last few days have seen a bit of political theater, including the arraignment of Carona, his wife and his mistress all at once, and in handcuffs at that, a variety of spluttering editorials and condemnations from people who should have known better and plenty of speculation as to what exactly will happen next. Because, as noted, this is an elected position, rather than one with a specific boss who can hire and fire people.

Which is precisely why, so far, Carona hasn’t budged.

It’s utterly, wickedly hilarious, frankly. As various defenders of Carona have tendentiously noted, the indictment and all that results from it is not a conviction, merely the start in the formal legal process. Speculation is running rampant that pressure is being brought to bear on him to turn on others the way that his former two minions Jaramillo and Haidl have on him, and if that process starts who knows where it will end, since the name mentioned more than once is DA Tony Rackauckas, who notably is not involved in the prosecution. Since it’s still early days all around, I’m content on that front just to sit and wait.

However it doesn’t address the core fact — an indicted man is currently the sheriff of Orange County, has claimed his innocence and says he’s not leaving. This argument hasn’t exactly washed with a lot of people and in the runup to the weekend everything was left hanging with a waffle of claims and counterclaims about whether he would or wouldn’t step aside. Nothing was much clearer since, and the fact that Rackauckas has sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors saying Carona should step aside is all the more interesting.

Meantime, the continuing reactions are telling. Board member John Moorlach, something of an OC political legend due to his accurate warnings about the financial games leading to the county’s bankruptcy back in the mid-90s, is otherwise pretty much a typical OC political character or rather caricature. It’s therefore a bit amusing to hear that he sent out an e-mail yesterday which was apparently a rant, though the full text has yet to surface:

[Moorlach] said he had heard the gossip about Carona’s alleged infidelity years ago but he chose to believe “this good Christian sheriff was just the recipient of a smear campaign.”

“On Tuesday morning, I, along with the rest of the county, had to find out from the media that Michael Carona was living a double life,” Moorlach wrote.

Except to repeat again — the OC Weekly via R. Scott Moxley had been covering this, and detailing those allegations, for years. The embarrassment isn’t finding out from ‘the media’ but that the supposed ‘smear campaign’ by a member of said media happened to actually be investigative reporting detailing things now leading to federal charges. Good job, guy. One suspects Moorlach right now is wishing his predictive skills were as sharp with smiling gladhanders dribbling virtue as they were with derivatives.

More entertaining today, though, is one of the crustiest men in a very crusty county, OC Register columnist Gordon Dillow, as much a representation of the soul of this place as, say, Mike Royko was for Chicago or Herb Caen was for San Francisco. The soul of Orange County being a different thing, Dillow’s views on life are generally of the pleasant variety showcasing the views of a man, as the Weekly’s Nick Schou says here, “who’s never seen an officer-involved shooting or excessive use of taser on an unarmed suspect he didn’t like.” There’s other stuff to talk about with Dillow as well but that really requires a separate post and the patience to deal with him, and the latter is not high on my priority list.

So today Dillow pens a boldly ahead of the curve claim that Carona might want to consider stepping down — bravo — and does so with the kind of fearless elan that…no, wait:

There are a lot of things that Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona can say in his own defense after being indicted by a federal grand jury on corruption charges last week.

[Dillow then goes on to say many such things, mostly either dwelling on technicalities or the idea that 'a thousand bucks here, twelve thousand there' were 'minor financial and personal matters' or similarly stirring stuff.]

He can argue all of that, and some or all of it may even be true. I’ve covered numerous federal criminal cases in my newspaper career, and after studying the indictment I have to say that, based solely on what’s on those pages, the conspiracy and witness-tampering charges against Carona do seem a little thin – at least so far.

But none of that changes this one inescapable fact:

Mike Carona can’t be sheriff anymore.

Before I continue, I should note that while I’m not a friend or political supporter of Carona, I’ve met and spoken with him numerous times over the years, and personally I liked the guy. As troubling as the allegations are, including the parts involving the alleged “mistress” – I don’t have any insight into Carona’s private life, but generally speaking, a man who cheats on his wife is by definition not a completely honest man – it saddens me to see him brought so low.

What’s beautiful about this are all the conditionals and the very way this is all set up. A few paragraphs essentially arguing Carona’s case for him, a meek ‘well gee he might have a point, you know those federal indictments!,’ a suddenly firm ‘he can’t be sheriff and BTW he was never my friend or anything…’ followed by a ‘nice guy, though’ clause. Then of course this as the killer touch: “…generally speaking, a man who cheats on his wife is by definition not a completely honest man.” Specifically speaking, perhaps, some can be generally honest if not completely. I’d love to see this guy as a marriage counselor.

The fact that this selection ends on a note of self-pity — Dillow is sad, oh noes! — is the most amusing part. That said, I was feeling a bit down in my first post on this the other day, not because I was feeling any sympathy at all for Carona, but because I was concerned about the continuing impact of idiocy like this in the mind of voters and citizens, not just here but elsewhere. Dillow rebounds later in the essay to address that a little more concretely but this type of mawkish there-but-for sentiment regarding Carona as a person strikes me as the type of thing he would condemn if this involved all those damned leftists out there he hates, though maybe a search for his doubtless equally thoughtful musings in the days of Monica Lewinsky’s fame will produce similar feelings of sorrow. I have my doubts, though.

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There’s a new sheriff in town…or will be

Michael Carona is still, at the present time, Orange County’s sheriff. This probably isn’t going to last, though:

Carona broke the law by failing to disclose that he had accepted tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts for himself, his wife and his former “longtime mistress,” according to a federal indictment unsealed this morning.

The women, Debbie Carona and Deborah Hoffman, were described as co-conspirators and were also indicted.

The gifts — primarily from former Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl — included cash payments of as much as $112,000, a boat, a trip to Lake Tahoe and ringside tickets to the Oscar De La Hoya-Felix Trinidad title fight at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, the indictment says.

The alleged conspiracy stretched from the months before Carona’s election in 1998 until August, when he is accused of attempting to “corruptly persuade” Haidl, in a tape-recorded conversation, to withhold testimony from the grand jury. Haidl has also been indicted.

None of this could have happened to nicer people. Seeing Haidl in this fix is especially delicious since his son figured in a disgusting rape case around here some years back — and, quite happily, was convicted and sent to jail. The chances that both Haidls are going to be serving in the same prison at the same time and all are doubtless pretty slim, but I admit it’s a great image.

But Carona, well, where to begin. Rather handily, though, there is a good spot — R. Scott Moxley at the OC Weekly, who handled the Haidl coverage I just linked to, has been digging deep on Carona for a long while now, and put together his own greatest hits collection of articles after the news broke. Well worth your time.

Stuff like this doesn’t thrill me, I have to admit. Don’t get me wrong, I am plenty thrilled by a lot of it, whether it’s the fact that all the dodging and weaving on Carona’s part all this time hasn’t helped him escape indictment — and getting named along with his wife *and* mistress must really have led to some fun dinner table talk tonight in his household — or just in seeing another typical OC blowhard get his. The folks over at the Crystal Cathedral are probably pretty happy that there’s no YouTube footage up (at least, up yet) of him talking about family values there.

But still, it doesn’t thrill me because, after one, one should hope for better. This isn’t a naive ‘however could a *policeman* be a crook’ wish or the like, merely an acknowledgment that even in a place like Orange County, and with plenty to suspect about those in power or have access to it, assuming a baseline of criminality by default bespeaks a total lack of faith in those engaged in local government at that level. I’d rather not live my life always thinking that, though certainly I think there’s every reason to assume a duty on the part of an informed citizenship to be aware of what abuses can and do occur, and to react against them. It may seem a hard balance, but it is not an impossible one to assume.

In any event, this is just an indictment so far, though the details of that indictment are pretty damning and already some local politicians are saying he should resign. Carona’s putting up some bravado for now:

“I’m staying because I love the job and I do a good job,” Carona said. “Most importantly, I have committed no criminal acts.”

Somehow, the recent travails of Michael Vick and Marion Jones come to mind.

[UPDATE: Gustavo Arellano has added to the OC Weekly coverage with a bit about other charming folks in the past who have held the office of sheriff. This, I admit, makes me rethink part of my post -- maybe you just have to be a doof to be elected sheriff in the first place. Not a problem per se, I just wish the ballots were clearer on the point.]

The breathing is getting easier

There was, honest to god, some rain this morning — not much, a mere smattering, but enough to help feel like the air might clear just a bit. But it had actually cleared quite a bit last night, happily, and so this morning I could finally see out to Saddleback — while the smoke was still rising in a great plume, it was at least nice to see it from a distance than to be lost in the obscurity of it.

The weather looks likely to hold and the predictions are getting more optimistic, I’d say with good reason — cooler weather and more humidity is always going to be a help when it comes to extremely dry brush. So we’ll see how the next few days go, though I’m still wondering what it will be like when I can see the hills properly again, and what my thoughts will be when it’s all clear, too clear. But friend Stripey indicated in her own visit to the area that it seems some scattered patches of greenery did survive — there’s always hope, even in small amounts.

…and it burns still.

There’s really little to add, but this whole thing is inescapable. The air quality outside says it all — when I’m at work and standing on the bridge between the campus and the nearby mall/marketplace, one can normally see a good ways over to the mountains and up north into OC even on a smoggy day. But it’s thick fog level right now, and it’s not fog. I could semi-see Turtle Rock on the one hand, some buildings near Jamboree on the other, and those are both walking distance (at least if you’re me, who likes to walk).

This map shows how it’s starting to burn towards the north more quickly, and unless things change rapidly it’ll cross the county line by the end of the day. When everything finally clears the hillsides will be little but a black mess, and will remain that way for a while to come.

I’m still getting questions about if I’m okay, if the campus is okay, etc. — trust me, all’s good! The fire threatens nothing around here directly, beyond this horrible air. But right now my plan tonight is a simple one — get home, close the windows, vacuum and scrub up and then pretty much hibernate for the weekend. I’d wanted to ease down anyway, catch up on reading and listening, try some cooking, meditate more on NaNoWriMo, so in ways this is the perfect excuse to do so. Being out and about just isn’t worth it.