Features by Jim Washburn

2010-03-15 Lost in OC: Cuba, Communism, and Several Long Digressions
If you recall our last installment, I was talking about my trip to the Soviet Union in 1988, and how their version of communism hadn’t worked out so well.
2010-03-01 Lost in OC: Cuba Si, Soviets No
I’m delighted to be going to Cuba, since it’s one of the few places in the world that isn’t yet thoroughly corporatized; and because I love Cuban music and culture …
2010-02-15 Lost in OC: The Civilizing Effect of Religion
Back in Nazi Germany, some prominent Nazis thought Christianity was just a Jewish trick, designed to make the Aryan race docile and weak with all that compassion.
2010-02-01 Lost in OC: Snakes of the Union
Whatever else one might say about the ritual of the State of the Union address, it’s at least an opportunity for the old white men of Congress to get their annual calisthenics in.
2010-01-18 Lost in OC: A Velvet Underground Mystery, the NAMM Show, and a Batmobile
A musician friend invited me to a salon he and his wife were hosting at their San Francisco home, where an old beat poet type would be talking about Angus MacLise.
2010-01-14 The FourStory Interview: Lorri Galloway
We started our conversation with Ms. Galloway by talking about the recent Seattle election in which voters supported, for the 20th year there, a levy to fund affordable housing.
2010-01-04 Lost in OC: Plenty of Affordable Housing on Pandora
We took my wife’s dad. He was an impressionable 15 years old when The Wizard of Oz came out 1939. He’s 85 now, and liked Avatar better.
2009-12-21 Lost in OC: Lost in Space
“Say, what’s with this hotel cocktail napkin in your pocket with GJ 1214b written in lipstick?” “That’s just a new name I thought up for a planet, honey. You like it?”
2009-11-23 Lost in OC: When the Levy Takes
Seattle: It’s my kind of town, aside from my probably not being able to stand living there. Seattle is teeming with culture, people, architecture, neighborhoods, street life …
2009-11-16 Lost in OC: The Dead Letter Box
It’s heartwarming that, a year and a half after my dad’s death, I’m still getting mail for him and about him. “We share your sense of loss at this difficult time,” begins one …
2009-11-09 Lost in OC: Eat or We Both Starve
I’m still digressing, and for that matter, I’m heading right back into parentheses. Somehow I feel safer in parentheses, like I’ve got side-collision airbags on my head.
2009-11-02 Lost in OC: And You Know That Can’t Be Bad
Don’t you just love those little wolves? I’m talking about Los Lobos, most probably the very best band in the world.
2009-10-26 Lost in OC: The Public Option Isn’t Optional
I live in California’s 46th District, and my congressman is Dana Rohrabacher. I know what you’re thinking: “Didn’t John Lennon play a Rohrabacher?”
2009-10-19 Lost in OC: The Mandingo Factor
Do you pull U.S. money out of your pocket and ask, “What the fuck is this?” Do you find yourself flipping off inanimate objects?
2009-10-12 Lost in OC: The Winnowing Year, Pre-Winnow
I have a long acquaintance with melon crates, since back in the macramé days, when they were common household furniture.
2009-10-05 Lost in OC: We’re Fighting the Wrong War
There is no class war, because it’s over. They won. They own the ball and they’ve gone home. They own the field, too, and the bleachers, concession stands and parking lots.
2009-09-28 Lost in OC: Looking for Home in a Hilton Ballroom
Neither you, God nor angels can get back to that state of timeless nothingness, that little speck that isn’t a speck, the void that’s not a void because there’s nothing to measure it against.
2009-09-21 Lost in OC: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
What’s the sci-fi book where in the near future the only jobs left are as pizza deliverymen, and people are living in converted storage containers? You could do worse.
2009-09-14 Lost in OC: Dad’s Home, So Cut the Horseplay
All the media has time to report is how the media used the Vulcan mind-meld on Arlen Specter.
2009-09-09 Lost in OC: Jim Washburn, Boy Flack
They are vampires who crave your ink, and they will wear you down until you just offer them your neck for it to be over with.
2009-08-31 Lost in OC: Nazis: Those Little Scamps Just Won’t Quit
It’s a pairing you don’t see every day, Poppin’ Fresh and Adolf Hitler on your doorstep, though I suppose it beats Mormons.
2009-08-17 Lost in OC: The Gretsch in the Bathtub, or How Not to Move
The Gretsch would grab him and pull him under, where, beneath the suds, there also lurked Hagstrom the Merciless and the dread Teisco.
2009-08-03 Lost in OC: This Bud’s for You … But You Won’t Find Health Care in a Bottle
Didn’t you wonder for just a minute last Friday if a pasty-faced despot in a North Korean bunker was watching CNN, clapping his hands and declaring, “OK, they’re both drinking. Launch the missiles!”
2009-07-27 Lost in OC: Can’t I Just Shutup and Move Like Everybody Else? Evidently Not
Individually books aren’t so heavy, but boxed their gravities combine into a superdense mass, like a Chunky bar in the heart of a dark star. And books by Jung weigh even more.
2009-07-20 Lost in OC: Life Litters the Lawn, as the Sonicare Hums Along
We’ve tried all its settings. We’ve laid it down at different angles. We offered it a stick of Dentyne. Last night I wrapped it in swaddling clothes and left it at the far end of the house.
2009-07-13 Lost in OC: The Mother of All Yard Sales
Wanna have a yard sale? You’ve come to the right place. I’ve been to thousands and have held a few. The former is far easier; all you have to do is show up and buy things.
2009-07-06 Lost in OC: Everything’s A’Flux, But the Sun’s Still Shining on Me
Pay the farmer to pay the tractor-maker to pay the iron foundry to pay the banker to pay the Chinese to pay your congressman.
2009-06-27 Lost in OC: The King of Pop, Kaput
All things considered, Michael Jackson had a good night, considering that the last time he stood on the Shrine’s stage his head was on fire.
2009-06-22 Lost in OC: Of Human Storage
I had recognized scouting for the malicious, childhood-sucking racket that it is, and spent more time watching Gigantor on my little black and white TV.
2009-06-15 Lost in OC: A Left-Handed Salute to Wretchedness
I’ve taken to calling my impediment penis elbow.
2009-06-01 Lost in OC: Bucket of Information!
Like calling Costco a wiener sample store.
2009-05-25 Lost in OC: Most Exclusive Residence for Sale
Everyone wants to buy a house with a hooker in it!
2009-05-18 Lost in OC: Wheel in the Sky
I don’t think Obama sits around with the rest of the Illuminati.
2009-05-11 Lost in OC: Too Much of Nothing
Is Don DeLillo any fun at parties at all?
2009-05-04 Lost in OC: Ain’t Got No Home
It’s getting a little too Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show for my tastes.
2009-04-27 Lost in OC: Earth Day Sponge Bath
Two plastic carrots thrown at the callers reported, N. Blake Ave.
2009-04-20 Lost in OC: Disunion
We’re two months into the Obama presidency, and they’re raising the specter of secession?
2009-04-13 Lost in OC: Cops Shoot Newspaper
“Come sleep with the homeless” read the LA Times headline.
2009-04-07 Lost in OC: I See You in the ICU
I finally realized that life doesn’t need to make sense for you to love it.
2009-03-30 Lost in OC: You’ll Be in a World of Yurt
His prototype looks like it was based on a pile of fire-retarded marshmallows.
2009-03-23 Lost in OC: Obama in the Lion’s Den
Even with our slowly shifting demographics, OC is not exactly friendly territory for Obama.
2009-03-16 Lost in OC: The Hand of God
If men got pregnant, abortion would have been legal 3,000 years ago.
2009-03-06 Lost in OC: Rush to Judgment: Lovin’ to Hate the Constitution
Bush’s powers weren’t even bounded by space or time,
2009-03-02 Lost in OC: The Grapes of Wrath Meet the Apes of Math
There was also a real-world component to the Great Depression
2009-02-16 Lost in OC: Obama Kiss
Now everyone’s going to want one.
2009-02-02 Lost in OC: The Younger Generation, Living in Sequim!
The Strait of Juan de Fuca: a name that begs for a question mark.
2009-01-13 Lost in OC: True Grit—Or At Least Dirt
If your home is your castle, your yard is your moat.
2009-01-05 Lost in OC: The Sludge that Wouldn’t Budge
There’s a push behind the term “clean coal,” and it’s not from the tapioca industry.
2008-12-24 The FourStory Interview: Santa Claus
The recent housing crisis apparently even has old St. Nick in the dumps.
2008-12-15 The FourStory Interview: Angelo and Marilyn Vassos
It’s human nature to want to crow a bit when you’ve done something good.
2008-11-24 Lost in OC: Our Shrinking Times
We may not have a great paper—or one at all—but at least we’ll have great hair.
2008-11-10 Lost in OC: Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead
Love is what everyone wants, but fear is such an easy sell.
2008-10-28 The FourStory Interview: Mary Ann Gaido, Irvine Planning Commission
She was there at the beginning and she’s there now.
2008-10-23 Jon Webb’s Affordable Housing Primer (part 2)
The second half of our affordable housing A-Z.
2008-10-20 Lost in OC: When Financial Instruments Go Out of Tune, We All Pay the Piper
Like the broken clock that’s right twice a day, he’s occasionally right.
2008-10-15 Jon Webb’s Affordable Housing Primer (part 1)
FourStory’s executive producer explains affordable housing for you.
2008-09-03 Lost in OC: All But the Dumbest Among Us
Take a headline: “Waterproof Negro Drowns.”
2008-08-07 Lost in OC: Death and (Fire) Axes
It’s 9 am and there are tomatoes all over the freeway.
2008-06-23 Lost in OC: Parched and Gay, Welcome to the New California
See how soon the white-on-white killing starts over that last latte on La Brea.
2008-06-04 Lost in OC: Lost in Transit
We don’t need an Einstein to tell us time is relative.
2008-05-21 Lost in OC: Cancer Drive
The article in Wikipedia is accompanied with hideously vivid photos of tumors.
2008-04-16 The FourStory Interview: Tent City Redux
Homeless Go Home! That’s pretty much the message in Ontario these days.
2008-04-09 Lost in OC: Whoops! Everything’s Broken
The last place any of these people wanted to wind up. Now they don’t even have that.
2008-04-02 The FourStory Interview: Irvine Mayor Beth Krom: part 2
Still none too pleased about 21,000 affordable units by 2014.
2008-03-21 The FourStory Interview: Irvine Mayor Beth Krom: part 1
Irvine must build 21,000 affordable units by 2014. Mayor Beth Krom is not pleased.
2008-03-05 The FourStory Interview: Colette’s Children’s Home
They’ve helped nearly 1,000 homeless Orange County women an
2008-02-12 Lost in OC: But I Digress
If you’re old enough, you’ll remember when Shakey’s had house pianists.
2008-01-24 Lost in OC: Let’s Talk of Patience to the Afflicted
The huddled masses stumbling in the dust with tent stakes and duct tape.
2008-01-18 The FourStory Interview: Residents of Ontario’s Tent City
200-plus people living in a community where the most stable structure is a porta-potty
2007-12-11 The FourStory Interview: Cathy DeMello of Integrity House
Your car is broadsided and you can’t even form phrases like “traumatic brain injury.”
2007-12-04 Lost in OC: Too Many Peoples—How I Spent My Thanksgiving
You know those strangled mewling sounds that Harvey Keitel makes?
2007-11-13 The FourStory Interview: Artist Jorg Dubin
What if Vermeer had been around to paint your dental hygienist naked?
2007-10-30 Lost in OC: The Fire Next Time
From Styrofoam noodles to apocalypse, with a few stops in-between.