The Ridiculous--Ain’t It Sublime?

Recession, unemployment, gangs, Waco, brush fires . . . Criminy! 1993 was like reading Dickens every night in a dungeon while Ross Perot drones in your ear about NAFTA.

Maybe it was such bleak thoughts that had us careening wildly from serious to silly. What else explains our steadfast inability to say, with a straight face, Joey Buttafuoco?

It was the year of Political Correctness gone amok, and maybe the crummy economy had everybody a tad oversensitive. So why is it so gosh-dang funny that the kings of impolitic syndicated radio chatter would charm Americans each morning, write best-selling books and share the cover of Time magazine?

Go figure.

But we had our own absurdities in the news stew of Orange County. Herewith a look at some stuff that did not involve any of the Board of Supervisors, or their new cars, or any politics whatsoever .

* Lemme guess: If you turn the logo inside out, there’s an image of Paul McCartney.

Was it sacrilege or just silliness? Was it a lesson in democracy or in demon worship?

Whatever it was, “this is the first time in years we have become this spirited,” said one student. And isn’t that what a school mascot is for?

The mascot inspiring the Mission Viejo High School Diablos (Spanish for devils) was exactly what you’d expect--a bulldog. No, really, a bulldog, because back in 1986, some parents complained that the school’s grim-faced devil logo was offending their Christianity. School officials obliged them, banishing the devil.

It took seven years, but students finally rebelled. Some began wearing the old logo (and were told to cover it up). A vendor visited campus with devil logos among the wares (and the athletics department was rebuked by the principal). A football coach quit. A batch of parents sued.

So it went to a vote, and an unheard-of 68% turnout among students overwhelmingly voted 3 to 1 for a devil of sorts. This one was designed to be cuddly by making it a smiling baby devil in a diaper. Now no one is particularly satisfied. So it turned out to be a lesson in, well, politics.

* Wonder if Mickey had this much trouble breaking into show biz?

What was that out on the ice? Was it an extra from the set of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”? Noooooo. That silver-faced phantom was Iceman, and he somehow managed to be even more embarrassing than the name of the Disney team he ever so briefly cheered for--and their ice-dancing pep squad, the Decoys.

Not for long, though.

By the second period of the Mighty Ducks’ opening night performance Oct. 8, an arctic breeze blew across the Anaheim Arena. And no, the Zamboni machine was not broken.

Poor, frizzy-haired Iceman. Straight from his day job at Disneyland, he wore shades, a baseball cap and zipped around the rink on a futuristic car. But talk about a doomed gig. Assigned to lead hockey fans in perky rock songs, the sound system crackled, game breaks lasted all of 30 seconds and the Mighty Ducks were getting mighty creamed. Met with hissing and booing hockey fans--who typically tolerate even soggy arena hot dogs--Iceman got the deep-freeze. And nobody’s seen him at a hockey game since.

Pity, really. At the time, Iceman displayed quite a sense of humor. After exiting stage right that first night, he suggested his salvation might be a costume change, perhaps something more Disneyesque, more heartwarming, more like the Mighty Duck mascot with a huge duck mask.

“When you’ve got that big thing over your head,” he said then, “you can get away with murder.”

* OK, J.B., I have this plan to remake “Heaven’s Gate” in Santiago Canyon. And if that works, maybe we could do “Ishtar” at Laguna?

Seventy years ago, the Egyptian army chased the Hebrews out of Seal Beach in Cecil B. DeMille’s classic, “The Ten Commandments.”

This year, the filming location was an Irvine industrial park and John Wayne Airport. The parting of the Red Sea it was not. The plot, hardly of biblical proportions: Wesley Snipes playing a futuristic psychopath criminal and Sylvester Stallone the maverick cop who hunts him down.

Yes, we played host for more than two months to the filming of the current action-thriller hit, “Demolition Man.”

But there were other Orange County connections to Hollywood in 1993.

In July, scenes for director Rob Reiner’s upcoming comedy, “North,” about a kid who “divorces” his family, were shot at the historic old County Courthouse in Santa Ana. A few miles away at the Anaheim Arena, 12,000 people lined up to be Mighty Duck movie extras. The public address announcer later bellowed to the cheering throng: “You’re not just a crowd today, you’re actors!”

The showiest connection was a vintage Hollywood story of local-boy-makes-good. Austin O’Brien, 12, of Mission Viejo, made the cover of Time magazine and his public relations odyssey with co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger was a mirror image of the story in “Last Action Hero.”

Unfortunately, it proved to be the biggest bomb since Roseanne sang the National Anthem.

* If it were a little colder here, maybe we would have a shot at the curling championship.

Here’s a bit of trivia that will win you a bundle in bar bets: How many professional national sports championships have been won by Orange County teams?

The usual response is silence. But the correct answer is two! And the latest was achieved just this year in Anaheim by that new hockey team.

Confused? That’s because you’re thinking of the so-so ice hockey team named after waterfowl. The champs are that very good roller hockey team named after amphibians.

The Anaheim Bullfrogs, created as part of Roller Hockey International, are an attempt to cash in on the current in-line skating rage. The team signed up minor league ice hockey players, paid them about $900 a week, dressed them in full hockey regalia, played on the Anaheim Arena’s concrete slab and charged $6 to $50 for tickets. The sight of a winning pro team attracted an average of 8,419 fans per match.

A banner hangs in the arena proclaiming the championship season. Who knows when that will happen again in Anaheim.

(P.S.: The first pro championship was won in 1977 by the Orange County Stars, a volleyball team.)

* Mr. Karcher, your cholesterol count is 835. What do you have flowing through your veins, anyway?

There comes a time when the hey-I-built-this-company-all-by-myself-from-one-little-hot-dog-wagon argument just doesn’t cut it anymore.

It didn’t sway the board of directors of Carl Karcher Enterprises when founder Carl N. Karcher, who really did start the company from a hot-dog wagon 52 years ago, wanted to begin selling Green Burrito products at the company’s Carl’s Jr. restaurants.

His handpicked board was wary. Was Carl just trying to make a quick killing to bail out his shaky personal debts? Yes or no, the board refused to go along.

When Karcher issued a public ultimatum--do it or put up your dukes--they put up their dukes, and Karcher was voted off the board and carried out of the ring. For the first time, Orange County’s most venerable business leader was an outsider looking in.

Cooler egos eventually prevailed, and the warring camps gathered and shook hands. Karcher was appointed chairman emeritus away from the day-to-day operations, and a complicated deal eased his debt problems.

It had to end that way, said a Karcher associate. “This is a man with hamburger flowing through his veins.”

* Yes, but I did mean that part about liking your car.

Birds do it, bees do it, even husbands and wives do it. And when they don’t, it used to be called loss of consortium. But we knew what they meant. Well, we did after a quick leaf through Funk & Wagnalls.

But Bonnette Askew wasn’t doing it with feeling. And her banker husband called it fraud. So he sued her, contending that she lied about being sexually attracted to him during their 13-year marriage. Last spring, after making national headlines for his unorthodox lawsuit, Ronald Askew, 50, was awarded $242,000 in damages, which were to be paid off with four land parcels the couple had jointly owned, but that Mr. Askew got.

If the jury verdict is upheld on appeal, legal types say it could potentially revamp California divorce laws that now say property must be equally split upon divorce. Stay tuned.

* Well, yer honor, I am a real big college basketball fan and we ran out of beer in the fridge so I decided to catch a hop to New Orleans to get a refill.

We didn’t think anyone could top Charles Keating. The guy’s S&L; defrauds millions from the nest eggs of elderly and devastates the industry, and his wife whines about his Spartan prison cell? Or Stephen Wagner, the financial officer who bilked the Newport-Mesa School District even as he bought himself stuff like, oh, a mink-lined bathrobe? But we hadn’t got wind of Danny Hernandez. A fleeting socialite and charity patron who was arrested in February with his wife, Susie, the couple was charged with skimming nearly $8 million from his employer so he could swim with the big fish.

But Danny couldn’t stay out of the doghouse, even after he got bailed out of the jailhouse as he awaits sentencing for mail fraud and tax evasion. The feds were annoyed that the guy kept living high while confounding their efforts to recoup the stolen money. Right after his bust, he dropped the dough to see the Final Four college basketball tourney in New Orleans. Dare he be late, he spent another $8,000 chartering a jet.

A judge said the trips violated Hernandez’s bail terms, so he was placed under house arrest, which means he wore an electronic monitoring bracelet. Seems Hernandez was supposed to spring for it himself, though, and he didn’t, so he spent Thanksgiving in the slammer, where he will stay until Jan. 3, when a judge hears his request to bail out again. The big date: Jan. 24, when Hernandez gets sentenced.

* This proves that all the California whine doesn’t come from Napa Valley.

The good news was that the drought was over. Unfortunately, that was also the bad news.

By Feb. 22, a winter-long series of storms had poured nearly 21 inches of rain down our throats, more than twice the norm. As if to see whether we’d holler uncle, another third of an inch came Feb. 23.

It turned out we couldn’t holler uncle quickly, enough. A bluff overlooking the beach in San Clemente gave way, and five houses changed their addresses from La Ventana to Pacific Coast Highway. Four more houses teetered on the edge.

The next day, Gov. Pete Wilson, who had been playing coy during storm after storm, finally declared the drought had ended.

Further evidence that you must be careful when praying for rain was growing all spring and summer: thick stands of brush and undergrowth on hills that had been kept nearly barren for six dry winters.

The result: a near-record harvest of pollen and mold that tortured allergy sufferers throughout the year. Then in October, the thick growth of brush burned so intensely the flames leaped into Anaheim Hills and Laguna Beach. Fire erased an entire residential section in Laguna, leaving 350 families homeless.

Those drought years never looked so good.

* $100 to see a 46-year-old! Sheesh, you could have gotten season tickets for the Bullfrogs.

It almost took CPR to get an Angels fan’s heart pumping this season. There was the usual bad news on the sports page, and the good news--a rookie doing well enough to win Rookie of the Year--was received with cynicism because so many favorites had been exchanged for a roll of quarters.

It must have been shocking, then, to drive past Anaheim Stadium the night of Sept. 17 and see the place overflowing. It was a real, true sellout crowd for an Angels game. More than 60,000 fans shouting, screaming, in joy and adoration for . . .

. . . The Angels? Come now, get hold of yourself.

No, for the starting pitcher of the Texas Rangers, the Man Who Might Have Been: Nolan Ryan. Due to finally retire his 95 m.p.h., Hall-of-Fame grade fastball at a codgerly 46, Ryan was giving his last performance in Anaheim, where everyone remembered he’d been an Angel but was let go in 1979 because he’d be over the hill in a year or two.

Wrong.

The results of that decision were plain. As Ryan struck out three of the first four Angels, the crowd cheered. I’m a “die-hard Angels fan,” explained a man who’d paid $100 for an $11 seat. But “I’m a bigger Nolan Ryan fan.”