We took a boat tour of Newport Harbor last week to see Christmas lights on the bayfront homes and yachts. Current and former owners of these fabulous abodes include Nicolas Cage, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richie Sambora, Peter Falk, Mark McGwire, the William Wrigley family, the Snyder family (founders of In-N-Out Burger), the FaBrizio family (founders of Simple Green), Shirley Temple, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Charles Bronson, Charles Schulz, George Argyros, and local luminaries like Fletcher Jones Jr and the Segerstrom family (owners of South Coast Plaza). In the early 20th century, lots in Newport Harbor were selling for $75. Amenities such as electricity, paved streets, sewers, streetlights and water were lacking and roads to the area were largely undeveloped. Basically, you were buying the right to live on a mud flat at a three-hour drive from civilization, so even at $75, sales were… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: John Wayne
It’s Not Just the Guns
Within a week or so, we’ve had Jovan Belcher, the mall shooting in Oregon and 26 people killed at a school in Connecticut. I’m hearing that maybe we should do something about guns. But we’ve always had guns. Since the country was founded July 4, 1776, Americans have had guns, and for most of that time, we’ve managed to live with each other without a mass murder a week. It can’t be just the guns. One of the most appalling things to me about modern American society is the way increasingly graphic violence is peddled as entertainment. Turn on the TV: mass murder is entertainment. Grotesque, violent death is “great television.” Serial killers in movies are the heroes. They can’t be killed off because they’ve got to come back and kill more people in the next sequel. I know John Wayne used to kill people in movies, but when the… Read more →
Twitter: 2010-06-07
Rented Rio Bravo this weekend: John Wayne in the John Wayne role but Dean Martin steals the picture! Angie Dickinson at 27: Wowzah! # Read more →