La Habra’s Mychael Darwin has designed custom jeans and jackets for Michael Jordan, Demi Moore, even President Clinton. He teamed with Disney on clothes based on the “The Princess and the Frog” movie and did a line of leather jackets in the 1990s inspired by the Negro baseball leagues—both labors of love for the African-American. A highlight of his career: Being at Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch. “In order to actually visualize the magnitude, you’d have to be there,” he told OCBJ’s Alisha Gomez. “It’s unbelievable. Who wouldn’t want to live like that?” More on Darwin in next week’s issue …
South Coast Repertory founding artist Richard Doyle has performed with the OC troupe since 1964. Yet in all that time he’s never gone to Laguna Beach to watch the Pageant of the Masters: “I’m always at the theater.” That will change. As the new voice of the Pageant—only its third narrator in 38 years following Thurl “Tony the Tiger” Ravenscroft and the just-retired Skip Conover—Doyle will be working the event from July 7 to Aug. 31. Doyle, who has appeared in movies and TV shows and done voices in addition to his many stage roles, says the Pageant gig has generated “more buzz” than all of the others …
UPS CEO Scott Davis has many ideas for conserving energy and boosting productivity. One of them: “No left turns.” Davis told the OC Biz Council that his drivers plan their routes to minimize lefts, which conserves “millions of miles” worth of fuel through reduced idling and prevents “lots of injuries” from intersection accidents. Atlanta-based Davis also suggested that California, which is focused on commuter high-speed rail, should be planning more freight rail in order to keep its ports competitive when the completion of the Panama Canal expansion project makes it easier for ships to reach Texas and other ports east …
While UCI partners with Shanghai’s Fudan University to set up an international business law think tank, UCI prof Peter Navarro continues to promote a different view of China. His latest book, with entrepreneur and UCI Merage B-school grad Greg Autry, is “Death by China: Confronting the Dragon—A Global Call to Action” …
Happy 70th to Corona del Mar’s Dan Ardell, businessman, charter-school advocate and onetime baseball bonus baby from USC who in 1961 was the first name alphabetically on the first Angels team.
