Bob McKnight was inducted into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame in Huntington Beach the same day his USC frat brother, Chris Cox, was on the other side of the country winning U.S. Senate confirmation as SEC chairman. Moreover, while McKnight runs Quiksilver and Cox takes over a federal agency, another of their Trojan classmates and Delta Tau Delta brothers, Pat Fuscoe, is in charge of civil engineering for the Great Park. “We planned it all out in college,” kids McKnight …
Best-selling author Dean Koontz,a “semi-libertarian” not usually associated with partisan politics,and wife Gerda opened their Newport Coast mansion for a 58th birthday party (and $700,000 fund-raiser) for Gov. Arnold. About 120, including California First Lady Maria Shriver, attended. More about OC’s friends of Arnold on page 22 …
OC Treasurer John Moorlach brushes aside Supervisor Tom Wilson and others who suggest his county-pension-reform crusade is motivated by a desire to be elected supervisor. Moorlach says it’s the other way around,he needs to be a supe to make reforms. “Running for supervisor is not running for higher office …
I see it as a step down,” Moorlach said on “Inside OC.” At $143,000 a year, the treasurer makes $24,000 more than a supe, and doesn’t have to worry about term limits …
On a related note: Joining the corporate trend, Irvine-based Freedom Communications is closing its defined-benefits pension plan. The 7,000 employees at the OC Register and other media properties will keep their vested benefits as of Dec. 31, when a sweetened 401(k) plan kicks in. “It’s not a big surprise,” said CEO Alan Bell, noting the pension fund woes in the airline and other industries. The Insider is told that Chicago-based Tribune Co. has studied the matter, too, but the L.A. Times still offers a traditional pension plan, in addition to a 401(k). The OCBJ offers only a 401(k) …
The cast of MTV’s “Laguna Beach” is throwing a fund-raiser for the landslide families Thursday evening at seven-degrees …
Having done $10 million in sales with two sports memorabilia auctions featuring Babe Ruth items, David Kohler (SportsCards Plus of Laguna Niguel) will again team up with Sotheby’s on Dec. 10 …
The bat makes the man: UCI history and art history major EvaMarie Rodriguez was in Cooperstown, N.Y. addressing a National Baseball Hall of Fame symposium. Rodriguez has researched links between baseball and concepts of masculinity in the late-19th century. She says tobacco-card photographs of ballplayers in standing, sitting and sliding poses mirror Frederic Remington’s cowboys: “These players could have been cut and pasted out of the paintings, holding the weapon of their trade on the baseball field instead of the frontier” …
Does this Irvine accounting firm have OC’s longest letterhead? Haus-maninger, Benoe, Lang, Alford & Geselowitz.
