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The California First
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2004
B EACON AWARD

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A courageously innovative, muckraking web site that focuses like a laser on the political, financial and legal shenanigans of the local government
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T erms of Use

The Editor presents:

The intrigue, the corruption, the comedy, the incompetence and every policeman's
ultimate fantasy of sex in a donut shop.

CUT ME IN is a series of riveting stories of bumbling and deeply flawed characters -
mobsters, fringe players, petty thieves turned politicians turned petty thieves - with
dark agendas who betray their honor, and the Public's trust, on a dime's turn; at
times humorous and tragic; redemption is always around the corner but flees when
tempted by small ambition; rare moments of truth are discarded like chump
change, all played out over the background both bleak and colorfully gritty of a blue-
collar immigrant town in the shadows of the big city, a town of second chancers,
forgotten and abused, but aching for a comeback... tales with no moral lessons to
uncover, only everyday political dirty dealings with the help of one lone hero,
Chucho* and his beloved low-rider.

Meet a few bit players sure to play starring roles in CUT ME IN:

The convicted cop
is caught having sex in uniform and on duty in a Yum-Yum donut shop with the
store's female clerk ("she gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket"), then is
hired as the Chief of Police by a small-city mayor who can barely do basic math but
thinks himself a genius at political calculus. The copper is a tall, square-jawed,
chisel-faced simpatico, a wealthy Gringo but claims to be Latino; previously a
college professor of Ethics who was terminated for acts of dishonesty; will donate his
Chief's salary to the Rosary bead-wearing Padre from the local Catholic Church,
whose faith is blind when it comes to donations of questionable provenance.

A corrupt city council,
led by a ribald weasel-faced closet-full-of-skeletons mayor with a thick, shady
moustache and an even shadier past, who's car was impounded for not paying auto
registration fees for 2 years running, and fronts for a south-of-the-border Mexican
political party, hires the sex-in-a-donut-shop cop and wants to promote him as the
new Chief of Police as part of his dark hidden agenda. Orders the Mexican flag to
fly on top of an upside-down American flag in front of city hall; dupes same rosary-
wearing Padre into using innocent souls for political ravel-rousing. Hires the crooked
city slick attorney on his reputation, then fires him upon failing to meet the mayor's
expectations; the mayor threatens to hire an even dirtier city attorney who will agree
to hire the dirty cop as Chief, who can then help conceal the mayor's other dirty
tricks from public scrutiny.

A crooked city-slick attorney, a Harvard Law Latino (Veritas? I don’t got to show you
no stinking Veritas!), is hired by the shady mayor in closed door session without
competing bids, one of two exclusive business strategies deployed by the attorney
(the other, if not hired to lucrative city attorney contracts, sends threats of recalls in
messages delivered by friends in the State Legislature). Ignoble mayor asks city
slick to approve hiring troubled cop as new Police Chief. Slick refuses in a rare
attack of pang of conscience, which puts his reputation in question. Mayor fires city
slick for refusing to rubber stamp Chief. City slick's moment of truth is a shocking
aberration which goes against every hair in his immaculately brilliantined 'do, stands
up to oppose the ethically challenged mayor. Slick's momentary but laudable lapse
in character gives him courage but gets him canned anyway; his briefest of
principled moments is worth the sacrifice. Besides, he's not worried; right away the
attorney secretly schemes to fund a recall effort against the mayor and his lackeys
as pay back, sure to be hired again by the next batch of neophyte council
members...

It's business as usual.

_________

CUT ME IN
A WatchOurCity.com Original

Any resemblance to a typical day in the life of small local towns lying low in the
penumbra of big city L.A. is flattering but purely coincidental. All names have been
changed to protect the innocent, the not so innocent, the accessories to the crimes
and the campaign contributors expecting astronomical returns on their investments.

*Translation: "Chucho" is a common Mexican nickname meaning "dog" in
colloquial Mexican Spanish. Anybody named "Jesus" is traditionally saddled with this
quaint term of endearment, just like any "William" would be called a "Bill". What I
can't explain is why, in the most Catholic of countries where the Virgin of Guadalupe
made her appearance as the mother of Jesus to convert the new world indian
savages, would those bearing the name of her son be called "dogs"? Chucho also
means "Watchdog".

*Reference: There is also the Mexican legend of "Chucho El Roto" during the time
of the Mexican Revolution, a historical figure painted as a common bandit, but
popular 19th Century Mexican culture identified with Chucho as a Robin Hood type.
After Chucho's death, his legend grew in popularity and his mystique helped to
transform him into a hero who personifies the desire of the poor that someone may
protect them and advocate for them. "Roto", means "torn", an association denoting
of lower class.

"Around 1888, a short novel called "Chucho El Roto, or the Noble Mexican Bandit"
was published anonymously, and quickly became very popular....by 1895, local
newspapers picked up the legend, and even suggested that "Chucho El Roto" be
pardoned so he could run for Congress".

Chucho's one true love, Matilde, was the niece of a wealthy landowner who, legend
has it, once invited Chucho to a fancy ball with Porfirio Diaz, Mexico's President,
whom Chucho got to meet and even took the opportunity to steal the President's
watch.

Chucho El Roto's "high sense of justice made him give most of what he stole to the
very poor in Mexico City, and the small towns and surrounding ranchos".

There are movies made of Chucho and even a modern theatrical production in
Queretaro, Mexico, titled "Chucho El Roto, En el Nombre del Pueblo", meaning "in
the Public's Interest".

A new collection of original short stories from the editor of WatchOurCity.com
that revives the Noir Pulp Fiction genre, with a Latino twist, based on real-life
shenanigans at small-time local city halls.

The public record is stranger than fiction:
High drama with low-lifes ensues when our hapless hero, Chucho*, the owner of a
flamin' red '64 Chevy Impala low-rider white top with pink vinyl interior, angry at the
impounding of his ride by Police Department rogue cops ordered to meet daily tow
quotas, blows the cover on a tow truck money-making and profit-splitting scheme
hatched in city hall between the mayor, the chief of police and the Iranian owners of
a towing business. Chucho is slow to take insult, but takes umbrage not so much
after noticing that the finely spray painted word "Matilde" above the driver side
chrome door handle, done in elaborate Moorish-style lettering, had letters M and A
badly scratched while in the tow yard, that was bad enough, but more due to the
insult of the symbolic message left behind with the maliciously truncated word
"tilde", which he suspects was the work of some prankster wise-guy cop in the tow
yard poking fun at the Spanish language, since "tilde" is the wavy symbol over the
letter N giving life to the word "Manana".

Then,

A corrupt small-time gay mayor, tall, macho-looking, suave, petty and vindictive with
a lust for money, power and handsome young bucks, hires a crooked city-slick
attorney to rubber-stamp a brazen hidden agenda to take control of public funds
worth a few millions and, eager to leave the Triple A farm team for the big leagues,
shakes down contractors and new charter schools for illegal campaign contributions
which he launders to finance his ambitious climb to higher public office. His plans
may be unwittingly jeopardized by our hero who, offered a personal invitation to the
mayor's pool-side party after being spotted on the Boulevard in his pink interior
sheet metal zoot-suit ride, accepts, thinking it's a low-rider appreciation party, but
feels that his manhood was deeply deceived upon entering a low-rider pants, clothes
optional men-only party, and all hell breaks loose. The mayor has already betrayed
one lover, the mustachioed owner of a corner taco stand, what's to stop him from
betraying the public trust, and making a pass on Chucho?

Also,

A simpatico convicted cop, with a weakness for donuts and the hot Latina damsel
behind the counter, wants a second chance, but needs the corrupt mayor and the
crooked attorney's blessing for a last try at drive-by redemption. Enter Chucho and
his serendipitous timing who converts the donut shop's corner parking lot into an
impromptu drive-by art gallery displaying his golden Aztec goddess wearing nothing
but silver hoop earrings and sheet metal serpent plumage, made decent with
flowing hip-length hair and spray painted on the Impala's hood which could stand its
own against any Baroque Madonna frescoed in St. Peter's Basilica; then while
documenting his artistry, our hero's camera accidentally captures some
compromising footage in the back of the donut shop with the uniformed on-duty cop
and the donut clerk kneading more than dough, putting Chucho in a slight moral
dilemma and messing up his weekend plans: should he turn in the captured footage
for profit, for civic duty, or use it to blackmail city hall into de-criminalizing cruising
the boulevard on weekends? Chucho may have only a Junior College education
majoring in auto body shop and fine art, with some continuing education in County
jail, rumor has it, for shoplifting some baby formula to feed his neighbor's son,
whose mother, Matilde, a struggling single mom, he's enamored of, but a dummy
he's not. His mother taught him right from wrong, and the recipe to a kick-ass hot
guacamole salad with a secret ingredient which he jealously guards, but has encoded
into the side graphics of his low-rider in classic Arabic text which beats Old English for
shear beauty and absolute obfuscation.

WatchOurCity.com

February 14, 2008, updated

A Gay Mayor

A convicted cop,

Latina

and a hot

"The streets were
dark with
something more
than night"

Raymond
Chandler