Old Orange Uniform Ushers in Urge to Give Advice

Boy did I find a piece of Orange County history at the swap meet this past weekend! If any of you have been to the Anaheim Convention Center in years past, you’ve doubtless noticed the brightly attired ushers there. No, I didn’t find a complete working usher, but I did find his suit.

For $5 I got the distinctive orange polyester sport coat with the Convention Center logo, the brown slacks with sharp orange and white stripes down the legs, and the brown clip-on tie.

Trendy fashion-setters that they are, the ushers there have since switched to burgundy blazers. This strikes a curious symmetry with me, because the very first time I went to the Convention Center, to see Cream in 1968, I was wearing a burgundy blazer and clip-on tie. My parents somehow thought “concert” meant “cultural fete “ and wanted my 13-year-old self dressed for the occasion, making me a source for much pot-addled mirth among the thousands of hippies there.

You can just bet the ushers--grumpy fellows generally so old you’d have to cut them open and count the rings to tell their age--didn’t much care for the audience or Cream’s 16-minute version of “Spoonful.” And now they’re the ones wearing burgundy, Cream just regrouped for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame awards, and I’m sitting here in an orange and brown polyester suit. It fits so well it could have been made for me. And wearing it, I feel so official that I might just wander down to the Convention Center and help them out.

Of course, it will be hard to fight the urge to shout “Weeds!” at a crowded garden show. And maybe the other ushers would begin to suspect there’s a bad orange in the bunch if, at boat shows, they have to deal with patrons complaining, “We know Skipper Alan Hale is dead, but that other usher said you have his sarcophagus here in Hall C.”

Perhaps my urge to be of assistance would be better served by sitting here at my Times work station, where co-workers already are turning to me with their difficult problems, like “Hey buddy, can you clean this gum off my seat?”

Glad to be of help. And to help us all keep apace of the accelerating Orange County lifestyle, I’d like to announce a new occasional “advice column” feature of Lost in O.C.: “Ask Mister O.C.,” for which I shall don the orange usher suit and, in my humble way, tell the whole county where to sit.

We’ll provide some sample questions and answers this time, until your cards and letters come pouring in, which would be a major relief, since about the only mail this column has generated so far are letters asking “Why doesn’t that nice T. Jefferson Parker’s column appear every week?”

So now, let’s “Ask Mister O.C.”:

DEAR MISTER: Why doesn’t that nice T. Jefferson Parker’s column appear every week?

Now cut that out!

DEAR MISTER: I think I could benefit from a step aerobics program but frankly, I can’t afford the $97 for the equipment. Any suggestions?

You bet! First try using real steps. There’s plenty of unused ones around, particularly in parking structures next to health spas, where everyone takes the elevator. For home use, I’ve found that kids’ plastic picnic tables--$5 to $10 at swap meets--come in the same bright colors as Jane Fonda’s $97 step, and put you one-up on the competition by giving you two steps, the bench and the table-top. Of course, they don’t come with the instructional video, but you can always rent “Klute,” hang your TV from bungee cords and make it bounce.

DEAR MISTER: It seems every time my husband and I find a new restaurant we like, our friends pooh-pooh it as “last year’s” cuisine. How can our taste buds get “with it”?

What you need to do is anticipate trends instead of just stumbling onto them. Short of eating microchips, there aren’t that many new cuisines left, so you can be pretty sure the next trend will be an amplification of some previous one.

My bet is that the next trend will be a revival of the bad theme restaurants of the ‘70s. Remember Victoria Station, the restaurants built in old train cars? These being the ‘90s, maybe they’ll come back as Victoria’s Secret Station, where everyone’s in a train car in his or her underwear.

If you really want to be one step ahead of your trendy friends, open your own restaurant. Here’s an idea for one, gratis: Get a couple of old jet fuselages, and open Jumbo’s. Customers would be seated next to strangers in the usual cramped passenger seats; menus, such as they are, would be in the seat pockets. Cheerless meals would be rolled down the isles in carts: everyone would get Smokehouse Almonds; in first class, you could serve flambeed desserts with playful titles like Pan Am 103. And you can pretty well imagine what to use for doggy bags.

Let me know how this works for you. I care.

Is there something you’d like to Ask Mister O.C.? Send correspondence to OC Live ! , 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626.