AN ORNERY SEVENTH: Money magazine this month...
AN ORNERY SEVENTH: Money magazine this month ranks the Internal Revenue Service’s 63 regional offices according to their toughness on taxpayers. Las Vegas won for “orneriest office,” but the Laguna Niguel branch ranked high, at seventh. . . . A few of its 1993 facts about the Laguna Niguel office: 58% of its delinquents had property seized. It also refused to accept money offers from 66% who were delinquent. Plus, for those it chose to audit, 16% wound up owing more taxes.
MOUNTAIN MAN: Superior Court Judge Richard N. Parslow always kept on his courtroom bench a color brochure about Prescott, Ariz., his retirement dream. Parslow, 59, retired this month and moved his family there. When Denise Huber’s body was found at the home of a former Californian there, it underscored the resentment some locals have about the migration of Californians to Prescott. . . . Laughs Parslow, who bought a beautiful mountain home there: “Eventually, Californians will take over. We do get kidded a lot, but it’s mostly friendly.”
SPOKEN WORD: Noreen Ayres, whose new Orange County mystery, “Carcass Trade,” is getting rave reviews (E4), plans to start using her own voice--instead of an actress’s--for future tapes of her books. After all, says the Mission Viejo author, it’s her voice she hears when she’s writing her female forensic specialist, Smokey Brandon: “It’s alarming to hear a line read when it’s not delivered in the same rhythm or sense you created it in.”
PRICEY PARKING LOT: The new Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles includes several spectacular cars from Orange County exhibitors (E1). The most expensive: a 1931 Bugatti Royale--on loan by Newport Beach developer William Lyon, valued at a minimum $12 million. . . . Curator Matt Roth explains that Bugattis were designed for crowned heads of state--and only six of them were built. Says Roth: ‘There’s even a ranking among the six, and this one’s second. It’s valued well into eight figures.”
