Getting the Picture on What O.C. Can Offer

I had a tour of Orange County’s high points this week and came away with new appreciation, as well as a new career.

My adventure began when the owner of the Anaheim Angels decided to change the name of his team to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, a marketing move that sent Anaheim city officials and Orange County baseball fans into a tizzy.

I wrote that you needed more than a theme park and a Target store to call yourself a real city. And I might have cracked that if not for the pastime of sitting around hating Los Angeles, there wouldn’t be much to do in Orange County.

Among those who took offense was Annee Pfau, sales manager of the Crowne Plaza Anaheim Resort. She complained about my “skewed ... playground-style” mutterings, and wondered if I knew anything about Orange County’s “cultural treasures.”

Nice guy that I am, I suggested that Pfau give me a tour of these “cultural treasures.” She got hold of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau, which lined me up for a tour with Lauren Yacker, a terrific name for somebody in PR.

First thing I noticed about Yacker’s itinerary was that it did not include a stop at the Trinity Broadcasting Network headquarters, an Orange County landmark, if not a cultural treasure. Ever since I hit the remote one night and caught my first televised Praise-a-thon starring televangelists Paul and Jan Crouch, I’ve been meaning to drop by and apologize for thinking it was the bar scene from “Star Wars.”

Second thing I noticed was that Pfau’s Crowne Plaza Anaheim Resort is just down the street from Disneyland and across the street from a Target store, but I’m not the kind of guy who says I told you so.

The problem was that I had already done nearly everything on Yacker’s itinerary. I’d been to Newport Harbor, Balboa Island, Mission San Juan Capistrano, every beach in Laguna, the “Pageant of the Masters” and the Dana Point Harbor. In fact, I once tried to buy a used boat in the Dana Point Harbor to use as a float-el, but my wife threatened to leave me.

Yacker said I ought to at least revisit the mission. OK, but on the way I tried to get the dope on the wild side of Orange County. She’s 30, smart, attractive, a single professional, and I wanted to know what the nightlife is like for a youngster living in a blue-hair community like Newport Beach.

“There are some bars where 50-year-old divorcees are hitting on 18-year-olds,” she admitted.

Just as I suspected.

But Costa Mesa has a happening club called Sutra, Yacker said. And as we passed the Irvine Spectrum, she said the mall is a popular hangout. It’s got a Cheesecake Factory and a P.F. Chang’s.

I bit my tongue.

When she told me the Fox Sports Grill gets a good crowd, I couldn’t help myself. “You’re only going to meet a moron in a place like that,” I said.

“This tour is not about my life,” Yacker reminded me.

We arrived at the mission, which is beautiful. But I always feel a little guilty that my Spanish ancestors annihilated Native American culture in the 1700s and enslaved thousands. And there’s no telling what the Franciscan fathers were up to.

Speaking of which, we were passing through Dana Point when I told Yacker about the Catholic priest there who confessed his passions to me and got booted out of the church by the pope himself.

Yacker changed the subject to the great beaches.

Yeah, I said. They are great. I just wish Orange County didn’t have such an abominable record of keeping them clean. On Wednesday, the day of my tour, four Dana Point beaches were closed because of sewage spills.

To be honest, I’ve always loved the beaches in Laguna. But I can only stay on the Sun Coast a few days at a time, because a lot of the women there frighten me.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Morgan Fairchild. But after a while, I feel like I’m at a Morgan Fairchild costume party. She’s everywhere, trying to look 38, and always on the arm of a sunburned 68-year-old guy in a Tommy Bahama shirt.

“Oh, yeah,” Yacker said defensively. “And nobody in L.A. looks plastic.”

I like this Yacker. Now that we’d bonded, I begged her not to take me to Laguna’s “Pageant of the Masters.” I don’t understand the point of having actors stand on a stage, motionless, in a re-creation of a famous painting.

Yacker insisted, dragging me in to meet marketing director Sharbie Higuchi, who suggested that I might have a greater understanding if I were in the pageant.

Huh?

They need understudies for those who can’t perform every night, Higuchi said.

But who would I be?

Higuchi took me over to meet Diane Challis, who suggested I be in Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

I could do that.

I would have asked to be Jesus, but I’m sure I’d be struck dead. I thought about being Judas, just for the thrill it would give Cardinal Roger Mahony, but they said I was too tall.

Challis looked at a copy of “The Last Supper” and said I’d make a good St. Peter.

I’m thinking of inviting the cardinal as my special guest.

Sticking with a religious theme, I convinced Yacker to take me to Trinity headquarters, which resembles a concrete wedding cake that fell off a truck. I wanted to begin growing into my role as a disciple and thought I should say a prayer for televangelist Paul Crouch, who has denied a former employee’s claims of a homosexual tryst.

While I shopped for Paul and Jan Crouch place mats and other souvenirs at the Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh Gift Shop, Yacker called her boss to tell her how my tour of Orange County’s cultural treasures was going.

They were right all along. You can have the time of your life in Orange County without going to Disneyland.

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.