Volume 9
March 1993-February 1994

Warner Time

Dale Warner has a dream. Like the great civil rights visionaries who challenged separate lunch counters and segregated schools, Warner struggles toward the day when racial injustice will be no more. But one difference between Warner and, say, Martin Luther King Jr. would be that Warner is a prosperous, middle-aged lawyer who believes that words like white guy and WASP are "vicious," "defamatory" and "patently racist." That's "European American" to you.

Another distinction is that when Warner bemoans the scourge of slavery, he's often talking about rather remote history--the pillaging Mongols, for example, and their hapless victims to whom, Warner assures, he is related. Of course, Warner's sense of indignation can also be quite contemporary, like Rosa Parks when she refused to move to the back of the bus: TV's Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place, he submits, are "total propaganda programs to demean and defame European Americans."

--John Whalen, "Euro American Like Me," July 1, 1993

A little more than a year later, Warner was campaigning for a seat on the Berryessa School District Board when a Public Eye column reported that he had been arrested for heroin possession in Lansing, Mich., in 1973. Moreover, Warner's arrest came during his fourth term in the Michigan State Legislature. Neither Warner's arrest or his past career in politics had ever been publicized in California. Warner maintained his innocence, and the charges were dismissed in 1977 when a judge ruled that his right to a speedy trial had been denied. Warner lost the school board election. He continues to work as an immigration attorney and lead a group known as Resisting Defamation.


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Down to the Bones

Viki Nevarez had to be sure.

Friends and relatives had told her for months to expect the worst. Official word had come from the medical examiner's office weeks earlier. A rosary in the Garden Chapel at Darling & Fischer Mortuary was only a few days away. The funeral mass at St. Patrick's and burial at Calvary Catholic Cemetery would take place in less than a week. But Nevarez still wasn't convinced her niece, Mary Macias, was dead.

The lingering doubt moved Nevarez to inspect the coffin everyone said contained the remains of her niece. ...

"It was just a pile of dry bones," Nevarez recalls. ... "But when I picked up the skull, I saw the little crooked tooth she had on the bottom left side. Then I knew it was Mary."

Equating her niece with a small box of bones was a personal struggle for Viki Nevarez. The same process posed a professional challenge for the forensic detective team working on the case. Richard Miller, an investigator with the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner's Office, coordinated efforts to identify the badly decomposed body. ... Miller called on a physical anthropologist, an odontologist, a Sunnyvale police artist skilled in skull reconstruction and, at one point, two "cadaver dogs" trained to sniff out human remains. Like Nevarez, they were all searching for certainty with a partial skeleton as their only guide.

--Gordon Young, "Skeleton Crew," Dec. 9, 1993

The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department is still investigating the Macias case. There are currently no suspects. Anyone with information should contact Sgt. Earl Tennington at 408/299-2211.


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Prank You Very Much

Metro knows a good idea when it sees one. After New Times--the alternative newsweekly in Phoenix--ran a gag story on the discovery of gold at an Arizona shopping center, Metro ran a localized version of the same story in its 1993 April Fool's issue. The article pinpointed the gold beneath the Valley Fair shopping mall and gave readers phony instructions on how to register a claim and become "stinking, filthy rich."

In the same issue, Metro included a fake photo of Mayor Susan Hammer wearing nothing but a smile, "a Dole banana G-string and red flame grape pasties" allegedly to "seduce" officials in Rio de Janeiro into an economic partnership.

Metro went on to take a shot at the Catholic Church in the same issue by reporting that the newly refurbished St. Joseph Cathedral would be turned into an after-hours disco/strip joint.

--"Stake Your Claim," April 1, 1993

The paper received roughly 200 calls about the hoax. Vice Mayor Blanca Alvarado called the photo of Hammer "trashy." The mayor herself confessed that she "didn't catch the humor in it." The mayor's office got a handful calls from people who thought San Jose's highest elected official really was in Brazil shaking her fruit on the dance floors of Rio. The Catholic Diocese complained in a letter to the editor. And more than a few rubes showed up at Valley Fair to stake their claim. Metro did, however, reap some economic benefit from the whole affair. Valley Fair, at first furious over the incident, decided to buy an advertising contract after witnessing the readership impact of Metro firsthand.


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Hollywood Moment

If the skirmish over whether to build a 16-screen AMC cinema complex in downtown San Jose near the Pavilion were a boffo Hollywood blockbuster, the Camera Cinemas--underdogs with heart--would invariably vanquish the slick conglomerate. Of course, a monster AMC multiplex would probably screen that crowd pleaser of a movie. Plus a handful of art films that could potentially hobble the independent Camera Cinemas.

Camera Cinemas say that, absent restriction to limit AMC to mainstream films, the cineplex will put them out of business. Operators of downtown's Pavilion shops say that without a movie complex, they intend to walk away from their $126 million investment in San Jose. If both sides are to be taken at their word, the City Council will decide today which business to kill.

--Colleen Cooke and John Whalen, "Last Picture Show," June 24, 1993

When the dust had finally cleared, AMC abandoned plans for a 16-screen complex. Instead, United Artists stepped in and gained approval for an eight-screen complex with promises not to show so-called "art" films--the staple of the Camera Cinemas. The UA theater's $9.1 million projected cost is being subsidized with $4.4 million in city taxpayer funds. The complex is under construction. One byproduct of the theater project was the eviction of five longtime tenants of the Pavilion who had weathered the ill-fated shopping complex's lean years.


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The Truth Was Out There

Unannounced, the aliens melt through the walls and crawl in the windows of her home. ...

Occasionally she's beamed up into their cigar-shaped spacecraft, a sleek black machine that hovers silently above outside, and then [Lisa] Reynolds is transferred to her abductors' "mothership."

Then things really get weird. ...

Temple University Professor David M Jacobs concludes ... "We think [the aliens] are producing offspring through human sperm and eggs. Why they are doing that, we don't know. ... People from time to time are shown kind of strange-looking offspring. .. Most abductees describe them as sort of hybrids."

--Bob Hansen, "The Aliens Want My Body," July 22, 1993

Hmm ... maybe X-Files agents Sculley and Mulder are on to something.


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Political Bedfellows

Like a political vote divided along partisan lines, state Sen. Al Alquist's decision to marry a woman 36 years his junior has split the lawmaker's friends into two camps: those who favor the union and those who don't.

Al's female associates disapprove of his March 27 marriage to Elaine. They wonder about her motivations. Why would a 48-year-old woman want to tie the knot with a man in his mid-80s? What is she after? Almost visible thought balloons form above their heads when her name is mentioned. He's old enough to be her father, for gosh sake. Clearly, she wants to run for office some day. That must be why she married him, they say, for his connections to power.

On the other side ... his guy friends and political compatriots think the wedding's great. (Wink, wink, nod, nod.) His trophy wife has made Alquist the cock-of-the-walk in Sacto, elevating his status from long-in-the-tooth legislator to seasoned stud muffin.

And he loves every minute of it.

But one thing brings his friends, both male and female, together: The are absolutely aghast at the thought that Elaine Alquist could very well be Santa Clara County's next Senate representative. Sen. Alquist, if what he says is true, seems determined to pull off a political prank of cosmic proportions--to anoint her as his successor when term limits force him from office in 1996.

--Bob Hansen, "What's Love Got to Do With It?" Aug. 12, 1995

Elaine Alquist is planning to run for office in 1996, but not for hubby Al's soon-to-be-vacated seat. Instead, she will campaign for a chance to represent District 22 in the California State Assembly.


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'Married ... Buried'

"Pennyroyal Tea" is about self-induced abortion; as is his wont, Cobain sees himself as a woman or a fetus, or a parasite of some kind: as a victim, in fact, unfairly dependent on others for life. And throughout In Utero, there are other equally thoughtful lyrics that light up the otherwise grim landscape--flashes of insight, like the devastating finish of "All Apologies," when Cobain yells, "Married ... buried" and, in the windup of "Dumb," the way the words "I think I'm dumb" melt incomprehensibly into "I've become dumb ..." (a feeling most mortals share more often than not).

--Gina Arnold, "Birth Trauma," Sept. 30, 1993

On March 4, 1994, Kurt Cobain went into a coma for 20 hours after overdosing on Raipnol and champagne. On April 8, 1994, Cobain committed suicide with a single gunshot wound to the head.


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Two-Adobe Town

Adobe Systems Inc. is eyeing downtown San Jose as a possible new home for its employees, Public Eye has learned. ... [Adobe] is considering the former Saint Joseph School site on the western edge of downtown San Jose, near the San Jose Arena and the Guadalupe River Park. ... Adobe reps have talked with RDA bureaucrats regarding the possible relocation, though details are sketchy.

--Public Eye, Nov. 10, 1993

A Metro scoop. Adobe will become downtown's largest commercial tenant, and could occupy up to four buildings soon.


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On to March 1994-February 1995

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