Hey, get a load of that cool new high-tech campus in Tustin! (Part 1)

I TAUGHT my 3-hour class this morning and then took care of some paper work. I finished up at maybe 2:30, and boy was I glad to leap like an idiot into the wild blue yonder of the weekend! I climbed into my Chrysler 300, and zoom!

I was talking to Bob Kopecky the other day, and he said I should drop by ATEP—that's the high-tech campus that just opened up in Tustin—and take a few pics. (ATEP is the Advanced Technology & Education Park, a campus of the South Orange County Community College District.)

He's mighty proud of it; he's its Provost. (We call 'im Park Ranger Bob.)

So I figured, what the heck, I may as well go over there since it was such a beautiful day. Plus I like to look at those big blimp hangers. I can never get enough of those things.

You can get to ATEP on Redhill—it's just off Valencia. Somebody's done a lot of work to clean things up at the old base. It used to be kinda post-apocalyptic: dirt, weeds, shitty buildings, toxic waste bubbling up from beneath the earth. (Well, not that.)

ATEP, whose cozy but shiny "phase 1" sits right along Redhill, looks modern and futuristic. It sometimes reminds me of the Borg. I worry sometimes that it's gonna X-ray me or transport me to Pluto.

Eventually, ATEP will be 68 acres of dazzling high-techery and whatnotery—plus a few of the old relics left over from the Marine era, like the little white chapel and the rusted pull-up bars of death. A nice contrast.

See the pic on the left? You can see, to the right, a mock-up of a vehicle that can actually drive across the country on one tank of gas! That's gotta be a big money saver.

Evidently, the "head" inside the cockpit is built around some ancient monkey skull or something, constructed with photons or electrons, but waddoo I know. I think it glows and bleeps.

There's all manner of high-tech whiz-bangery at ATEP. Even the parking lot is unusually convoluted, as if it were designed by Rube Goldberg or maybe the City of Tustin. I could do without that, actually.

I poked my head into one of the rooms, and GOOD LORD! It was filled with dozens of Mac Pros!

Now, I'm all Mac'd up myself, and so I know just how fine these computers are. They purr. They crunch and whoosh. I drool. You can take over the world from one of those, y'know.

As the kids say (and, frankly, I do wish they'd stop saying it), "sweet!"

PART 2 OF THIS SERIES will be a tour of the inside of ATEP. Hundreds of kids take classes at the campus (sometimes called the "Entity") already, and you wouldn't believe the great contraptions & gizmos they have to work with!

I'd keep on eye on those kids, if I were you, Bob.

TUSTIN'S THE DISTRICT: GRATUITOUS BUZZKILLERY:

P.S.: On the way home, I dropped by that big dumb shopping area to the southeast of ATEP—the "District," it's called.

So, OK, I do have a complaint. I think it's pretty rude to go to something that, for decades, has been known as the "biggest" or the "stinkiest" or whatever, and then to go ahead and build something right next to it that's even bigger or stinkier!

So what do those New Age sharpies at WHOLE FOODS MARKET do? They build a store that's even bigger than those hangers! I almost fell over tryin' to see the top of it!

Plus it's filled with nothing but New Age bullshit—you know: books with titles like Know your Karma through Asparagus, books by that ashole Andrew Weil, books about enemas and nuts & twigs, books by Shirley F*cking MacLaine. —Plus "organic" sprouts and oats and cow brains and fig bars.

I liked the post-apocalyptic wasteland better.