About Irvine, California

In each of my semi-weekly Tourbus posts, I write a few words about my beloved hometown of Irvine, California. Upon closer inspection of the Tourbus archives, I have discovered that some of what I have written about Irvine was not factually accurate. In particular, Irvine is not

Located the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers (10/25/01)
The wombat capital of west central Belgium (11/04/01)
The barbeque okra capital of Madagascar (04/02/02)
The possible childhood home of Werner Heisenberg (although we aren't quite certain) (05/09/02)
Quietly nestled between the Shire and the Cracks of DOOM! (08/02/02)
The inverse relationship between price and quantity demanded (10/24/02)
The town immortalized in the hit musical "Don't Cry for Me Orangantina" (11/21/02)
A town made entirely out of cheese and Legos (02/05/03)
Hog butcher to the world (03/28/03)
Filmed in front of a live studio audience (04/02/03)
An animal that, when fully grown, can weigh over 3,000 pounds and jump over 25 feet (07/16/03)
Available in both original recipe and extra crispy (09/10/03)
The 14th century home of the papacy (07/24/04)
The gateway to scenic central Botswana (09/30/04)
The fourth most serious of the seven deadly sins (10/24/04)
America's number one selling pretzel (08/16/05)
The former capital of the short-lived "Rhythm Nation" (10/11/05)
The site of the 2007 winter Olympics' cross country luge event (07/20/06)

I regret the error.

For the record, Irvine is

One of the United States' largest planned urban communities (04/01/01)
One of the safest cities in America (06/09/05)
35 years old (05/30/06)
Future home of the Orange County Great Park (06/06/06)

I have been unable to confirm or refute that Irvine is

The Marshmallow Peeps capital of central Orange County (11/10/01)
A papal chapel in the Vatican Palace that was erected between 1473 and 1481 by the architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus IV (11/17/01)
A small, amphibious Australian mammal with webbed feet (11/30/01)
The basic monetary unit of Great Britain (12/09/01)
A sea- level waterway that connects the Mediterranean and the Red Seas (12/13/01)
The northern end of the Earth's axis, lying in the Arctic Ocean, about 450 miles north of Greenland (12/20/01 and 12/19/02)
An ornate mausoleum complex on the banks of the Yamuna river in northern India. (01/02/02)
A large marine mammal with two long tusks, tough wrinkled skin, and four flippers. (01/24/02)
A small, ring- shaped cake made of rich, light dough that is fried in deep fat. ["Mmmm ... Irvine!"] (01/31/02)
Birthplace of the Olympic curling revolution (02/19/02)
Nummy cheddar cheese goldfish capital of central Orange County (02/28/02)
Blah blah blah Orange Curtain blah blah blah blah largest strawberry blah blah (03/21/02)
The first Norman king of England (05/28/02)
A baked or chilled dish that has been made light by adding whisked egg whites (06/11/02)
Birthplace of belly button lint (06/20/02)
The clog dancing capital of southern Orange County (07/02/02)
A large purple vegetable used to make baba ghanoush (07/11/02)
A medieval siege engine with a sling attached to a wooden arm for hurling large stones (07/16/02)
The river that provided much of the water for ancient Mesopotamia (10/02/02)
Where it clearly states that as you add units of a variable input to the production process while holding one or more fixed, total production will increase at an increasing rate, increase at a decreasing rate, peak, and decline absolute (11/12/02 and 12/15/05)
The treaty that ended the 30 years war (11/14/02)
The birthplace of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (11/28/02)
An area of space-time with a gravitational field so intense that its escape velocity is equal to or exceeds the speed of light (12/02/02)
A salmonid food and sport fish that is mostly smaller than the typical salmons and are anadromous or restricted to cool clear fresh waters (01/14/03)
A remnant or trace of an organism of a past geologic age, such as a skeleton or leaf imprint, embedded and preserved in the earth's crust (01/30/03)
The place where all your socks go when you lose them in the dryer (02/08/03)
Britain's highly paid Lord Chancellor (02/12/03)
Where there is just one moon and one golden sun, and a smile means friendship to ev'ryone. [Though the mountains divide and the oceans are wide, it's a small world after all!] (03/09/03)
A large, swift-running flightless bird characterized by a long bare neck, small head, and two-toed feet (03/23/03)
A large city located in northeastern Illinois, on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the Chicago River (03/08/03)
Where we pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot -- dink up, me 'earties, yo ho! (04/27/03)
Home of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (05/01/03)
Home of the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain and Garden on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan (05/08/03)
Home of the 1985 Super Bowl champions (05/13/03)
Home of historic Wrigley Field (05/18/03)
A South American plant widely cultivated for its starchy edible tubers (06/05/03)
Presented by Bank One (06/27/03)
A spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination in thousands of sparkling lights and electro-syntho-magnetic musical sounds (07/25/03)
A type of dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the microprocessor's clock speed (07/30/03)
Where you too can be governor (08/13/03)
An event that occurs when a program or process tries to store more data in a buffer than it was intended to hold (08/26/03)
Part of a multi-pack and is not labeled for individual retail sale (09/18/03)
An hysterical parody in the tradition of Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman (10/02/03)
Where my governor can beat up your governor (10/09/03)
Whose minty tingle gets your breath clean and fresh (10/16/03)
Located at the point where the Kansas River (also known as the Kaw) joins the Missouri River (10/23/03)
Where Grim Grinning Ghosts come out to socialize (11/10/03)
Now available with 50% more rutabaga (12/15/03)
The site of man's first controlled, powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine (12/19/03)
Where our variety of featured meats is seasoned to perfection and slow-roasted over an open flame to capture their individual flavor (01/06/04)
The original celebrated curiously strong peppermints (01/21/04)
Where, at the tone, it will be exactly five o'clock. DING! (02/06/04)
A town surrounded by a foil jacket to help prevent crosstalk (02/19/04)
Where you should immediately consult your doctor if an allergic reaction to this product occurs (03/04/04)
The largest city in southern Greece (04/01/04)
Where your 13th pair of shoes is free (04/08/04)
The third of four terrestrial planets counting out from the Sun (04/21/04)
Where NURRbody in the club's gettin' tipsy (05/01/04)
Home of the Stanley Cup-winning Tampa Bay Lightning (06/10/04)
Separated by over 1,500 miles of the open Pacific from the nearest continent (06/27/04)
The snack that smiles back (07/10/04)
Where the sun goes down and the tide rolls out and the people gather 'round and they all begin to shout: "Ick! Mud!" (07/31/04)
Birthplace of the retro encabulator (08/09/04)
A binocular-shaped toy that lets you view 3-D images (08/19/04)
Now available with 2 billion effective pixels (09/03/04)
The last Catholic monarch to reign over England, Scotland or Ireland (09/23/04)
The first national park in Norway (10/14/04)
A sweet confection made from a mix of nuts and boiled sugar (11/11/04)
A curved device that when thrown correctly returns to the person who threw it (11/18/04)
A large gamebird with a fan-shaped tail and wattled neck (11/25/04)
The national theatre of Bulgaria (12/14/04)
The national beverage of Denmark (01/04/05)
Now available in individually wrapped 1 oz. bars (01/13/05)
Where the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain (02/02/05)
The founding document of New Zealand (02/07/05)
America's #1 Valentine candy (02/16/05)
Where we are frantically trying to figure out what a cubit is (02/22/05)
A town that should be refrigerated after being opened (03/06/05)
The birthplace of the red Swingline stapler (04/09/05)
Where the troops of Lapu-Lapu, a chieftain of Mactan, defeated Spanish forces under Ferdinand Magellan (04/29/05)
Where age relives fond memories of the past ... and youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future (05/19/05)
Caused by a relatively rapid increase in the population of phytoplankton algae in an aquatic system (06/07/05)
Home of the third most decisive battle of the English Civil War (07/02/05)
A dark granite stone which provided modern researchers with translations of ancient text in Egyptian demotic script, Greek, and Egyptian hieroglyphs (07/14/05)
The landing place of Caesar's army during the Roman conquest of Britain (07/28/05)
The seventh fastest growing city in west-central Idaho (09/08/05)
Where we welcome our new sea lion overlords (09/20/05)
Where it's one, two, three strikes you're *SAFE* at the old ball game (10/18/05)
Where we take one, one, one 'cause you left me and two, two, two for my family (11/15/05)
Where we forget what eight is for (11/29/05)
Now available with 17% more sea sewage (01/24/06)
The clog dance capital of north central Paraguay (02/23/06)
Where we haven't had an incident of a swagman stealing a jumpbuck and hiding it in his tucker bag for at least three weeks (03/16/06)
A Polish mathematician who, in 1932, solved the Enigma machine (03/24/06)
Now available with 10% more PopoZao (04/27/06)

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About Irvine, California