Considering I found her book TOTALLY FUCKING FUNNY, did the original readers similarly adore her in all her hammered-and-sickled glory? “Oh my god, I have had at least 20 letters over the years that have said, ‘Stalin killed 20 million people!’”Schoenkopf recalled. “And I’m like, Jesus fuck, I know, okay?”Again channeling the collective rage of OC’s PC police, she mimicked, “‘Why don’t I call myself Fascist Boy?’”

Now at City Beat -- a mere 3-months in, with a painfully scanty staff of three and amidst a successful relaunch -- Schoenkopf’s receiving reams of hate mail. “ ‘Who’s this inane, vulgar, rambling, trite girl who’s a terrible writer and has a potty mouth?’”she laughs. “And I was like, ‘You live in Los Angeles, are you really that sheltered?’”Even Commie Girl, who’s interviewed the record-holder for gang bangs (742, if you must know) and makes new friends at the Rush Limbaugh Fan Club meeting, is surprised.

Between sips of just-off-work wine, Schoenkopf lists three of her favorite columns, starting with “The Church of Phil,”a sweet paean chronicling the rise of Huntington Beach-cum-Vegas cover crooner Phil Shane. She particularly likes “Real Live Boys,”also one of my top picks (along with “Last Call”, a tear-jerking eulogy to an Anaheim punk club). As she writes, “For decades it’s been a truism that those on the right only love you till you’re born and then you’ve got a freaking bull’s eye on your head.”From here, she launches into the Right’s encouragement of the adoption of embryos in order to cash in on the consequent $10,000 federal tax credit originally intended for eager couples adopting post-utero (i.e. real, live, and born) orphans. It continues: “The most cuckoo among them even think the Pill is murder….If that means we have to start burying our Tampax in consecrated ground, so be it.”

Her hands-down favorite, “Capitol Punishment”(subhead, “How I stopped worrying and learned to love Arnold Schwarzenegger”), logs her multi-day, multi-mixed-drink attempt to interview the Governator. Characteristically hilarious, yes, but it’s also chock full of run-downs of political bills and the stats on both loved and hated Sacramento suits. “Everybody thinks I’m this bimbo who doesn’t know stuff,”Schoenkopf said when asked why this is her winning commentary. “Like, oh you’re just a party girl. Well, actually, I do know lots of stuff about things.”

Finally, we talked about men. I gushed over “Smell the Love,”which detailed her love/hate relationship with a teased hair cock-rockers The Moseleys. By the end (which can be revealed without really revealing anything: “You imagine you could be his Yoko. You imagine you could be his Vitamin U.”Ah, Vitamin Me?!), I knew Commie Girl was a genius unafraid to tell the truth, and we’d be forever bonded by our shared ability to become idiotic puddles in the presence of rock ‘n’ roll man-babies. We discussed her former engagement to the political director of the California Republican Party, a man so far Right while she was so far Left they often came full circle, for example in their dual disdain for Bill Clinton. “My only deal-breakers,”she noted of her romantic choices, “are if you think gay people are gross or dirty or going to hell,”she said. “That to me speaks of such a closed-mindedness. If you think other shit, well how ‘bout that? We disagree, are we going to go have some good sex or what?”

And Obama? As she wrote on her own site (www.commiegirlcollective.com) in regards to a photo of the handsome Democratic hopeful together with the handsome progressive she once supported, John Edwards: “I think I just got cured of my Luke & Owen Wilson daydreams.”

Considering she’s flown the OC coop north to la-la land, does the southern California native harbor visions of continuing on to our liberal Shangri-la here in the Bay? Nope. Actually, she hates San Francisco, a sentiment based largely upon some obnoxious radio DJ’s assertion that everyone from Southern California sucks just as she, at the impressionable age of 18, was about to arrive in the city. Not the friendliest welcome.

“I feel like I’d get a lot of the same response there as I’ve gotten being the editor of LA City Beat,”she said. “‘Oh, but you’re being flip about something that’s very important, we don’t laugh about that.’ That self-seriousness…”she trailed off. “I think there’s a lot of that in your city.”

Commie Girl in the OC is a definitive, well-versed argument against across-the-board SoCal suckage. Now it’s our turn, we uber-impenetrable NorCal lefties, to return the myth-busting favor and show the visiting author that we can indeed laugh our asses off.

Rebecca Schoenkopf reads from Commie Girl in the OC
Thu/10, 7 pm
City Lights
261 Columbus Ave.
(415) 362-8193
www.citylights.com