"It's troubling that he had a cellphone since he's a person who got other people to murder on his behalf."

Charles Manson had a cell phone.

Eco-tourism, the guilt-trip.

Enough whale-watching for you. Time for urban cruise where the sightseeing is the pollution and blight of L.A. harbor.

On a drizzly afternoon, a group of tourists huddle aboard the Christopher sipping wine, nibbling cookies and gazing out at the ocean just off Long Beach. Cameras dangle from their necks, ready to record the sights....

Corroded metal shipping containers, belching smokestacks, trash-strewn waterways and oil islands highlight this harbor cruise.

The 2 1/2 -hour excursion takes passengers through a seascape short on the picturesque but full of concrete and metal -- a ride through exhaust-tinged air and past power plants, rusty warehouses and the Terminal Island prison that once housed Charles Manson and Al Capone.

What's with the wine and cookies? Shouldn't it be something more medicinal and off-flavored? Wheatgrass juice and vegan sushi, maybe.

(I must admit, I would enjoy this cruise. 1. Great photo-ops. 2. Reality is always beautiful/interesting from a safe distance.)

"My hero is Gandhi. I'm an extremely non-violent, peaceful person and a vegetarian. I don't even kill bugs."

Protests Matthew Roberts, 41, who has recently learned that his father is Charles Manson. He's considering calling the murderer who raped his mother:

"If I did talk to Charlie on the phone, I would say, 'I truly understand what it's like to be you, more than anyone could ever imagine on so many levels.'”

On so many levels...

Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz, who are you?

I'm seeing that name, I think, for the first time, in the obituary of the repellent murderess, Susan Atkins. (It was Atkins who boasted that she "stabbed [Sharon] Tate, tasted her blood and used the blood to write the word 'Pig' on the front door of the house.")

In 1968, Ms. Atkins gave birth to a son. [Charles] Manson — who by all accounts was not the father — had her name the child Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. While he was still a baby, the child was removed from Ms. Atkins’s care and later adopted.

Manson had already given Atkins the name Sadie Mae Glutz. I wonder if the (renamed) Zezozose Zadfrack ever got it into his head to go searching for his biological parents, the way adoptees so often do. I hope not. But surely, there are men born in 1968, who know they were adopted, who have stopped to wonder if they are Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Do you ever look in the mirror and think you're rather cute, but maybe you're cute like this?

"The parole board does not hold my life in its hands. And I don't want to be too critical, but men tend to think they do."

"Charlie never thought he did. He never expressed all this desire for power, this desire for acceptance."

"Charlie" = Charles Manson. The statement is from Squeaky Fromme — Lynette Fromme — who will be released on parole.