On a happy day, I might have said something like mayter's writeup (see below), though I didn't grow up in OC and couldn't wait to get out. More often, however, I found myself bitter and ranty about the place I lived from May 2001 until April 2002, which made me prone to calling Orange County, California a place "where rich old white people come to die, but not nearly soon enough."
With the exception of Laguna Beach and occasional hidden enclaves of coolness, the land behind the Orange curtain exemplifies pretty much everything that sucks about the Wasteland that is Southern California: rampant car culture and plenty of resultant smog, gated communities and other horrid suburban sprawl, and a near-total lack of soul. Orange County also has the dubious distinction of being home to the world's first covered shopping mall, South Coast Plaza. It's also a bastion of political conservativism (again with the exception of Laguna Beach and some fun spots in Newport Beach). It's fun to compare and contrast the OC Weekly and OC Register's spin on things and hope the truth is somewhere in between.