“In our culture, social interaction depends on talking. All the time. But when you walk into an Indian community, it’s not that they don’t talk, but there are long periods where nobody says anything. Where nothing happens.”
January 30, 1997
Thursday, January 30
Margaret Langdon hunts down Kumeyaay native tongues
I want to own my own prison
Dear Mary Alice: If someone is arrested and given the opportunity to be released on bail, can he/she pay with a personal check or a credit card? Not that I’m planning ahead or anything...this was …
January 30, 1997
An existential honeymoon in Guaymas
The first night I lay awake listening to jungle noises—night birds, a laughing burro, strange swishes that made me picture Tarzan riding a vine from tree to tree, and the cackles of stoned people.
January 30, 1997
McDonald's claim of 65 billion served
Matmail: One thing I’ve always wondered about is the McDonald's signs that say “Over 65 billion served." Sixty-five billion what? I figure it’s either: (1) items (i.e., Cokes, fries, and the big stuff like Quarter …
January 30, 1997
Chargers owner Alex Spanos and Governor Pete Wilson. Spanos give to Northern Calif. senate race
Last March, a mysterious last-minute political attack appeared in mailboxes throughout the Northern California senate district being contested by Democrat Byron Sher and Republican Patrick Shannon. The hit piece, "widely criticized as the dirtiest of …
January 30, 1997
Henry Huntington once bought a whole garden simply to preserve wisteria,
My husband, too, is a temperate, practical man, so the walls of our house are barren, but certain members of the vine family are making their greedy way. We planted two wisteria by the front porch.
January 30, 1997
175 pounds of marijuana found in Tierrasanta storage locker
The strange saga of Soloman and Kathy Silver took yet another turn last week. Soloman is the 30-year-old ex--Point Loman accused of arranging the smuggling of hundreds of pounds of marijuana into Maine from 1992 …
January 30, 1997
Thursday, January 23
San Diego surf glossary — based on Trevor Cralle's Surfin’ary
A. AAAAHOOO! The first term found in a book on “surfspeak." is reported as the sound made by a surfer when up and riding a wave, when watching another surfer catch a hot ride, or …
January 23, 1997
When MTV makes the screen hazy
Matt, you knower of all knows: I can’t sleep at night because of this, and I need to know. On MTV’s The Real World and Road Rules, it appears as though every now and then …
January 23, 1997
Ball lightning in Wyoming
Attention: Mattfax: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a large cold front sweep through the plains, but it’s pretty awe inspiring. In 1993, somewhere around the Wyoming state line, my wife and I drove …
January 23, 1997
The strange eucalyptus at Balboa and Ruffin Road
Matmail: Did you know that there is a tree with a knot tied in it on the southwest corner of Balboa and Ruffin Road? Check it out. No one believes me till I show them. …
January 23, 1997
Spiritual disillusionment in Balboa Park
Downtown looked like a fashion show for uniforms. Bob suggested we forget the crusade and follow the swabbies to the Hollywood Burlesque. Cliff asked, “Why bother with the Hollywood when in TJ they show it all off?”
January 23, 1997
San Diego city council donors fined and fined
As the debate about expansion of the stadium rages on, callers to radio talk shows have voiced a consistent, plaintive question: "How could the city council have negotiated such a bad deal for taxpayers?" Veteran …
January 23, 1997
The exotic world of San Diego' honorary consuls
I was selling rum in Venezuela in the '60s," says John Norton, "when I met some girls from the Swedish Embassy. One finally became vice consul in L.A. She suggested me for the job of …
January 23, 1997
Sony pulls Playstation manufacturing out of Rancho Bernardo, sends to Tijuana.
Last October, Japanese newspapers broke the story that Sony would no longer manufacture its PlayStation video game machine at its San Diego plant in Rancho Bernardo. Instead, the reports went, all of the games would …
January 23, 1997
Thursday, January 16
Balboa Park museums do surgery on masterpieces
Bringing new life to half-eaten breakfasts.
January 16, 1997
Stinky cheese and stinky feet
Dear Matt: Why do some cheeses smell like people’s feet and vice versa? 2. Who deduced that the extract from a sheep’s stomach was the missing essential ingredient for cheese making? — Curious, North Park …
January 16, 1997
Microwave takes double the time as conventional
Mattman: How come when I put two potatoes in my microwave it takes twice as long to cook them as to cook one? When I put two potatoes in my conventional oven, it doesn’t take …
January 16, 1997
Blowing really does cool off your soup
Dear Mr. Alice: I was contemplating a hot bowl of soup the other day, eager to eat but reluctant to burn my tongue. So of course, I scooped up a spoonful, blew on it a …
January 16, 1997
The rhino as fire marshall
Matmail: This weekend we rented the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy. In this film the rhinoceros is depicted as being the “self-appointed fire marshal of the veldt,” and one is actually seen stamping …
January 16, 1997
Hamels of Mission Beach mad at city, ready to quit
The Hamels are ready to call it quits. After 30 years of running their sportswear and bike rental emporium at the foot of Ventura Place in Mission Beach, brothers Dan and Ray Hamel want to …
January 16, 1997
Uninsured and sick in San Diego
Last time I saw Sara Gagliardi, she was bent double. Sweat poured off her brow. She was in pain. She limped to the back of the health food store where she was working and sat …
January 16, 1997
Nackey Scripps Loeb grew up on E.W. Scripps' sprawling Miramar Ranch
The story of ex-Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rocky Bleier's cross-country fight with ex-wife Aleta Whitaker over the $900,000 she says he owes her is front-page news in Pittsburgh. He says he can't afford to pay …
January 16, 1997
Coast to Coast in Kerouac's Time
Over lunch, Tony’s family debated the benefits of Chicago and San Diego. Mrs. Russo, Tony, and his sister preferred Chicago. Mr. Russo claimed he would have stayed out West except for the family’s nagging.
January 16, 1997
Thursday, January 9
San Diego mafia in the 1950s used slayings to enforce rules
If you think nothing happened here in the 1950s, consider this. “Willie the Rat" Cammisano from Kansas City settled in Kensington on Lymer Drive. Momo Adamo from Los Angeles by way of Kansas City and …
January 9, 1997
The Secret Life of Plants author admits error
Matt: Do plants feel pain? — Marcos, San Diego Mankind has tried, mankind has failed to prove that lettuce shrieks in pain when we tear it up for salad. Peter Tompkins started all this in …
January 9, 1997
McGrory and San Diego city council celebrate in stadium skybox
As an army of bulldozers, pile drivers, and concrete cutting machines massed outside the gates of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium a week ago Monday night, the city attorney, city manager, and a few lucky …
January 9, 1997
How Do You Keep Warm at Night?
If you think of the homeless at all — aside from how to avoid them or that daily mini-moral crisis as to whether to give them spare change or not — it may strike you …
January 9, 1997
Cute cockroach babies — and how they die
Matmail: Are cockroaches cute when they are babies? Perhaps a better way to phrase it is, are they smaller? Smoother? Less likely to make eye contact? I see various sizes around San Diego sometimes in …
January 9, 1997
San Diego city council pooh-poohs stadium expansion signatures
The battle over whether San Diego voters will get a say in approval of that stadium expansion deal with the Chargers is getting hotter, and local lawyers and campaign consultants are said to be lining …
January 9, 1997
A very San Diego story involving Kerouac and Dostoyevsky
“Look what’s changed in the last two months. Eric died. We barely escaped a nuclear war. By June, Kennedy might attack Cuba, and the Russians could retaliate by invading Hollywood. Bonanza could be in Russian.”
January 9, 1997
Thursday, January 2
How mobsters made their move on San Diego
Some hard guys came to town after the war. A big ex-con with the cold eyes of a killer drove in from Kansas City. He parked in front of a white stucco house in Kensington. …
January 2, 1997
Adobe Creek Falls – series of cascades through a narrow little gorge
Just north of San Diego State University, the runoff shed by some 15 square miles of chaparral-covered hillsides and suburban streets placidly crosses under ten lanes of Interstate 8 west of College Avenue. Then it …
January 2, 1997
KGTV Channel 10 news operation placed under marketing director
The first week in December, KGTV Channel 10 station management announced that long-time news director Jeff Klotzman would be departing at the end of the month and the entire news operation would be placed under …
January 2, 1997
San Diego County Jail treats visitors as criminals
You recognize the visitor's door at the downtown jail because it is the only door that is open. A row of blowers lines the wall overhead, giving the feeling of a back entrance. First-time visitors …
January 2, 1997
Risky business
Increasing violence in Mexico means big profits to U.S. makers of bulletproof limousines. In an Atlanta Journal story, limo makers from Austin to Detroit report a surge in orders from south of the border, especially …
January 2, 1997
Matthew Alice's true identity
Dear Matthew Alice: Are you real? That is to say, are you actually one person, or are you a group of people under an assumed name? — Name Withheld to Avoid Embarrassment, Clairemont Every decade …
January 2, 1997
St. Johns, Arizona – my mother's hometown
Outside the windows, chimes touch together. They ring exactly as they did when someone lived here, when Blue Willow china was set on the table and cows were milked in the barn.
January 2, 1997
Czeslaw Milosz on Anna Swir's poems
"There is practically a love relationship between me and Anna Swir. Though we were not lovers at all, but it is sort of by empathy I feel her body, so to say.”
January 2, 1997