Looking down the row of colorful fan-filled T-shirts, holding my sign high for all to see, I experience a moment of concern at being among so many cultural castaways. And when I stand to take …
July 15, 2004
News & Stories
Reader writer Barbarella goes to Hollywood
Jell-O forever
Dear Matthew Alice: When I had my tonsils taken out (a rite of passage in the 1930s), I was served a helping of Jell-O. With the birth of each of five children, the hospital tray …
July 15, 2004
Why do pants come in pairs?
Heymatt: Why are underwear and pants always referred to as a "pair"? Yes, there are two leg holes or pant legs, but a single shirt has two arm holes or sleeves but is never referred …
July 15, 2004
Picking up pennies' pass?
Matt: Settle an argument. My friend and I were walking across campus the other day, and I stopped to pick up a penny. My friend thought it was stupid for me to go to all …
July 15, 2004
Cashing in (2)
A controversial member of the administration of ousted Democratic governor Gray Davis has turned up on the payroll of the San Diego State University Foundation. Rudy Murillo -- onetime aide to ex-congressman Lionel Van Deerlin, …
July 15, 2004
Let Him Break Rocks
The online publication of "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz's journals has a San Diego man on the hot seat. "Wilson," not his real name, says he turned down interviews by Today's Katie Couric, the …
July 15, 2004
Bankruptcy May Be the Only Option
Great Expectations. Charles Dickens wrote the classic. San Diego, going to the dickens financially, could write a sequel, Inflated Expectations. The city got into its pension amess because, among many unwise things, it had the …
July 15, 2004
The big screen
We don’t go out to the movies very often. After last Monday, I remember why. Jack and I have taken our kids to the movies in what Ben calls a “feeater” exactly twice. The first …
July 15, 2004
Climb Tahquitz Peak in the San Jacinto Mountains, and visit one of the few active fire lookouts remaining in Southern California.
Tahquitz Peak celebrates a legendary demon who, in the oral tradition of the Cahuilla Indians, used to dine on maidens and create crackling bolts of lightning over the San Jacinto Mountains. At an elevation of …
July 15, 2004
Unseen gullies cause sudden death
The column tried to stay motionless to surprise Pico at Mule Hill. But Duvall, the Portsmouth's surgeon, found the camp “rather a bad place to escape observation, on the top of a high mountain destitute of trees.”
July 15, 2004