Thirty-Five Years Ago Since WWII, the emergent “East Coast” style has tended toward a simplified, even primitive, form and a more cerebral content.... The New Yorker always was, and still remains, a great testing ground …
October 5, 2011
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Stories by Various Authors
1991: You’re Gay, You Drive, You get Special Handling
Some Peeves Never Change
Thirty Years Ago Tribune editor Neil Morgan will put an end to a “very strange and uncomfortable” situation next week when he turns loose his protégé Tom Blair to write a column of his own. …
September 28, 2011
Francesco Petrarch
How often on that day, think you, did I not on the return journey look back upon the peak of the mountain! In comparison with the loftiness of human contemplation, unless one is mired in …
September 21, 2011
"Come Prima," by Archie Randolph Ammons
I know there is perfection in the being of my being, that I am holy in amness as stars or paperclips, that the universe, moving from void to void, pours in and out through me: …
September 21, 2011
The Hip List
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>On the night of Tuesday, September 28, in a boxing ring constructed inside New York City’s newly renovated Yankee Stadium, a heavyweight championship bout will be held between the aging, invincible Muhammad Ali, …
September 21, 2011
A 91X Rant
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>Studio structures have been bemoaned for so long that it is almost an automatic reflex to greet the recent breakdown with cries of “Up the rebels.” But the upshot of independence is that …
September 14, 2011
What O.B. Were You Visiting, Mister?
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>Being a life-long resident of Ocean Beach, I found your article last week on the O.B. Pier a little amusing. Maybe your writer found one or two fishermen whom he could romanticize, but …
September 7, 2011
Homeric Hymn
O universal Mother, who dost keep From everlasting thy foundations deep, Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee! All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea, All things that fly, or on …
August 31, 2011
Seen on DVD: Confessions of a Superhero, Baghdad Cafe, Death to Smoochy
Shana Wride Director, Walter Cronkite Is Dead at San Diego REPertory Theatre If you love Absolutely Fabulous, then you’ll love the entire French & Saunders series. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, the comedy team responsible …
August 31, 2011
Empedocles
Behold the sun, everywhere bright and warm, and all the immortal things that are bathed in heat and bright radiance. Behold the rain, everywhere dark and cold; and from the earth issue forth close-pressed and …
August 24, 2011
Be on the Alert for Marijuana
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>San Diegans are meeting in churches, recreation centers, and living rooms, hoping that somehow, some way, they’ll make it through the night without a chocolate milkshake.... Most of them are fat...not just pleasingly …
August 24, 2011
You Can't Fight Rose Lynne
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>I had two phone calls. The first caller, a woman, began plaintively, “I find your reviews depressing. You’re always writing about how to save money, share meals, find bargains. My husband and I...don’t …
August 10, 2011
Seen on DVD: Dumb and Dumber, I Saw the Devil, Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Giovanna Maimone Actress, Hellbenders I’m a comedy fanatic. The Farrelly brothers are by far my greatest inspiration as a comedy writer. Their Dumb and Dumber pretty much set the mark for its genre of sick …
August 3, 2011
Where the Bad Boys Are
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>Just as the people who live along the ocean shore are affected by the tides and the pull of the moon, the children of the street in inner territories like Shell Town and …
August 3, 2011
Comic Book Bash
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>SAM: WE’RE THROUGH, you airhead. Jack is meeting me this Friday at City College to see “That Scoundrel Scapin.” Eileen. ANGEL, SORRY we couldn’t finish the voyage, but rock and roll is calling …
July 27, 2011
Summer stories
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>At a mock Hollywood party in one scene of Rodgers and Hart, the pleasant musical revue at the Carter Centre Stage, a drunken partygoer makes the bold confession: “I’m heterosexual!” This is a …
July 20, 2011
Seen on DVD: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Battle of Algiers, Freedom Riders
Ralph De Lauro Film program director, Central Library and Cinema Under the Stars Napoleon, by Abel Gance. All sparks and pinwheels. Gance’s silent thrill ride is long, sentimental, and simplistic, yet it’s bursting at the …
July 13, 2011
Archie Bunker Would Have Thrived in Lakeside
Thirty-Five Years Ago Jerry Ford and Ronald Reagan use them. So does the Chicano Federation. As a matter of fact, almost no political happening would be official without them. Security guards are the new symbols …
July 13, 2011
Found in the Shuffle
Thirty-Five Years Ago If you drive south on Highway 5 and take the Pershing Drive off-ramp down to 26th Street, you will wind up on a narrow road through green hills and cool groves of …
July 6, 2011
Perils of the Press
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>Being the first on the scene will get a newsman his story, but getting a “scoop” is not without its perils. Last Wednesday, the second F-14 fighter in three days went down at …
June 29, 2011
Rooms with a View
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>[T]he dominating mood among the middle-class graduates is one of passive acceptance of a decayed world, handed to them on a platter beyond meaningful repair. While the middle-class kids tend to view themselves …
June 22, 2011
Are You Pilgrims?
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>Dear Matthew Alice:<br>Why don’t cats have to have licenses?<br>Paul Bloom, Point Loma Dear Paul:<br>Cats in San Diego are clasified “wild animals,” just like opposums and werewolves. Not only does this allow cats to …
June 15, 2011
Boëthius
“Wherefore I much marvel why these things are thus turned upside down, and the punishment of wickedness oppresses the good, while evil men obtain the rewards of the good. And I desire to know of …
June 15, 2011
DVD Review: The Station Agent, Garden State, The Hangover
Craig Bentley Film Producer, MonopolyDocumentary.com Tom McCarthy, the director of The Visitor and Win Win, started his directing career with The Station Agent. I can’t think of another director who’s so faithful to his characters …
June 1, 2011
Take Cover
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>[T]he walnuts in the walnut chicken were burned and hence inedible, the Peking duck consisted of squares of apparently canned, fat-riddled duck, and each and every dish, regardless of how it had been …
June 1, 2011
"Pollution," by Karen Stromberg
Dear God, I want you to know I feel so much better since I cleaned the fish tank. Every time I saw them sucking at the surface like a row of tenors, my guilt was …
June 1, 2011
Lady Gaga Did Not Invent the Bologna Skirt
Thirty-Five Years Ago<br>[Jerry] Brown is viewed as one of the shrewdest, most ambitious politicians of the century, so dedicated to power that some wouldn’t be surprised if, dissatisfied with the mere Philosopher King role, he …
May 25, 2011
"Rosh HaShana" by Aharon Shabtai
Even after the murder of the child Muhammad on Rosh HaShanah, the paper didn’t go black. In the same water in which the snipers wash their uniforms, I prepare my pasta, and over it pour …
May 25, 2011
"Diary Cows," by Ron Koertge
What She Wanted was my bones. As I gave them to her one at a time, she put them in a bag from Saks. As long as I didn't hesitate she collected scapula and vertebrae …
May 18, 2011
Run for the Border
Thirty-Five Years Ago Re: Review of my movie, Taxi Driver. You are dead wrong in your cheap, mindless review. If I weren’t so busy putting together half a dozen film packages with my friends Warren …
May 18, 2011