It's noon on a midsummer Saturday in a camp of the church of cheer, and eight million blades of grass are about to die. For the next four days, UC Irvine’s Mesa Court Field will …

Tourism from Southern California is huge in Rosarito Beach; it's the town's principal revenue-generating industry and bigger now than ever. But a problem has emerged in the past few years that threatens those revenues and …

Nationwide last year, some 20.7 million youths - 64.1 percent of 14- to 18-year-olds - worked at paying jobs. Below, seven local teens talk about their summer jobs - how they got them, what they …

Pete Wilson's ex-maid, Josepha Klag, is set for a deportation hearing in United States Immigration Court here this coming Wednesday. Allegations that Klag had been in the country illegally when she worked for Wilson and …

Matthew: Ash Street, Beech Street, Cedar Street...Hawthorn, Ivy, Kalmia, Laurel... Uh, wait a minute. Kalmia? Redwood, Spruce, Thom, Upas.... Upas? Does a kalmia grow on Kalmia or a upas on Upas? — Tree Hugger, Uptown …

Matmail: Why does charcoal burn? Isn’t it already burned? Or is it only mostly burned? What gives? — Bryan Coon, San Diego Charcoal is simply carefully cooked wood. Mankind figured out this one many centuries …

Dear Matt: I apologize if you’ve already been asked this question. Then again, who cares. You get paid for this. What a life. Anyway, a few of my associates and I were wondering why the …

Dear All-Knowing One: Why is it that you sometimes see urinals filled with ice in public restrooms? Is the ice just dumped there to get rid of it, or does it serve a purpose? — …

The California bungalow had its origins in India, another crackling-hot destination in need of cheap, cool housing. The bengalas, as the conquering Brits called them, were small, open, one-story huts with wide verandas.

Though he could star in commercials for products that promise a perfect, healthy baby, I believe Finian was born flawed. Though his sleeping face suggests cherubic innocence, I believe he entered the world stained with …

The bloody cross-country odyssey of Andrew Cunanan is causing turmoil at a World Wide Web site set up by some young alumni of La Jolla's tony Bishop's prep school, the accused slayer's alma mater. Reporters …

Annie offered me the tiller and I accepted. Precious was lively, responsive. I tacked and headed north toward the Coronado Bridge. Annie continued telling me about her Australia trip, about meeting Norm Wright and his wife Helen.

Dear Mr. Alice:As some friends and I were kicking back one day listening to the Beatles and reading the lyrics that came with the album, we were wondering, what was the first music artist to …

My kids are considering San Diego State, and I'm interested to see if this fall's Daily Aztec newspaper staff carries on last year's most notable last year's most notable traditions: careless prose and a dependence …

A former San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau executive has become enmeshed in a sex-and-money church money church scandal that's making headlines in Florida, Wisconsin, and Tennessee. "Baptist Leader Linked to Second Woman Who's Not …

Dear Matthew Alice: How many facts of life are there, and what are they? — Wondering, La Jolla There are three facts of life: There will always be death; there will always be taxes; there …

If it's good enough for TV factories, why not prisons? That seems to be the logic behind a proposal to build a privately run jail in Tijuana to house Mexican inmates currently occupying California prisons. …

Dear Almighty Matt: Okay, here’s the deal. I, like many of my fellow Americans, have a strange fascination with beer. I mean, what’s better than beer? Not much. Well, the other night I was once …

People have come into my office having heart attacks. But after Masako walked out our front door, I felt more helpless and frightened than at any other time during my four and a half years …

Midsummer nights, I not infrequently put myself to sleep considering the taste of a warm, ripe apricot. I imagine the apricot’s sunrise color, the red blush along its curve. I imagine the apricot’s heft in …

“I found a job as an editor with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which happened to be moving to San Diego, in 1982. I had an office on the 11th floor of that lovely old wedding-cake building.”

Matt: I’ve, always wondered why car tires need tread patterns in them. Why is a tire better if you cut designs into them than if they Were just plain? And why are there so many …

It was early May, and San Diego City Manager Jack McGrory was worried. He and the city council had put city taxpayers on the hook for guaranteeing the sale of 60,000 seats for each Chargers …

Hey, Matt: Why doesn’t the temperature scale have freezing at zero and boiling at 100? Why 32 and 212? —Buddy Borgen, L.A. Move to Europe, Buddy. Or Canada. Or Mexico. Or almost any place except …

Ex-Omaha cattleman Bill Foxley, who moved to the green hills of La Jolla years ago, made headlines in Denver last week when he abruptly closed the doors of his famed Museum of Western Art. Foxley's …

“There are more people in the service industry than anything else. Service jobs are always gonna be with us, whether it’s pumpin’ gas or shinin’ shoes or washin’ dishes, Hey, just take pride in it.”

Ron Mullis at Sandi’s: “They sold him a 5-year-old gelding, but what he took home was an 18-year-old range stud. Next morning he came out with a halter, and the horse threw him like a rag doll.”

Matthew Alice: I found an owl feather and stuck it in my hatband, and some lady insisted that it was illegal for me to do that. How can that be? — Richard, Escondido I don’t …

Dear Matt, Purveyor of Knowledge, Great and Infinitesimal: While perusing my 1997 tide calendar and looking ahead to the tide fluctuations in the coming months, I noticed in October that there re two new moons …

Matmail: All right, this has bugged me for years. Hamburgers. There's no ham in them! In fact, these days there is little meat of any kind in them. How did they get named? Is it …

Matthew Alice: Can a Siamese twin get their connected sibling drunk? — mattyj, the Net Got to say I’ve never considered that dilemma. One twin a teetotaler, one a lush. One out carousing all night, …

Dear Matt: I just love that dangerously delicious snack food the Hostess Twinkie!! Those beautiful little gold bars of yellow sponge cake and that cloudlike white filling can make me dance with joy! During a …

Why is Roman Catholic priest Rudolph Kos, a.k.a. Rudy Edward, a.k.a. Father Rudy, whom a Dallas jury found liable for sexually abusing 11 boys, able to live without supervision near an elementary school in downtown's …

Browse through toasters, blenders, and unnameable parts for God-knows-what, a dozen or more sizes and variations of vacuum-cleaner bags, clock radios, coffeemakers, water filters, vaporizers, humidifiers, computer manuals, an icecream maker, an Electro-Lux vacuum-cleaner cylinder.