San Diego Reader

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Loosening Family Ties

Loosening Family Ties

For me to write of family strikes me as vaguely pretentious if not outright hypocritical. Possibly we all feel like failures in this area, at least to some degree. Those who do not I tend to ...

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A Fear of Cold and Dark

A Fear of Cold and Dark

It may well be behind us as this sees print, but I will comment again on the fascination this part of the country has with the macabre at this time of year. Between Halloween — which ...

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Friday Night Frights Part II

Friday Night Frights Part II

My friend Christian Cullen was telling me a story of how he was robbed in his apartment at dead-blank, carotid-artery range by two inept assailants with a .45. They mistook Cullen for a major marijuana dealer ...

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Hog-Tied with Christmas Lights

Hog-Tied with Christmas Lights

Here is a tale told to me on a Friday night, one that may sound like so much ramadoola (an old hepcat word I miss) ... More Comments (5)

Fire Lane

Fire Lane

Do this on a Friday or Saturday night — almost any night, really. Impress your date, your friends, kids, mom or dad, freak out your ... More Comments (2)

Page to the Stage

Page to the Stage

Gregory Page is back from Australia, where he toured on his own, then hooked up with Steve Poltz to re-form the Rugburns Down Under. Page ... More Comments (2)

Brizz vs. Ninjas

Brizz vs. Ninjas

Another hot — really freaking hot — August weekend. A Sunday morning, actually, and I’m greeting the (in theory) post-church crowd in and around Horton ... More Comments (2)

A Threat from the East

A Threat from the East

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and ... More Comments (5)

Everything's Happening, But Nothing's Going On

Everything's Happening, But Nothing's Going On

It could be someone’s living room in 1969, say, just outside of An Hoa: open air — no bullet holes or mortar scars — a ... More Comments (5)

A Con Love Story

A Con Love Story

Marlon Castle, 22, got in line for the entrance to the San Diego Convention Center after having stood in line for 20 minutes at the ... More Comments (9)

John's Fair Maiden

John's Fair Maiden

It’s over, you know that. But it’s not. It’s never over. Year after year it comes back; and every goober, his brother, and his family ... More Post a comment

You Must Keep Reading

You Must Keep Reading

Haven’t done this for a while. Seems indicated: recommendations for summer beach reading. In the past few months I have happened upon three extraordinarily excellent ... More Comments (14)

We Hijacked a Theater

We Hijacked a Theater

Junior Wells and John Belushi must have been grinning up from wherever they are now — mumbling and slurring with cocaine-and-Tanqueray-addled approval at “Doc” Holliday’s ... More Comments (2)

How's It Goin', Everybody?

How's It Goin', Everybody?

June has had damp cool about it. The sky, for most of the month, scallop and oyster clouds. Congealing bruises showed at intervals beneath the ... More Comments (3)

Hula Hoop Revolution II

Hula Hoop Revolution II

Speaking with a few young dudes and a few chicks up here in North County, I asked, “What’s up with your weekend?” this past last ... More Comments (2)

Escondido by Night

Escondido by Night

I am staying in Escondido. I am unfamiliar with this town (which is called a city) and so I set out to explore on a ... More Comments (23)

Port-O-Protector

Port-O-Protector

How to explain what I was doing in Escondido as parking-lot cop on a Friday night in May for “Cruisin’ Grand: Pre-’74 American Hot Rods, ... More Comments (5)

Diversion from the Humdrum

Diversion from the Humdrum

It seems as if the same number of people now spend their Friday nights watching YouTube (and other nights, and sometimes 24/7 — the meth ... More Comments (6)

Thoughts at 4:13 a.m.

Thoughts at 4:13 a.m.

“Remorse, emptiness, relief, disbelief, sadness, feeling older, morally diminished.” These are feelings expressed to me in an email from a friend and fellow writer about ... More Comments (3)

Moral Failure?

Moral Failure?

Not all Fridays — let’s face it — are fun, games, leisure, and license. Some suck. Not unlike a very recent one, a several-day visit ... More Comments (4)

Peruvian Currency

Peruvian Currency

Friday again. Payday again. You’ve been down to Ramen noodle soup since Wednesday. You’re in North County, but you are far from retiring, much less ... More Comments (5)

Crash

Crash

Fridays are paydays for many working people, and it reinforces in some that sense of license implicit on the eve of the weekend. One example ... More Post a comment

Cute Little Thing

Cute Little Thing

I am writing this the day before that God-forsaken Hallmark idiocy, Valentine’s Day, and it is Friday the 13th. This seems to spell doomed love. ... More Comments (2)

People-Watching

People-Watching

In these harsh, Bush-shadowed times as the sun sets on the empire of the two Georges from Texas, it is not surprising that our Friday ... More Comments (5)

The Road to Perdition

The Road to Perdition

One recent Friday your columnist started out from San Marcos after five days with his disturbed son — maybe ten hours’ sleep, total. The whole ... More Comments (3)

Elephant and Castle

Elephant and Castle

On a recent Friday night I was staying at the downtown YMCA. Don’t ask. The irony in its being referred to as the “Y” for ... More Comment (1)

Parking Lot Thrashers

Parking Lot Thrashers

Sometimes, on a Friday night, if you’re a kid and you live in the wilds of San Marcos, all you have are your friends, your ... More Post a comment

Spin Dry

Spin Dry

On a recent Friday I was at Interfaith Community Services in Escondido, where I encountered some beatific (I think that’s the word) people, a diabetic ... More Comment (1)

Doubt and Indecision

Doubt and Indecision

In the past minute or three I’ve been trying to determine what it is that so distinguishes one month from another. What is it that ... More Comments (2)

Supposedly Endless Summer

Supposedly Endless Summer

Here is a post-holiday column possibly welcome only to readers who spend inordinate amounts of time taking the rectal temperature of cats. It is about ... More Comment (1)

The Time Machine

The Time Machine

It was a Sunday morning, the last in November and just after Thanksgiving. The Time Machine, the 1960 George Pal version, came on one of ... More Comments (2)

Christmas on the Loop

Christmas on the Loop

Christmas is getting harder to dodge as a topic, and I may have outwritten that one. I think I have columns running right past that ... More Post a comment

A Tone of Entitlement

A Tone of Entitlement

We have all by now — or most of us anyway — found ourselves familiar with the phrase “random acts of kindness.” I first saw ... More Post a comment

Just For Men

Just For Men

I will (the mountain or Allah willing) have turned 58 years old by the time this appears, assuming it does at all. Anything I might ... More Comments (2)

I Smoked the Weight of My Own Soul

I Smoked the Weight of My Own Soul

Maitland is standing, fourth from the teller, on Friday afternoon at an undisclosed Hillcrest bank. He is holding a paycheck for $1050 and a deposit ... More Post a comment

I Love

I Love

Give us, Lord, a bit o’ sun,A bit o’ work and a bit o’ fun:Give us all in the struggle and SputterOur daily bread and ... More Post a comment

The Gates of Mercy

The Gates of Mercy

Visit the sick, it is said in scripture, somewhere. I try to do that when indicated, possibly because it is pretty much always the last ... More Comment (1)

Poor Dad

Poor Dad

It would have been two weekends ago, All Souls (morphed along our border into Day of the Dead), a date I have had fun with ... More Comments (4)

Brizz's Body Count

Brizz's Body Count

Shall I give Halloween a rest? I don’t much think so. Why me? In fact, I notice it growing on me day by day, and ... More Post a comment

Halloween Dream

Halloween Dream

Fall is the most fun season to write in and about. I have exhausted the famous Hemingway quote to F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of ... More Comments (2)

The Dark Side

The Dark Side

Now is the onset of a delicious annual malady that might be called the Halloween syndrome, particular to Southern California. Why Halloween seems to be ... More Comment (1)

Buck Up, for Cripe's Sake

Buck Up, for Cripe's Sake

I am, I guess you could say, a bit of a cutup. It’s true. I’m known for my wry sense of humor in certain circles, ... More Comments (3)

This Is The End

This Is The End

As always, it is a little odd writing this column at something of a remove, a matter of a week or two, sometimes as much ... More Comments (2)

The Angry Malcontent: A Musical

The Angry Malcontent: A Musical

Only three months until Christmas! It’s enough to throw me into a panic now, weeks earlier in September. This gives rise to my thoughts this ... More Comment (1)

Dad, Do You Have to Smoke?

Dad, Do You Have to Smoke?

Visitation weekends are an anxiety experience for Baldwin, punctuated by sheer bliss. Baldwin is in his 50s and lives in Mission Hills. His little boy ... More Post a comment

I'm Watching Too Much TV

I'm Watching Too Much TV

Over halfway through September. I can’t wait. I’m still stuck here in these dog days, maybe all of us are. My sentences are too long. ... More Comments (2)

Note to Trailer Park Patriots

Note to Trailer Park Patriots

Sitting down to write this column, I checked the exact date this would appear and was immediately transported to that morning of 9/11/01. It is ... More Comments (13)

My Mother and the Balloon Animals

My Mother and the Balloon Animals

Many people will tell you, when the subject comes up, that one’s dreams are uninteresting to others. I do not find that to be the ... More Comments (4)

Summer in Chicago

Summer in Chicago

The end of summer is at hand, and I may well miss it. Jumping the gun a bit, but not by much, I find myself ... More Comment (1)

America's Finest Fridays

America's Finest Fridays

We San Diegans are a self-congratulatory lot; the weather itself is, to us, a kind seal of approval on our meritocracy. After 28 years here, ... More Comment (1)

I am, in fact, very much related to Conan the Barbarian and, by extension, the governor of California

I am, in fact, very much related to Conan the Barbarian and, by extension, the governor of California

It will have been some weeks after the San Diego comic convention by the time this sees print, but it hasn't happened yet as I ... More Comment (1)

SciFi Summer

SciFi Summer

Hot enough for you? I’m counting on the heat still being a predominant if subliminal influence this first week of August. As I often do ... More Comments (2)

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