You have seen them, these Porsches — on highways, on city streets, in parking lots — and you have coveted. You have gazed at them as they passed you, stopped and walked around them when …

A liberal arts education seems out of place in a culture that defines people largely by what they do A liberal arts education doesn't prepare you to do anything in particular, at least, not anything …

The Tony and the Pulitzer aren’t hard to fathom: there is real bravery in dismantling the myth of civil rights icon Solomon “Sonny” Jasper: a man whose image adorns classroom walls; a man who marched …

"Moore wants more," I would joke to myself.Busy Fingers Are Happy Fingers — Joe DeeganI couldn't find an angle to get my story started, I told her. "Forget all about angles," she then said with …

The Woes Of A Woman In Love — Barbarella....We've reached the end of the line. I hope your dreams turn out fine.Notes Give Pathos to Clouds — Laura McNeal.... I played Beethoven's sonatas until the …

December 2, 2007: During his radio broadcast of the San Diego Chargers’ victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, announcer Hank Bauer gave a shout-out to Charger fan Alfred Silva, who was battling cancer. (Silva’s brother-in-law …

My family lived in Boston from 1978 to 1980, which happens to be the same two years that the great culinary ambassador Julia Child made her second series at WGBH, Julia Child & Company. (The …

At the end of the Old Globe’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s masterful, quietly scathing Hedda Gabler, someone asks about the title character, “What kind of person does something like that?” It’s a fine question for …

Dear San Diego,As we near the end of our campaign to save the Reader and find our way back into print, here's a look back at the making of one of my favorite cover stories …

Dear San Diego,First, I want to think everyone who has donated so far to our fundraising campaign. Your generosity has been moving, almost as much as the messages of support that have accompanied your donations. For …

November 6, 2025 Dear San Diego, Day two of our Save the Reader fundraiser has me thinking about why the Reader is a good thing for San Diego to have. When the Reader shut down its print edition in …

Dear San Diego,I’m asking you to help me raise $120,000 in just 10 days to help secure the Reader’s future for the next few years. (Heck, maybe for the next 50.) It’s a big ask, …

For as long as I’ve been aware of politics, I’ve been aware of the progressive warning that this or that Republican politician “wants to take America back to the ‘50s” — that awful era of …

“Boys marry their mothers,” the old saying goes. But then, it’s an old saying, and so does not account for new developments. Like, what if the boy Ty started life as the girl Claire? Would …

Cygnet’s choice for its first show in the brand-new Clayes theater in Liberty Station is a canny one. Change is scary, in part because it means waltzing with the unfamiliar. So when you’re leaving behind …

“Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it …

The Heart — Book and some lyrics by Kait Kerrigan, music and most of the lyrics by Anne Eisendrath and Ian Eisendrath, based on Maylis de Kerangal’s Réparer les Vivants, which translates to “Mend the …

God’s Country RememberedMy wife and I are driving up El Cajon Boulevard. It hasn’t changed much, not really. Businesses come and go (there wasn’t anything remotely like the Hung Vuong Pho restaurant back then), but …

You know the old saying: history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, and the third time as a musical. I, Claudius gave us the scheming murderess Livia, who built …

It feels funny calling Noises Off! a sturdy, reliable comedy — perhaps even misleading. “Sturdy” and “reliable” are words not usually associated with “meta,” “madcap,” and “naughty.” And yet. Theater lovers have been grooving to theater …

The Reader has started this series of its best stories from the past 52 years — 2600 cover stories and some remarkable interior features — to help make up for the loss of its physical …

The Reader has started this series of its best stories from the past 52 years — 2600 cover stories and some remarkable interior features — to help make up for the loss of its physical …

A pretty blonde actress sat behind me at a recent performance of Backyard Renaissance’s production of Tennessee Williams’ monster of a melodrama, chatting on her phone during the first intermission. “I plead the fifth,” she …

My chief impression after the seeing the Globe’s current production of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well was how much the play reminded me of other plays. There’s a king who sets the drama in …

You can learn a lot about Gloria Calderón Kellett’s One of the Good Ones from this publicity photo taken by Rich Soublet II. The fellow at the door looks like a clueless gringo who thought …

C.S. Lewis, among others, referred to eternity as an ever-present now, at one point writing, “the present is the point at which time touches eternity.” Noah Haidle, in his plus ca meme chose play Birthday …

The note from dramaturg Jesse Marchese lets us know that Hansol Jung’s exercise in “lesbian camp” is “stupid smart, a dramaturgical mashup of theatrical sources from throughout history.” Those sources include Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, …

[Editor's note: Regrettably, the reviews for both this and Diversionary Theater's Merry Me were delayed, and both shows will close this weekend. But there's still time to see them!]When I attended North Coast Rep’s Birthday …

Near the end of Jocelyn Bioh’s mostly winsome, mostly winning play set in a Harlem hair braiding salon, a woman who came in near the beginning and ordered microbraids says to the staff, “Thank you …

The tone is set before the stage is — or rather, as the stage is: a waitress in a Main Street diner, getting the place ready to open for the morning crowd. Making coffee, drying …

Deepak Kumar’s story of a Midwestern strip-mall restaurant in crisis is…wait, wait, is it the strip-mall restaurant that’s in crisis, or is it the family that owns the strip-mall restaurant? What’s that you say? Why …

Full disclosure: your humble correspondent has been known to bang out an occasional sonnet for the guest of honor at birthday parties. As party tricks go, it isn’t bad: the subject gets flattered and ribbed …

On the one hand, the fact that Steven Dietz’s second riff on Agatha Christie — the first was 2023’s — has been extended for a second time, such that it now runs through May 25, …

When the Reader ceased its print edition, I expected disappointment. Heck, I was disappointed myself. What I did not expect was the particular brand of disappointment related to the loss of our crossword puzzle. But …

I was fortunate enough to attend the San Diego Theater Critics Circle’s Craig Noel Awards as a guest earlier this year, so I can attest that they do not give an award for Best Performance …

San Diego really is a great theater town. If it weren’t, a community theater like Coronado Playhouse would be a little bit nuts to put on a show like Kander and Ebb's Curtains, the title …

Full disclosure: your humble correspondent has never seen Hamilton. So I can’t make any sort of informed judgment about whether or not La Jolla Playhouse has succeeded in Hamiltoning Lincoln with its new musical. (And …

Playwright Heidi Schreck’s interrogation of our nation’s founding document is just about as clever and engaging a way as I can imagine to get theater audiences to reconsider its worth — or even just consider …

Dooley Stevens is a big man with a violent past, fresh out of the joint on a cycle that’s running on empty as he searches in the desert for something that he’s lost — or …

On February 5th, I posted on X, "After 30 years of working at the San Diego Reader, I went and bought the thing. Looking forward to seeing what's possible."Welp.Video:San Diego Reader ends print edition after …

Lamb’s Players Theater scored a hit in 2018 with its production of Once, and has brought nearly the entire cast back for another run at it, lo these seven years later. Let’s take a gander …

The words at the top of the poster for Appropriate at The Old Globe caught my eye as I headed to Will Call: “Ferociously Theatrical.” Theatrical? Don’t most plays take place in a theater, ferociously or otherwise? But by …

At the turn of the millennium, the American Film Institute named Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot the number one funny movie in American cinema. One of the criteria for inclusion on the list …

The news of late has been full of stories about the price of eggs; some pundits have gone so far as to suggest that it tipped the recent Presidential election. It’s not just a lot …

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” — Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2When a man reaches a certain age, he’s liable to have favorite Simpsons jokes. One of mine comes …

“Legalize it, don’t criticize it,” went the old Peter Tosh song. It sounds so simple — until you remember that “legalize” means bringing in the law, and the law is never simple. For the law, …

On September 19, piano rocker Ben Folds brought his Paper Airplane Request Tour to the Epstein Family Amphitheater on the UCSD campus. The hook: write your request, sail it onto the stage, and if Folds …

Thanks for noticingLost Abbey finds a new wayAnderson’s apogeesAntique modernHeavenly hall undergroundMounting MadraParent-friendly playgroundThe van man canPeaceful, eaze-y feeling

This summer, a friend gave me a copy of Daniel Gross and Tyler Cowan’s book Talent (maybe he thought it would help). He also suggested I listen to Cowan’s podcast, Conversations with Tyler. I started …

The lights of a thousand electronic slot machines flash and glow in the cavernous entrance hall of Harrah’s Resort Southern California in Valley Center. The games have names like Buffalo Gold, Treasure Ball, and Dragon …