While it’s easy to imagine Mamie Eisenhower baking a pumpkin chiffon pie, it’s hard to picture Nancy Reagan (or anyone else) slicing the ends off lemons, scooping out the contents, and filling the rinds with …

Politeness is the art of choosing among one’s real thoughts. — Abel Stevens I zoomed in on a glittery globe that contained translucent swirls of pink, purple, and green. The sky was a clear, rich …

Bonnie Whiting Smith begins the Palomar College afternoon “concert hour” with a three-minute John Cage piece entitled “A Flower.” The piece consists of melodic singing and the sound of Smith’s knuckles and fingertips tapping on …

Heymatt: I’ve been watching my crazy cat and was wondering if animals have mental illnesses like people do. We get schizophrenia and paranoia and other things. Are animals vulnerable to them too? Sometimes I wonder …

Rocket from the Tombs was a mid-’70s Cleveland band that never got a lot of recognition. But Rocket spawned bands that did gain notoriety — such as Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys — and …

Skip’s the Man Skip Frye is an icon in the surf world and a world-class boardmaker (“I Finally Got Skip Frye to Make Me a Surfboard,” Cover Story, October 14). He keeps his own schedule …

On October 17, 2000, Regina Marie Bos, a 40-year-old mother of three, performed during an open mic at Duggan’s Pub, a neighborhood saloon near her home in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her Saturn was parked across the …

What Makes the Grizzlies Dance June and finally snow peas sweeten the Mission Valley. High behind numinous meadows ladybugs swarm, like huge lacquered fans from Hong Kong, like serrated skirts of blown poppies, whole mountains …

Here’s a brief catch-up for last week’s truants: Patric Douglas, 42, is CEO of Shark Diver, a shark-cage-diving enterprise that will hook you up with a 20-hour boat ride to Isla Guadalupe, one of the …

Countdown to Halloween right here on TGIF: the Gutenberg cyber all-hits all-the-time blogorama and alternative weekly fishwrap and freaky friday funfest!!! your DJ? Whaddami sayin? Your KJ! That’s keyboard jockey — Johnny Lira! Comin’ at …

A reader recently asked whose food-writing I enjoy. Truth is, after so many hours of scribbling food prose, I’m totally full — when I hit the pillow I want mainly mysteries — Andy Dalziel, Inspector …

A few months ago I went to see the XX, a young band that won just about every award available in the British music industry this year. Everything about that band is minimal and sparse, …

I am in full Earth-mama mode these days, using a natural remedy whenever possible. So when Patrick started moaning from the bathroom about inheriting his father’s bad digestion, I started looking into aloe. Yes, aloe. …

Trepidation is not the ideal frame of mind in which to approach a film, even around Halloween. But after I Stand Alone and Irreversible, the French enfant terrible Gaspar Noé merits nothing less and nothing …

Of course, he didn’t stay here. Most likely, you wouldn’t either, not if you were young and ambitious and living a two-hour drive up the freeway to get to Hollywood. Not if you’d grown up …

Thirty-Five Years AgoThese days, Tom Waits is sleazier than ever. He looked like he’d wandered in off Broadway that night, straight from the doorway he’d been sleeping in. It isn’t often that you see a …

619 hip-hop kingpin Mitchy Slick did not win “Best of” in his category at last month’s San Diego Music Awards, despite a spirited write-in campaign launched by SDRaps.com. But at least considerable debate was generated …

“Our first guitarist, Eric Rad, died onstage mid-song at the Mabuhay Gardens from an apparent heart attack,” says saxophonist Bob Bartosik of his long-defunct punk band Housecoat Project. The group’s unreleased 1988 album Girlfiend comes …

“It’s kind of disheartening to put so much work into a CD, get it up on iTunes and Amazon, and then have someone just make it available for anyone to steal,” says singer-guitarist Scott Samuels …

Thursday 21Chicago instrumental trio Russian Circles rolls into town behind its third and finest effort, Geneva. This proggy iceberg of a record drifts and splinters in the vein of Mogwai, replacing the Glaswegians’ ice-ax percussion …

“The government of God is the only government which will hold society, against depravity within and temptation without; and this it must do by the force of its own law written upon the heart. This …

The Messenger of God said: “While a man was walking on the road, his thirst grew strong and he found a well and descended into it and drank and was leaving, when he saw a …

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau says doing good can have selfish motives. Goodness, he writes, “must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he …

You can try to love this part of town, but it’s hard. I’m at First and Ash. Land of monthly-stay hotels and parking lots. Just a stone’s throw from City Hall and its concourse, the …

Membership: 1000 families Pastor: Monsignor Lawrence Purcell Age: 70 Born: Indio, California Formation: University of San Diego–St. Francis Seminary, San Diego; Pontifical North American College, Rome, Italy Years Ordained: 45 San Diego Reader: How long …

On the evening of October 18, things got “nutty” at University City High School, where the first of eight “Budget Town Hall” meetings was held. The meeting was organized by mayor Jerry Sanders’s office to …

Who has been the biggest recipient of Senate campaign cash from Sempra Energy’s political action committee this year? According to figures compiled by the OpenSecrets.org, as of October 3, it’s none other than majority leader …

"We just want the uncertainty to end,” says Donna Fenter. “We’ve been living in limbo for years. It’s torture. It feels like a damn internment camp. We can’t make any plans. We can’t do anything …

Alma Vasic, owner of F Street Corporation, which runs the adult bookstore chain and website by the same name, contributed $2500 to Democratic assembly candidate Toni Atkins on October 11, according to state filings. The …

The National Science Foundation is planning what it calls a “marine seismic research” project during which “various research vessels operated by U.S. academic institutions or government agencies” will use a variety of underwater devices such …