For One Week Only

Thirty Years Ago
I worked at a liquor store. We always had drifters and drunks that would hang out there. Well, I got to know one drunk named George. I dialed the pay phone when George was standing by it and he answered. I said, “Hello, George, this is God calling. Are you going to be good? Are you going to lay off the sauce?” When I described what he was wearing, he believed me. He came into the liquor store afterward, bought two quarts of Muscatel, and said, “I just talked to God.”
— OFF THE CUFF: “HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE?” Lin Jakary, March 27, 1980

Twenty-Five Years Ago
It is true, of course that [Mia] Farrow has been coached to imitate Woody Allen’s speech patterns (or what comes to the same thing, Diane Keaton’s) to a creepy degree. But at the same time she has not been given that greedy monopoly on the wise wit and the witty wisdom that would mark her, as it always did Allen, a Superior Being. Anything but.
— MOVIE REVIEW: “FOR ONE WEEK ONLY,” Duncan Shepherd, March 28, 1985

Twenty Years Ago
I must confess that although I was married, had two sons, acquired advanced degrees, and enjoyed an exciting career, I often defined myself in terms of my breasts. Whenever I saw Marilyn Monroe on the screen, I thought, Well, she’s got nothing on me.

Three and a half years ago I came home from a swim, entered my bathroom sideways, and saw in the mirror that my skin sagged. I lifted my right arm. Immediately I saw the outline of a lump no larger than a pea.
— “SING AS YOU GO UNDER,” Eleanor Widmer, March 29, 1990

Fifteen Years Ago
It’s been 11 years since the Padres were number 1 at anything, but new owner John Moores tops the list of professional baseball team owners who contributed money to federal candidates or a national party committee. Quips James A. Barnes in the National Journal, “Club owners, who have pleaded collective near-poverty in their current labor dispute with the players, were much more willing to reach into their pockets for gifts to the pols.”
— CITY LIGHTS: “STRIKE THREE,” Thomas K. Arnold, March 23, 1995

Ten Years Ago
Last year for my birthday, I got a babysitter and took myself to the Belissima Day Spa in Escondido for an hour massage. This year, I got a babysitter and took myself to my obstetrician’s office for my 12-week visit. I am pregnant with my fifth child.

Before Christmas, we had a family portrait taken. As I stared at the photo, I saw, in the way the children were arranged, a space on the floor between Johnny and Angela. Room for another baby came into my head like someone whispering over my shoulder.
— KID STUFF: “JACK GOT A MUCH BIGGER PRESENT THAN HE THOUGHT,” Anne Albright, March 23, 2000

Five Years Ago
When U2 plays the Sports Arena on March 28, the venue will have a new name: the iPayOne Center — a discount real estate brokerage in Carlsbad that has agreed to pay $2.5 million for a five-year name-rights license, with the City getting 10 percent. After that, if iPayOne still wants its name there, it will cost $500,000 a year, again with 10 percent going to the City.

Councilmembers Jim Madaffer and Tony Young voted against the name change. Michael Zucchet, a councilman who voted for the name change, said, “Tony Young actually changed his vote. He said it was a mistake; he pushed the wrong button. He filed his change of vote with the city clerk the next day. Jim Madaffer voted for the deal in 2002 but against it in 2005, which doesn’t make any sense, and I let him know it.”
— BLURT, Michael Hemmingson, March 24, 2005