Ball and Chain. On a Wednesday in early December, convicted murderer Justin Lopez wore an orange jumpsuit to his wedding. Lopez married his girlfriend, Mariah Mierya Cavazos, in a jail lobby in Alice. Though he …

The anthemic, Clash-esque Coronado band the Front was finishing their set, opening for Johnny Thunders at the Spirit (now Brick by Brick) on March 20, 1986. After vigorous punk ’n’ roll originals, some reggae, a …

“We want to bring people and music together for a higher cause than just making money or exposing people to our music,” says Kris Towne, co-owner of Controls for the Sun Studios in Linda Vista. …

“Did you get some practice time in?” Scottie Blinn asks the half circle of students, electric guitars at the ready, seated in the teacher’s lounge at the Sacred Heart Parish School in Coronado. “Yeah,” they …

“I don’t know if this counts as acting,” blues diva Candye Kane says by phone from her Oceanside home. “I’m the narrator and I play myself.” The Toughest Girl Alive, a play based on Kane’s …

At Night We are apart; the city grows quiet between us, She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes, The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty, Five streets divide us, and …

The 1915–16 Panama-California Exposition site in Balboa Park is renowned among San Diegans for its incomparably beautiful Spanish-Moorish buildings, its gardens, and the graceful Cabrillo Bridge. That area is the primary destination of the walk …

Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday. I raise a tiny toast, a demitasse of delight about The King’s Speech. I could also proliferate some prose about excellent talents doomed not to enter the magic circle of …

I’m Skyping with a woman I’ll call Jessie Shaw who lives in Martha’s Vineyard. We were partners a long time ago. Our liaison ended with a clean breakup followed by a five-year cool-off. Since then …

Lisa FranekExhibition and programming directorMACSD/San Diego Latino Film Festival I was recently inspired to revisit Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers. It’s such a visually stunning film, with a nice romantic/wuxia storyline. I never get …

He comes bounding across G Street against the light, stops, looks at me for a moment, then lopes on up Ninth Avenue. He’s a beautiful, big German shepherd, young, free, strutty, and out to cause …

Answered Prayer Rug I saw the cover on the rug that was found in the Dumpster (Cover Story, January 20). Well, that actually happened to me. I was working on a jobsite by University and …

There’s a new baby in the family. Little Jude was born to my niece in December, and his great-aunt Eve is assembling a gift basket for him and his mom. Instead of buying whatever is …

Zillion Happy Volts takes its name from the surreal 1989 art-house film Dr. Caligari. “It’s one of my all-time favorite cult movies,” says singer Davit Buck, who formerly fronted the Homeless Sexuals. “The phrase is …

Thirty-Five Years AgoThat Mr. Shepherd gives four stars to the apocalyptic disaster film Earthquake and only two stars to Swept Away indicates that he might do well to rid himself of paranoia and study Marxism …

Hello, Matt: Every time I go to text somebody, I look at the keyboard and wonder why the letters are so mixed up. If they were in alphabetical order, it would be easier to find …

Membership: 80–100 Pastor: Melito Barrera Age: 47 Born: Olongapo, Phillipines Formation: San Diego State University, San Diego; San Diego Baptist Theological Seminary, San Diego Years Ordained: 11 years SDR: Can you think of a time …

Opticks To what end are comets, and whence is it that planets move all one and the same way in orbs concentric while comets move all manner of ways in orbs very eccentric, and what …

I don’t know what it is, but it’s weird and pissed off. — from the movie The Thing (Kevin’s favorite quotation, according to his Facebook page) One of my Facebook friends has logged off. For …

Looking at the last weekend in this first month of a new year, dawning decade and still infantile millennium, I am confronted with some unavoidable recollections of my first experiences in this city in January …

In the United States, Motörhead is better known for T-shirts than for music, but in their native Britain the band has been a beloved cultural treasure for decades. Yes, “beloved cultural treasure” is a strange …

For 23 years, my life story began at four months, when I landed in my mother’s arms wrapped in a thin blanket and bearing a handwritten letter that read, “Congratulations to you both, the new …

The idea was to throw a 100th birthday party for the most influential blues musician that ever lived: Robert Johnson. For Big Head Todd & the Monsters, the plan grew to include a tribute album …

Change doesn’t come often to the desert community of Nomirage, located 13 miles east of San Diego County and 2 miles southeast of Ocotillo’s quiet town center. But change is what will happen when Brandon …

Undercover DEA agents slipped into the Mariner's Cove apartments on West Point Loma Boulevard on Tuesday, January 25, and arrested an alleged drug dealer. An unmarked silver van with seven DEA agents wearing bulletproof vests …

A rumor began to circulate this week on the Southwestern College campus that Henry Amigable was no longer managing the $389 million construction and reconstruction projects generated from Proposition R. In November 2009, Seville Construction …

Should taxpayer money go to schools and fire protection, or should it be used to subsidize shopping malls, big-box retailers, auto plazas, movie multiplexes, hotels, and pro sports stadiums? This may be California’s biggest battle …

Robert Wyatt, an art-rock category-confounder who sometimes lists toward the traditional, weaves seemingly disparate strands into this set of haunting sob-songs, jazz standards, and originals. Cello, alto sax, and strings throw washes of color behind …