Stuff stockings, stalk Santa.

I first saw Double Indemnity (USA, 1944, Paramount) in a college film class. I had grown up with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray as the perfect TV mom and dad on The Big Valley and …

Sheriff’s deputies have not solved the mystery of who killed Larry Robinson, the guitarist remembered for his decades of local shows and legions of guitar students. He was murdered in a Temecula music store two …

For a cocktail on Humphreys’ newly revised drink menu, bar manager Austin McAdams uses as a base liquor a perfect 15-year-old scotch. But before serious scotch drinkers storm Humphreys with broadsword and targe, McAdams asks …

Seattle’s Tacocat — singer Emily Nokes, guitarist Eric Randall, bassist Bree McKenna, and drummer Lelah Maupin — brings their surf/pop/throb/costume riot to the Casbah on December 7. Ms. Nokes sat for some email questions. Which …

“It’s the border,” Rodrigo says. “So crazy. It stops good things happening all the time.”

Forty years of Robert Cray: all the while, some among us are waiting for that guitar of his to quicken into flames, rather than smolder like last night’s fire. Not a very heroic guitar hero, …

The Shawshank Redemption (USA, 1994, Columbia) is debatably my favorite movie. It shouldn’t be because it deals with a lot of serious issues, and I’m only 15. Tim Robbins is so smart, and Morgan Freeman’s …

Mission Beach coffee roaster Swell Café has experienced massive growth in the past four months. For one thing, it might no longer be right to call it a Mission Beach roaster. While its original café …

Natives populated Otay Valley 9000 years ago.

Big-wave surfing was born in the minds of Southern California surfers in 1953, when a photo of George Downing and Buzzy Trent riding a 15-foot wave at Makaha, Hawaii, appeared in Life magazine and National …

Boys like to shoot guns. I like children to remain uninjured. Airsoft, which involves shooting one’s friends but also involves plastic BBs and full facemasks, sounded like it might be a way to meet halfway. …

Rick Alverson’s Entertainment not only elicits the same kind of uncomfortable laughter fans of comedian Gregg Turkington’s alter ego Neil Hamburger have long grown accustomed to, it does so in understated and sublimely subversive cinematic …

A staffer to congressman Juan Vargas has accepted a free overnight in Manhattan courtesy of a Washington think tank. This time it’s Scott Hinkle, legislative director for the border Democrat, who took off for New …

Nick Lowe is of two minds about Christmas. “In Britain, Christmas is different,” he tells me by phone from his home in England. “In the states, you embrace the corniness. Here [in Britain], it’s more …

Cats are a problem. We gotta enclose the areas where we’re growing.” Diane Moss breaks it down for a visitor. “You gotta be careful with your compost. It’s composting,” she explains, “and that brings the …

I asked the most knowledgeable surfer I know about the name Grimace Rock. Skip Frye told me it comes from a picture taken when a surfer realized he was about to hit the rock. Grimace …

“I have a confession to make. The four of us tried the escape room downtown.” I didn’t understand why it was a big deal until she finished her confession: “We didn’t make it out.”

No nation can be strong except in the strength of God or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a …

Disney's mustache doesn't cut it.

The movie based on Marco Collins focuses on his role in the grunge explosion in the 1990s, his support of Washington state’s gay marriage referendum, and his sidelining addictions. “I don’t feel completely comfortable about …

ReWild Mission Bay gave a presentation in the Midway District on November 18 at the Loma Riviera community room under the auspices of the Friends of Famosa Slough organization. Rebecca Schwartz, the conservation program manager …

Why San Diego Opera's second act won't end in tragedy.

The Art of Denial If you ignore a thorn in your hand it will go away but first the hand gets infected, swells, turns coal-purple, and sometimes parts must be amputated to save what remains. …

State senator Marty Block, locked in a rough-and-tumble primary race with fellow Democrat Toni Atkins, termed out of her Assembly seat, is going all out to attract donors to his financially challenged campaign war chest. …

Childish Mayor I’m calling in response to Mayor Falcouner’s letter, “El Niño, El Schmiño.” I wonder if he wants some French fries to go with that waah burger. We’ve got way more pressing issues than …

I saw The Color of Pomegranates (by Sergei Parajanov, a Soviet filmmaker of Armenian heritage, 1969, International Film Exchange) during the Soviet Arts Festival in the company of a visiting cadre of Georgian culturistes who …