Adam Parfrey

Parfrey Wrote the HELL.A. column and occasional feature stories in the 1990s for the Reader.

Articles by Adam Parfrey

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Holy Week in San Diego: our mish-mash of Christianity

Medical look at Christ's crucifixion, City Rescue Mission, Carmelite nuns, Dorman Owens, Mother Teresa, Antiochian Orthodox

Medical explanation of Christ's crucifixion and other Easter stories The severe scourging, with its intense pain and appreciable blood loss, most probably left Jesus in a preshock state. Moreover, hematidrosis had rendered his skin particularly ...

God, Christ, Satan, or Con?

San Diegans Worship a Miracle Man

It is like baking a cake. I stir, I knead, I pound, I twist, I bake you. I drawn you in tears I scorch you in sobs. I make you a sweet and crisp, an ...

Lt. Col. James “Bo” Gritz at Lakeside's Harvest Fellowship

A Revolution of Small Guns

On this chill evening, a mere fortnight before a Trilateralist named Clinton got the nod, American-built cars of substantial steel pull up in front of Lakeside’s Harvest Christian Fellowship. The bumper stickers say it all: ...

Woman Carries Elvis Presley's Test Tube Tot

“God Made Me Do It,” She Says SPANISH EYES by Debra Wimer (From the Ginger Aldett Fan Club Newsletter; abridged by Adam Parfrey) The first thing I remember is crying over how tragically short Elvis ...

Budd Boetticher ends up near Ramona

Bare knuckles

There are the little men. Then there is Budd Boetticher. I don't mean his size — he's a compact man with an easy smile and vaguely Mongol eyes that hint at a barbaric zest for ...

Walter Keane: the saucer eye orphans have lost their father

A painful paternity suit

Keane kids were the true pop art, much more a mass phenomenon than Warhol’s Brillo boxes or Lichtenstein’s exploded comics.

Russian brides — more than you imagined

Natasha is my name. I like cook and sew. I marry you, yes?

It's a peculiar setup. Strangers write strangers, attempting a mating dance despite cultural barriers so fierce that very little is communicated beyond the desire to communicate. Take Ed Burden (name pseudonymous by request), airline pilot, ...

Reader writers pour out Christmas stories of divorce, jail, forced intimacy

Tales of loss and desolation

A criticism implied in every gift I don’t remember Christmas. None in particular. There’s this Christmas thread, an irregular stream of pictograms (orange snowriding disk = delight) linked by an underlying Christmas smell (new plastic, ...

On the noir side of town: Chee-Chee Club, county courthouse, Little Vietnam, Pt. Loma Bayside Trail

San Diego, my lovely

Stretching east of 30th Street, the Mid-City mesa has for decades been a Gasoline Alley wasteland of car washes, card parlors, dinky pink bungalows: low-rent neighborhoods whose obscurity is secured by distance from freeway off-ramps.

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