PhotosI noticed a convertible on the way into work today. Pretty good looking… especially for a Buick. Good grief, I’m admiring a Buick. Old, old, old. The kind of person who still says Good grief, ...
April 21, 2021
As an undergraduate at Thomas Aquinas College near Ojai, California, Matthew Lickona co-founded and ran The Hype, a college lit-mag printed on the school's copier and sold at a dollar a copy to pay off speeding tickets acquired while trying to make movie times in Los Angeles. This may or may not have helped him to land a job at the Reader upon graduation in 1995, but the paper did reprint some of his collegiate Easter Island-based cartoons, and later, his Mudflap Girls series. He has been at the paper ever since, in a variety of capacities: feature writer, wine columnist, church reviewer, restaurant critic, television columnist, editor at large, and now, film critic. Plus some other stuff under various pseudonyms.
He is the author of a couple of books (Swimming with Scapulars, Surfing with Mel), and his essays have appeared in places like The Awl, FirstThings.com, and Doublethink. In his spare time, he likes to write movie pitches and country songs.
Articles by Matthew Lickona
Midway upon the journey
Is American cuisine inherently racist?
I remember the first time I felt nervous about what I was eating. “Nervous,” as opposed to “apprehensive,” which describes how I felt the first time I ate ant eggs, corn smut, and rattlesnake at ...
April 7, 2021
El Indio’s Rube Goldberg-esque tortilla conveyer belt makes good TV
David Page’s initial interest in San Diego’s venerable El Indio Mexican restaurant was maybe not entirely visual, but he grants that “what interested me the most at the time — provided they could meet the ...
April 7, 2021
A night out with a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Both sky and highway are washed in gold from the lowering sun as I sail along the 94 toward downtown, there to attend the Grand Re-opening of Rooftop Cinema at the Grand Hyatt. It’s a ...
March 24, 2021
Something rotten at the Reader?
We get letters! A longtime Reader reader wrote in a couple weeks back to complain that “The Reader is now spinning Republican shit on your [our?] newly [duly?] elected governor Gavin Newsom… the man we ...
March 24, 2021
Night on University Ave., Olive St. above Switzer Canyon, Rob Quigley's vision for Little Italy
University Avenue Nocturne “We try to cruise by the hot spots where there has been trouble. Bars or restaurants, businesses, what have you. For example. Shooters bar on 30th Street in North Park has had ...
March 20, 2021
Inside gay killer Andrew Cunanan: Bishop's School, older friends, Gay Pride parade
Schoolboy charm A 1988 graduate thought she recalled Cunanan going up to one of her male friends, grabbing one of his pectorals, and saying something like, "Oooh, very nice. You've been working out. Give me ...
March 13, 2021
Ostrich meat from Bear Valley, melancholy journey of Ramona steer, duck hunting near Chocolate Mountains
Long Neck, Low Fat David Stepp waits for an ostrich craze A 220-pound bird has got about 85 pounds of meat. And the meat is red meat. Two of the muscle groups taste exactly like ...
March 1, 2021
The soundtrack of our lives
A moment: a cloudless Saturday afternoon, Balboa Park, just in front of Cabrillo Bridge, maybe 200 people — couples, families, friends — lounging on the grass in the spreading shade of the Moreton Bay fig ...
February 24, 2021