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.
Penasquitos teens in big trouble, Stephen Facciola, Olive Street, Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, San Diego Chinatown, Padres and the Mob
Rancho Peñasquitos boys, charged with hate crime The teenagers shot at Roman from the Subaru with the BB gun during three or four passes. They took turns shooting at him as they drove by, but ...
The setting has a way of obscuring any sort of resolution
San Diego Repertory Theatre’s production of Stephen Karam’s The Humans does a good deal of stage-setting before you even take your seat. A display by the box office provides “a behind-the scenes glimpse of the ...
“People thought I could predict the future.”
Brad Taylor does his homework. Twenty-one years in the Army (including eight with Delta Force) is an education in itself, but it’s research that has helped make his Pike Logan novels bestsellers. “Newsfeeds,” he told ...
Locating the sacred within this world
On January 10, University of San Diego law professor Steven Smith shared a lunchtime lecture stage at the American Enterprise Institute with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and novelist/reporter Tara Isabella Burton. The topic ...
Madame has been a mistress; that is all, and that is enough.
Toward the end of the Nervous Theatre’s production of Jean Genet’s The Maids — which, by the time you read this, will have departed for Seattle after a one-weekend run at the Tenth Avenue Arts ...
New year, (mostly) new critic
Permit me a wry grimace as I imagine theatrical legend Alec Guinness’ reaction upon learning that a theater critic’s first memory of him — of any sort of performance, really — came from Star Wars. ...
Book lovers, architecture, Oakley Hall, Francis Parker, Five Points, South Mission Hills, Jerry Schad's view, the ultimate Halloween house
Book-lovers chew the fat at the Mission Hills Library His watch tells him 6:45. This Mission Hills branch stays open tonight — it’s Monday. He slaps the book closed, reshelves it, glances to his left. ...
The Vietnamese refugee, the serious Jew, the homeless, the disaffected, Charles Dickens, other Christmas books, the poor in Tijuana, Horton Plaza shoppers, Christmas letter writing
Sister Santa’s once-a-year smile I fell in love with America for the first time on a sweaty night in a Bangkok refugee center in March 1991. “In America people have meat with every meal,” my ...
Is it art? Or is it a joke?
When Max Robert Daily ran Oslo Sardine Bar inside Logan Heights’ Bread & Salt art center, visitors would ask, “Is this art?” Fair question. Now that he’s setting up in a Seaport Village storefront, the ...
Ken Leighton 2:37 p.m., Jan. 28
Ian Anderson 1:24 p.m., Jan. 28
Delinda Lombardo 8:56 a.m., Jan. 28
Ian Anderson 1:56 p.m., Jan. 27
Matt Potter 12:31 p.m., Jan. 27
Mike Madriaga 10:30 a.m., Jan. 27
Photos