PhotosI Have Purchased a Grey Cardigan Sweater My wife and I fell in love over wine, bourbon, and cognac. We attended a college with a dry campus, and many evenings were spent sitting in my ...
November 29, 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
Reader editor Matt Lickona welcomes first child
Nathanael West, Jim Thompson, Max Miller
Janet, My Mother, and Me “We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth ...
November 20, 2021
Kosher cooking in San Diego State area, Navy couple in Otay Ranch
The Door’s Open. Go In! Some beards, like Alan’s, are magnificent in their autonomy — they grow as they wish, untrimmed and untamed. “You shall not round the corners of your beard.” These beards grow ...
November 13, 2021
San Diego Reader’s Best Of issue 2021
Best Friend to Joshua Trees Is there anything to be done about the plight of the Joshua tree? While state and federal agencies dither over whether the imperiled desert dweller deserves endangered species protections, one ...
October 20, 2021
Army-Navy Academy, wine experts behind doors, castrated man's life
An unhampered look at Carlsbad's Army Navy Academy "Unlike the upper-school cadets, these boys will break down and cry, a lot. They don’t want other boys to see ’em cry, ’cause it’s not macho. But ...
August 29, 2021
Alexander Theroux's father and brothers, Amy Chu's mother, Matt Lickona's grandparents
Decent Life Led by the Ordinary Man I will never forget the time a monsignor from our church, favoring our simple household with a visit, stopped by and in the course of dinner, sat back, ...
August 21, 2021
Midway upon the journey
I 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
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