Photos“I’ve seen it around,” says my neighbor Nick about the sign in his front yard, “and every time, I liked it, because it pretty much says what I believe. We’re all just human beings, and ...
November 25, 2020
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
Sign of the times
Garbage thinking with Ben Wheatley
In The Simpsons: Season 7, Episode 3, “Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily,” Homer and Marge lose custody of their children and have to attend a parenting class in order to get them back. At one point, the ...
November 25, 2020
UCSD’s The Koala: no longer endangered
Artist Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph Piss Christ served as my proper introduction to the meaning of free speech. Serrano, a Catholic, intended it to be a comment on the commercialization of Christian icons — the ...
November 4, 2020
San Diego Reader's Best Of issue
Look for the online list of Best Of voting winners soon. We have printed and re-stocked extra copies of this week's print version where the Best Of voting winners are listed. Best place in San ...
October 21, 2020
Joseph Mitchell’s and Joe Gould’s Secret
I started writing for the Reader 25 years ago; Joseph Mitchell is one of the big reasons why I wanted to do so. The summer before my senior year of college, I visited Thidwick’s Books ...
October 14, 2020
What happens when all the world’s a stage?
Just under a year ago, I was given the honor of working as the Reader’s theater critic. For a while, I joked that God was so horrified at the prospect that he killed the entire ...
October 14, 2020
The Chargers crowd, the Padres crowd, where old Chargers are
Cheerleading Is More Dangerous than Fighting Cage-fightin’ rock stars. It’s Wednesday at 1:00 p.m., and I am waiting for amateur mixed martial arts fighter Jaime Reyes at the Lakeside Cafe. When he walks past me, ...
October 11, 2020
Golden State dreams
Winding my way up La Mesa’s Mount Nebo on a Sunday morning, I wound up on the Summit Drive cul-de-sac. All but one of the houses sported a tasteful Biden/Harris 2020 sign in the front ...
September 30, 2020
Tagging Renoir
The pale blue, two-story stucco and cinderblock building squats in a parking lot along Broadway in Lemon Grove between a Walgreen’s and an Eyeglass World. It houses Rock Liquor (Beer Wine Grocery) and a Western ...
September 30, 2020