Dear Californians: Please stop making smug Facebook posts about your January trips to the beach when you know the East Coast is getting the crap beat out of it by a storm. Please stop responding to your friends’ posts about snow and the importance of layering with reminders that if they’d just been smart enough […]
ASHLEY SCHWELLENBACH
Posted inSpecial Issues
Eat, drink, and be merry!
What would the holidays be without food? Repetitive political arguments with distant relatives? A six-hour drive through holiday traffic to get to Grandma’s house? A three-hour wrapping marathon capped off by too much spiked eggnog and weird dreams about Claymation dentists? It’s the food that makes the holidays. Call it gluttonous overindulgence, call it a […]
Posted inNews
Sizist spawn
Read, you fiends, and think fondly of Ray Bradbury and Maurice Sendak
From a poodle with a person problem, to bloodthirsty writers plotting their revenge against editors, to an unrepentant sinner presumably standing at heaven’s gate, New Times is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its annual 55 Fiction competition with wit, cynicism, whimsy, and style. And the Sun is joining in. In keeping with our tradition of […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
When life hands you clams …
Delve into a world of Oceano mystics, bootleggers, and artists
If you’ve been looking for a copy of Luther Whiteman’s Central Coast classic The Face of the Clam, you should know you could expect to shell out at least $148. The book, originally published by Random House in 1947, enjoyed a second printing after its initial release: an edition printed by the military during the […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Sitcom world, good talent
PCPA gets experimental with Songs
PCPA promises one thing with its genre-bending production of Songs for a New World: a new and provocative universe, with virgin territory to explore. Or, at least, the play’s creator, Jason Robert Brown, made this promise implicitly when he titled his 1995 production. But Brown fails to deliver on this promise, and even with the […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
De la ventana de mi vida
Live Oak gets a Mexican folk band with roots, pride, and social consciousness
What else is a man/ than what he can provide/ to the people that he loves/ and live his life with pride,” asks a singer in Los Cenzontles’ most recently released album American Horizon. The band’s 18th album was released in November of 2009, and already the Mexican folk music troupe is putting the finishing […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Wretched, wretched word count
A few things you should know before taking on the annual 55 Fiction challenge
Here are 55 words for New Times’ and the Sun’s annual 55 Fiction contest: Rule one: 55 words or less. Two: Contractions count as a single word. So go to town with the shouldn’ts, wouldn’ts, won’ts, and can’ts. Trois: Hyphenated words don’t count as a single word. Star-studded-sky? Three words. Shi: Standard acronyms are a […]
Posted inNews
Expressive squeegee
A Santa Barbara painter fills the walls of the Steynberg Gallery
If Santa Barbara painter Henry Rasmussen’s canvases could talk they’d have an odd pack of stories to tell—of being perforated with an old pen, brushed with acrylics and oil sticks, spray painted, splashed with thinner, squeegeed, sanded and scraped, sewn into, and carved with a kitchen knife. It’s a fairly violent working method for an […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Lyrical, educational, folklorico
A Cal Poly club shares its heritage and art
For many children growing up in Mexican or Mexican American homes, watching ballet folklorico is a traditional family pastime. When those children grow up, it’s not always easy for them to find organizations that encourage and expand upon their interest in their cultural heritage—especially for students attending Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. Third-year industrial […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
The wyrd and the dead
PCPA brings Shakespeare’s Scottish play to life
The basic outline for the plot to William Shakespeare’s Macbeth can be explained in a children’s book. If you give the Thane of Glamis (Macbeth, the title character) the title Thane of Cawdor, he’s going to want to be king. And if he manages to become king, through foul and treacherous murder, he will be […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
A month of love, hearts, and song
February is for musicians
The month of dead presidents and candied hearts just got cooler. Actually, the change occurred in 2004 when four music-minded friends challenged one another to write 14 songs in the month’s 28 days. They posted recordings of their songs online and maintained a flow of feedback for each other’s work. Now in its seventh year, […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
From rags to em dashes
The best of the type geeks exhibit at Cal Poly
Being a geek of any sort comes with a set of responsibilities: Wear a cloak, be capable of rattling off magic spells by heart, stand in line at 2 a.m. in order to be the first to see a new movie. And type geeks are no exception to the rule. They’re irritated by the presence […]