The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping What’s it rated? TV-MA When? 2024 Where’s it showing? Netflix Masked as schools with a focus on “healing troubled teens,” Ivy Ridge and its sister schools run by the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (known as WWASP) aren’t out to help teenagers become better people, they’re […]
Bingeable: <i>The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping</i>
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Bingeable: The Gentlemen
The Gentlemen What’s it rated? TV-MA When? 2024 Where’s it showing? Netflix Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Sherlock Holmes, The Covenant) created this action comedy TV series, which is a spinoff of his 2019 film of the same name, about newly minted 10th Duke of Halstead Eddie Horniman (Theo James), who inherits his father’s 15,000-acre estate only […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Love Lies Bleeding depicts a gritty and fantastical love affair
Love Lies Bleeding What’s it rated? R What’s it worth, Glen? Full price What’s it worth, Anna? Full price Where’s it showing? Regal Edwards RPX Santa Maria, Regal Arroyo Grande Rose Glass (Saint Maud) directs a screenplay she wrote with Weronika Tofilska about Lou (Kristen Stewart), a gym manager who falls for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Flower City Ballroom presents Green Jellÿ, live in concert
New York-based heavy metal and comedy group Green Jellÿ will perform at the Flower City Ballroom in Lompoc on Saturday, April 6, at 7 p.m. According to press materials, Green Jellÿ has touted itself as “the world’s worst band” and attracted a cult following during the 1980s and ’90s for its cartoonish style and use […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Songwriters at Play hosts contest finales in Solvang and Cambria
Mid-April will mark the conclusion of two local music competitions, both organized by Songwriters at Play. The featured musicians slated to perform at the two finale events—scheduled for Saturday, April 13, at Solvang’s High Roller Tiki Lounge and Sunday, April 14, at the Cambria Center for the Arts Theatre—were juried finalists from monthly Songwriters at […]
Posted inMusic, Arts & Culture
Local thespian Gale McNeeley brings a poet cockroach to life
Catch the show Email friendssyvlibrary@gmail.com for more info on Gale McNeeley’s upcoming one-man show, sponsored by the Friends of the Library of Santa Ynez Valley, at the Santa Ynez Valley Grange Hall. To find out more about McNeeley, visit galemcneeley.org. For better or worse, some actors are inseparable from certain roles they play well, often, […]
Posted inOpinion
Biden will see our country through its current challenges
I wrote President Joe Biden a letter early last year with regard to our current threat to democracy and the attempted coup of Jan. 6, 2021. I sent him copies of excerpts from The FBI Story as published in 1957, which indicates that our country’s balance of power would never allow a tyrant to take […]
Posted inOpinion
Lawmakers should have been listening to sound conservative policies all along
Winston Churchill famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they’ve tried everything else. It seems that San Francisco may be trying to emulate Churchill’s pithy observation. Yes, this is another rant about San Francisco’s descent into dysfunction and squalor. Criticizing the mess in San Francisco is so easy that I […]
Posted inOpinion
Dollar bills, y’all
The cannabis industry isn’t what it was cracked up to be in California. With bigtime dispensaries like MedMen going down, legal grow operations not raking in the amount of money they were projected to, and a thriving illegal market—what gives? Hey, word on the street is that it’s still illegal at the federal level, which […]
Posted inNews
Political Watch: March 28, 2024
• The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee advanced legislation that prevents Coast Guard Academy cadets from punishment when reporting an incident of sexual assault, and language in that legislation was proposed last year by U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), according to a March 22 statement from Carbajal’s office. The bill advanced by the committee also […]
Posted inNews
United Way of Northern Santa Barbara County offers free, in-person tax filing services until April 13
To help Santa Barbara County residents file their taxes and get tax credits they’re eligible for, United Way of Northern Santa Barbara County teams up each year with Cal Poly and Allan Hancock College to host free, in-person tax filing. The program launched about 18 years ago with United Way helping file taxes in Lompoc, […]
Posted inNews
Rancho La Laguna withdraws appeal, Superior Court preservation ruling stands
After a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge ruled that the Board of Supervisors acted within its rights to deny the 4,000-acre Rancho La Laguna subdivision project, attorneys representing the developers filed an appeal to the decision. That appeal was short-lived as the developers later withdrew it, letting the Superior Court decision stand, said Linda […]