Issues / 2004 / Dec 16
The Play’s The Thing
Salinas’ toy lending library.
A tiny head full of raven-colored braids peeps out from behind a bright red curtain. “Watch, Mommy,” seven-year-old Akiye Lasu calls out to her mother from a pint-sized puppet theater. “Are you watching?” she asks. ...
Winter Vacation Reading List
Best Books from California 2004.
Here’s a haphazardly selected and tremendously subjective list of the best books out of California this year. Feel free to accept or reject these suggestions at your leisure, but I promise each of the books ...
DiscSpace
DiscSpace
BARENAKED LADIESBarenaked for the Holidays | Desperation/Nettwerk Did anybody see this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade? My favorite part was watching Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page attempt to lip-sync one of these songs (nobody actually sings ...
ArtListings
ArtListings
Links to galleries within this section: | Coast Gallery | Carmel Art Association | Chapman Gallery | Hawthorne Gallery | Karthia Studios | Lewis Gallery | Local Color | Monterey Senior Centery | Natl Steinbeck ...
Squidfry
YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR HAT ON…And the rest of it, please. Squid’s all for middle- to late-aged women posing half-naked…wait a minute, maybe Squid’s not. Case in point: the Carmel Fire Belles: a group of ...
Letters
Curl Up With Some Good TV What’s all the fuss about closing libraries in Salinas? [“Balancing the Books: Deep financial troubles could make Salinas a city with no libraries,” Dec 2-8.] Reading books is vastly ...
The Year in Weird
A year’s worth of strange but true stories from the nation’s daily newspapers.
Let Freedom Reign Optimists International announced the formation of a chapter in Baghdad, Iraq. Fickle Fingers of Fate The International Wheelchair Rugby Federation informed Mark Fosbrook, 28, who has no feet and only two fingers ...
Not Half Bad
The Medium bring perky bleakness from Fresno.
Even though the Fresno-based group The Medium has extremely catchy music, don’t expect sunny lyrics from this acoustic rock outfit. On “The Way It Is,” bassist/vocalist Brian Coale sings lyrics like “when you are around ...
Never Grow Up
Finding Neverland’s fun-loving star hides darker motivations.
Marc Forster’s movie, Finding Neverland, about J.M. Barrie and the “lost boys” is glossy, floridly sentimental, yet daringly muted. As the playwright, Johnny Depp is at the opposite pole from his pirate mode. This guy ...
The Penultimate Gig
The Unknown Jeromes play one more, and then one more. And that’s it.
A few weeks ago, at an Unknown Jeromes show in the Lava Lounge, it was a bit hard to keep track of everything that was happening onstage. During an energetic version of the Bob Marley ...
NewsBriefs
CIA Muckraker Dies As far as scoops go, investigative reporter Gary Webb hit the motherlode back in 1995. In what would become a highly controversial story and also the makings of a book, Webb wrote ...
Food and Spirit
Food and Spirit
I don’t sleep much—not as much as most people. Consequently, I experience more of each 24-unit time measurement than a lot of people. I love to watch Don Imus in the wee hours, simulcasting his ...
Lawyers and Money
Fees disputed in public records case.
A court hearing last week did not resolve the dispute between public interest attorney Michael Stamp and the city of Monterey in a case that gets at issues of democracy and public access to government ...
Taking Off
Globally-loved local pianist Weber Iago is set to fly.
Weber Iago is starting to break out of his gilded cage. Since arriving on the Peninsula in the early 1990s, the Brazilian pianist has become something of a local institution through his steady gigs at ...
In Steinbeck’s Kitchen
The Steinbeck House in Salinas offers homey meals and a chance to tour the author’s birthplace.
On a visit last week to the Steinbeck House Restaurant in Salinas, I snuck a peek into the room where John Steinbeck was born. The 19th century manor immediately made me think of childhood visits ...
Holiday Nightlight
PG’s Candy Cane Lane continues a half-century tradition of welcoming Santa to town.
Despite being thousands of miles from the North Pole and hundreds of miles from Disneyland, one Pacific Grove neighborhood has been hosting luminaries like Santa Claus and the Little Mermaid for years. During December, scores ...
The Final Cut
Salinas City Council bows to the inevitable and shutters its libraries, vowing to find the money to reopen them.
Salinas’ three libraries will close next year as part of painful budget cuts approved by the City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 14. After listening to two hours of heartfelt pleas from teachers, school kids and ...
Casino Heist Revenge
A star-studded cast of hipster thieves romps through Rome with an oh-so-cool vibe, chased by their last victim.
Let’s be honest: With a cast like this, it doesn’t matter too much what the characters are doing onscreen, or if it makes about as much sense as a monochrome rainbow. Director Steven Soderbergh knows ...
HomePage
New-Again Carmel Classic
Mary Carl and Kris Howard had been friends for more than ten years when they decided to remodel a house together. Although grubstaked by their husbands’ money, the women did the entire project unassisted by ...
Charging Beyond The Call: Asked at Northridge Mall in Salinas
Q: Are you intimidated by phone companies?Follow-up: If you were in charge of a phone company what random fee would you charge your customers?Leigh SchlosserMarketing | King CityA: No. I don’t think about it much. ...
Nirvana Shaped Box
With the Lights Out gets at the music behind the myth.
According to former New York Times critic Neil Strauss, only 11 out of the 30 teenagers he surveyed in a Tower Records in an upscale LA suburb had ever heard of the band Nirvana. That’s ...
Wrong Numbers
SBC Communications has received 50,000 complaints in the last seven years. The nation’s second biggest telephone company doesn’t care.
When it comes to conjuring the darkest strains of consumer venom, when it comes to incurring rage so deep and bloody it makes mature adults spit with anger like petulant children, the worst offender, leading ...
TheaterListings
| theater opening | Box and Cox 6pm Tues. Continues Wed 6pm. Unicorn Theatre presents the acclaimed Victorian-era drawing room comedy Box and Cox by John Maddison-Mortan. Set in a London boarding house in the ...
