A musical about a suburban housewife grappling with mental illness? Hit the snooze button and wake my ass up in two hours. But in a glorious testament to the old adage that there are no dreadful stories, only dreadful storytellers, Next to Normal pr...
People browsing Speakeasy Original jewelry (speakeasyoriginal.com) for the first time would probably describe it as "tough guy" stuff. Jonathan Clingenpeel quickly corrects that. Although he grew up in motorcycle clubs and is covered in tattoos, he ...
Avant-garde painter Paul Sarkisian, best-known for his work at the revolutionary Ferus Gallery in 1960s Los Angeles, disliked the description of his work as photorealistic. His large-scale work wasn't him copying from photographs; many of the finer ...
I'm the last person who'll tell you to follow Vogue. Just because a designer came up with a beautiful concept 40 years ago doesn't mean his or her every idea is gold. Most trends are just silly, and considering that our bodies and skin tones are all...
Playwright Samuel Hunter's characters are ordinary people with ordinary problems: mortality, illness, loneliness, figuring out how to get from Point A to Point C with no idea where Point B is. But Hunter raises the ordinariness of his characters to ...
Working retail can be damn boring. Once you're done spending your paycheck on clothes (really, clothing stores should just offer company scrip to make it all easier), there's not much left to do besides stare aimlessly or tell people, "That top look...
War is hell, but you wouldn't know that on a visit to Laguna Art Museum's latest ex?pose show, featuring the anti-war graphite and paper drawings of artist Dana Harel. "Between Dreams and Nightmares" features little we can instantly chalk up to mili...
Downtown Huntington Beach isn't all bros and riots--the blog Main & PCH focuses on the positive in Surf City. Founding editor Lauren Lloyd covers the food, lifestyle and creative makers of the city's downtown and Huntington Beach in general. But thi...
Time has not been overly kind to Craig Lucas' The Dying Gaul. The 1998 play may only be 16 years old, but it feels like it's from another century. Which, of course, it is. But a play set in 1995 in which characters are enamored of miraculous new inn...
Looking for a new bag? Then sack up! Bindles aren't just for hobos anymore; they're the ultimate earth-friendly way to carry your things. With a little creativity, you can make a unique hobo sack and take one step closer to the simple life. "We're n...
I come from a generation that marched in the streets against nuclear energy. Nuclear energy = nuclear weapons = war. We did "die-ins" at the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, with activist Tim Carpenter leading the battle; watched Bruce Springsteen ...
Who says road rage has to be limited to throwing your finger in the air or waving both hands around like an angry Italian? Isn't there anything more creative you can do? According to a small, Orange-based start-up, the answer is yes. Motor Mood (mot...
Randy Morgan really doesn't want to be here. But the stout, gruff-voiced Laguna Beach artist is tired of all the "bullshit," as he puts it, that seems to constantly fly his way. And so he sits outside the Coffee Pub in the city's downtown villag...
You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce where the story's going in Gregory Moss' new play, Reunion. There are just enough clues deftly deposited over its first 90 minutes that when the Big Reveal comes--and, boy, is it a Big Reveal--it doesn'...
Rodellee Bas sees a lot of vintage. As the owner of Adored Vintage (adoredvintage.com), an online clothing store and boutique in Long Beach, she has an on-and-off love affair with digging through mounds of junk to find the proverbial gold, but one t...
Emigdio Vasquez needs little introduction in these pages. We've highlighted his works over the years, but recently, unfortunately, it has been in a negative context, such as when Orange police detectives tried to slur his photorealistic portraits of...
A resurgence in handmade crafts over the past several years has opened up a treasure trove of products and lifestyles that make websites such as Pinterest and Etsy possible. The community has grown into festivals and conferences, and now, it has its...
The black-framed glasses come off the face of Stephan "Bax" Baxter and clunk onto the table between us. His shock of graying, flyaway, un-styled Jim Jarmusch-esque hair spills into his face, then is moved quickly with a flick of his hand. We're talk...
The streets of downtown Santa Ana are barren on a cold Tuesday night, save for a space on Fourth Street where members of the Santa Ana art collective Konsept meet to discuss plans for the next Downtown Art Walk. The collection of pizza boxes, bags o...
Sevenly's Dale Partridge is on a quest to "achieve a more truthful existence." To do so, he's on a path to achieve what Proverbs describes as "crowns to a man": an excellent wife, wisdom, wealth, the gray hair of the righteous and grandchildren. A...