Monthly Archives: December 2010

In the late 1970s, there was a brief craze for generic brands. This lite beer was cooked up by General Brewing in downtown L.A. and marketed at Ralphs supermarkets. I remember hoisting a few of the $1.99-a-six-pack specials. Let’s just … Continue reading →

Actress Jessica Alba may regularly rank No. 1 on such as AskMen.com’s list of 99 Most Desirable Women in the Galaxy, but when it comes to punctuation, she’s no English major. I can forgive a lot in a girl, but … Continue reading →

Wednesday morning, with the rain still coming down, they — “they” being county flood control — hadn’t fully released the water coming down from Devil’s Gate Dam in the Arroyo Seco concrete channel. This morning — Christmas eve eve, with … Continue reading →

Twenty … five, I guess it is, years ago, I did a cover story for the old Pasadena Weekly about the Arroyo Seco that my editor Pam Fisher headlined The Big Ditch. This morning, in these record rains, with no … Continue reading →

The Big Ditch in the middle of Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco is of course running knee-deep and very fast from Devil’s Gate to the L.A. River in a days-long downpour like this. But there’s some water in it almost every day … Continue reading →

Pasadena Poly grad Joe Mathews, above, is the author, with Mark Paul, of the new analysis of what ails the Golden State, “California Crack Up.” Joe spoke to the annual fundraiser for the Charles Cherniss Tournament of Toys the other … Continue reading →

I remember in 1982, in graduate school at Thunderbird in Glendale, Arizona, pulling over to the side of the country road when my 1972 Volvo 145E’s odometer rolled over to 100,000 (analog) miles and taking a (film) picture of it … Continue reading →

My father, E. Milton Wilson of Claremont, painted this version of a puro de Habana on one side of a postcard and mailed it to me after penning a poetic lament on the back, including this: “Hey, those missiles are … Continue reading →

When I was growing up in Altadena, this home and garden on Mendocino was where family physician Dr. Haines lived, across from the Town & Country Club. Now it’s one of the five houses that will be on tour in … Continue reading →