Subject: Birthdays

• I Have a King Day

  Our pal Rebel Girl at Dissent the Blog has a dream: it is a dream for a week worth of activities at Irvine Valley College dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., and kicking off on his birthday today. Those activities include: a new on-campus Peace and Justice Center; an institutional adoption of Amnesty International's Prisoner of Conscience; a campus-wide re-creation of the 1963 March on Washington, D.C.; school Trustee Tom Fuentes (the former Orange County Republican Party chairman) reciting Ki

  January 16, 2006

• The "Real" Housewives of Orange County

  The Housewives season is coming to an end (thank god) so this week's episode concluded with a cliffhanger of sorts. Lauri is going to have a therapist-mediated get-together with her druggie son Josh to see if he can be part of her wedding. Annnnd . . . the cameras will be there to catch the whole thing! No wonder the poor kid hates her. She's exploiting his disease to make herself look more saintly. For shame, Skelator. Aren't mothers supposed to put their children's needs before their own? I'm

  January 16, 2008

• Dance, Monkey, Dance

  With the skies painted a dismal gray, and my mood darkening to match what loomed overhead, I headed to Santa Ana for the Santa Ana Zoo’s weekend birthday celebration. What’s that, you say? Santa Ana has a zoo? Yessiree. That it does and this weekend, the zoo turns 56. Fifty-six years of caged monkeys, displayed farm animals and good old-fashioned family fun. I should have been more excited. I was, after all, headed to a party … but there’s something strangely somber about heading out t

  March 1, 2008

• Club Pick: Too Short with DJ Scene at Sutra

  Attention Bay area beat junkies, club rats and weekend freaks! Friday is definitely your night to shine under the strobe lights of Sutra. Platinum rapper Too $hort will be unleashing a club bumping set in honor of turntable wizard DJ Scene's birthday bash. Since arriving on the hip hop scene in 1983, no other rapper has pioneered the art of the braggadocios gangster anthems quite like Too $hort. His masterful use of true life tales, racy rhymes and gangster flow has earned him a basket of platin

  September 17, 2008

• Is Real Housewives a Real Guide to OC-Style Parenting?

  Ginia Bellafante writes in today's New York Times that The Real Housewives of Orange County reveals much about Orange County-style parenting.Parenthood supplies a strange and fascinating dimension of The Real Housewives of Orange County, which increasingly feels like Mildred Pierce: the habit of indulging children materially, instead of making them go to the library or disciplining them, backfires with a spectacular regularity. Later:The women have very little idea of how most of their children

  February 16, 2009

• A good day to own a record player: Marvin Gaye's 70th Birthday

  With only minutes to go until the afternoon sun leaks through my bedroom windows, I should probably be doing something productive like getting ready for work, finishing up an article or at least mowing the lawn or something. But I'm not, it's my day off. And luckily, it couldn't have come at a better time. A few months ago, after some light pestering on my part, my aunt agreed to loan me her 1968 Fisher turntable covered in dust. It was one of the first things she bought when she moved to her ho

  April 2, 2009

• Grandpops of Pop

  November 1, 2007

• [Hey, You!] Bond. Series E Bond

  May 7, 2009

• Free Cupcake At Sprinkles Today: Update

  Yes, you read that right. Say the word "Candace" at any Sprinkles location and you'll get a free dark choc cupcake in honor of the bakery's founder, Candace Nelson, whose birthday it is today.Hey, Candace, my birthday's coming up in a couple of weeks' time--what do I get?Sprinkles, Corona del Mar Plaza, 944 Avocado Ave., Newport Beach, (949) 760-0003.     Update, Tuesday May 12: Whisper "chocolate peanut butter" and you get exactly that: a dark chocolate cupcake with peanu

  May 12, 2009

• Tim Carpenter's Progressive Democrats of America Turns 5

  Tim Carpenter of PDA.​Tim Carpenter, the longtime Orange County progressive activist who moved back east several years ago and is now national director of Progressive Democrats of America, is in a party mood. That's because his organization, which is at the center of the single-payer healthcare debate (they are for it), celebrates its fifth birthday with celebrations this week in the nation's capital and around the country.If you happen to be in D.C. on Thursday, swing by the PDA birthday part

  July 28, 2009

• Tomorrow: The Deadbeats, Circle One, Shattered Faith and More

  Some dude named Joey is celebrating his 30th birthday tomorrow at the Tropics Lounge in Fullerton with a bunch of cool old punk bands.The bill includes The Deadbeats, an LA-based group formed in 1977 that through 2000, but then broke  up. That is, until they reunited with a slightly different lineup in 2007. Also on the bill is Circle One, an LA  hardcore band formed in 1980, Huntington Beach's Shattered Faith, another killer band from three decades ago that still kick ass.  

  July 9, 2009

• Miss Coco Peru

  August 20, 2009

• Festen

  October 1, 2009

• Wahoo's Fish Taco Turns 21!

  ​Wahoo's, started in 1988 by a bunch of surfers in Costa Mesa, is about to celebrate its 21st anniversary. The problem is that the founders were so laid-back that nobody really remembers when the first store actually opened. They aren't letting this stop them from having a good time, though, so they're starting their 21st birthday celebration on Saturday, Nov. 21 with a party and giveaways.In the nine months since their 20th birthday celebration (which Edwin told us all about back in February)

  November 12, 2009