Pulitzer Prizes

Fun & Nobody

Stages Theatre

Newport Beach Film Festival Gets Its Irish Up: The O'Brien's, The Iceman, What Maisie Knew

The less is more strategy to improve overall quality and fill houses seems to be working at the halfway mark of the 2013 Newport Beach Film Festival.Based on the screenings I've attended, you can't swing your elbows without hitting someone like you could in the past. Crowds seem to be digging it all ... More >>

Roger Ebert: Why There Can Never Be Another

To Kill a Mockingbird and Save Mr. Lincoln: Gayle Brandeis and the Political Young Adult

Our little lit family's sojourns find us back from a week in Baja California Norte, Mexico by way of, yes, Chicago, Illinois and Maycomb, Alabama. Audio books are the absolute best travel companions (can pause, never need to go pee), and listening together to the first four cassettes (yes, old-schoo ... More >>

Is OC Theater Still Worth Your Time in 2013?

In a little more than a year, Orange County lost two of its edgiest, longest-established storefront theaters: The Monkey Wrench Collective, which closed in December 2011, and the Hunger Artists Theatre Co., which closed in November. Both announcements were disheartening because, together (if you cou ... More >>

Horses, Andrew Jackson and Fat People!

Previewing OC theater for 2013

Pat Oliphant Exhibit at the Fullerton Museum Through This Sunday!

By Dave BartonThat instantly recognizable signature. The O an open mouth yawping in protest. The dot of the I like a projectile being thrown. The remaining letters leaning forward to attack. You don't even have to know his work to recognize political cartoonist Pat Oliphant is a confrontational indi ... More >>

Lincoln Movie Not as Honest as Abe, Says UCI Professor and Expert on South Jon Wiener

Disney opened Lincoln in 11 theaters on Nov. 9, expanded Steven Spielberg's historical saga to more North American theaters the next two weekends and now plans to go even wider thanks to more demand than there are movie seats.A UC Irvine history professor who caught the flick believes past and futur ... More >>

This is How You Lose and Win and Lose: Junot Diaz and the Campaign (!) for Honesty

I seldom listen to my own radio show, either because I'm dining with the fambly or grading student essays, but I recalled from weeks earlier enjoying my taped talk with Junot Diaz, and made a point of listening to last Wednesday night's excellent Bibliocracy interview with the MacArthur genius and P ... More >>

Jerry Amante, Tustin Councilman, Has Grand Jury "Misfeasance in Office" Finding Marked With Call for His Head and Hiring as a Lobbyist

Hey, Tustin City Councilman (and former mayor) Jerry Amante: the grand jury beotch slaps you for "misfeasance in office" and "exceeding or misusing a public power or position and thereby risking harm" for lobbying a college president to force the resignation of a professor who exposed the massive a ... More >>

OC Weekly Nabs Seven Awards at LA Press Club Affair Honoring Woodward and Bernstein

Celebrities and reporters gathered Sunday night at the Millennium Biltmore's Crystal Ballroom in downtown Los Angeles for the 54th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards and OC Weekly staffers grabbed seven honors.Three of the Weekly's awards were for first place: Michelle Woo for Best Persona ... More >>

'Jitney' Shows We're Black Like Them

South Coast Rep's staging of the August Wilson standard reminds us why we need more African-Americans in OC

UC Irvine MFA Writers: Your Clip-and-Save Review

The end of the academic year approaches, which finids Mr. Bib looking forward to the arrival of annual literary journals sponsored by local colleges and universities. Alas, The Ear, Irvine Valley College's magazine is long gone as, it appears, is Orange Coast Review, out of OCC. Still UC Riverside p ... More >>

Umami Burger Brings Something Savory This Way

Adam Fleischman's phenomenon finally opens in OC

See tomorrow's plays today (and Saturday and Sunday...)

This marks the 15th year of the Pacific Playwrights Project, an effort launched in the late 20th Century by South Coast Repertory to try to help playwrights get more productions of their plays while also helping get some much-needed dough in their pockets. The festival selects five to 10 plays a yea ... More >>

The Prince of Atlantis

South Coast Repertory

LA Times "Re-Occupies" Orange County?

​Back in the glory days of newspaper journalism, the Los Angeles Times boased some 100 staffers in Orange County and the paper consistently beat the Orange County Register on its home turf.  Then the industry imploded under the combined weight of Craigslist, rising paper costs, and online con ... More >>

Why Are Tucson School Officials Banning Mexican-American Studies?

[¡Ask a Mexican!] And how can I help fight those pendejos?

'Topdog/Underdog' Is Black Like Us

Suzan-Lori Parks' Pulitzer Prize-winning play resonates far beyond its African-American characters

The LA Times Crosses Over

How the newspaper's cozy relationship with Camp Pendleton hampers its coverage of religious controversies on the base

Topdog/Underdog

South Coast Repertory

Gourmet Grill Masters Opens in Irvine

Edwin Goei​Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold described the chicken at the previously mobile-only Gourmet Grill Masters this way:"The chicken at Grill Masters stands a cluck or two above the rest: extravagantly seasoned fowl cooked on rotating spits, perfumed with smoke, slow-roasted ... More >>

Irvine Fine Arts Center Welcomes the 99 Percent

Three exhibits show the world in perpetual Occupy mode

Robert Rizzo, Corrupt and Bloated Bureaucrat, Sells His Big-Ass Surf City Home

​The Huntington Beach home of disgraced former Bell city administrator Robert Rizzo has sold for $939,000.That's $40,000 less than the asking price when the two-story home was first listed in June, $10,000 less than a later discounted price, and $139,000 more than the bloated bureaucrat earned in ... More >>

UCI Seminar Examines Fallout from Afghanistan War on Public Health Here

​The effects of the war in Afghanistan on that country's inhabitants, the U.S. military and geopolitics have been kicked around plenty but what about the cost to America's public health system?That topic gets its due through a UC Irvine seminar surrounding the war's 10th anniversary. It's availabl ... More >>

The Trip to Bountiful

South Coast Repertory

Report: Contaminated Chinese Honey Continuing to Illegally Invade U.S. Stores

Photo by Anne Marie PangorianGet the real stuff at your local farmers market...​The big story about honey these past couple of years is colony collapse disorder, the disturbing phenomenon of mass die-offs of bees. But one I learned about years ago that doesn't get enough play is that what is sold ... More >>

OC Weekly Captures 10 or 11 OC Press Club Awards

​OC Weekly won 10 or 11 awards at Wednesday night's Orange County Press Club Journalism Awards Dinner at the Hyatt Regency Irvine. Among these were eight first-place awards. It's 10 or 11 total because the same Weekling tied for first place in the same category, something Kedric Francis, Firebrand ... More >>

Jonathan Gold's Choice for Best Roast Chicken to Roost in Irvine

Image from www.grillmasters-chicken.com​ LA Weekly's Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold describes it this way: "The chicken at Grill Masters stands a cluck or two above the rest: extravagantly seasoned fowl cooked on rotating spits, perfumed with smoke, slow-roasted and glistening w ... More >>

'Jerry Springer' Vs. Arthur Miller Vs. 'The Underpants'

[SUMMER GUIDE] And more from OC and Long Beach stages this summer

'Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird'

Found Theatre

'Three Days of Rain'

South Coast Repertory

Pacific Playwrights Festival Shows the Plays Must Go On

South Coast Repertory's annual showcase for new works gears up

How Do Mexicans Propose Marriage?

[¡Ask a Mexican!] And why I will finally stop insulting Guatemalans!

KCRW Global Street Food Fest SOLD OUT--But Win a Pair of Tickets NOW

Piaggio on Wheels will be there this Sunday, and so can you!​SOOOOO...remember that panel I'm going be on this Sunday in Santa Monica, alongside KCRW-FM 89.9's Evan Kleiman, celebrity chef Jet Tila, and Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold? If you're interested, tough tamales--event is ... More >>

Ruben Vives, Former Illegal Immigrant, Wins Pulitzer for Coverage of Bell Scandal

​There are a lot of local angles to tie in this week's Pulitzer Prize victory by Los Angeles Times reporters Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottlieb for their coverage of the City of Bell Scandal. You have the man they took down, Robert Rizzo, being a resident of Huntington Beach, and that Gottlieb used to ... More >>

There's Something About 320 Main

Cameron Diaz eats at this Seal Beach stalwart, and so should you!

Pulitzer Prize Winning Food Critic Jonathan Gold Reviews...The Olive Garden

​Sometimes an April Fools prank can backfire on the prankster. It happened to Jonathan Gold, our esteemed colleague and Pulitzer Prize winning food critic at the LA Weekly. His planned joke on his longtime food photographer Anne Fishbein to meet him at Olive Garden didn't go exactly as planned. ... More >>

320 Main Makes Jonathan Gold's List of LA's 55 Best Cocktails!

Seal Beach: Not LA, but who cares?​LA Weekly's Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold's list of Los Angeles' 55 best cocktails is essential reading, not so much for the drunk aspect but to hear him drop history bits after history bits on cocktails, restaurants, and so much more. But noth ... More >>

'Wide Angle View' Shows the Personal Is Political

The photojournalists of OCCCA's latest exhibition never stop working

One Era Ends and Another Begins at South Coast Repertory

Scr.orgMartin Benson and David Emmes​It's not exactly a seismic shift, but whenever two main forces behind a major artistic institution decide to step down, it's a very big deal.  And that's what's happening at South Coast Repertory, a theater that (sorry, Will Ferrell and Jenna Haze) is, ha ... More >>

Why Orange County Is the Capital of Bolivian Cuisine in the Western United States

Order of salteñas from Rollie's--SO good...​I was surprised to read last week's installment of "Ask Mr. Gold" in our sister paper LA Weekly. In it, someone asked the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic of he knew where to buy salteñas, the legendary empanada originally from Argentina but long cla ... More >>

2011 LA Weekly Gold Standard Final Restaurant List

​In case you missed our announcement to get a discounted ticket for the 2011 Gold Standard, it's not too late to get yourself in. Tickets are still available, but they are expected to sell out. Clear your calendar for Sunday, March 6, and get your tickets now.Restaurant list after the jump!

Tickets for LA Weekly Gold Standard On Sale This Week

​[UPDATED Monday January 17 5:30pm] $10 discount for early bird tickets,  now through January 20 at 10am! Details after the jump!The third-annual LA Weekly Gold Standard food-and-wine event happens on March 6 at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Curated by Jonathan Gold, the rest ... More >>

The Mourning After

Grieving tastefully in 'Rabbit Hole'

Revenge of the Space Pandas

Garage Theatre

Howard Korder's 'Garden' Variety

SCR's production of his 'In a Garden' explores the 'messy underpinnings of creating something wonderful'

[¡Ask a Mexican!] Special Navidad Shopping Guide Edition

[This Hole-In-the-Wall Life] Thai This Now: Siam Taste of Asia

Way Out There With Them!

Columnist Michelle Malkin finds home amongst local immigrant-bashers