In Austin, Texas, there’s one name that sends a giant smoke signal skyward to hungry barbecue fans from around the world, calling, beckoning all night partiers and early-rising professionals in town on business alike: and that name is Franklin. Franklin Barbecue, the small Texas roadhouse shack, is a culinary and cultural phenomena that belies it’s […]
Texas
OC Education Worker’s Twitter Page Gone After Harm Wished on Barron Trump
An Orange County Department of Education employee sent tweets that expressed her hope that what happened to Texas school shooting victims Friday would also be experienced by the children of President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch. One tweet mentioned Trump and […]
SEC Accuses Newport Beach Man of Fraud in Golf Course Deal
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today filed a complaint against an Orange County businessman and his Texas-based partner for allegedly devising a $675,000 fraud scheme involving the proposed purchase of an unfinished, $5 million Colorado golf course. Caliber Capital Management LLC. owner Paul A. Garcia, a 53-year-old Newport Beach resident, and Richard T. […]
The Evolution of a Criminal Is a Marvel of Feeling
Vital, thoughtful and deeply personal, first-timer Darius Clark Monroe's autobiographical doc stands as a testament to the power of movies to stir empathy. At age 16, honor-student Monroe had grown sick of seeing his hardworking family struggle to keep up with its bills. He had dabbled in employee-theft at the Venture store where he worked […]
Fall Fashion Preview 2014
It's mid-September. You thought you'd be wearing tights, snuggling in a scarf and drinking a hot pumpkin latte. Even if you're not that dumb, maybe you hoped, just hoped, for 80-degree weather instead of 106. Maybe you could wear that scarf at nighttime and sip that latte after 8 p.m. You were wrong. We were […]
Linklater's Glorious Boyhood Captures Life in Bloom
The business of childhood is the business of waiting: waiting for Christmas, waiting for school to let out, waiting to be old enough to stay up past nine. No other movie I can think of captures the wistfulness of those days full of waiting than Richard Linklater's Boyhood, an ambitious and clever undertaking that could […]
Lyle Lovett's Motorcycle Diary
Lyle Lovett may be known as a Grammy Award-winning musician, actor and one hell of a dapper Texas gent. But there's a side of the Stetson-loving Lovett that many fans may be unaware of: his lifelong affair with motorcycles, which he began riding as a Texas adolescent in the late 1960s. So, when Todd Huffman, […]
Why Don't Other Latinos Like Being Called Mexican?
DEAR MEXICAN: My dad says when he was a kid growing up in Downey, they used to open the local plunge (pool) to mexicanos and negritos on Thursdays only because the pool was cleaned once a week on Friday mornings. Is this an accurate account of racism in the 1940s or an exaggeration? Do you […]
Smokey Fred's BBQ: 'Cueing On Collins
“Hey, Fred!” is something you'll hear at least once while at Smokey Fred's in Orange, and it's not just because the guy behind the counter is—you guessed it!—Fred. People want to shoot the shit with him, since he's a gregarious fellow who looks as though he left his post as an SEC football defensive coach's […]
Gold Daggers
Gold Daggers are into the Melvins-Big Business school of making the maximum out of a minimum—they’re two dudes and two instruments playing too loud because that’s how they like it, and their self-titled new album is bristling with AmRep-style loud rock that’s a downer in all the good ways. (When they really get roaring, like […]
OCMA Live Band Showcase Night 2
The OC Music Awards kicked off its yearly series of live showcases last week, starting the trek to the March 8 awardstravaganza where winners are chosen and losers are lovingly consoled—and you can get in on the battle royale early with the second showcase in Tustin. Headlining is Corona-ish indie folk-pop band Me and the […]
Kolache Factory Is Czech-Mex
If you're not from the Czech Republic or Texas, chances are you've never heard of kolaches. And if you've never been to those parts of the Lone Star state called the Czech Belt, then you probably have no idea the pastry is bigger than bagels in Manhattan. The Czechs who settled in central and south-central […]
Halloween Covers Night
It’s that most wonderful time of the year—Halloween, when awesome bands pretend to be other awesome bands and you can finally drink beers and sing along to songs that you’d otherwise need a time machine to enjoy live. This year, South Bay indie stalwart Otik Records tapped six local bands to transform into four punk/pop/bubblegum […]
Young n' Wild Weekender
Wild Records' Young & Wild Weekender arrives today, consisting of wailing rockabilly vocalists and greasy-haired guitarists shredding in a fury of psychotic abandon. Among the biggest rock n' roll heavyweights appearing tonight, three acts have long-carried the Wild Records name across the US and Europe: Gizzelle, Luis Wildfire and Omar and the Stringboppers. Long time […]
Baptist Generals
The road behind Denton, Texas band Baptist Generals is a long, rocky one. It took ten years for singer/songwriter (and sole remaining founding member) Chris Flemmons to release another album after 2003's No Silver/No Gold, a solid record relished by both music critics and modern folk fans alike. But the group's 2013 Jackleg Devotional to […]
Is There Any Good Mexican Food in England?
DEAR READERS: The U.K.'s spectacular Guardian newspaper asked if I could field some questions for its readers as part of the paper's summer travel package—turns out Brits want to know more about Mexican food! Let's be benevolent toward those buggerers; their idea of what our comida constitutes comes solely from their gabacho cousins, not any […]
Catching the Butcher
In the strangely Valentines Day-appropriate story of Catching the Butcher, we follow one woman's quest to win over the man of her dreams: a serial killer terrorizing a Texas town by murdering women and dumping their bodies (with a poem attached) in the river. Sounds like a dreamboat! Written by Adam Seidel, this dark comedy […]
Nashville Pussy
“Born to die in a rock ‘n’ roll band!” says title track on Nashville Pussy’s redone From Hell To Texas, and you know what? They keep doing what they’re doing and maybe they’ll pull it off. Since like 1996, Nashville Pussy has been pumping out nasty nowheresville scuzz-rock, like a caveman Kiss or mountain-moonshine-powered Motorhead, […]
Frito-Lay Gets Huge Bill In California Sales Staff Wage Cheating Case
Frito-Lay, makers of the popular Fritos, Tostitos and Doritos chips, routinely cheated more than 2,100 sales employees out of money owed for overtime work in California, according to a class action lawsuit. Earlier this year, the Texas-based snack food company agreed to settle the case before an Orange County jury inside the Ronald Reagan Federal […]
Tito's La Familia: Taco Steam Bath
Orange County has hard tacos and soft tacos, lonchera tacos and those bought at drive-thrus. Korean tacos and gourmet ones, varieties bought frozen and those prepared at home. The mighty taco acorazado at Alebrije's and even rarer ones such as beso de monja, a Cuernavacan speciality that's like a three-layered ham-and-bacon taco made with flour […]
Main Street Santa Ana LLC Evicts Everyone in Low-Income Apartments in Time for Holidays
Main Street Santa Ana LLC has offices in that California city as well as nearby Cypress and Midland, Texas, according to a quick search of listings on the Interwebs. Consider that a friendly tip to all of Ocotillo Apartments' tenants who may want to send letters of displeasure over being served eviction notices last week […]