Now in its 35th year, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference has developed the kind of fervent, devoted fan club more commonly associated with boy bands, sports teams, and reality TV shows. Among Central Coast writers in particular, SBWC’s popularity has reached mythic proportions. The conference is the subject of breathless writers’ group discussions and Adult Ed night class lore.
It’s been two years since we discovered my father was having an affair.
Circuses are scary-and I’m not talking about the clowns. Last week, on a windy afternoon in Santa Maria, I found myself 40 heart-pounding feet off the ground, my sweating palms gripping a trapeze bar. I feigned a smile to my hosts from Circus Vargas, thought about my last ride in an ambulance, and jumped.
Certainly there’s a fine line between genius and cuckoo. In the world of animated filmmaking, perhaps we can even lend that delicate demarcation a little elasticity. But even considering the wacky factor, can somebody please explain to me why this funny, well-made cartoon needed a scene where Big Z (voiced by our own Jeff Bridges) non-explicitly but unmistakably pees on the foot of penguin protagonist Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf)?
It’s an odd time to be on earth. We know peak oil is approaching, the planet is getting warmer, and human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to that. You’d have to be living in a climate-controlled cave to not be worried that life as we know it is in grave danger. And yet the vast majority of us continue to get in our cars and drive alone to wherever we need to go, day after day. And in the U.S., about 50 percent of those car trips are for distances less than two miles.
What came billed as the biggest, most innovative, and certainly the most “sustainable” development ever proposed in the history of Santa Barbara County failed to make it out of the starting blocks on June 12, as the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission voted 4-1 against it in a decision that managed to be procedurally minor and momentous simultaneously.
From sea to shining sea, they are cranking their sleds in the name of sisterhood. Denise Clark, Jill Gass, Sonia Ross, and Lisa Tonello started riding their bicycles-one at a time, in relay fashion-on Tuesday afternoon, June 12, at the Oceanside Pier, and they will not stop until they reach the Atlantic City Boardwalk. They will cover 3,043 miles of road through 13 states.
Yoon Choi, the UCSB student detained by immigration agents on 5/23 for carrying an expired visitor’s visa, returned to campus
The sale of Santa Barbara’s Wine Cask store and restaurant, which was finalized on 6/1, confirmed rumors that healthcare mogul-turned-restaurateur
After much reworking by the city’s Ordinance Committee, the Candidate Video Program was approved by the Santa Barbara City Council
