2007 - Page 380 of 521 - The Santa Barbara Independent

Cover Story By Indy Staff

The Indy’s Annual Blue and Green Guide

Welcome to The Independent’s Blue & Green issue, our annual ode to those great outdoor activities that cause so many of us to live in Santa Barbara. Whether you’re a surf nut, a hiking fanatic, a rabid rock climber, or just someone who enjoys a casual stroll along one of our many beaches, we’re pretty positive that one of the main reasons you endure our town’s high cost of living is because you’ve got a thing for the outdoors, a nagging addiction to crisp air, and a hankering for unspoiled natural beauty.

Arts & Entertainment By James Hanley Donelan

The Santa Barbara Symphony at the Arlington Theatre

With a bang, a crash, and a boom, Nir Kabaretti brought his inaugural season with the Santa Barbara Symphony to a spectacular close. He began the concert with Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, gracefully balancing its humor with its intricate rhythms and clever surprises-the Can-Can never sounded so good. The rest of the evening showed us the full range of the Santa Barbara Symphony’s capabilities, offering everything from late romantic heartbreak to modernist strangeness.

Living By Michelle Drown

Seashore Sightings

Ilike looking at tide pools and watching the little critters within carry on about their business; it’s one of my favorite things about being a coastal dweller. I can even name a few of the inhabitants in the tiny watery worlds-sea urchins, teeny fishes, and itty-bitty crabs.

Outdoors By Matt Kettmann

Leaving More Than a Trace

The ear-splitting roar of a chainsaw throwing showers of splinters and dust up into a cloudless sky penetrates the serene mountain scene. The fresh air’s aroma of sage and wild mint gets overpowered by the reek of grease and oil. The uneven, hardly trampled soil gets unearthed and tamed by a pickax. Gnarled, ancient branches of oak scrub meet their immediate defeat in the jaws of loppers, their shredded remains tossed over steep cliffs. Helmets are worn, sweat pours down faces, hands get cut, eyes fill with dirt, ears ring, muscles grow sore.

Film & TV By Max Burke

Delta F Minus

There is something tragic about a comedy that fails, because it means what one group of people believed to be funny enough to write, film, and release-and spend millions of dollars in the process-does not match up with what anyone else considers even remotely funny.

Theater By Charles Donelan

Santa Barbara Theater Brings Miss Julie to Center Stage

With Miss Julie, August Strindberg made one of the most exciting and volatile contributions to the repertoire in the long history of the theater. In the manifesto with which he prefaced the play, Strindberg set out some extraordinary requirements for the new theater of “naturalism” he had in mind: no footlights, no stage makeup, events happening in real time, absolute candor about such socially awkward subjects as blasphemy, lust, and various bodily functions, and, finally, the creation and depiction of the naturalist character-a kind of amalgam of the tragic hero and the protagonist of the 19th-century novel-a complex person with even more complex motives.

Arts & Entertainment By Indy Staff

Music Notes, Far and Near

THE WEEK THAT WAS: Laws of cultural averages dictate that even in an urban locale, much of the steady flow of live music will be mediocre, with occasional bursts of glory. It’s the way of the world. Santa Barbara, which gets a grander parade of culture than its size might seem to warrant, also follows that law.

Events By Indy Staff

To Market, To Market

The Goods: For the last 16 years, the Zannon family has been growing all-natural pistachios on the family farm in the Sierra Madre Range of Santa Barbara County. In that time, these nuts have gained quite the reputation. Growing only U.S. fancy-grade pistachios, the Zannons have received praise for their brined and hot air-dried nuts in an episode of the Food Network show Food Finds, as well as from the L.A. Times and a number of cookbooks.

Living By Marisa Demourkas

Weeknight Racing with the Santa Barbara Yacht Club

It’s moments before the first starting gun, and waves are rushing over the bow of our J-105, Rock’n & Groov’n. There are six of us onboard for the race, and we all have our duties in order to get the yacht to the start line on time; everyone must work hard to get the boat in proper trim. Even though I have done this many times before, thoughts still rush through my mind-“Do we know where we are going? How much more time do we have?”