By Brian Lafferty

January 3, 2012 (San Diego) – I pop in the Bridesmaids DVD. I’m ready to laugh. I wait. Fifteen minutes pass. Then thirty. No laughter. Then a whole hour passes by, but not a single chuckle was uttered. Towards the end of the movie it was so quiet in the house that I distinctly thought I heard the sound of crickets chirping outside.

I didn’t laugh once during the two hour running time. I couldn’t even smile. What made it irksome was that every single joke had the potential for a laugh but the writers and actors find some way to foul it up.

By Buck Shott

Past presidential fibs have led to impeachment and resignation. Shouldn’t honesty be a key qualification for any presidential candidate?

December 28, 2011 (San Diego’s East County) – Voters, and the candidates they support, often have drastically different views on the various issues.  But honesty and integrity are two traits we should all agree upon as minimal “qualifications” for anyone seeking the presidency.

Granted, in the heat of a campaign any candidate may have a slip of the lip, forgetting a statistic or misstating an name. But when presidential contenders knowingly tell brazen lies, air campaign ads with outright falsehoods, and then shamelessly defend such fibbing, we should all think twice about the character of those seeking our nation’s highest office.

 By Charlotte Reed

• East County Realtors rally to aid less fortunate at Christmas time
• Two new scams reported in East County

By Walter Davis

By Brian Lafferty

December 21, 2011 (San Diego) – Many people I know would be hard-pressed to name their favorite TV show. For me, it’s easy. Mission: Impossible is my all-time favorite TV show. There’s something about the creativity in each mission’s execution. Even though everybody knows that the team will succeed, that doesn’t mean it lacks suspense.

By Charlotte Reed

December 12, 2011 (San Diego’s East County)—From the Real Estate Trenches is a weekly column focused on real estate news that impacts East County’s real estate market. This week’s local and national real estate highlights include:

• Fannie and Freddie suspend evictions for the holidays
• Prudential Financial sells its real estate brokerage for $110 million
• Counting my blessings
• Military Home Loans open house

By Brian Lafferty

This is the last of a four-part series on loss and grief from an Autistic person’s point of view.

December 16, 2011 (San Diego) – It’s now been over a year since Mom died. It’s unbelievable how fast those 365 days have come and gone. As I sit and write this, I think a lot about what happened during those 365 days. More importantly, I think about what I’ve accomplished.

Zeytoon Restaurant at VineRipe Market

Persian and Mediterranean cuisine

8191 Fletcher Parlway
La Mesa, CA 91942    (next to CostCo)
(619) 462-7809        

By Megan McGlamery

Nestled in La Mesa next to the VineRipe Market is Zeytoon, a delicious Persian and Mediterranean restaurant now under new ownership. Zeytoon, which translates to olive, serves a wide variety of flavorful appetizers, salads, entrees and sandwiches, all of which are reasonably priced and generously sized. The market is also a treasure-trove of specialty foods from around the world.

Scroll down for coupons and details.

 By Sharon Cormousis

 
New Technologies, local and national databases help reunite lost dogs and their owners

By Miriam Raftery
 
November 20, 2011 (San Diego) –Media reform and citizens’ groups have voiced concern over purchase of the San Diego Union-Tribune, a self-proclaimed “watchdog”, by a team led by real estate developer and political activist Doug Manchester. His major pending development projects are the very sorts of deals an independent media outlet would ordinarily report on and investigate.
 
The acquisition has drawn pointed criticism from both conservative taxpayer advocates and representatives of liberal interest groups.

By Greg Dunne                               

November 16, 2011 (Harbison Canyon) -- It’s November, the month when we all enjoy turkey at Thanksgiving. So this edition of Bird Talk is on the wild turkey and the other turkey namesake bird, the turkey vulture.

The wild turkey is not native to California, although it is native to North America. Numerous attempts tointroduce the turkey to California failed. Then in the early 1990s a second attempt was successful.  Today, wild turkeys can be seen throughout the back hills of East San Diego County. 

 
Nothing but the Truth!
By Will Power

By Cate Sacks

November 12, 2011 (Blossom Valley) -- News from Facebook, Therapy dog Howard has passed all the training to become a therapy or service dog. This boy is simply awesome. He is gentle, submissive and kind. I have never heard him bark, and he is happy just "being"..whether than means with the other dogs, people, children or just by himself. He is a young boy who has been rounded off to a year old. His body is that of a boxer but his look is that of a chesapeake bay retriever...an amazing combination that is hard to find. He sleeps quietly in his crate and learns quickly.  

By Brian Lafferty

November 11, 2011 (San Diego) – Apparently every generation brings a disaster movie in which an asteroid, meteor, or comet is about to strike the Earth. There was Meteor in 1979. My generation had not one but two such movies in 1998. They were Michael Bay’s Armageddon and Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact. I don’t think I need to tell you which was more popular among my classmates.

 By Nancy Clement

By Brian Lafferty

November 11, 2011 (San Diego) – As a critic it’s easy to look at a film and say something like, “It would have been better if they did this.” The flaw of such logic is that there’s no guarantee that the replacements or additions would be any better than what made it onto the screen. Nor would excising a scene or plot necessarily benefit the movie.

By Brian Lafferty

Last year I lost my mother to breast cancer. This column is the third of a four-part series about loss and grief from an Autistic’s perspective.

November 10, 2011 (San Diego) – I’m an optimist. I’m not a Lloyd Dobler optimist, but I rarely get pessimistic. When Mom fell ill it was emotionally hard for me to see her sick every day. But I didn’t dwell on the worst-case scenario. I refused to believe the worst-case scenario would even occur. Mom was strong. I believed she would beat it.

By Brian Lafferty

November 8, 2011 (San Diego) – Attack the Block is made in the same spirit as the early 1980s work of Steven Spielberg. Like E.T., it centers on a group of young boys who have a life-changing encounter with the uncanny. Like The Goonies (which was directed by Richard Donner, but everybody knows it was really Spielberg’s film) the boys in Attack the Block band together on a daring adventure to save their homes.

By Brian Lafferty

November 7, 2011 (San Diego) – The comic book superhero genre won’t be going away anytime soon and that’s all right with me. Thanks to Warner Bros., The Dark Knight and Watchmen rank among my most favorite theater experiences. There have been many other comic book movies that left me excited for the next installment, eager to discuss them with friends.

By Brian Lafferty

November 7, 2011 (San Diego) – Dressed to Kill, now out on Blu-Ray, is Brian De Palma at the apex of his career’s “Hitchcock Stage.” It began with Sisters in 1973. It continued with Obsession in 1976, which was a remake of Vertigo that actually bettered Hitchcock’s alleged masterpiece (Vertigo is, to me, perhaps the most overrated film of all-time). In 1980 he wrote and directed Dressed to Kill, a mystery thriller that borrows a lot from Psycho (De Palma, in a featurette, defends himself against plagiarism accusations, arguing that Hitchcock created a specific film grammar that he merely utilized).

By Brian Lafferty

November 4, 2011 (San Diego) – I love surprises. I drove into the parking lot where the In Time screening too place thinking that it was going to be a dime a dozen action film with incoherent stunts and poor camerawork held together by a gimmick. Over two hours later, I went home with a smile on my face.

By Cate Sacks

November 3, 2011 (Alpine) -- All These Animals put up with constant walking, petting, mauling, hugging, and kissing from an ongoing stream of children last weekend at the Santee Fall Festival.  They all proved to be wonderful family pets.  Even our sweet black cat walked on a leash for the kids!

By Greg Dunne

 By Sharon Courmousis Sacred Rocks Reserve

Increase your enjoyment of living!

By Doug Deane

October 29, 2011 (San Diego’s East County) -- The following local, state and national education news items are excerpted from a very informative e-newsletter published by Doug Deane, chair of the Business Education Committee at the San Diego East County Chamber of Commerce.

Our picks for Deane’s top education stories from the latest issue include:

• GUHSD boundary study community forums
• GUHSD Superintendent Swenson’s Newsline
• State looks into loss of funds by start-up charter schools
• California gears up for extra year of kindergarten
• Students need supervision to make online learning work
• The forever recession (and the coming revolution)
• How to break the cycle of remedial college classes
• Definitions, models and characteristics of gifted students
• Designing schools for 21st century learning
• A trigger to disaster at schools
• Young superintendent has district on rise
• West Hills to commemorate 50th anniversary with Gala Nov. 4
• Report calls for new oversight of school construction
• County teachers of the year named
• Weighted AP grade will cost you at Helix
• A new yardstick to measure schools
• Bill would overhaul No Child Left Behind
• Online educators gaining both classes and critics