Park-sick after visiting relatives in Boston, Addison and I decided to check out some of the many varied parks Santa Monica has to offer. For the first article we didn’t have to go far. Palisades, Reed and Dorothy Green are all in our regular rotation, but as we continued our tour further afield, trying to cover more ground, we enlisted... Read more →

I just found my old maternity bras in our garage. I’d been down there before scouring for them, but between furniture, Benjamin’s old clothes, toys and books and who knows what else, it seemed they were gone for good. Until, like a parting of the sea, Jay headed down to make a little space so we could maneuver through the chaos.... Read more →

Benedicte Schoyen was having photographs taken of her and her dancing at the Santa Monica Dance Studio. The photographer was walking with a cane, and Schoyen found out that he had been diagnosed with cancer. So she organized a fundraiser at her dance studio to help him. “She got all artist friends together to throw a concert and... Read more →

THE BACKYARD — Some people need an excuse to bring the barbecue grill out of hibernation and fire it up. Not me. I don’t care if it’s Fourth of July weekend or the Super Bowl. I love to grill, and pretty much do so all year long, taking breaks during the few days it rains or when too many neighbors stop by looking for... Read more →

Dear New Shrink, I am wondering if you can give me advise about handling rejection. I have started to feel really bad because I lost my job and cannot seem to find another one; several times I have gone on job interviews, and not even had a call back. But what is really troubling me is dating. I have no trouble getting dates but here too,... Read more →

Let me say this: you’re going to need a change of clothes. Now let me explain why: when you take Joe Rivera’s Kickboxing Burn at Burn Fitness you will sweat so much you will be sopping wet by the time you leave. Rivera, a black belt in two styles of martial arts with 30 years of training behind him, structures his class so that... Read more →

Bloody hell! No, that’s not an expletive, it’s a description of Martin McDonagh’s play “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” now messing up the stage of the Mark Taper Forum. A bizarre black farce about the deadly “Troubles” in Northern Ireland — how’s that for an oxymoron! — “The... Read more →

DOWNTOWN — Frances Noble became so hyper aware of the multitude of homeless women that populate the streets of Santa Monica while she was working on her latest book, “Blanket of Stars,” that she stopped walking by, let alone going to, public parks. “We saw these women and talked to them for days and days and days, and... Read more →

‘My Name is Khan’ With a theatrical debut that set an all-time record for the biggest weekend Bollywood opening film in North America, two of India’s biggest stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, star in this romance. Khan, an Indian man with a unique way of looking at the world, moves to San Francisco where he meets a... Read more →

At the same moment that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was being chided by the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee for having clerked for the suddenly demonic “activist judge,” Thurgood Marshall, Marshall himself, in the person of actor Laurence Fishburne, was enthralling audiences in a dynamic nearly two-hour... Read more →

Dear New Shrink, I often come up with new ideas at work which I enjoy sharing with my team. However, several times now I have shared ideas with no immediate feedback. However, soon after someone else will re-state my idea and it will then move forward. I am concerned that I am not getting acknowledged for my ideas and that others are taking... Read more →

DOWNTOWN — Megan Kilroy’s favorite place to go in town is the Santa Monica Pier. She thinks its crowded and touristy, but she loves looking out over the edge and watching the waves crash against the pillars. But when she sees a plastic bag floating in the water, her heart breaks a little bit. “I was just so mad, I just... Read more →

It’s been a long, arduous road to getting back in shape. I won’t lie. Sometimes getting up, going to the gym and making yourself sweat until you feel like you’re going to pass out, or pushing yourself to go that extra notch higher on the step mill, is not what you want to do when you roll out of bed. You make a choice. You... Read more →

Last month, news reports confirmed that whooping cough is now an epidemic in California. Physicians have since been inundated with calls from concerned parents. As the disease spreads both in California and nationwide it is important that parents inform themselves about pertussis (whooping cough), both what it is and what their vaccine and... Read more →

There are stories people tell of mortals and immortals at one time living together and producing offspring — half man and half god. They are stories found in our mythology. Ages pass and the stories are forgotten or at least relegated to story books. But what if there were some truth to it? Author Rick Riordan works from that premise... Read more →