July 2010 – Page 2

California Pizza Kitchen’s Cherry Lime Sparkler

July 23, 2010June 9, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Some journos spend months landing an exclusive interview with a Hollywood star. We spent six weeks working to bring you this exclusive review of California Pizza Kitchen’s cocktails. Our request went from server to manager to general manager to corporate office to public relations to marketing to… well, who knows? Way up we went in the halls of corporate pizza power and back down again to get the OK. At last it was on. CPK, we’re coming for your cocktails, so unlock that liquor cabinet.

First of all, has it really been 19 years since CPK hung its shingle at the former corner of De la Guerra? General Manager Kevin Secky has been here nine of those years, making sure the gears are greased and the dough is spinning. The full bar has only been open for three years, where it served beer and wine only once. But now there’s a page full of mojitos and margaritas and another page of assorted specialty drinks. Secky put the human face on the machine and welcomed us to it.

Putting Stock in Youth : SB’s Summer Stock is City’s longest lasting theater camp for kids

July 16, 2010June 9, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Eric Lehman thinks ahead, well ahead. When he was in his mid-20s he wanted to “keep something going and age with it.”

That something was Summer Stock, the Santa Barbara-based theater summer camp for schoolchildren that has been introducing young kids, from 6 years old and up, to the thrill of stepping onstage. Lehman and his wife Maureen have been at it long enough that their grandkids will be joining the cast for this summer’s first performance “The Cosmic Cools,” featuring kids aged 7 to 11, showing Friday at Center Stage Theater. That’s followed by “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe,” for 12 to 15 year olds, opening Saturday.

Precious moments, onstage and off: ‘Time of My Life’ caps Rick Mokler’s career at theater department

July 13, 2010June 9, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Rick Mokler retired last month after 20 years as a director, instructor and later the head of the Theater Department at SBCC. A great number of local actors worked under his tutelage, and Santa Barbara theatergoers, whether they know it or not, continue to encounter his graduates at Center Stage, Rubicon and beyond. So his swan song, Alan Ayckbourn’s “Time of My Life,” can only take on added depth with its comic examination of time, nostalgia, memory and appreciating the here and now.

“Time” dates from 1992, and is one of Ayckbourn’s lesser-known plays, yet it employs the same kind of time-jumping formalism as “Absurd Person Singular” and “Bedroom Farce.” The center of events is a 54th birthday dinner at a favorite Chinese restaurant for Stratton family matriarch Laura (Katie Thatcher), surrounded by her husband Gerry (Jon Koons), her son Glyn (Brian Harwell) and his wife Stephanie (Leesa Beck), and her other, younger son Adam (Josh Jenkins) and his date Maureen (Marisa Welby-Maiani).

Dargans’ Irish Coffee

July 9, 2010June 11, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

By the time you read this, the World Cup will be nearly over and you’ll have more of an idea about where your teams of interest stand, if they’re standing at all. At the time of visiting Dargan’s after a long absence, all the talk was on Koman Coulibaly, who was responsible for America tying rather than winning their match against Slovenia. “What was that ref thinking?” “He certainly was the villain of the piece.” And so on.

Because of the early hour for many of the matches, both Dargan’s Irish Pub and its neighbor The Press Room have been opening in the early morning. One would think no one gets up to watch a 4 a.m. match downtown, but they do. Dargan’s is not that bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but they have been opening at 7 a.m.

THE ORIGIN – UCSB A&L brings eight classic monster movies downtown

July 2, 2010June 11, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Alright, so Universal’s attempt to resuscitate its classic monster movie franchise hit a big, hairy speed bump with “The Wolf Man.” Its mixed reviews don’t bode well for the remake of “The Creature From the Black Lagoon,” coming next year. While Hollywood (in all its wisdom) tries to reinvent the wheel, why not take in the original wheel? This summer, Arts & Lectures presents all the classic Universal monster movies in one spooky fest.

Even if you haven’t seen these films, you’ve heard of the monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein (and his bride), Wolf Man, Invisible Man, Mummy, the aforementioned Black Lagoon chap and the Phantom of the Opera, who, by the way, isn’t some handsome guy in a mask.

And speaking of A&L…UCSB Arts and Lectures announced its overflowing 2010-11 season this past week

July 2, 2010June 11, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Is it too early to be planning the fall and new year? Didn’t summer just start? If you’re Celesta Billeci and her longtime staff at UCSB Arts & Lectures, thinking years ahead is just part of the job. Long before this story, A&L signed off on a full calendar of events beginning in August and ending next May, with lots of room in between for surprises to happen. (And good surprises, too. This time last year, that surprise turned out to be Elvis Costello.)

“People always ask us, ‘What’s new?'” says Billeci. “But ‘what’s new’ is our modus operandi. We’re always adding new events. We want to keep it fresh and relevant. We don’t want to say this is it, and nothing more.”