An antique iron press with an enormous black wheel anchors the back room of artist Elaine Benjamin’s Blue Chair Press studio, formerly home to the Blue Lake Advocate. The place also came with the oak counter where she greets me, wearing a pair of round tortoise glasses. Obsolete objects are all around, including a row […]
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill is the managing editor of the North Coast Journal. She won the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2020 Best Food Writing Award and the 2019 California News Publisher's Association award for Best Writing.
Posted inArts + Scene
The Dead Celebrity Cookbook
Let’s get this straight — anytime somebody puts together a collection of recipes from dead celebrities, I’m in. The trifecta of food, gossip and pop culture nostalgia is too much for me to resist. Daily Show film critic Frank DeCaro shares the spoils of his extensive research — through what must have been an Alexandrian […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Film Festivus
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Journalist Mikael Blomqvist (Daniel Craig) is enlisted to investigate the long-ago disappearance of Henrik Vanger’s (Christopher Plummer) niece. Suspects abound — there are Nazis, drunks and abusers in every branch of the family tree. The heroine, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a punk hacker/researcher, is also among villains, and neither […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Owning It
Suk Choo Kim smiles like a happy baby. At 62, his hair is wispy and silver, but his broad face is still smooth and rosy like the persimmons heaped on the granite counter at which we sit. I open one of his folios, a black 8 x 10 archival paper envelope with a dozen or […]
Posted inMusic
Zombie Throw Down
Rome had bread and circuses. Arcata has stuffing and zombie wrestling. Scores were settled in gravy this past Saturday night at the Arcata Playhouse during the second annual Zombie Throw Down. Billed as a way to manage the local zombie problem, the show featured plenty of ghoulish makeup and audience participation. It was my […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Miso: Japanese Comfort Food
As soon as the mornings turned chilly enough to see your breath, my grandfather, who normally never lifted a chopstick in the kitchen, would commandeer the stove and scowl over a pot to make miso soup for our breakfast. This was not the pale little bowl of cloudy broth and delicate cubes of tofu you […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Fangs for Nothing
REVIEWS THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN — PART ONE. As I sat in a theater super-heated by the hummingbird metabolisms of 150 tweens, watching end-credits roll, I considered this: I had just sat through my fourth *Twilight* movie in the space of a week. This last is the penultimate installment in the series, the […]