by Terrance McArthur
It started as a Christmas card/pamphlet, a story sent to 200 friends by Philip Van Doren Stern. Frank Capra turned it into a 1946 movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart. The film wasn’t a hit at the box office, but it became a hit on TV and video. The Lux Radio Theatre broadcast an hour-long version of the movie in 1947, and a TV film was made of a benefit performance in 1999. An expanded (adding more of the film scenes and dialogue) script is now Merry Christmas, George Bailey, a CenterStage Clovis Community Theatre production at the theatre in the Clovis Veterans Memorial District Auditorium through December 11.
by Terrance McArthur
Once upon a time…an orphaned baby crawled into Santa’s sack and was carried to the North Pole, where he grew up thinking he was an elf…Oh, you’ve heard this one? A Will Ferrell movie called Elf, you say? (A movie everyone seems to have seen—except me.) Well, in 2010, a musical version opened on Broadway, and it usually plays at Christmastime. Elf: The Musical is now onstage in a Good Company Players production at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater through January 9, and that’s a good thing. You should be glad.
by Terrance McArthur
A food magnet of the area for thirty-eight years, the Sunnyside Delicatessen owners retired and closed shop during the Pandemic Panic. Take heart, dear friends! It has returned, under new ownership, and southeast Fresno once more rejoices in the taste of Reuben sandwiches.
by Terrance McArthur
The Good Company Players’ holiday shows at the 2nd Space Theatre have always been a good bet; there’s no dinner with the show like you’d get at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater, but the price is lower for a classic, love-and-laugh-filled memory or a musical review to lift the spirits. It could be The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, It’s a Wonderful Life: a Radio Play, or A Christmas Carol, or a lively conglomeration of comedy and music like this year’s Holly Jolly Holiday, playing through December 19.
by Terrance McArthur
Coagulated milk protein. Sound delicious?
Hold on! That’s cheese we’re talking about, and there are over a thousand types, each with a different combination of the animal source, its diet, added enzymes to speed coagulation, pasteurization, butterfat, and aging. The Great Food Search presents the ooiest, gooiest, cheesiest dishes we could find—How Cheesy Can You Get?
by Terrance McArthur
Gomez and Morticia, singing and dancing?
It must be The Addams Family musical, back onstage in the Good Company Players production at Roger Rocka’s Music Hall through November 7.
by Terrance McArthur
Everly Swan is worried about a rival tea shop opening in town, her relationship with hunky police detective Grady Hays, and the annual Lost Colony historical drama, and…oh, yeah…a star surfer, dead with an arrow in his back, in Bree Baker’s sixth Seaside Café Mystery, Partners in Lime.
by Terrance McArthur
When it’s summer in the San Joaquin Valley, it’s hot…so, why not have a hot dog? The Great Food Search has gathered a tasty pack of the frankfurter kind. Let’s take a bite.
by Terrance McArthur
Barefoot in the Park, Neil Simon’s longest-running Broadway play, turns fifty-eight years old this year. Is it still funny? Under Dan Pessano’s expert direction, the Good Company Players’ production at the GCP Second Space answers with a resounding…”YES!”
by Terrance McArthur
It’s summer, and you want to eat something light, so…Let there be SALADS! And there WERE salads…and they were GOOD!
The Great Food Search has featured salads before (in 2014 and 2019), and some of the restaurants I’ll talk about this year are ones I’ve mentioned in earlier articles, but they aren’t the same salads, so…Let’s Eat!
by Terrance McArthur
There was I Do! I Do! in the 60s, and then there was the off-Broadway Daddy Long Legs, and a Good Company Players production of Daddy Long Legs is onstage at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater through September 12.
by Terrance McArthur
A bed & breakfast on the California coast. A 400-year-old shipwreck. Rumors and roomers, and an 11-year-old girl investigating her suspicions. Of course, there has to be a murder in Treasure Most Deadly, Terry Ambrose’s fifth Seaside Cove Bed & Breakfast Mystery.
by Terrance McArthur
Barbecue, barbeque, BBQ, or Q—call it what you want, it’s always good eating. Banners, flags, and billboards up and down Clovis Avenue promoted BBQ, but I never paid much attention to it until I went to a friend’s memorial service at the California State American Legion offices in Sanger (Yes, Sanger). After the service was a barbecue, and it was so-o-o-o-o-o good! Where did this food come from? I found out, and the answer is the subject of this Great Food Search.
by Terrance McArthur
Do you know what “serendipity” is? The word was coined from a Persian folktale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes succeed by luck and accident. It’s those little instants when things in the universe fall into place. Synchronicity. Chance. Happenstance.
