A Southern California woman says she was caught up short when she enthused, “It’s the bomb,” and a 12-year-old had no idea what she was saying. Does our slang need to change as we grow older? Why do we say “the bomb”...
Puzzle Dude John Chaneski has a quiz about the unofficial terms for familiar things that have less familiar official names. “The Academy Awards of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” for example, are unofficially...
Here’s a riddle: “Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.” Think you know the answer? You’ll find it in this week’s episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other...
There doesn’t seem to be a settled counterpart to bicoastal for someone who travels between two places on the same coast. Maura in Marin County splits her time between Northern and Southern California to be near grandchildren, and bipolar isn’t the...
In California, everybody gets a little crazy when those hot, dry winds called Santa Anas start blowing. A caller asks the origin of the name. Is it a translation of Spanish for “Satan’s wind”? By the way, here’s that list of...
jingle mail n.— «In the great Southern California bust of the early 1990s, real estate legend holds, many defaulting homeowners mailed their keys back to the lenders, in effect washing their hands of the whole matter, and promptly left...