Just a quick question:  Why does the Bee use the cover of the highly read Ticket section to feature the film “Fred Claus,” then spend two pages bashing the film like a baby seal in a batting cage? 

Maybe they could have featured one of the 100 or more artists with gallery shows this Saturday, or a performer from the Festival of New American Music.  This is nothing against movie critic, Carla Meyer, who is thoughtful and direct in her piece.  This is aimed at the editorial board, or whoever else in the “Entertainment” section is responsible for what gets put on the cover (if you happen to know, drop us a line) who may just want to cut down on the number of movies they feature on the front page of the Friday Ticket. 

How about this for a small piece of advice?  Unless it’s a four star movie, put something else on the cover. 

If you’ve missed the Herb Caen-like musings of “Aloha Bob” Graswich in the Bee, you can now rejoice.  The folks over at 21st and Q have given the job over to Lisa Heyamoto, Sacramento’s most laid-back columnist.   Heyamoto has casually catalogued the eccentricities of the city for a week now, and seems to already have the feel for the ironic, charming, and trivial content necessary for a successful three-dot column.  When you think about it, the three-dotter is really the true precursor to the blog.  Sure, some people say that the diary format truly fathered the modern blog, but unless you’re Samuel Pepys, odds are you didn’t intend your daily musings to be public content.  The three-dot column is just a blog…on paper.

I, for one, am happy that Heyamoto got the job.  She’s been on my “someone-to-root-for” list ever since she wrote an odd piece last year about “Google doppelgangers” for which she was lambasted by Bee online commenters.  They poo-poo’d the piece’s triviality and newsworthiness, going on to personally insult Heyamoto in a most unprofessional manner.  I sometimes wonder what types of pieces these people want to see in the “Scene” section–severed heads, Afghan poppy fields, racial injustice–lighten the eff up here people, it’s the “Scene” section for chrissakes.  After that, Heyamoto went on an extended bender, but, in her defense, that was her job as the Bee’s “Nightlife” writer.

Anyway, bully to the Bee for giving Heyamoto the job.  I wish her luck as the region’s most prominent non-online blogger and hope that she doesn’t need to hit the “Nightlife” beat too hard anymore. 

We’ve taken our shots over the years at the two ring circus that is “Good Day Sacramento,” but we’ve not told the other side of the story, the side that compares Good Day against the other morning shows in the area to see where each stands in this fence-sitter of a media market. (Are we a small big market or a big small market, who can tell?) This week, a dear friend relayed to me his experiences with a two morning shows, and I’d like to share those with you. Hopefully, this will give you a chance to judge for yourself as to who really rules the airwaves from dawn to coffee break.

First of all, let me set the scene for you. My friend had two appearances lined up last month to promote an event, one appearance on the KCRA morning news on channel 58, and one appearance on Good Day Sacramento. The KCRA news appearance was (as if you couldn’t already see this coming) a bad scene.  Rushed for time, fighting technical difficulties and trying to get out his message points despite the woodenness of the broadcast team, my friend did his best to fill the thirty seconds that they wound up giving him. According to him, the crew was a bit scattered, everything was thrown together last minute and the everyone seemed a little stressed. Continue reading “A Tale of Two News Shows” »

This controversy over free publications makes me think of ripping down someone else’s “Vote for me!” student council campaign sign and replacing it with your own:

A Natomas media rivalry has turned ugly, with owners of two local publications each claiming the other has stolen stacks of the competitor’s periodicals from the rack.

In one case, Natomas Journal publisher Will Craig was caught on surveillance tape in August picking up a stack of N Magazines from the South Natomas Community Center, replacing them with his own newspaper and dumping the rival publication in an outside recycling bin…

Craig said he simply was sending a message to the people connected with N Magazine because he believes they have been stripping his racks for 21 months.

I understand, only remotely, that it’s important to the publishers to tell advertisers what their circulation is and where their publication is offered; however, doesn’t getting rid of the rival’s rag artificially increase the number of publications being taken?

At least he’s recycling them.

Local blog, Flippers in Trouble, received a mention recently in a Forbes.com article about the best places to flip a home.

Watching asking prices drop on flipper properties–those bought and sold within two years, according to real estate agents–has become a sport in the Sacramento real estate blogosphere. By filtering official Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data, the blog Flippers In Trouble tracks every area flipper–those who bought a home in the last two years–and reports who is trying to sell his property for less than he paid.

So, uh, I guess congratulations are in order? After 1 or 2 or 1,348 listings don’t you sort of get the picture that folks are having a hard time flipping properties? It’s a down market, we get it. I wonder if sacbee.com sponsors this Web site because they love them some piling on about the housing market.

UPDATE: Turns out we aren’t the only ones with the market cornered on snark. The folks over at Sacramento Land(ing) are having some fun with this post, too. Nice work, guys.

Yes, it’s that time of year again.  No, not Big Fun time.  No, not triple digit weather time.  No, not time to change your Brita filter.  It’s time to vote in the Sacramento News & Review’s “Best of Sacramento.”  Now normally, we’d stop there and let you all vote away to your heart’s content, but we’d like to make one quick request of you.  You see, there’s this website called The Sac Rag, and it would be really cool if you voted for it for “Best Local Website” and “Best Local Blog.”  It’s not much that we ask of you, just a little click on your little mouse.  Just think of it as checking “Yes” on a note that we slipped you that read: “Do you like me, check ‘yes’ or ‘no’?” 

Thank you for your support.

UPDATED 4:00 pm:  If you weren’t able to hear the live broadcast of “Insight” featuring writers from the Sac Rag today, you can check out the archived audio here.  Listen especially closely for the moment when sac-eats’s and Stickie’s breathing peaks and their hearts stop as Jeffrey Callison says, “I did a search on The Sac Rag and came across the following piece about me…”   You can almost hear Stickie and sac-eats thinking to themselves, “What stupid thing did we say about this fine gentleman that we’re now going to regret for the rest of our lives?”  It’s what live radio is all about.   

The Sac Rag was featured on “Insight,” the local topics show hosted by Jeffrey Callison on KXJZ. 

Insight-90.9 KXJZ, 2-3pm

August 1- “The Writers of The Sac Rag”

This is one of the good ones.

Marcos Breton’s Metro column today features his take on the search for the men responsible for the murder of Satender Singh a month ago. Once again it’s important for me to state that those people need to be caught and punished, and that Singh’s death is a real tragedy.

Breton takes Sacramento to task for being the kind of place where culprits don’t walk into the police station and turn themselves in routinely. He also brings up the “unwanted attention” this case brings on the area’s “Slavic community.” Although he acknowledges that only “some members” of that community belong to Evangelical churches who have engaged in anti-gay protests, he goes right on ahead and assumes that the attackers should turn themselves in because “[a]ttacking a man, causing his death and then hiding from the law is the opposite of Christian principles.” He’s obviously read his stuff, this Marcos Breton.

Continue reading “Breton keeps to Bee party line on Slavic Christians” »

90.9 actually.  That’s where we’ll be tomorrow, August 1, between 2-3pm.  The Sac Rag will be featured on “Insight,” the local topics show hosted by Jeffrey Callison on KXJZ.  Keep an ear to your Filco and you might hear the dulcet tones of sac-eats and CoolDMZ mixing with the subtle Scottish brogue of the show’s host.  If you do miss it, check out the archive here.

Insight-90.9 KXJZ, 2-3pm

August- “The Writers of The Sac Rag”

Sorry for the outage folks.  If you tried to connect to the ‘Rag this morning and were rudely turned away, we apologize.  No helping those pesky technical difficulties. 

Two media notes today:

1) The “Perfect Timing” award goes to “Sactown” magazine for featuring Natalie Gulbis, local LPGA golfer, on the cover of their most recent issue.  Despite her good looks and good game, Gulbis had never won an LPGA event as of printing.  Gulbis just won her first LPGA event yesterday in France.   Nice timing, guys.

2) Thanks to Sam McManis at the Bee for including CoolDMZ in his recent piece about local blogs.  Also, thanks to Jennifer at Sacatomato.com for her kind words.