Author: CoolDMZ

"X-ray vision to see in between / Where's my kimono and my time machine?"

“1st-Grader Threatens To Shoot Classmate”

green gun
not this kid… or WAS IT???

KCRA reports:

A first-grader at a Sacramento school threatened to shoot a classmate over an argument, police said.

Authorities were called to Caroline Wenzel Elementary School at 6870 Greenhaven Drive at 11:45 a.m. Monday to assist school officials with an investigation, Officer Norm Leong said.

The 6-year-old’s father was contacted and advised of the threat. No arrests were made.

Investigation? No arrests made? You don’t say. I’m glad the principal, Judy Montgomery/Philip Moore according to SCUSD’s website, didn’t decide to go off book and handle this themselves. If this was my kid, I would be so livid that I would probably forget to scold him for being such a dingbat. Is that really the district’s policy when it comes to these things?

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!!! to play Austin City Limits festival

The just-announced lineup for this year’s Austin City Limits music festival includes former Sacramento band !!!. (I thought about ending that sentence in three exclamation points.) The font size of the band’s name on the lineup poster puts them in the same tier as Sonic Youth and The B-52s.

The festival will be held October 2-4 in the Austin of Texas.

Segregation(?!) at Elk Grove schools

Supernintendo ChalmersAs the Bee reports today, administrators at several schools in the Elk Grove school district are going “old school” to motivate their kids to take standardized tests this spring — as in segregating them by race for motivational speeches:

Students at Laguna could go to any rally they wanted, but the gatherings were designated for specific races – African Americans in the gym, Pacific Islanders in the theater, Latinos in the multipurpose room.

What incredible bad taste and stupidity on the part of the district. If their concern really was to allow staff to “talk about test scores without making any one ethnic group feel singled out in a negative manner,” why not take ethnicity out of the question! Why not give all the kids a pep talk about how they can all do better?

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My favorite closed-up businesses

All of us who have lived here for any length of time (even 6 months) have had a favorite business close its doors, leaving a big hole in our routine. I’ve been a resident since 1982 so I’ve got my fair share. I’ve already mentioned Franke’s and Sidewalk Pizza, and I could probably list several dozen but the following 3 have been on my mind recently, so here goes my list of favorite businesses that are no longer among the living…

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UPDATED – Jerry Houseman’s pro-tax rant VIDEO

Jerry Houseman, SCUSD board member
Jerry Houseman,
SCUSD Board Member

At last night’s SCUSD board meeting, during which the board voted to close 4 schools, the thing that really caught my attention was member Jerry Houseman’s comment on the proposal for school closures. He took the opportunity to rail against the Tax Day Tea Party protests and Fox News, yelling at the assembled school parents and other taxpayers that the reason the district is in such dire straights is that people in California don’t want to pay taxes. The prospect of an elected official — charged with spending millions of taxpayer money — browbeating his constituents to cease their resistance to higher taxes while they have the gall to take advantage of a public service like education, is pretty frightening. I think perhaps he was out past his bedtime.

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SCUSD votes to close 4 schools

After a marathon meeting this evening the Sac City Unified School Board has voted to close four schools for the upcoming school year. The board decided to spare Mark Hopkins — which had been on the chopping block as of Wednesday — but that school will most likely close after next year. Genesis High School, and Alice Birney, Lisbon, and Thomas Jefferson Elementary schools will close; the district believes this will save $1.5 million.

Of all the rotten luck!

The Gaslight Anthem
The Gaslight Anthem.

Depending on how you look at it, either due to extreme good fortune or some severe karmic missteps in Sacramento’s past, Wednesday night held possibly the best night of live music in Sacramento’s history (for the indie pop/rock set):

  • Jenny Lewis at 6:30 PM at Empire
  • The Gaslight Anthem at 7:30 PM at the Boardwalk
  • The Hold Steady at 9:00 PM at Harlow’s

All three come highly recommended by basically anybody who has heard them. If it wasn’t for the Boardwalk being way out in Karma-knows-where, I suppose an enterprising hipster could have made all three performances (and then commit ritual suicide, obviously) but I think they probably had to settle for Ms Lewis and The Hold Steady and paying lots in cover charges.

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UPDATED: Media disconnect in the Tracy case

SEE UPDATE BELOW. Obviously we want the media to publicize Amber Alerts and report on murders. But there seems to be a disconnect between the media’s tendency to tout its own policies on not reporting certain details of crimes and its tendency to run for days with details of other crimes. What has happened in Tracy is completely devastating. When a story starts its life as an Amber Alert, but ends up being a story about a grisly murder, shouldn’t the media not want to have the victim’s face and name and the unspeakable details about what happened to her plastered all over the front page and sold as the top story?

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Public advocates present independent SCUSD budget analysis

At the April 2 SCUSD board meeting, a group of local advocates presented a well-researched and ambitious plan for the SCUSD budget that avoids layoffs and school closures. At least I think that’s what the plan does, there are lots of charts and graphs and financial stuff, and I didn’t have time before the meeting to dig through it. It does look well researched. Could make for an interesting presentation!

(Hat tip: SCUSD Observer blog)

Casting call: “Up All Nite”

nitelifBob Shallit reports that a local film company is holding auditions Saturday for a new local entertainment and nightlife show called “Up All Nite” that will be debuting on April 23.

“It’s ‘Entertainment Tonight’ meets ‘TMZ,’ ” says executive producer Roxanne Avent.

Isn’t that just called “TMZ”? Producers are seeking a female lead to co-host with Sac native Craig Jackson, host of VH1’s “I Love Money,” which I haven’t seen and which I kind of wish I didn’t know existed. Or it is genius, I can’t tell. They are also seeking a score of “reporters” to cover Sacto nightlife. Anybody trying out?

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