Hello, readers. This is a hot infotainment alert that Sac-Eats and I will be raiding the public airwaves again to discuss the big fun that you, your family, your date, your friends, or any combination of the above can have at the California State Fair.
Please tune in to Insight on Capitol Public Radio, which you probably hear at 90.9 FM, on Monday, August 24th at 10:00 AM. We hope you will join us!
I’ve got a lot of random thoughts after the first weekend of the California State Fair, so forgive me if they are a little haphazard.
It appears that the organizers this year had two goals, which I think are both blue ribbon ideas and successes in their implementation:
1) More public participation
2) Be more funny
If you check out the free Official Program included in every Sacramento News and Review (another stellar idea), you’ll see that there are a lot of audience-involved competitions, including the Fair’s Karaoke Championship on 8/30, the Rock Band (as in the video game) Stage, and the State Fair Star talent contest, among more than a dozen others.
You’ll also see more comedy around the park. Funny attractions range from the educational (Sparx Sound Effects Show, one of the many Hollywood-themed attractions) to the wacky (the Traveling Game Show is hysterical) to the just plain weird (check out the creepy singing robot at the SMUD exhibit). And, as usual, Jeremy the Juggler is back, who I think is damn funny and super-talented, calling him a “kids†attraction is a little insulting, in my opinion. Weird Al also made his second appearance in a row, let’s hope he comes back next year. If you weren’t there, you simply have no clue how great his show is.
Now on to the Booze!
Continue reading “Stickie’s Report on Big Fun – Part 1”
There has been quite a bit of attention from the Sacramento Bee about the John McCrea story, and I’ve got a few things to say about it. I appreciate the attention to the SacRag, positive, negative or neutral, but I feel the need to correct a few details that I feel the Bee got wrong.
I think Rachel Leibrock missed on a few points. Call it poetic license, call it journalistic opinion, but I call foul. You may have noticed that there are many things in her 21Q blog entry in quotation marks, which I said, and other things that are not, but are attributed to me as they are accompanied by the words “so says”.
Her headline was “Lighten Up Sac – or so says Sacrag writer”. Well, that sentence implies that I said those words. I did not. I never said that Sacramento should lighten up, mellow out, take a chill pill, calm down, cool it now, or float on (oops, that last one shows my age). In fact, I acknowledged to her that I knew that I was running the risk of offending people with this story.
Another quote from her story is the implication that I said, “Ya’ll should step off, too.” Again, I never said anything to this effect. In fact, I don’t think I have ever used the words “step off” in my life, and I would expect my friends to punch me square in the face if they ever heard me utter this phrase.
Most offending to me is her claim that I feel that “SacRag readers don’t have a very good sense of humor”. Whoa. Damn. I have all sorts of problems with this statement.
First and most important, I never said that, nor did I say anything that implies it. In fact, the readers of the SacRag crack me up. Some comments to stories bug me, but I am still amused by the interaction that occurs on this site.
Second, please look at the comments that were made by readers. A total of six readers made negative comments about the story. Six. According to StatCounter, we had 1,053 unique visitors and 551 click-throughs to the entire story. I know that we have this level of daily traffic (although this was a bit more than usual), so I would never judge the readers of the Rag based upon negative comments from only six readers.
Third, I am not arrogant enough to think that if I write something humorous that others do not find funny, that this means that the dissenting readers are somehow deficient. Different strokes for different folks.
To conclude, I don’t want anyone to think that this article is “sour grapes”. We at the Rag provide media commentary and criticism, just as Rachel does when she writes her 21Q blog. Blogging is not necessarily journalism, as a blog provides opinions, interpretations and spin with more individual freedom than a piece of journalism that is subject to editorial control and a more stringent demand for neutrality and a consideration for a well-rounded presentation of opinions. We at the Rag have already acknowledged our mistake; I hope that our counterparts at the SacBee are big enough to do the same.
The Sac Rag 