Sh*#t NDN (Indian) Girls Say

Here is a video that fascinates me. It's Northern NM Native Americans (or Indians - NDNs), likely from a variety of Pueblos, and the Navajo 'Res'. The accent is half northern NM - half not - maybe too Hispanic for the Navajos. The world of regional pow wows has become very big and important in recent decades, so they mention other tribes (e.g., Crees, in video #2 of this series) that they never, ever would have mentioned traditionally. One girl even mentions Vine Deloria, an influential Sioux writer, whose lawyer brother, Sam Deloria, was my next-door neighbor in the mid-Seventies! So, many, many influences crashing around!

How To Speak Posh

How To Speak Bristolian English

Year Of The Horse

"Breaking Bad" Touches One Of The Deep Mysteries Of The Southwest

"Breaking Bad" takes the viewer on a dark journey through the drug underworld, but it also touches something deeper. In Season 5a, episode 5, "Dead Freight", Lydia is kidnapped and taken to a basement. To save her life, she describes a railroad radio dead zone by pointing at a map. Where she points has no railroad, however. What is at that point?

Pueblo Pintado.

Here is a wonderful documentary about the Anasazi of Chaco Canyon. The section between 39:10 - 41:40 is most significant. As Robert Redford narrates: "From no one building, and at no one time, would a person see this pattern. It's as though this intricate symmetry of relationships to the sky and the Earth was drawn on the landscape, but only to be held in the minds of the people." Like "Breaking Bad" itself!

Puzzling False Alarm At 10th And J Streets

Baffled firefighters mingled with baffled nightclub goers at 10th and J Streets on Friday evening, about 10 p.m.. Someone called in a fire, but there was no fire in sight. "This is 1009 10th Street," offered a nightclub doorman. "1009? We're looking for 1001," said a fireman. But there was no such address.

No smoke, no flames, but the nightclub crowd was growing by the minute.

Who would have an incentive to call in a false alarm? There was one woman on the sidewalk who seemed to have an incentive: "Hose me down, baby! These firemen are HOT!"

Dramatic faceoff: Fire engine faces west on J Street; everyone else faces east.

Some of the fire engines regrouped on 10th Street between F and G Streets, where they busied themselves for a few minutes ousting a homeless person from a doorway. Still, no flames.

Oscar Nominated Animation Shorts

À La Française

Competition strong in the Oscar-nominated animation shorts!:

Bleeding Apple

Engineers at Apple are trying to contact me regarding my failed ITunes installation. Apparently it's topical today.

"Cabaret" Strike

Thursday Train

Mars Rover Opportunity Looks Pretty Dusty

Went native!

Here's a side-by-side view of the solar panels from December 2004 (left) and today:

Climbing Transmission Towers

Fierce Funk Class, In The Groove

I missed this fun last week. In the foreground, the girls in red, Steph (with the Fierce Funk labeled pants) and Sadie (the blonde) look particularly good. Sadie's considering three trips to various parts of the world next year. It sounds wonderful!

Still Haven't Got A Flu Shot

I'm pretty complacent about getting a flu shot. How could I get sick? I feel so good! On the other hand, it took only four days for H1N1 to terminate a healthy 46-year-old:

These were Nancy Pinnella’s last days: On Jan. 21, she felt sick, leaving work early. On Jan. 22, she went to a doctor, hardly able to speak or breathe. By 6 p.m. that day, she was in intensive care at Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento. Her kidneys were failing, her lung capacity severely reduced. Doctors sedated her, induced paralysis and put her on a ventilator and dialysis.

...On Friday, a bright spot: her kidneys and vital signs got better. Then, between midnight and 6 a.m. Saturday, Pinnella suffered three severe strokes in three different parts of her brain. On Sunday, the family said goodbye and took the 46-year-old advertising executive at KXTV News10 off life support.

Water Shortages Already Starting

It isn't even February yet:

The state department of health has identified 17 communities across the state that are running out of water and need help to keep their residents supplied with healthy and available water. It's what many fear may be just the tip of the iceberg as California's drought gets worse.

Four of the communities are in the Sacramento area, including the Whispering Pines Apartments in Mariposa County, the Jackson Valley irrigation district in Amador County, Washington Ridge Conservation Camp in Nevada County and a tiny group of cottages known as Ophir Gardens in Placer County near Auburn.

Ophir Gardens began running out of water late last year.

"The difficulty that they're facing is low yield from their single well," said Brent Smith, with the Placer County Water Agency.

Smith said the well is only able to provide one gallon of water a minute.

The parks owner has begun bringing water in by truck, an expensive process that has so far kept the 16 small cottages from running dry.

Residents like Rita Bainbridge are dreading what may happen if the system runs completely out of water.

"Cutting back on showers and dishes and stuff. And I won't like that...at all," said Rita Bainbridge, who has lived at Ophir Gardens for about nine months.

National Review Death Watch

There's a chance climatologist Michael Mann's defamation lawsuit against the National Review might succeed in bankrupting the magazine. Scientists in general, and climatologists in particular, are ill-equipped to handle brazen slander; a world where anything goes. Here's hoping!:

Scientist Michael Mann is suing the Review over statements made by Canadian right-wing polemicist and occasional radio stand-in for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn. Steyn was writing on the topic of climate change when he accused Mann of falsifying data and perpetuating intellectual fraud through his research.

Steyn went on to quote paid anti-climate science operative Rand Simberg — an employee of the right-wing think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute — who compared Mann to Penn State’s convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

Mann, Simberg said, is “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data.”

Strangely Enough, The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) Seems To Correlate Better With Precipitation In Albuquerque Than San Francisco

Friend Jerry notes:

I see that some people are blaming the harsh winter in the eastern US on the PDO.

But he's skeptical:

Preliminary analysis: correlation between subzero days in South Bend, Indiana vs December-January-February PDO index = 0.08. Correlation with average PDO index for previous year = 0.07.

ABQ Annual Precipitation vs. Annual avg. PDO * 10, 1949-2013. R-squared = 0.20. (To my surprise, according to National Weather Service (NWS), ABQ precepitation was nearly normal last year - 9.32 inches. According to NWS:

"This was the 6th year in a row with below normal precipitation, although 2013 was only 0.13 inches below the official 30 year normal of 9.45 inches (1981-2010). The long term annual normal precipitation (1892 to current) is 8.56 inches. 2013 was the 76th driest (46th wettest) on record since 1892."

Similarly, San Francisco Precipitation vs. Annual Avg. PDO*10, 1960-2009. R-squared = 0.04 (corrected for July 1 - June 30 water year - labeled in end year).

Jerry describes his efforts:

I also tried correlating the average FALL PDO index with the occurrence of subzero temps in South Bend, to see if there was any PREDICTIVE value in the index. Result: Rsq = .00001. I'm concluding that the PDO index is about as useful for forecasting as the Farmer's Almanac.

I'm not quite so ready to throw the PDO away:

I'm intrigued about its usefulness for Southwestern drought. Some connections work - Eastern Australia's precipitation swing from 2006 - 2011 vs. ENSO, for example.

Jerry warns about the seductions of ENSO:

I think that the usefulness of the ENSO index is what has misled some people into thinking that the forecasting problem can be reduced to the calculation of indices.

When I saw "some people", I include a local TV weathercaster. He attributes the harshness of this winter to the fact that the PDO is in its negative phase, conveniently forgetting that the previous two winters, during which the PDO index as also negative, were mild, with NO subzero temperatures at all.

Yes, consistency is a silly thing!

"Breaking Bad" Locations - Incremental Update

Every few of months, I do an incremental update to my "Breaking Bad" Locations Web Pages. I've finished another incremental update today to all my Locations posts. (Much of the update involves sneaking over to Shayne's and Marius' Web Sites and quietly copying a few of the spectacular art images there.)

The biggest changes were to the final post. What I was doing during the run of "Breaking Bad" was collecting and posting elsewhere on my blog the best of "Breaking Bad" reviews, videos, photos that I was running into on the fly. I take that blog collection and drop them onto this Web Page. In the event you missed them the first time around, or just like it all in one place.

Infrequent Posting As Of Late

I'm preparing an incremental update to my Breaking Bad posts.

The Smell Of Approaching Rain

It's a real thing:

There's a name popularly ascribed to this range of post-precipitation scents: petrichor. Petrichor was first described in 1964 by mineralogists Isabel Joy Bear and R. G. Thomas of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. As they defined it, it occurs when airborne molecules from decomposing plant or animal matter become attached to mineral or clay surfaces. During a dry spell, these molecules chemically recombine with other elements on a rock's surface. Then when the rains came, the redolent combination of fatty acids, alcohols and hydrocarbons is released.

Australian Fire Tornado

Steve sends this amazing video of a whirlwind on FIRE!

SNL "Her" Parody Trailer, "Me"

Pope Francis Is The Catholic Church's Obama

Like that's a bad thing:

Pope Francis is undergoing a popularity surge comparable to the way Barack Obama was greeted by the world in 2008. And just as President Obama has been a disappointment for America, Pope Francis will prove a disaster for the Catholic Church.

...Much is being made of his ‘compassion’ and ‘humility,’ but kissing babies and hugging the sick is nothing new. Every pope in recent memory has done the same, yet only now are the media paying attention. Benedict XVI and John Paul II refused to kowtow to the liberal agenda, and so such displays of tenderness were under-covered.

Francis is beating a retreat for the Catholic Church, and making sure its controversial doctrines are whispered, not yelled – no wonder the New York Times is in love.

...Francis not only panders to enemies and professional grievance mongers, but also attacks his allies. Just as Obama snubs Britain and Israel, Pope Francis swipes at practicing Catholics.

So not only has he insulted, and severely damaged the work of, pro-life and pro-marriage groups with his comments, he has also gone on the attack, dismissing Catholics who attend the older rites in Latin as ‘ideologizing’ and being guilty of ‘exploitation.’ Apparently “Who am I to judge?” doesn’t apply here.

...Apart from the fact that there is no major nation practicing unfettered capitalism (like Obama, Francis loves attacking straw men) there is more real tyranny in socialist cesspools like Francis’ home of Argentina than in places where capitalism is predominant.

In the document he rejects the free market and calls for governments to overhaul financial systems so they attack inequality. In doing so he shows himself painfully misguided on economics, failing to see that free markets have consistently lifted the poor out of poverty, while socialism merely entrenches them in it, or kills them outright.

List Of Rainy Season Dry Spells

The National Weather Service in Sacramento compiled a handy list of the worst dry spells during rainy seasons ever recorded since records started in the 1870's. The current spell will likely last until next Thursday, making it, at 53 days, far and away the worst of these dry spells:

(will likely reach 53 days): Dec. 8, 2013-current
44 days: Nov. 15-Dec. 28, 1976
42: Jan. 17-Feb. 27, 1899
41: Dec. 18, 1962-Jan. 27, 1963
38: Nov. 4-Dec. 11, 1959
38: Nov. 8-Dec. 15, 1940
38: Feb. 15-March 24, 1883
36: Nov. 26-Dec. 31, 1989
36: Dec. 18, 1960-Jan. 22, 1961
36: Nov. 15-Dec. 20, 1958
34: Dec. 16, 2011-Jan. 18, 2012
34: Dec. 5, 1956-Jan. 7, 1957

People Forget So Fast!

Looking Longingly At The Pop Culture Conference In Albuquerque In February

Nick and Lori are hosting, Miguel is presenting, Jennie is coming - maybe Kirika too. Maybe a reunion opportunity....

This Is What Catastrophe Looks Like

NAM, The Rebel

Interestingly, the NAM model is beginning to rebel against the model consensus, and suggesting rain in a week, on next Thursday. I like the NAM model – better than GFS – so here’s hoping it’s right!

Meanwhile, Fairbanks, AK, has been shut down by freezing rain, which in January, is utterly absurd

"Her"

Interesting movie! Falling in love with an operating system! Both Jetta and Joe the Plumber liked it (Jetta loves it; Joe's heartbroken and left afterwards to commiserate with some spirits).

Afterwards, I started asking Siri numerous questions, including, "Do You Love Me?" She parried the question well.

Cast featured Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly (a professional writer of faux-personal letters), Rooney Mara as his estranged wife Catherine, Scarlett Johansson as Samantha, the OS voice, Amy Adams as neighbor Amy, plus Olivia Wilde as the Blind Date, Portia Doubleday as the Surrogate Date Isabella, with contributions from Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Director Spike Jonze, and others. The scene is near-future Los Angeles, with a marked California vibe. Music by the ever-versatile Arcade Fire!

Speaking Of Ekaterina Krysanova....

I was wondering why I found the Bolshoi Ballet's Ekaterina Krysanova so attractive, and then I realized she looks a lot like Kylie Minogue. Hmmmm. I wonder if I have subconscious templates of what the Perfect Woman looks like. There must be a blonde template there somewhere in my head, but as far as brunette template goes, Ekaterina will do....

"Le Corsaire" - Bolshoi Ballet - Tower Theater - Pathé Cinema

Le Jardin Animé, "Le Corsaire".

Six months ago, Sally urged me to go see "La Sylphide" as performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, and presented at the Tower Theater by Pathé Cinema. Pathé distributes movies of very recent ballet performances, in the manner that live opera is sometimes shown in local cinemas. The number of showings is small (sometimes just one), and the entrance price considerably-higher than for most movies, but for the discerning viewer, it's the next-best thing to being in Moscow to watch the performance itself. Sadly, the Bunhead crowd can't seem to afford it, or maybe they haven't heard about it, so it was an old crowd (but Elaine was there!), but really, these films are the best way for young American dancers to keep tabs on what is happening in Moscow these days, and learn just who is who. After watching "La Sylphide" I had a crush on Ekaterina Krysanova.

Tonight, we went to go see "Le Corsaire": A brief synopsis:

Ballet in 3 acts and an epilogue on a libretto written by Jules Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Joseph Mazilier together with Marius Petipa.
Created on the 23th January 1856 at the Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra, Paris
This new choreographic version has been created on the 21th of June 2007 at the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscou.

Ballet broadcasted live in cinemas thanks to Pathé Live

Music : Adolphe Adam

Conductor : Pavel Klinichev

Choreography : Marius Petipa
Scenography and new choreographic version : Alexei Ratmansky, Yuri Burlaka
Sets : Boris Maminsky
Costumes : Elena Zaytseva
Lights : Damir Ismagilov

Médora: Svetlana Lunkina (réserve : Ekaterina Shipulina)
Conrad: Ruslan Skvortsov (réserve : Mikhail Lobukhin)
Seyd, le Pacha : Alexey Loparevich
Birbanto : Andrey Merkuriev (réserve : Denis Savin)
Zulmea : Kristina Karaseva
Gulnare : Nina Kaptsova (réserve : Chinara Alizade)
Isaac Lanquedem : Gennady Yanin
Gardien de Seyd : Andrey Sitnikov

Ballet of the Bolshoi Theatre
Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre

Directed by Vincent Bataillon
Produced by François Duplat – Bel Air Media / Pathé Live – Thierry Fontaine

New Look at an Old Ballet

This Bolshoi Theatre production is intended for those who still seek for miracles in theatre. ... And if, in addition, you are as passionate about ballet as was Petipa, who embellished the old Paris original with marvelous choreographic tableaux and numbers of his own and if you love it as much as do the creators of the Bolshoi-2007 version of Le Corsaire – Alexei Ratmansky and Yuri Burlaka who have attempted to revive – here the creations of their famous predecessor – there – simply his signature, you will become a devotee of this ballet and attend performances of it just as regularly as you do those of La Bayadere or Swan Lake.

This is real “grand ballet” where there is enough dance for virtually the whole company at once, while the prima-ballerina proves her right to this title almost without a break. And although this Le Corsaire is far removed from its literary source (Byron’s poem of the same name, dear reader), its libretto is quite capable of satisfying society’s love of the pirate-romantic genre.

A great deal of work was involved in launching this Le Corsaire. The creators of the ballet studied archive material in Moscow’s Bakhrushin Museum and in the St. Petersburg State Theatre Library; with the assistance of the Paris Opera, the original score was retrieved from La Bibliotheque national de France; the old costumes and sets were reproduced, while, having deciphered the original dance notation in the Harvard Theatre collection, Ratmansky and Burlaka added dances of their own, their aim being in no way to sin against the spirit of that age when the last of Petipa’s Corsaires loved, drowned and finally ended up safe and sound – the 1899 revival. Just over one hundred years later – might be a suitable title for this hazardous and one hundred percent serious romance between the Bolshoi Theatre and grand ballet.

...Le Corsaire was an unfailingly popular ballet throughout Europe in the 19th century. Its grandest staging was in Paris in 1856 but it soon arrived in Petersburg, was much revised, its first score by Adolphe Adam given a patchwork of interpolations. It survived, variously corrupt, in Russia, and in London we rejoice in the Mariinsky’s madcap account – by Groucho Marx out of Ali Baba. Now Alexey Ratmansky, director of the Bolshoi Ballet, and Yury Burlaka, a specialist in dance reconstruction, have made a production that seeks to show the ballet as Petipa finally transformed it in 1899. The plot may, fragmentarily, be Byronic but it is really a romp for pirates, slave girls, assorted eunuchs, and with a shipwreck to round matters spiffingly off. The score has been cleaned.

The scenery, by Boris Kaminsky, is brilliantly of-the-period in suggesting Adrianopol under Turkish rule. The costumes by Yelena Zaitseva rework those designed in 1899 and are admirable. Ratmansky and Burlaka have restored a text, recapturing much of what I sense is the Petipa manner, and filled it with dance delights. The result is fascinating, and was given on Thursday and Friday nights, when I saw it on the Bolshoi’s New Stage, with exultant zest.

Svetlana Zakharova, as the heroine Medora, was enchanting, witty and beguiling in step and manner, and she sailed with adorable grace through ferocious choreography. (At the second performance, Svetlana Lunkina was also a delight). The celebrated Jardin anime is revealed as a far longer scene than heretofore, the stage a riot of danseuses with roses in baskets, bouquets, parterres, garlands, looking exactly like the photograph in the programme of the 1899 staging.

The shipwreck is tremendous and scary, and Gennady Yanin scuttles about the stage like an anxious crab, brilliantly comic as Medora’s venal father. And the piece lasts 3 hours. ....

by Clement Crisp
The Financial times, 06/25/2007

Adolphe Adam was the same composer as for the ballet "Giselle", so in a way, despite their disparate styles (spare and classical vs. sumptuous and character), "Giselle" and "Le Corsaire" are cousins.

I was really struck by "Le jardin animé", partly because of the costumes, partly because the music so-closely parallels "Giselle" (with the garland-bearing dancers echoing the Wilis), and partly because of the sheer number of dancers. There were no surviving notes regarding the costumes for this part of the ballet, so costumer Elena Zaytseva had to create them from scratch. Interestingly, the angle of the skirt on the dresses in "Le jardin animé" almost-perfectly matches that of Morning Glories. We had those kind of flowers in Corrales, New Mexico when I was growing up as a little kid, so one odd effect on me of "Le jardin animé", with all the dancing Morning Glories, was a strange form of home sickness.

I think this is my favorite ballet now. It's so much better than so many!

Film Trailer




Fortunately, a pas de deux from this version of "Le Corsaire" is on-line!

Le Corsaire pas de deux - Svetlana Lunkina and Ruslan Skvortsov




Svetlana Lunkina Discusses Giselle

Trouble In My Neighborhood On A Monday Night

Looks like an auto accident.

"Cabaret" - Third Weekend - DMTC

Just one more weekend to go!

I haven't taken any pictures till Saturday, just because I worry about stuff derailing on my Stage Manager watch.

Afterwards, we went to Woodstock's Pizza in Davis. From our perch, we could observe pizzas being made.

Shoe Tossing Near Where I Live

These shoes mark the West End of what I suspect to be a Drug Zone.


I was mystified why people in my neighborhood toss shoes on electrical lines. So, time to consult Wikipedia:

Shoe flinging or "shoefiti" is the practice of throwing shoes whose shoelaces have been tied together so that they hang from overhead wires such as power lines or telephone cables. The shoes are tied together by their laces, and the pair is then thrown at the wires as a sort of bolas. This practice plays a widespread, though mysterious, role in adolescent folklore in the United States. Shoe flinging has also been reported in many other countries.

...A number of criminal explanations have been proposed as to why this is done. ... Some also say that shoes hanging from the wires advertise a local crack house where crack cocaine is used and sold (in which case the shoes are sometimes referred to as "Crack Tennies"). It can also relate to a place where heroin is sold to symbolize the myth that once you take heroin, you can never "leave": a reference to the addictive nature of the drug. Others claim that the shoes so thrown commemorate a gang-related murder, or the death of a gang member, or as a way of marking gang turf. ... However, the practice also occurs along relatively remote stretches of rural highways that are unlikely scenes for gang murders, and have no structures at all to be crack houses.

These shoes mark the East End of what I suspect to be a Drug Zone.


I rather like the drug-sale explanation offered on Wikipedia, because these shoes bracket a location where I often see mysterious people waiting in the shadows, and where there is mysterious traffic. A decade ago, I remember a Big Raid here, where a swarm of police shut them down at gun point. My guess is either that they have returned, or it's a new group resistant to the lessons of the past.

Good for what ails you....

I Never Did Solve A Rubik's Cube

I wonder if magic ponies do Sudoku?

Nice Work, If You Can Get It

These people are nuts:

One hundred million dollars for failure. That may be the total payout to Henrique de Castro, the number two executive at Yahoo, who was brought in just 14 months ago to boost growth and digital advertising revenue. De Castro, the chief operating officer who was lured away from Google with a $62 million deal, has been fired by CEO Marissa Mayer. According to The Wall Street Journal, De Castro will depart Yahoo with “a severance package that could be worth more than an estimated $42 million.”

The turnaround effort at Yahoo has been disappointing since Mayer took over in the summer of 2012. Some Wall Street analysts turned negative on the Internet firm, as sales dropped slightly last year. Mayer, who took the helm in July 2012, has attempted to revamp Yahoo with new exclusive content on its websites, redesigned email and other innovations. De Castro was criticized for failing to convince advertisers to spend more money with Yahoo.

Single-Payer Might Not Work In This Country, Because The United States Is Too Corrupt

So, we will be stuck with Obamacare:

"I have not advocated the single payer model here," he said, "because our government is too corrupt. Medicare is a large insurance company whose board of directors (Ways and Means and Senate Finance) accept payments from vendors to the company. In the private market, that would get you into trouble."

The key to a single-payer system is that the government sets prices. Usually, it empowers boards of independent experts who set those prices low. Reinhardt's argument is that in the United States, health industry interests have so much sway over Congress that the prices would end up being set by health-care interests.

"When you go to Taiwan or Canada," Reinhardt said, "the kind of lobbying we have here is illegal there. You can’t pay money to influence the party the same way. Therefore the bureaucrats who run these systems are pretty much insulated from these pressures. Here you have basically a board of directors in the House Ways and Means Committee that gets money from lobbyists both at the regulatory writing stage and during normal operations. And they can call an administrator and demand they stop something from happening."

...Still, Reinhardt's argument is a reminder that the simple fact that a policy worked in another country does not mean it will work in this country. His point about the importance of independence is particularly crucial.

"Stand Your Ground", In Practice

The Tampa Bay Times is keeping a database of all Stand Your Ground cases in Florida, fatal and non-fatal alike. Here are the fatal ones. Looks like a lot of gang bangers are using SYG to stay out of prison. The case of Muñoz seems the most poignant.

The U.S. And Iran Have Common Interests

Time to lose the hatchet:

While the two governments quietly continue to pursue their often conflicting interests, they are being drawn together by their mutual opposition to an international movement of young Sunni fighters, who with their pickup trucks and Kalashnikovs are raising the black flag of Al Qaeda along sectarian fault lines in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

The United States, reluctant to intervene in bloody, inconclusive conflicts, is seeing its regional influence decline, while Iraq, which cost the Americans $1 trillion and more than 4,000 lives, is growing increasingly unstable.

At the same time, Shiite-dominated Iran, the magnetic pole for the Shiite minority in the region, has its own reasons to be nervous, with the ragtag army of Sunni militants threatening Syria and Iraq, both important allies, and the United States drawing down its troops in Afghanistan.

On Monday, Iran offered to join the United States in sending military aid to the Shiite government in Baghdad, which is embroiled in street-to-street fighting with radical Sunni militants in Anbar Province, a Sunni stronghold. On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry said he could envision an Iranian role in the coming peace conference on Syria, even though the meeting is supposed to plan for a Syria after the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, an important Iranian ally.

...Yet even Iranians outside the reformist camp see the shared interests as undeniable. “It is clear we are increasingly reaching common ground with the Americans,” said one of them, Aziz Shahmohammadi, a former adviser to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. “No country should have an eternal enemy, neither we nor the United States.”

With Iran as an island of stability in a region plagued by violent protests, sectarian clashes and suicide bombers, there are not that many options left for Washington, experts here say.

“We face the same enemy, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a prominent Iranian reformist journalist who closely follows the Arab world. He recalled how Iranian intelligence operatives gave reliable information to American Special Forces troops battling Iran’s enemy, the Afghan Taliban, in 2001.

I Didn't Realize San Diego Mayor Maureen O'Connor Was Laid Low By Gambling

I saw it in the AARP newsletter, but this article gives more information. One billion dollars in losses? The mind boggles:

She won about $1 billion from 2000 to 2009, according to winnings that casinos reported to the Internal Revenue Service, but lost even more. Iredale said her net gambling losses topped $13 million.

Extreme Drought Awareness Is Beginning To Settle In

2014 is going to be agonizing:

Similar high-pressure zones pop up all the time during most winters, but they usually break down, allowing rain to get through to California. This one, ominously, has anchored itself for 13 months, since December 2012, making it unprecedented in modern weather records and leaving researchers scratching their heads.

...The current high-pressure ridge is even stronger and more persistent than a similar ridge that parked over the Pacific Ocean during the 1976-77 drought, one of the driest in the 20th century.

..."I wish I had a really good answer for this," said Daniel Cayan, an oceanographer and atmospheric scientist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. "It's unusual for the pattern to have not broken down to allow some relatively active, vigorous winter storm systems to track across California."

...Last year was the driest calendar year in recorded history in California in most cities, with records going back 160 years. The first snowpack reading in the Sierra Nevada earlier this month found a snowpack of just 20 percent of normal.

Meanwhile, major reservoirs in Shasta and Oroville are each 36 percent full, about half of normal for this time of year. San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos is 30 percent full, 42 percent of normal. Major Bay Area water agencies haven't yet called for mandatory summer water restrictions but are expected to make the decision in the next month or two, depending largely on whether the high-pressure ridge breaks down and rain falls.

State Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin told members of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento a week ago that his agency is likely to recommend that Gov. Jerry Brown declare a drought by Feb. 1, which would make it easier for water transfers between agencies and for emergency loans and other assistance.

...Since July 1, San Francisco has received 2.1 inches of rain -- just 20 percent of normal; San Jose has received 1.57 inches, or 26 percent of normal; and Oakland has received 2.08 inches, or 22 percent of normal.

Meanwhile, the Sacramento area is beginning to respond:

Faced with historically low water levels on the American River and a long-range forecast providing little relief, the Sacramento City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to enact severe water rationing on residents and businesses, while also boosting enforcement efforts against water scofflaws.

The council approved what city officials described as a “stage 2 water shortage plan,” requiring those who live and work in Sacramento to reduce their water use by between 20 percent and 30 percent.

...“We’re the river city and yet here we are having to make very difficult decisions,” said Councilman Allen Warren.

...The American River’s flow out of Folsom Dam is at its lowest point since 1993, putting it in “crisis mode,” Brent said. Folsom Lake is so depleted, remnants of a Gold Rush-era mining town buried by water for years have emerged in the barren lakebed.

Air Pollution Impacts From Wildfire Impacts

What is curious here is not how high the pollution levels were - pollution levels can be much, much higher in places like Fairbanks - or how long a period - they can last much, much longer in places like Fairbanks - but how they seem to detect an effect with such a small sample size. Disturbing, if the study can be taken at face value:

The research, conducted by UC Davis and the California Air Resources Board, found that rhesus macaque monkeys born at the university’s Primate Research Center in the summer of 2008 – an unusually intense fire season – had depressed immune systems compared with those born a year later.

...During late June 2008, PM 2.5 levels spiked at ARB measuring stations in Davis and Woodland, not far from the primate research center, said Lisa Miller, professor of veterinary medicine at UC Davis and a researcher at the primate center. Smoke had drifted into the Central Valley from more than 2,000 fires ignited by lightning strikes. More than 1.2 million acres burned.

“In 2008, monitoring locations had readings of 75 micrograms per cubic meter for a 24-hour period,” said Miller. “That is extremely high.”

The current national standard for safety is less than half that amount. Additionally, wildfire smoke also causes higher ozone levels, which are linked to asthma, lower birth weights and heart problems.

The effect of that particulate matter was measured on 50 monkeys – 25 that were born in 2008 and 25 in the mostly quiet fire season of 2009. Use of the primates is seen as a crucial model for establishing the effects of toxins and environmental effects on humans.

The young monkeys, which live outdoors at the primate center, were between 1 and 3 months old when they were examined. Researchers took blood samples and did lung function studies. “The idea behind this is that if we detected any changes in the animals this information might translate as a biomarker that can be used for kids,” said Miller, whose specialty is childhood respiratory diseases.

The outcome proved surprising, Miller said. Conventional medical wisdom says that smoke and other irritants cause immune systems to kick into high gear. This study, however, found the opposite.

“When we took blood samples and put them in a tissue culture dish and treated that culture with a mimic of an infectious organism, we found that the blood from animals exposed to wildfire smoke responded in a reduced manner when compared to the control group from 2009,” said Miller. “That means the ability of the animals to respond to a real pathogen was reduced.”

The Relentless Rise Of Lake Enriquillo

Calamity in the Dominican Republic:

Theories abound, but a conclusive answer remains elusive as to why the lake — as well as its nearby sibling in Haiti, Lac Azuei, which now spills over the border between the two on the island of Hispaniola — has risen so much. Researchers say the surge may have few if any precedents worldwide.

The Future Is Jellyfish

Jellyfish everywhere!:

How could jellyfish take over the ocean? “One bite at a time” Gershwin says. And there may be no way back. A new balance may be struck, one in which jellyfish rule:

We are creating a world more like the late Precambrian than the late 1800s—a world where jellyfish ruled the seas and organisms with shells didn’t exist. We are creating a world where we humans may soon be unable to survive, or want to.

So Now It's New Mexico's Turn

Irresponsible gun owners everywhere. So many that we'll never be safe with guns around:

Just before 8 a.m., authorities say, a boy some described as an outcast opened fire in the crowded gym. Seconds later, a teacher coaxed him to lay down the weapon and he was taken into custody. But two students lay gravely wounded.

A 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were flown to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas. The boy was in critical condition and the girl was in serious condition, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez said at an afternoon news conference at the isolated middle school, which sits atop a bluff at the northern edge of this town of 50,000 people.

By nightfall, officials had released their names: Nathaniel Tavarez, who remained in critical condition after two surgeries, and Kendal Sanders, whose condition had been upgraded from serious to satisfactory after surgery.

Here Comes The Cocci!

Valley Fever is a big deal in Arizona, but it's also a big deal in California:

In 1977, the San Joaquin Valley—the swath of agricultural land that runs through central California—was designated a disaster area. Record-low runoff and scant rainfall had created drought conditions. At the beginning of Christmas week, the weather was normal in Bakersfield, the city at the Valley’s southern end, but in the early hours of December 20th a strong wind began to blow from the Great Basin through the Tehachapi Mountains. Hitting the ground on the downslope, it lofted a cloud of loose topsoil and mustard-colored dust into the sky.

...The Tempest from Tehachapi, as one researcher called it, spread dirt over an area the size of Maine. Twenty hours afterward, the dust reached Sacramento, four hundred miles north of Bakersfield, in the form of a murky haze that hung in the air for another day, stinging the eyes and noses of the residents. On the twenty-first, it started raining in Sacramento, which turned the dust to mud, coating the cars and sidewalks, and marked the end of the drought.

Over the next several weeks, Sacramento County recorded more than a hundred cases of coccidioidomycosis, otherwise known as valley fever, or cocci, a disease caused by inhaling the microscopic spores of Coccidioides immitis, a soil-dwelling fungus found in Bakersfield. (In the previous twenty years, there had never been more than half a dozen cases a year.) Six of the victims died.

'Stand Your Ground' Defense In The Theater Texting Shooting

Charming! An ever-elastic, get-out-jail card that can used for any conceivable purpose.

"Nebraska" Serendipity

The trailer is more interesting with German subtitles.


Monday evening, I picked Joe the Plumber up (on obscure Del Paso Heights street corner) and he bought me dinner at the Mongolian Barbeque place off Truxel. Then, it was off to watch 30 minutes of previews before "Nebraska" (starring Bruce Dern, and featuring Bob Odenkirk of "Breaking Bad" fame) at Arden & Ethan.

Just before showtime, guess who showed up? Jetta and Lela! Apparently we independently settled on exactly the same plan. This is the first time that Jetta has met Joe the Plumber (she had refused meetings before this, because my stories painted Joe as dodgier than she would tolerate).

"Nebraska" is a fine film. "Extremely mellow," according to Jetta. I liked the cinematography of this black-and-white film. Reminiscent of "Breaking Bad", but with a different look, just because the northern plains of Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska are different than New Mexico.

Bruce Dern is a marvel!

Sympathy For Kim And Kanye

Troubles never end:

Kim was at a Beverly Hills medical building when she was swarmed by photogs. We're told the guy allegedly tried to help Kim get in the building, as he started screaming, "F**k these fa**ot-ass n****rs"" -- referring to the paparazzi. Kim then told him it was not appropriate to use the N-word. We're told he then screamed at her, "F**k you bitch. Just trying to help you. Shut up n****r lover, stupid slut."

Apparently that got Kim hot as fish grease ... she watched the guy walk into an office. As they were walking we're told the guy continued berating Kim. She dialed Kanye on his cell, and when the guy realized Kanye was on the phone he allegedly said, "F**k you N****r." Kanye -- who had just arrived at the building -- then met up with Kim.

Sources say Kanye and Kim rushed into the waiting room of chiropractor Richard Hill and found the 18-year-old sitting there. Witnesses say Kanye punched the guy and Kim screamed, "We have it all on tape."

If I was Kanye West, I'd have done the same thing.

It's all very calculated and cynical too. (Verse 2 of Britney Spears' "Piece of Me"):

I'm Mrs. 'You want a piece of me?'
Tryin' and pissin' me off
Well get in line with the paparazzi
Who's flippin' me off
Hopin' I'll resort to startin' havoc
And end up settlin' in court
Now are you sure you want a piece of me?

The Bimbo Jones Remix showcases Britney at her brilliant, humorous best!

Erik Flags "Terrible PR Pictures from the Theater of the United States"

This almost looks local.

Water Meter Going In, And An Era In Sacramento Ends

When my house guest left the house this morning for the airport, I could hear jackhammering down the alley.

In a few minutes, the jackhammering was right behind my house. I went out in my pajamas to challenge the workers.

Turns out, it's a new water meter. They've been installing these things all over Sacramento for years now. I had thought they had forgotten about me.

Sacramento is located at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers. There was a time in Sacramento where we could defy the rest of the state and waste water with abandon, even in the toughest of droughts. No more.  And era has ended.

Concrete box and metal plate, cleverly hidden behind a plywood board so no Homeless Recycler will ever discover them.

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend

Let's be realistic here. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If the choice is between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel (including psychotic Los Zetas), as it seems to be, then it's better that the U.S. work with the Sinaloa Cartel. We don't have to like the Sinaloa folks to do business with them:

An investigation by El Universal has found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs in exchange for information on rival cartels.

...There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be "the world’s most powerful drug trafficker," coordinates with American authorities.

..."The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the U.S.," reports El Universal, which also interviewed more than one hundred active and retired police officers as well as prisoners and experts.

...El Universal said that the coordination between the U.S. and Sinaloa peaked between 2006 and 2012, which is when drug cartels consolidated their grip on Mexico. The report ends by saying that it is unclear whether the arrangements continue.

I make the point in Comments here, but I'm not sure people understand.

More Questions Than Answers

Who are these Chosen People? What is this Promised Land? And why do we have to switch the Golden Calf for Blue Crystals?

This Bridge Scandal Is Just Starting!

Apparently it's about money - Big Money - but the exact connections are still murky. For reasons that are still unclear, Christie was trying to - and is still trying very hard to! - hold hostage the billion-dollar Hudson Lights project:

The Hudson Lights project is a billion dollar project because it offers unparalleled access to the George Washington Bridge. But take away that access and it’s no longer a billion dollar project.

...We know that because of its location, the long-term viability of this project could be threatened by any permanent changes to the GWB toll lanes that negatively impacted the on-ramp adjacent to the site.

...In other words, even though the permits were in place, the zoning approvals were done, the designs were finished, there was one last thing to lock down: the money.

...Moreover, the most crucial weeks that would decide whether this project would be capitalized are coincident with the weeks between when the traffic shut-down was ordered and when the traffic shut-down was lifted. It was only after Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye learned of Baroni and Wildstein’s shenanigans that the financing was finally sewn up. In fact, it was the very first business day after the lanes were re-opened that the developers announced they’d raised $218 million.

...I find it hard to believe that would-be investors in this project weren’t alarmed by the prospect that Port Authority officials had decided, without warning, to begin running experiments to see what would happen if local access to the GWB was temporarily, and then permanently, restricted. And in light of Mayor Sokolich’s first question to Chris Christie during their face-to-face meeting in Fort Lee this past week, asking the governor to promise not to exact revenge on Fort Lee for the trouble this scandal is causing, it seems even more significant that the governor was musing about making permanent changes in public during his December 2 press conference in Trenton. The cat was completely out of the bag on whether there had been a legitimate “traffic study,” and yet the governor persisted in characterizing the allocation of toll lanes as something that gave an unfair benefit to Fort Lee at the expense of the rest of the human race. Even in December, it seemed, Fort Lee and this project still faced a threat.

...I think that begins to get at what was going on here. We now know that a major redevelopment project, one that depends on Port Authority assets and relationships, was put in jeopardy at a vulnerable financial moment, and in a way that put the viability of the entire project at risk.

But we still don’t know why.

"Breaking Bad" Wins Big At The Golden Globes

That was to be expected, since "Breaking Bad" is the Best TV Series Ever.

This was unexpected, though: Jennifer Lawrence apparently not wanting to intrude into Taylor Swift's interview, yet capturing the attention anyway.

Similar to many people, I like Taylor Swift, but love Jennifer Lawrence.

Dinner With the Ettensohns

A good time catching up with the fambly.

Time To Repair Relations With Iran

Bad relations with Iran never made much geopolitical sense. We have too many interests in common. It's time to reboot.

Amber - If You Could Read My Mind

I like Amber's cover of Gordon Lightfoot's song. She had been part of the Starz 54 trio. Here, she is at a fashion show.




These guys lip sync over her solo studio recording (from 2000, or so). Disconcerting, but one can always choose not to look, and listen instead.

How "Breaking Bad" Broke All Of Biggie Small's Crack Commandments

Follow these rules, you’ll have mad bread to break up
If not, twenty-four years on the wake up

Sixty Years Without A Bath

No one knows why he lives like this.

Impressive! Since the California rainy season has utterly failed this winter, and with water use restrictions a dead certainty, I might look like this by next November.

Likes to smoke a pipe filled with animal dung.

Damn, this guy is a role model!

I Want To Believe

From Breaking Bad Friends.

From a 2011 review in Salon by Matt Zoller Seitz:

"Breaking Bad" is, in its heart, the story of the supposedly respectable, white, upper-middle class becoming the Other. I don't think it's an accident that those quasi-mythic drawings of Walt in the guise of his porkpie-hatted alter ego, Heisenberg, resemble old Project Bluebook sketches of extraterrestrial visitors. Walt is becoming as much an alien -- an undesirable Other -- as the illegals who have periodically sneaked across the border throughout the show's run.

Which reminds me of the only time I ever reported a UFO sighting.

Why Lavell Crawford's Fans Were Upset With 'Breaking Bad' Finale

Jeff Brofsky Will Be At Albuquerque Comic Con

It's time for Albuquerque Comic Con, and that means it's time for Jeff Brofsky! Here is brand-new profile of Jeff:

Brofsky's love for comic books goes back to his days as a youngster, growing up in Far Rockaway, N.Y. He still remembers his father, a lieutenant with the NYPD, giving him a buck and telling him to select 10 comic books.

Although his dad seemed to prefer that he pick out favorites like Superman and Batman, the youngster "wanted Marvel (brand) X-Men, Spider Man ("the first hero of the Silver Age of comics," Brofsky says), Fantastic Four." He wouldn't let his father read his new comics because he didn't like the way his dad bent the covers back when he read them, almost as if Jeff Brofsky anticipated a price guide coming out sometime in the future, with incredibly high prices for those in "mint" condition.

Some of those old titles are still some of his favorites.

"I still have a lot of stuff," he said. He keeps his best comics, including some top-dollar items, in a safe deposit box, and keeps his prized comics in mint condition by not reading them. Many of his old favorites have been reprinted in volumes of hardback books.

...Brofsky's parents moved the family, apparently part of that great Empire State migration, to Rio Rancho in 1972, right after Brofsky graduated high school. Brofsky said some Rio Ranchoans may remember his name in the Observer several decades ago, when he donned a costume to be "Chicken Man" at New Mexico Six Guns' hockey games at Tingley Coliseum.

He attended the University of New Mexico, where he ultimately obtained his bachelor's degree in psychology.

"I use it every day," he says of that degree, although a marketing degree might have suited him better for his Tall Tales Comics venture. Although his passion had once been stamps and coins - he remembered organizing his own show for those hobbies in New York - comic books remained a passion when he was an adult.

I went on two Vegas weekends. Since what happens in Vegas ends up on my blog, here is that report.

I Have A House Guest!

I've been in my house for nearly nineteen years. I've never had a house guest before! Shake things up a bit!

He went on a walk this morning. Who does that?

Curious if E. has met him by now:

M.: Say hello when he returns from his walk.

E.: I'll hide in my bedroom when mokum comes back.

M.: No, be sure to say hello! He's a nice guy!

Parking Violation In Midtown

Scofflaw on left; cop car on right.

Busiest Week Of My Pathetic Life

I hope it's enough....

A Roadkill Opportunity?

Sheryl Crow - "No One Said It Would Be Easy"

Really like this song.

So, Chris Christie's Got Himself A Scandal

It figures a bully like him would do something like this:

“What I've seen today for the first time is unacceptable," Christie said. "I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge."

I like a tweet posted at Daily Kos:

If you think Gov. Christie wasn't involved in closing the lanes to the bridge, then I have a bridge to sell you.
— @zachbraff

Rush Limbaugh, Meteorologist

He's an ass, but he makes me laugh, sometimes.

The trouble is that Meteorologist speak is slowly bleeding into common English usage. Weather guys talk like this all the time. At least the 'polar vortex' crisis of 2014 isn't as severe as the 'haboob' crisis of 2011 and 2012, when Arizona was hit unusually hard by these dust storms, and people all over the state freaked out about lurid-edged Arabic words contaminating the pristine way they speak out in the 602:

We are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country. And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented. Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have. It’s called the “polar vortex.” The dreaded polar vortex.

Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Well, they just created it for this week…They’re in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming.

Made Buzzworthy!

Dave Layman noticed this Buzzworthy article that appeared last October regarding the descanso my sister and myself made. Somehow, I missed it, but it's cute:

"This Might Be The Sweetest Walter White Tribute Yet"

Clickworthy

Not:

For as little as a half cent each click, websites hawk everything from LinkedIn connections to make members appear more employable to Soundcloud plays to influence record label interest.

...Italian security researchers and bloggers Andrea Stroppa and Carla De Micheli estimated in 2013 that sales of fake Twitter followers have the potential to bring in $40 million to $360 million to date, and that fake Facebook activities bring in $200 million a year.

...Dhaka, Bangladesh, a city of 7 million in South Asia, is an international hub for click farms.

The CEO of Dhaka-based social media promotion firm Unique IT World said he has paid workers to manually click on clients' social media pages, making it harder for Facebook, Google and others to catch them. "Those accounts are not fake, they were genuine," Shaiful Islam said.

...In 2013, the State Department, which has more than 400,000 likes and was recently most popular in Cairo, said it would stop buying Facebook fans after its inspector general criticized the agency for spending $630,000 to boost the numbers.

...In Indonesia, a social media-obsessed country with some of the largest number of Facebook pages and Twitter users, click farms proliferate.

Ali Hanafiah, 40, offers 1,000 Twitter followers for $10 and 1 million for $600. He owns his own server, and pays $1 per month per Internet Protocol address, which he uses to generate thousands of social media accounts.

...David Burch, at TubeMogul, a video marketing firm based in Emeryville, Calif., said that buying clicks to promote clients is a grave error. "It's bad business," he said, "and if an advertiser ever found out you did that, they'd never do business with you again."

Charity As A Form Of Kickback

Pharmaceutical prices are way too high:

As drug prices have soared in recent years and insurers have increased co-payments, a new type of charity has blossomed to fill a vital niche — helping patients pay the steep out-of-pocket costs for their medicines.

But the largest of these co-payment assistance charities, the Chronic Disease Fund, is now in turmoil after questions have arisen about its relationship with a pharmaceutical company that is itself under investigation for its marketing practices.

The practice is casting light on what has long been an open secret: The bulk of the contributions to these charities come from the pharmaceutical companies. The foundations not only help hundreds of thousands of patients a year, they also raise drug company sales and profits.

After all, if a patient cannot afford out-of-pocket costs of $5,000 for a $100,000-a-year drug, the drug company gets nothing. But if the manufacturer or the charity pays the $5,000, the patient gets the drug and the company receives $95,000 from the patient’s insurance company or Medicare.

...Critics say co-pay assistance helps keep drug prices high and circumvents efforts by insurers to control drug spending by making consumers bear part of the cost.

“These subsidies are unfortunately used to promote the overutilization of expensive brand-name drugs,” said Wells Wilkinson, a lawyer at Community Catalyst, a consumer advocacy organization.

The charities counter that any benefit to the drug companies is secondary to helping patients.

“Look at the alternative,” said Dana Kuhn, founder and president of Patient Services, one of the charities. “If they didn’t donate their dollars, people would die.”

Drug companies often directly subsidize the co-payments for privately insured patients. But they cannot do so for patients covered by federal programs like Medicare’s Part D drug benefit, because that would be considered a kickback, an illegal inducement to use a drug.

Wonder How Pamela Trokanski's Plans Will Affect DMTC?

Synergy? Competition? Trouble? Success?:

Trokanski is fixing to build an 18,000-square-foot, two-story building next to her current studio that will introduce what she calls “Life in 11 Dimensions,” which will bring together a spa, healthy meals, dancing, art, theatrical productions and a community meeting space.

...According to a professionally drawn site plan for the project, a full 3,438 square feet can be devoted to meeting places for community groups, business conferences and the community, with a dedicated nearby space for the healthy food vendor Stone Soup to provide on-site catering. Produce could come from an on-site organic garden. A theater will have 115 to 200 seats depending on the production.

“It’s kind of a gift to Davis,” Trokanski said. “Living a healthy, creative life in a healthy, creative community in a healthy, creative world.”

Collaboration is the name of the game. Acme Theatre Company, a longtime troupe for high school-aged actors, is just one of several groups looking to benefit from “11D,” as the project is being called.

“We’ve been thinking of a collaborative space, so when Pamela talked about 11D it seemed just like a dream,” said Emily Henderson, artistic director of Acme. Henderson first met Trokanski as her student at a dance class at Davis High School, an example of the roots Trokanski has in the community.

Oak Park Heads Balletward

They are onto something good:

Denver Russell has the chance of a lifetime. She will star in what’s believed to be Oak Park’s first rendition of the classic ballet “The Nutcracker.”

“It means a lot to me,” the bashful 10-year-old said last week.

Denver is one of 40 girls in the Girls Self-Esteem Program Academy who are practicing their dance moves around the clock and honing their pointe technique by balancing on their toes.

...Girls in the program, ages 4 to 18, practice ballet three times a week and pay between $25 and $50 a month to participate. Most of the girls are black and hail from underprivileged families from across the Sacramento region, said Kandice Kelly, the program’s director.

“I’m of the belief that every girl in the world should take ballet once,” said Kelly, a former ballerina. “It helps with poise. It helps with grace.”

Kelly founded the program five years ago after volunteering at the Fathers Resource Center, a nonprofit for single fathers that she discovered while working as a television news reporter.

“There were a lot of girls who didn’t have mothers. And the little girls started following me on the weekends because I was the only female,” Kelly said.

Obnoxious Bureaucrats

Al Qaeda is apparently very meticulous:

This transaction in northern Mali shows what might seem an unusual preoccupation for a terror group: Al-Qaida is obsessed with documenting the most minute expenses.

In more than 100 receipts left in a building occupied by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in Timbuktu earlier this year, the extremists assiduously tracked their cash flow, recording purchases as small as a single light bulb. The often tiny amounts are carefully written out in pencil and colored pen on scraps of paper and Post-it notes: The equivalent of $1.80 for a bar of soap; $8 for a packet of macaroni; $14 for a tube of super glue. All the documents were authenticated by experts.

Nice Article On Liorah Singerman

Theater busy:

“My mother was a teacher in the Sacramento school district,” says Singerman, “so I knew how much performing arts were suffering in the schools. It was just horrible.” That first season, she spent 90 minutes a week for 10 weeks with students at Caroline Wenzel Elementary School in Greenhaven. They produced a review that was a huge success.

Five years later, Singerman is juggling shows at five schools—Didion, Crocker Riverside, Sutterville, Holy Spirit, and Shalom School—as well as a production of “The Wizard of Oz” at Sierra 2 Center for the Arts and Community in Curtis Park. That production will be taken to the participating schools, which simplifies the logistics of sets, lighting, costumes and choreography. Singerman—relying on her husband’s skills—has introduced the use of film to project the stage sets. “We rearranged our living room and set up a green screen, just like they use for weather reports,” says Plaza. “The kids came over and we shot footage.”

Singerman choreographs, directs and produces every show, with help from husband and assistant director Michelle Petro. Parents do everything from selling tickets and refreshments at the shows to ensuring that Young Actors Stage has a home at their children’s schools.

We Can Neutron Dance: Hollywood Movie Dance Tribute - Part 2

Kate writes:

Posted on Sullivan’s site as mental health break – very fun (especially if you like/remember the song), and very well done.

Say What You Think

Good point:

Following reports that the Iraqi city of Fallujah had fallen into the control of an al Qaida-affiliated group over the weekend, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wasted little time in putting out a statement blaming the tumult on the Obama administration's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the country in 2011.

...White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the likes of McCain and Graham ought to be transparent about what exactly they're proposing.

"I've heard members of Congress suggest this, but if members were suggesting that there should be American troops fighting and dying in Fallujah today, they should say so," Carney said during his daily press briefing.

Thrown Under The Bus

In the end, everyone abandoned Liz Cheney. And it's a good thing!:

Cheney’s early 2014 struggles had a lot to do with the flaws of her own campaign, and now she says family concerns ultimately doomed her bid. But I think her already-flailing debacle of a campaign (before the family news came out) tells us something about the fizzling of the Tea Party as an oppositional force, especially when it comes to serious, entrenched conservatives like Wyoming’s Mike Enzi. It bodes well for 2014 that she flamed out quickly. Nepotistic sister-betraying Cheneys and other Tea Party opportunists just may not find Republican primaries as easy as they were in 2010. And that’s good for both parties, and for the country.

A Happy Ending!

Amanda sends a happy note:

UPDATE: Alex is found! Thank you! Thank you to all who helped. He had located a river and was found following it. Stayed in the woods 2 nights. He is tired, hungry, and disoriented but otherwise well. Sooo many people came out for the search. Wouldn't have found him without you and the shares

Search Starting For Alex Salyers

Search starting early tomorrow morning for Amanda's brother, in the Sierra foothills vicinity of Cool, CA.

My dear mountain friends: My brother Alex has been missing since last night. He may have just wandered off, but no one knows where he is and we'd like to know he is safe. Last seen walking towards Auburn Lake Trails. Please let me know if you have any info.

Money, Success, Fame, Glamour

Michael Flowers, of "Breaking Bad" Set Dressing fame, continues to make challenging and interesting video mashups.

I am puzzled. Where is the moral? But it's five minutes till curtain, so must run....

First Weekend Of "Cabaret" Done

Was this just the most-endless Tech Week, or what? A performance or rehearsal on ten of the last eleven days! Endurance was useful for Stage Managing this show, but with a lingering cold, it was hard to find, at times. I'd fall into coughing jags, and had other issues.

New Year's Eve went pretty well. The cast was motivated!

Friday night, there were some glitches - people missing set changes, usually. Twice, I snagged the line leading from my head set to the radio transmitter while moving furniture, which disconnected me from the headset and delayed relaying 'Lights!' to Jenna in the Light Booth.

Saturday night was nearly-perfect for set changes. Just some prop problems (Letter to England, etc.). Dalton told a few tales - about how he and Katherine inadvertently spat into each other's faces, and the like. There was a distraction too. Katherine came onstage in her fur coat towards the end of Act I. She took off the fur coat and laid it down. Just then, a highly-visible moth came out of the fur coat, and started buzzing about on stage. Strange!

Sunday afternoon, a few set change issues returned. At the end of the first Train scene, Hugo exited stage right again, instead of stage left. With him delayed, that set change turned into a massive clusterfrack stage left. Richard and I nearly collided while changing the set just before 'Sitting Pretty', which definitely slowed things down. Katherine noticed the last egg remaining for the weekend was very-strangely puckered and distorted. We wanted to make Dalton eat it on stage, or at least see if there was a bat inside of it, or something, but thought better of it, and sent Rebecca out to get more eggs instead.

Feeling A Bit Nostalgic

First, for 1985....




Then for 2004.