BATHROOM TISSUE MAY BE KEY TO HIGHER TV RATINGS
If you want to make “Big Brother” interesting, ration the toilet paper. The public verdict on CBS’ latest laboratory experiment is that it’s tedious. The reasoning, popular punditry goes, is that reality is boring. I disagree. The flaw was thinking that cramming 10 people into a two-bedroom apartment would inevitably…
TIMES PLACES 2ND FOR INDIA SERIES
The Times has been awarded second place in a competition sponsored by the New York-based South Asian Journalist Association. The staff was recognized for “Passages from India,” a series of stories on the cultural, artistic and political life of Indians and other South Asians in the Bay Area. The series…
COULD KICKBOXIN’ SCRIBE BE THE NEXT “SURVIVOR”?
I better get Employee of the Month for this. My co-workers, who conducted a secret vote under citronella tiki torches by my editor’s pool, have decreed that I am the employee most likely to make it in “Survivor.” “You’d be perfect for this,” cooed one. “You better sign up, girl,”…
ALL FIRED UP FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY
Thanks to Leap Year, Independence Day gets shunted to a Tuesday and deprives some working stiffs of a three-day weekend. Arm yourself with little historical knowledge and you might appeal to a higher-up’s sense of patriotism and fair play. Technically, when the Pennsylvania Evening Post published “This Day the Continental…
TOURS AND WALKS CAN FILL THOSE SUMMER DAYS
If you want to keep a few steps ahead of the summer crowds, you have to know where you’re going and sometimes where you’ve been. You might think a tour would be the last place for a native to get re-acquainted with his or her own surroundings. How often, though,…
PEOPLE
Punctuality counts for Bob Dylan’s gig tonight OK, you lollygaggers and slackers. You know who you are, creeping late into concerts, stumbling into people’s picnic baskets on the lawn or elbowing folks on your way to your seat. Be warned: If you happen to have Bob Dylan tickets for tonight…
ALL’S FAIR WITH CLAY FOWL FLICK
For old-fashioned lovers of claymation, “Chicken Run” is 85 minutes of exquisite artistry. The visual effects are both breathtakingly beautiful and hysterically comical. While computer animation is gradually approaching reality’s textured nuances, claymation still has that rough, reach-out-and-touch naturalism. The movie, which is about a henhouse in revolt, is really…
PEOPLE
Buttafuocos weathered bad times, now splitting After a bullet to the head, inexplicable loyalty to a philanderer, talk show appearances, movies of the week and bad hair days, Mary Jo Buttafuoco has finally left the bum. Well, at least she’s separated from Joey Buttafuoco, who had an ill-conceived affair with…
OUTDOOR CINEMA; FIND THE BIG PICTURE UNDER THE NIGHT SKY
One of the best things about movie theaters is that you can escape into their deliciously air-conditioned recesses on sweltering summer days. But give us a projector, a wall, the canopy of night and some natural air conditioning and we have the setting for outdoor cinema. Bay Area audiences seeking…