(By Joe Kukura) From the “We’ve watched this twenty times over today” department, footage from last night’s Scripps National Spelling Bee where little Sameer Mishra above thinks he’s been asked to spell a dirty schoolyard taunt, then repeats this dirty schoolyard in front of his mom, a national tv audience, and to the perky fake blond sideline reporter backstage. Best of all, he spells his way of this jam and goes on to win......

If you’re anything like us, you’ll get unnecessarily riled up woot-woot-ing for the Bay Area in any kind of regional representation-structured contest. If there’s a competition and any kind of trophy involved, screw it – we’re down. Add to that the factor that these kids are totally cute as hell with their awful posture and adorable lack of telegenic savvy, and the Scripps National Spelling Bee – the Super Bowl of these things – makes great entertainment. ...

Is this for real, or one of those ridiculous made-uppy New-York-Times-imagined-it problems? Apparently, the times reported a month ago that in SF, there are some low-income students who would rather starve than accept government-subsidized food. And now, at last, the SF Schools Blog offers a loooooong rebuttal with loads of context. Here's the gist: yeah, it's a problem, it's a problem everywhere, but we already knew about it and we're trying solve it. (The......

We just received word, via a former student who has asked to remain anonymous, that New College of California has allegedly lost its accreditation. It should be noted that we have yet to confirm the validity of this letter from either WASC and New College But the full letter that was sent to SFist can be found after the jump. Does the school have a plan if they lose accreditation? Yes, and it's a......

For as much as everyone pretends to be indie coffee house-loving, Starbucks-hating, people of god -- we're not. Especially when we're lazy. If we're in the financial district and want our half-caff, venti macchiato with a double shot of sugar-free vanilla and only want to walk two steps from our door to get it, so be it. We're going to Starbucks. But NOT, however, on February 26th between the hours of 5:30 to 8:30 PM.......

BeyondChron has a civil point/counter-point debate going on about Yoshi's SF, which opens its doors today. But let's go back a bit, shall we? If you didn't know, San Francisco has the most cheery pockmark on its record: the "Negro removal" period. During this time historic buildings were torn down and black Western Addition residents were shooed out of the city. A movement that "never succeeded in driving all blacks from the Fillmore," but......

By Frances Reade Eugene Robinson has been the leader of S.F.'s most dangerous art-rock band Oxbow since 1989. We don’t mean Oxbow is "dangerous" as in "Tipper-Gore-no-likey." We mean "dangerous" like “Eugene is known to lurch into the crowd mid-set and strangle irritating audience members into unconsciousness." "Dangerous" as in "the man strips down and brandishes his pee-pee in a threatening manner onstage." "Dangerous” as in… "awesome." Besides slinging 18 years of sweet, sludgy......

-- The Pogues: Like most music-taste education, our college roommate got us listening to these guys. And they're one of the few acts that we still dig after all these Britney-influenced years. Kudos, Pogues! Starts tonight at 8 p.m. at the Fillmore; $65. -- Ratatouille (2007): Animated flick about a gastronomic rat (voiced by the awesome, the spectacular, the hilarious Patton Oswalt!) Screens tonight at 7 p.m. and 9:20 at the Red Vic; $5-8.50.......

Bay Area polluters (that's all of us, kids) are responsible for contaminating the Bay with such nasty toxic materials as sewage, flame retardants, and Teflon. Mother seals who eat contaminated fish, pass the chemicals through placenta, and then through milk to those adorable little seal pups we all love so much. Harbor seals near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge are now being studied to determine the effects of such exposure. Researchers hope that this new......

We were super-excited when we got the chance to talk with Alex Ross, the New Yorker's resident classical music critic (and blogger). Ross's writing has profoundly affected the way we think about music and music writing in all its genres and forms, and his twin enthusiasm for new classical music of the 21st century along with his deep love of the profoundly musical Icelandic pixie that is Björk always liven up our weekly periodicals reading......

Someone told us a story of a famous pianist who believed in bringing culture to the people, and went to a factory in Italy to give a lecture in front of a piano. He started to talk about Schoenberg, and after a few minutes, a voice rose from the audience: "Shut up, and play!" Ok, he said, and sat down at the piano, playing the Schoenberg piece. The voice rose again: "Rather, talk!" András......

Thank goodness the Department of Homeland Security's on top of all the threats to American freedom -- the New York Times today profiles Nalini Ghuman (at right), a British musicologist and assistant professor at Mills College who hasn't been able to get back to Oakland to teach her classes and work on her book about composer Edward Elgar, because Immigration and Customs refuses to let her back in the country. Ghuman is a British citizen......

Dave Eggers, well-known author and tutoring activist via 826 Valencia and its affiliates, has been awarded a grant from the Heinz Family Foundation. $250,000 smackers. ...

San Rafael-based Edutopia Magazine, which is brought to us by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, looks to the future in its latest issue, identifying 10 ideas or trends that its experts believe can improve K-12 education. We found them thought provoking, and hope you agree. ...

Hey, everyone loves a list, right? Especially those ranking institutions of higher learning. The yearly U.S. News & World Report list is out -- any wagers on how local schools did? And, really, how much would it affect your choices? We remember mulling the 1991 list saying "can't get in there, can't get in there, nope, not there either . . ." But it's still fun to see how stuff measures up, we suppose. Unshockingly, Stanford University was high on the list, reaching No. 4 this year, undoubtedly driving the next generation of Azia Kims....

Sorry we're a little late putting up SFist Mihi's last SFJFF review! Judith Schaefer's movie, So Long Are You Young, screened at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley on Tuesday and when the lights went back up, the crowd of mostly senior citizens were on their feet wildly applauding the filmmaker. The gray-haired lady sitting in front of us was shouting, "your movie is a gift! It's a poem!" Shaefer's documentary is itself the story of......

The problems with Oakland's University Preparatory Charter Academy (or "Uprep") are mounting, with an anonymous teacher leaking papers to the Chron today that indicated possible grade-changing on official transcripts sent with college application papers. For instance, the teacher gave one student Fs and Ds on his/her work, the report card that went home had Ds and Cs, and the transcript that went to the colleges showed only As and Bs. Teachers also noticed that the......

The graduation ceremony at San Francisco State University was the biggest (and therefore the best?), we've ever seen. Some 3500-odd purple-clad Gators (Gaters?) lunged for their sheepskins a few weeks back. Wow, we attended a lot of graduation ceremonies the past month. Like SFSU, City College, and the Academy of Art in S.F. but also Stanford and Cal. Who spoke at your commencement? Anyway, get on out there, graduates, and rock and roll with your......

Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park,\ already offers an undergrad degree in wine business -- but now the school is expanding its program. Graduate students cam now earn an MBA in Wine Business. ...

You want to know the best thing about the San Francisco Courtesan Carnival, a "solidarity party that will support labor rights and education funding for erotic service providers"? Their PR is handled by a man whose last name is "Buttner." Hee hee hee! Ahem. Anyway, the Carnival's happening this Thursday, the 7th. Short notice! Better start polishing your buckles and straps now. They're raising funds for erotic services workers to attend labor training camps.......

Don't worry, he's still dead. But the deceased Bible salesman's ghost drifted through the minds of a few characters at SF State's graduation last weekend, startling an out-of-towner named, for real, Earl Clampett. Apparently one of the graduation speakers had a few unkind words for the Reverend -- himself a bottomless pit of unkind words -- and that rubbed Earl the wrong way. So in his column on World Net Daily, a trustworthy and insightful......

The Stanford Daily swings into Day 2 of its wall-to-wall coverage coverage about Azia Kim, the fake Stanford student. This story is AWESOME. Today's article reveals that Azia Kim's friends from high school all thought she was going to one of those community colleges that feeds into Berkeley, but when she came back at Christmas break and said she'd gotten into Stanford, everyone believed her. While Kim's grades and extracurriculars weren't great, everyone figured she......

This story is awesome. Stanford University has caught a girl who's been pretending to be a student at the school for the last eight months. The girl, named Azia Kim, showed up on campus the day before freshman orientation this school year, and told two freshmen she was a freshman having temporary housing problems due to some kind of administrative snafu and that she didn't like the roommate she'd been assigned, and could she crash......

So Newsweek's come out with its rankings of "the top public high schools in the country," and the Bay Area has 9 10 schools in the top 300: Magnet school Lowell High in SF topped the list at 57, and Monta Vista in Cupertino came in second (85). The rest of your schools: Mission San Jose in Fremont (140), Burlingame High School (196), Mountain View High School (213), Andrew P. Hill in San Jose......

According to a press release put out on PR Newswire by her attorney, Dr. Arlene Ackerman has filed suit against the San Francisco Unified School District in San Francisco Superior Court....

It's Bad Movie Night at the Dark Room SF! Every Sunday night, they screen some terrible-sounding movie with some wisecracking hosts and free popcorn. May is Razzies Month, where they'll screen the 2006 worst-movie nominees, and tonight's featured movie is Little Man, where Shawn Wayans plays a midget criminal pretending to be a baby. That looks awful. 2263 Mission (x 18th), 8 p.m., $5. Other events: --Belly dancers, including local troupe Fat Chance Belly Dance,......

Well, some pretty good news for teachers in Ravenswood City School District: their union has managed to get them a little more scratch. ...

Jill Tucker's series on Junior ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corp) and Nanette Asimov's features on California's special education program have won top honors in the 2006 John Swett Award for Media Excellence, which is the California Teachers Association's highest honor for media professionals....

The calendar of a non-profit nature organization in Golden Gate Park...

The last of our slightly less-than-timely coverage of the Alternative Press Expo, which took place last weekend, focuses on folks telling their sequential art stories in a longer form. Which, as much as we love the other stuff, is really what we dig the most. We focus on Ted Naifeh, Dave Dwonch, Joseph Costirlos, Von Allan, Jaimel M. Hemphill, and Javier Gonzalez....