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......

Mills High School English teacher David Lista, 35, of Belmont has admitted to filming underage girls using the bathroom at the high school where he taught. it seems he was arrested yesterday afternoon after a Mills technology coordinator came across Lista's cinematic restroom work while checking the school computer server. Police then searched Lista's home, which turned up a "small amount" of methamphetamine as well. Ouch. But this wasn't the first time Lista's alleged......

Students at Encinal High School walked out of their classrooms today in response to proposed budget cuts. Last night the school board held a tense meeting that went well into the wee hours of the morning, voting to increase class sizes by cutting advanced placement classes, most high school sports, music in the elementary schools, and counselors in the middle schools, reports NBC 11. Students walked out today, marching straight over to the school......

Oh dear. This Xanadu medley was conceived, produced, and seamlessly executed by the students of Lafayette Jefferson High School, a learning institution that's somewhere not in California. Anyway, be sure to check out the finale, which culminates in a smoke machine spectacular! (Source: auschglitz)......

It's that time again. (We can't believe it's already Monday.) As usual, there is great music going on every night of the week so make sure you take the jump to see our daily recommendations. We've been counting down the days to see Sara Bareilles since we heard about this tour back in December. It's here. Finally. Bareilles will be opening for James Blunt in the VH1's "You Oughta Know" tour. There's no way you......

Yes, by popular demand, San Francisco Film Society's SF360 Film will once again bring you the one, the only, "Trapped in a Closet" sing-along, the awesomest sing-along this side of the Buffy "Once More With Feeling" sing-along (sing it everyone: "Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes/They've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses...") The show will be Friday, January 25, at 7:00 pm at Mezzanine....

Says you! In an effort to diffuse to the sheer horror of being labeled a "dork," "techie," "queer," or even "local artist," recently San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had this to say during a virtual chat. In a fireside chat in the virtual world Second Life, Newsom responded to a question from Philip Rosedale, CEO of Second Life publisher Linden Lab, about virtual worlds not just attracting geeks. The mayor laughed and offered a......

Here's todays sports news...

Back in October, we featured Josh Groban in our holiday section of New Tunes Tuesday. We suggested that it would be "perfectly Grobanized - gorgeous string accompaniments, long high notes, huge endings, orchestral arrangements, different languages and of course several collaborations..." It seems that everyone needed to be Grobanized this Christmas season especially after Oprah Winfrey's suggestion that Noel is "the one Christmas CD every family should have." Since then, Josh Groban's Noel has......

SFist interviews Kenneth Ryan, Prop Master of the San Francisco Ballet...

While the Bay Area struggles at keeping birds oil-free and alive, fisherman Hai Nguyen, 24, of Garden Grove tries to murder marine mammals. While fishing off the end of a Newport Beach pier, Nguyen used a steak knife to stab a sea lion who innocuously swiped his bait. According to AP, "the animal was taken to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, where staff found the knife had pierced the sea lion's heart... [i]t was later euthanized." Nguyen faces up to one year in prison and a fine of $20,000for violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act. And for being a cruel dick....

Today, a little before 8 a.m. in the Bayview-Hunter's Point District at the 600+ unit complex Bayview Apartments currently under renovation: one person, shot; one person, dead. When police arrived at the scene, according to CBS 5, they "found one victim found in a doorway of a residence at 25 Garlington Court. The second victim was found around the corner." It seems that the two shooting victims knew each other, "one worked as a......

Last night at Washington Park in Alameda, a 15-year-old girl was shot and killed in a robbery. According to the the Chron, "the girl was with about 10 friends when five or six teenage boys whom they didn't recognize approached them." One of the guys in the approaching gaggle shot five shots into the air, and then one in her back. She was pronounced dead at Highland Hospital in Oakland. No arrests have been made in connection with her murder. (Don't they draw the bridges, or something like that, when a serious crime happens on the island?) ...

A Palo Alto high school girl survived a kidnapping and sexual assault yesterday afternoon, an ordeal that went on for 90 minutes. At 3 p.m. yesterday, a teen was on the "500 block of Arastradero Road near El Camino Real...near her home, when a man accosted her from behind, hit her in the face several times and dragged her into his car," according to Palo Alto police officer Dan Ryan. The city of Palo......

Each Tuesday we will feature new music that should (or whatever) be on your radar. Standouts: 1. Nicole Atkins - Neptune City: This New Jersey native, reaches down deep to relate stories of her hometown, Neptune City on her debut release. "From the time I was a kid I started collecting these sad little tragically beautiful personal stories from the people in my life, and my own as well. That sense of history really appeals......

Back in high school, we had an English teacher who really drilled the Transcendentalists into our brains, especially that one Thoreau Emerson quote: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." What can we say? It still makes us think. Like about restaurants that have hardly changed in at least 20 years (the amount we can vouch for, since that's when we moved here from Southern California) if not 35 -- Juan's Place, in Berkeley. We......

Good Lord, Bay Area residents. It seems that we had not one, but two bomb scares yesterday....

Because we are no good at doggerel, we are going to decline what would otherwise be an extremely tempting way to write up this post and not write it in rhyming couplets. That's right -- local theater troupe Rhyme Time Theater is presenting Race Is A Lie, a play about race relations in the SFPD. Written in rhyming iambic pentameter. (To refresh you from high school English class, that's a sentence with the pattern da-DUM......

Pedaling through Golden Gate Park the other day, we noticed the conspicuous absence of the giant purple half-head that has graced a lawn near the deYoung for a few months. We had all kinds of mean things to say about the head (adolescent pseudo-profundity, like something constructed for a Led Zeppelin album cover), but on the other hand, we smoked enough pot in high school to think, hey, awesome, a giant half-buried purple head with a 1000-yard stare!...

-- The Arcade Fire: LCD Soundsystem and Wild Light open for this white-hot -- that's right, white-hot, or so we hear -- Canadian indie-rock band. Music starts tonight at 7 p.m. at Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View; $19-40. -- High School Musical: You know what? We watched this on Disney and it sucked us in. Sad, yes. Absorbing, for sure. Ray of Light Theatre and School of the Arts (SOTA) put on......

coarse language = a wee bit NSFW -- The Boys in the Band: Mart Crowley's work, which takes place one night during a birthday party, details what happens to the gays after leaving the 18- to 25-year-old demographic, with twink rage aging into fine bitterness. Really, it's the most accurate depiction of gay men, ever. Screens tonight at 7 p.m. at -- where else? -- the Castro Theatre, Castro & Market Streets; $6-$9. --......

Servers aren't cheap, so we'd like to take a moment to thank the advertisers on SFist this week: Zipcar for letting those of us who don't have cars where we can rent them from without going to an airport. Cazadores for educating us about tequila - now we know more than just 'Sure, we'll take some tequila in a drink.' Fierce People for making our family seem so much less dysfunctional than the family in......

-- SF Macarons versus Macaroons. [Gridskipper] -- East Bay movie studio/shopping center deal? Fin. [Chron] -- #70: Early morning Hunters Point murder. [SF Crime] -- Lawsuit over AT&T Wireless' ability to suck. [Examiner] -- OMG: High School Musical 2 premieres tonight! (It seems Zac Efron's a huge Giants fan. And probably a Castro Street fan, too. What?) [Chron] -- Sierra Nevada Brewing Company executive's body found in Sacto River. [Chron] -- Patti Smith singing......

-- Clueless and Mean Girls: Jane Austin's Emma interpreted via a mid-'90s Beverly Hills screens first, starring Paul Rudd (Eee!) and a pre-PETA Alicia Silverstone. Tina Fey's ode to high school bitches follows, starring a pre-coked out Lindsey Lohan. Starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Bridge Theater, 3010 Geary (at Blake); $7. --- Burn My Eyes 2 -- Rock Poster Exhibition: Artist from all over the Bay Area feature their poster art. Musicians Scott......

You thought she was gone, but no: Fiona Ma is still coming to us from beyond the grave! Or Sacramento or wherever she is now. Despite having left the Board of Soups back in January, Ms. Ma's official SFGov webpage lingers on, like your one friend from back home who kept hanging out at the high school after graduating. But you'd never guess, from looking at it, that's she's moved on; it's the first......

Here's todays sports news...

SFist interviews HP Mendoza and Rich Wong of "Colma: The Musical"...

Unless you see all four of Mike Daisey's "Great Men of Genius" monologues (and see them IN ORDER), you might miss the point. GMOG is NOT in fact one man acting as four different "geniuses" -- Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nicola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard -- in four 75-minute monologues. Rather, this is one five-hour monologue, broken up into four segments, wherein the true genius of the piece, Mike Daisey, interweaves vignettes from his life with the excerpted life stories of those famous men. And did we say he's funny? ...

What happens when nearly 30 local artists create works of art made entirely from reclaimed and recycled materials? Head over tonight (or sometime this month) to find out at the Market Street Gallery for ReArt: The Art of Reuse. till 5pm, 1554 Market Street,SF. More art for the month of June - local artist David Benzler had been all over the thriving Mission district art scene for the last several years. His latest work......

You've still got the Berkeley World Music Festival today, and Indiefest's Hole in the Head fantasy/sci-fi/horror film fest is in full swing! Your other options include: --This looks like a can't-miss! ACT is presenting Fields of Gold, a musical about Amish teens in the throes of rumspringa (sampling the modern world). Set to the music of Sting. We quote: The songbook of Fields of Gold features a mix of Sting and The Police’s most beloved......