Results tagged “poorpeople”

We are going to eat SO MUCH food next week, aren't we? That is to say, isn't everyone? This royal-we business makes it hard to communicate sometimes. Does the Queen have this problem? Anyway, yes, everyone will eat lots of food next Thursday, because if they don't that means they hate America. That goes for poor people, too. Doubly so.

We were pumped to be headed to the SFIFF again this year with our friend, Liana, who’s from Brazil. We’ve seen several Brazilian films together at the festival over the years, and this year we had a number of good options, but decided on , a film by Ricardo Elias.

After weeks of playing coy, Danny Glover finally addressed the question about running for Mayor and said nyet to the whole idea. In a statement released to the press, Danny said "I have not considered, nor am I entertaining, the idea of running for mayor." That sounds pretty definitive, actually, not the usual kind of wishy-washy statement candidates make when they kind of sort of want to run but don't want to commit just yet. The Examiner's kind of funny but mainly not "San Francisco's Next Mayor?" bit had Glover listed at 450-1 odds anyways. That's slightly better odds than Wolfgang Puck but not nearly as good odds as Clint Eastwood or Larry Ellison.

Tonight there will an interesting auction, for the Princess Project. It's a Bay Area non-profit that provides prom dresses and accessories to high school girls that could not otherwise afford them. Which sounds kind of not very important but just think about what a special night it will be for those girls who are suddenly able to have a nice dress to the prom. One could argue too, that this would make a great reality show for MTV but who cares about poor people when you can show rich, spoiled sixteen year olds. The auction will feature items from local businesses and will from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m., at Dolce in San Francisco.

As our little Nancy Pelosi is discovering it's good to be Speaker of the House. Your peeps get some shout outs, you get to name who chairs what (even if they don't know the difference between the two branches of Islam that are currently killing each other in Iraq), and you get to chill with rock stars, as Nancy is, having the pleasure of hanging with Bono for Bono's semi-annual visit to congress.

He's in New York! Tuesday he took off to the Big Apple to attend a three day event for the Clinton Global Initiative conference. That's Clinton as in Bill Clinton, not George Clinton. The Clinton Global Initiative is some big huge three day conference in which various political and governmental big wigs gather to discuss the environment and helping the poor people and Africa and all that stuff that George Clooney and Angelina Jolie talk about.

This week's BART breakdown is brought to you by the letter "T," as in Truck. As in truck stuck on a ruck. Or more like stuck on one of those track switercheroo things that lets trains move from one track to another. D'oh!. No word yet as to whether or not there were any mother------ snakes on the goddamn truck.

Of course you remember that bouncing-ball commercial they shot in SF a few months ago. Wasn't it pretty? Yes, yes it was. But we couldn't help thinking, at the time, "couldn't this be even MORE wasteful?" The answer is yes, yes it could be. A Europish beverage called Tango Clear went to Wales and shot a remarkably faithful spoof, only with food instead of rubber balls. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Good thing Wales doesn't have any starving poor people, otherwise that would be in kind of poor taste. The ad company that created the spot went so far as to create a phony protest-site, pretending to be outraged about the fruit-dumping, to add a dose of highlarious social commentary.

The Gavster reemerged from hobnobbing with Scientologists to announce that he was going to try and have a court rule whether or not a 1997 measure calling for the building of a new Candlestick park and other development still holds. The measure was passed back then, but was put on hold after Eddie DeBartolo got in trouble with the Feds and after people realized that the measure was just as sucky as most people thought. If it can be sent to court and if the court says "yay", speculation is that the city will start building the sucker, despite the fact the measure is almost ten years old and, as everyone seems to be pointing out, goes against the normal process of city governance.

For this week's SchwarzenWatcher we were going to give a budget analysis but decided not to. Nobody cares. Because who cares about the financial state of the State when Arnie gets caught driving a motorcycle without a license? And gets away with it! All we can say is it's good to be the Governor. Today the LAPD said they wouldn't cite the Governor for driving without a license. And why should they? Do you remember last time the LAPD tried to stop Arnold? The DMV added that because he was riding with a sidecar, it made the motorcycle technically a three-wheel vehicle and thus technically not something he'd need the M1 license for.

-The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that an East Contra Costa County school can teach Islam by having the students pretend to be Muslim for three weeks. As part of a history course at Excelsior School for seventh graders, a teacher had students role-play being Muslim to help learn Islam. So the kids adopted Muslim names, read religious poetry, gave up something to simulate Ramadan, and stoned girls for not wearing burkas (kidding!). This got the school system sued by a couple of parents who thought that by "teaching" kids Islam, they were in fact "indoctrinating" them and thus violating their constitutional rights. The court, however, ruled that the school was only doing it for educational purposes and not trying to convert them. That's what science class is for.

Today we questioned the very being of this column. Why do we write it again? Is it an act that improves the world or diminishes it? Should we keep doing it? You'll have your own opinions, but you get to read and we have to write, and while we love both, the reading is invariably easier. Still, what's the point in diving into the depths of off-Broadway service journalism? Why do we torment these poor people? Who gives a damn what we think? All the questions that turn one drink into six, a few chips into the whole bag and unemployment into general assistance.