Cover Story
A very bad joke?
John Denver, Sisyphus, and a survivor Twinkie. This assortment of characters has all the makings of the worst joke ever told. Or the best assortment of short stories ever published. You’ll have to be the judge. I can’t believe that the cold, clinical measurements and algorithms of science and math could ever be applied to…
Alt debutantes from Down Under
I don’t pretend to know the minds of teenage girls (or the minds of grown up women, for that matter!), but I imagine a lot of gals would happily trade their lives for the lives of 23-year-old twin sisters Lisa and Jessica Origliasso. For the past two years or so, the Brisbane, Australia-based sisters have…
Comic relief – personified
New Times You played Lady Macbeth in Fresno this year; very different from the Melodrama, no? Hayley Galbraith I had been doing the melodrama circuit for a while and I wanted to go back to some of that more classical material. Melodrama is older so you could call it classical, but sometimes you just…
How shall summer’s honey breath hold out?
All the world’s a stage, except, apparently, Bellevue Charter School, which recently terminated its five-year relationship with the Central Coast Shakespeare Festival. In mid-May the school’s principal, Brian Getz, informed Artistic Director Zoe Saba that the school board had come to the conclusion that the festival was an insurance liability, and the school would no…
WTF is LARPing?
Verisim, a live action role playing (LARP) troupe based in San Luis Obispo, is a little like Fight Club. Not that they actually fight. Unlike many other LARPing groups, members of Verisim don’t use weapons—called boffers—to attack one another. In lieu of boffering the stuffing out of one another, they rely upon words as tools…
O health care, where is thy sting?
Do you recall the guy in Michael Moore’s film Sicko, whose fingers were severed, who had to choose which finger he wanted to save because his health coverage would pay for reattaching just one? Well, Cencal Health is a lot more understanding than that. If that patient had had the assistance of CenCal Health, he…
Does your family have emergency plans and provisions?
Joyce Shearer Works with the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program of the Central Coast I have a disaster pack in the back of my car but no plans for evacuating SLO. Riley Smith Retired We have food, water, shelter, cooking supplies. We also teach emergency preparedness. Cecilia Scheetz Elementary school teacher QUOTE: “We have a…
Clayhouse 2007 Sauvignon Blanc Paso Robles
A great little summertime refresher, this classic variety is pure California style that’s enjoyable alone and with food. A medium-bodied white, it offers nectarine, Mandarin orange and Mello Gold grapefruit (milder than the standard) flavors accented with floral notes that make it friendly and easy to like. Pair it with salads that mix fresh fruit…
Locally grown, locally made
During a recent appearance on Dave Congalton’s “hometown radio” show I was shocked, quite frankly, over the number of people calling in to discuss chain restaurants. I don’t review fast-food places for one simple reason: if you dine in Applebee’s, Chili’s, McDonald’s or Wendy’s, and all the rest, you can expect that most foods they’re…
Fast Facts
The Children’s Museum has reopened its doors! The three-story, 8,400-square-foot facility offers children ages 2 to 12 (and their families) the opportunity to “explore, investigate and create” through a multitude of interactive and innovative exhibits. The new museum provides an exhibit that honors the museum’s roots and incorporates familiar town landmarks such as a diner,…
Mothers for Peace challenges NRC
The Nulear Regulatory Commission heard oral arguments on July 1 by San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (MFP) regarding the safety of proposed storage casks for spent fuel at the Diablo Canyon generating plant. The group alleges that the tanks Pacific Gas and Electric Company wants to build at its utility would be vulnerable to terrorist…
Cayucos Del Mar project faces setback
A hearing before the County Planning Commission, on whether to approve the controversial Cayucos Del Mar development, yielded mixed results on both sides of the debate. The June 29 hearing saw a large turnout of residents and business owners in opposition to Morro Bay developer Franco DeCicco’s proposed mixed-use project. Now in its third design,…
Sting and the police
The SLO Police Department has been issuing tickets, like Oprah gives away cars, to unsuspecting drivers who’ve turned left from Madonna Road into the Longs Drug store parking lot—without the recipients jumping up and down in jubilation, of course. Turning left into the lot is a maneuver SLOcals have relied on for years, but since…
Abandoned buildings rare but troublesome
Like a series of beached whales, each more decayed and skeletal than the one before, the buildings line the hillside behind Broad Street in SLO. Torn plastic building wrap flaps in the breeze and an incomplete wire fence dissuades, but does not prevent, would-be trespassers from exploring the buildings. City documents show the project on…
Ambition and Mr. Kokkonen
To hear him answer the question “How do you see yourself?” Matt Kokkonen is a living embodiment of the American Dream. “I’m just an Immigrant boy from Finnland,” he answers, deliberately understating his achievements and his ambitions. He may have washed up on the shores of New York with only a single suitcase, and 16…
Payback for Chinatown?
The Chinatown project was the topic on the agenda, but politics seemed to be on everyone’s minds when the SLO City Council approved, on July 1, a plan to allow the Copeland family to purchase 1.3 acres of downtown city land for the cut-rate price of $1.1 million, plus another $2.6 million to replace lost…
Get real! Humans can’t change the climate
The planet Earth is a very dynamic place for the tiny human life that inhabits five percent of its surface. The climate is constantly changing, even though from the Homo sapiens’ points of view, who live 90 years out of the billion years of the planet’s life, it seems to be fairly stable. Somehow a…
Carter: Appraisal too low for Chinatown land
I received an e-mail today from a local broker who strongly believes the $8.8 million market rate appraisal for the Chinatown property is too low. This broker told me he “knew” the Copelands had spent at least $12 million accumulating the Blackstone, Sauer, Muzio, and Bello property. I asked him how he knew this. He…
Beach carelessness burns boy
One week after what should have been an enjoyable day at the beach, my 5-year-old grandson remains hospitalized in a Bay Area burn unit. He was transported to Valley Medical Center in San Jose, by ambulance from the Arroyo Grande emergency room after receiving severe burns to his feet at Pismo Beach. Hot embers left…
You first on privatizing sex talk
I almost hate to break it to Steve Kobara in this manner, (“Sex should be private,” June 26), but blunt revelations of heterosexuality are so pervasive they almost go unnoticed. Underwear ads. Beer commercials. Public displays of affection. Bridal magazines. So, I’ll put it to him this way—we’ll stop when he does. We’ll stop when he…
Unwelcome learning about gay marriage
In today’s ever-changing society, we need to have our eyes wide open to anything that might come our way. This is exactly what my family and I were doing when we had our children attending May Grisham Elementary School, located in Old Orcutt, a small town just south of Santa Maria. I attended this same…
Government is no solution to health-care woes
I support Mr. Heath’s desire for a more egalitarian health-care system, but not the obsolete model he is advocating (“Support Senate Bill 840,” June 26). Single payer government health insurance is based on a top-down command-and-control system with limited consumer choices. Costs are controlled by rationing goods and services. The decisions on rationing are often…
Get upset over downer cattle
It’s time we all took our heads out of the sand. As most of us have known for a long time, the meat industry does not stand up to the rigid standards it is supposed to, and there are loopholes in those standards. The Humane Society has been documenting abuse of laws and abuse of…
Get this straight; let’s have a clean fight
I apologize to Mr. Page for failing to remove words from a letter published last week that were inappropriate, and I welcome more contributions from him. — Ed Connolly, editor. Steve T. Kobara has disparaged me in his letter (“Sex should be private,” June 26). Kobara accuses me of being “shrillest anti-gay” and names me…
Revelers, take care
We know that if we steal a car, pick a pocket, or stick-up a bank teller, life can instantly become very unpleasant. We also know that jaywalking and deliberate littering have legal as well as social consequences. But there are some laws that, even though we are aware of them, we could violate unintentionally. Consuming…
Jade Jackson, singer/songwriter, performing at Linnaea’s Café this Sunday, July 6, at 7 p.m.
NEW TIMES: What genre of music do you play? JADE JACKSON: I play all original music. NEW TIMES: Do you write your own songs? JADE JACKSON: Yes, I’ve written over 60 original songs that I can perform. NEW TIMES: When did you start performing your music? JADE JACKSON: I taught myself to play guitar about…
Now read my crap
Every year I offer a bunch of my own entries for the 55 Fiction contest. This year, none of mine got selected by the noses-in-the-air, Ivy League, elitist, latte-slurping, vegan, obtuse, abstruse, Kangaroos, probably French, judges. You should just hear them around the office, quoting Camus and Balzac and sighing deeply when they ponder how…
