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Press Democrat Ownership Includes Sandy Weill, Norma Person, Jean Schulz, More
As reported in this week’s news story, the Press Democrat is being sold to a local group of investors, including lobbyist Darius Anderson and former congressman Doug Bosco.
The sale of the Press Democrat was completed today, with additional investors in the 115-year-old paper, though not a sale price or each individual’s percentage of ownership, announced just now.
They include:
Norma Person, whose late husband, Evert Person, sold the Press Democrat to the New York Times in 1985. She lives in Santa Rosa.
Sandy Weill, former Citigroup CEO with an active role in repealing the Glass-Steagall act and donor to the Green Music Center. He lives on Sonoma Mountain.
Jean Schulz, widow of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. She lives in Santa Rosa.
Gary Nelson, founder of Nelson staffing. He lives in Sonoma.
Bill Jasper, CEO and president of Dolby Sound from 1983 to 2009. He lives in Sonoma.
Les Vadasz, founding member of Intel Corporation. He lives in Sonoma.
The makeup of the Press Democrat‘s ownership is getting very, very interesting. The involvement of Norma Person is welcome, surely—when owned by the Persons, the Press Democrat had a decidedly local feel. But expect plenty of noise to be made about Sandy Weill, whose $12 million donation to the Green Music Center was not without considerable scrutiny, even in the pages of the Press Democrat itself. A reliable source once related that Weill wasn’t pleased with the Press Democrat for the criticism his history on Wall Street was garnering. You know what they say: if you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em.
Best of luck to our many friends over at the Press Democrat as this sale goes through. Often, change of ownership is a reason to cut staff and restructure benefits, and we truly hope that this isn’t going to be the case for the newspaper’s employees. More importantly, we hope that what ownership spokesman and former San Francisco Chronicle publisher Stephen Falk says is true: that this new ownership won’t meddle in the objective reporting of the newsroom.
Snoop Dogg to Play Phoenix Theater on Dec. 15
It’s official, and no, we aren’t joking: Snoop Dogg is playing the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma on Saturday, Dec. 15. If this means that we get to possibly see Tom Gaffey and Snoop Dogg on stage together, all will be amazing in the world.
Tickets go on sale this Saturday, Nov. 10, at 10am.
General admission tickets will be $70, making this the highest-priced ticket at the Phoenix in recent memory—and by “recent,” I mean “since 1989.” But consider that when Snoop plays in San Francisco, tickets cost over fifty bucks anyway, and minus gas and toll and parking, and it’s the Phoenix, for chrissakes, well… I’m betting it’ll quickly sell out.
If you’re a Snoop superfan, there’s also a VIP meet-and-greet option, including a photo with Snoop himself and special tour merchandise, priced at—drumroll please—$350.
Got your mind on your money and your money on your mind? You can get tickets, starting Saturday at 10am, here.
(UPDATE: Snoop’s also playing the Uptown Theatre in Napa the night before, on Friday, Dec. 14. Tickets are $60, and go on sale this Saturday at noon right here. If you can’t get Phoenix tickets on Saturday, that’s a good option—the Uptown is a great place to see a show.)
Nov. 14: Warren Miller’s ‘Flow State’ Pre-Party at Lagunitas
I’d like to give thanks to Warren Miller for continuing to make films about daredevil skiers and snowboarders, whizzing down horrendously steep and icy mountain tops to almost certain death, all of which I get to watch from the comfort of a warm theatre seat while stuffing my mouth with popcorn. You too can live vicariously through Miller’s latest flick, Flow State, premiering Nov. 17 at the Marin Center, with a pre-party co-sponsored by the Bohemian and Lagunitas Brewing Company. Drop by to enter the raffle for tickets to the premiere, a Spyder jacket, Heavenly passes, winter snow gear and Warren Miller apparel. If that’s not enough, there’ll be pint specials flowing all night. The Flow State pre-party happens on Wednesday, Nov. 14, at Lagunitas Tap Room. 1280 N. McDowell Ave., Petaluma. 6pm—8pm. Free. 707.527.1200.
Nov. 12: Ian Frazier at Book Passage
A New Yorker contributor since 1974, Ian Frazier has finally knocked out his first novel. Really an expansion of his regular humor columns, The Cursing Mommy’s Book of Days is like AbFab on acid, its star being an alcoholic mommy with a “clueless idiot” for a husband, a “horrible, wretched” oldest son and a propensity for blaming the Bush administration for every mishap that befalls her. This book is is quite a departure from Frazier’s earlier work, such asTravels in Siberia, wherein the author recounts the history of Siberia along with some its famous exiles. The novel’s been racking up fans, who love Frazier’s keen sense of humor. Ian Frazier appears on Monday, Nov. 12, at Book Passage. 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera. 7pm. 415.927.0960.
Nov. 10: Dana Carvey at the Uptown Theatre
This year’s Halloween bash at the Santa Rosa Skatepark offered the chance to see a number of ridiculously rad costumes. There was the heavily tattooed ballerina bee on a motorcycle. There was the creepy hobo clown catching air over graffitied ledges. But the best of all was the girl dressed like Garth—played by Dana Carvey—from SNL skit-turned-movie Wayne’s World (her boyfriend was dressed like Wayne, naturally). The sighting brought back fond memories of one of the funniest movies to come out of the ’90s, one that produced a million catchphrases: Party Time! Excellent! Schwing! We’re not worthy! Not! As if! The list goes on . . . Dana Carvey performs on Saturday, Nov. 10, at the Uptown Theatre. 1350 Third Street, Napa. 7pm. $55-$70. 707.259.0123.
Nov. 10: Dana Carvey at the Uptown Theatre
This year’s Halloween bash at the Santa Rosa Skatepark offered the chance to see a number of ridiculously rad costumes. There was the heavily tattooed ballerina bee on a motorcycle. There was the creepy hobo clown catching air over graffitied ledges. But the best of all was the girl dressed like Garth—played by Dana Carvey—from SNL skit-turned-movie Wayne’s World (her boyfriend was dressed like Wayne, naturally). The sighting brought back fond memories of one of the funniest movies to come out of the ’90s, one that produced a million catchphrases: Party Time! Excellent! Schwing! We’re not worthy! Not! As if! The list goes on . . . Dana Carvey performs on Saturday, Nov. 10, at the Uptown Theatre. 1350 Third Street, Napa. 7pm. $55-$70. 707.259.0123.
Nov. 8: Sonoma County Jewish Film Festival at the Rialto
Films showing through November at the Sonoma County Jewish Film Festival include Nicky’s Family, Reuniting the Rubins and A.K.A. Doc Pomus, a documentary about the legendary rock-and-roll songwriter that got rave reviews from Greil Marcus in the latest issue of The Believer. Nicky’s Family tells the true story of Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who organized the rescue and transport of 669 children fleeing Hitler’s Army in 1938. Nicknamed the “British Schindler,” Winton didn’t gain recognition for his actions for more than 50 years, when his wife discovered the story while searching through the attic. The Jewish Film Festival runs through Tuesday, Dec. 4, with Nicky’s Family screening Thursday, Nov. 8, at Rialto Cinemas. 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol. 1pm and 7:30pm. $10. 707.528.4222.
Sexual Healing
The surprise: despite possibly dire subject matter, The Sessions is mostly a comedy. The plot follows Berkeley writer Mark O’Brien (subject of the documentary Breathing Lessons), who was confined to an iron lung because of childhood polio. Set in the late 1980s, The Sessions is based on work O’Brien did for the lit-magazine The Sun about losing his virginity late in his 30s to a sex therapist.
Helen Hunt has the role of Cheryl, an un-glam healer—she drives a Country Squire station wagon. Hunt’s aquiline face is seasoned but not carved into a doll’s grimace by plastic surgery like far too many of her contemporaries. It’s essential to her aura of authority.
John Hawkes, who plays Mark, has excelled as dangerous men—the Manson figure in Martha Marcy May Marlene and the meth-cooking uncle in Winter’s Bone. The gold standard of paralytic acting is still Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, but Hawkes’ gentleness and fine comic timing make this a sex comedy of a variety we haven’t seen before.
The scenes of Hunt and Hawkes together require unidealized physical contact. (It turns out not to be a good idea to sit on the face of a person who has to sleep in an iron lung.) To gin up the potential romance, The Sessions wanders away from the respect it might give to sex surrogacy, an unusual and surely difficult profession. It didn’t have to be that way. When Cheryl comes home unnerved by a hard day’s work, her husband, Josh (Adam Arkin), says without irony, “You’re a saint.” It might have been more adult to take The Sessions in that direction: there still are Berkeley (and elsewhere) husbands who wouldn’t mind.
But we get what we get in the movies. The Sessions is essentially lovable. Hawkes and Hunt are touching, and director-writer Ben Lewin’s final matching shots are both gently sentimental and tastily mordant—especially considering that this movie could have gone so, so wrong.
‘The Sessions’ opens Nov. 9 at Summerfield Cinemas.
Sandy Shores
Nate Silver, New York Times writer and rising-star statistician, has written a book that clears the air in many sectors, not the least of which is climate science. The Signal and the Noise is not exclusively about global warming, but the one chapter devoted to the statistical challenges facing climate scientists does a great deal to clarify the facts of climate change.
“In the scientific argument over global warming, the truth seems to be mostly on one side: the greenhouse effect almost certainly exists and will be exacerbated by manmade CO2 emissions. This is very likely to make the planet warmer,” writes Silver. “The impacts of this are uncertain, but are weighted toward unfavorable outcomes.” Spoken like a true scientist, using the requisite probabilistic language in which scientific theory is cast. But even as the Bayes’ theorem demands that scientists couch theory in conditional language, politics eschews uncertain language; the two worlds do not mix, Silver argues.
The problem is not, as Silver sees it, one of determining whether or not the greenhouse effect exists now and can be expected to elevate temperatures on earth. That much is known. The real problem lies in the statistical models that predict what happens next—and in our political system, which is making the situation worse.
Many climate predictions are inaccurate, and bad prediction models have been exploited by partisan politics. A bad prediction model becomes a weapon in partisan hands, harming the progress of climate science and misinforming the public. The outcome has been that more Americans now disregard global warming than did a few years ago. This is a setback, since future preventative actions may require public support.
Climate, Silver says, is a dynamic and extremely complex system, and such systems cannot be predicted with precision. In fact, Silver offers the tip to readers that whenever someone makes a confident, precise-sounding prediction about a dynamic system—such as exactly what the economy, the climate or California’s earthquake faults will do next year—confidence is proof of inaccuracy. Predictions that include uncertainty are typically more reliable.
Although there is good modeling, Silver claims, for general temperature increases and sea-level rise, no models can accurately predict much more. Not a lot can be known for certain about changes that may come as increasing carbon levels exacerbate the greenhouse effect. But Silver advises science to remove itself from our dysfunctional political system, which is too polarized to seek honest outcomes. Only scientists working together without political interference, he says, can advance climate science by using the Bayesian process—thinking and modeling in a probabilistic fashion.
Press Democrat Ownership Includes Sandy Weill, Norma Person, Jean Schulz, More
The sale of the Press Democrat was completed today, with additional high-profile investors in the 115-year-old paper announced.
Snoop Dogg to Play Phoenix Theater on Dec. 15
It's official, and no, we aren't joking: Snoop Dogg is playing the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma on Saturday, Dec. 15. If this means that we get to possibly see Tom Gaffey and Snoop Dogg on stage together, all will be amazing in the world.
Tickets go on sale this Saturday, Nov. 10, at 10am.
General admission tickets will be $70, making...
Nov. 14: Warren Miller’s ‘Flow State’ Pre-Party at Lagunitas
I’d like to give thanks to Warren Miller for continuing to make films about daredevil skiers and snowboarders, whizzing down horrendously steep and icy mountain tops to almost certain death, all of which I get to watch from the comfort of a warm theatre seat while stuffing my mouth with popcorn. You too can live vicariously through Miller’s latest...
Nov. 12: Ian Frazier at Book Passage
A New Yorker contributor since 1974, Ian Frazier has finally knocked out his first novel. Really an expansion of his regular humor columns, The Cursing Mommy’s Book of Days is like AbFab on acid, its star being an alcoholic mommy with a “clueless idiot” for a husband, a “horrible, wretched” oldest son and a propensity for blaming the Bush...
Nov. 10: Dana Carvey at the Uptown Theatre
This year’s Halloween bash at the Santa Rosa Skatepark offered the chance to see a number of ridiculously rad costumes. There was the heavily tattooed ballerina bee on a motorcycle. There was the creepy hobo clown catching air over graffitied ledges. But the best of all was the girl dressed like Garth—played by Dana Carvey—from SNL skit-turned-movie Wayne’s World...
Nov. 10: Dana Carvey at the Uptown Theatre
This year’s Halloween bash at the Santa Rosa Skatepark offered the chance to see a number of ridiculously rad costumes. There was the heavily tattooed ballerina bee on a motorcycle. There was the creepy hobo clown catching air over graffitied ledges. But the best of all was the girl dressed like Garth—played by Dana Carvey—from SNL skit-turned-movie Wayne’s World...
Nov. 8: Sonoma County Jewish Film Festival at the Rialto
Films showing through November at the Sonoma County Jewish Film Festival include Nicky’s Family, Reuniting the Rubins and A.K.A. Doc Pomus, a documentary about the legendary rock-and-roll songwriter that got rave reviews from Greil Marcus in the latest issue of The Believer. Nicky’s Family tells the true story of Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who organized the rescue and...
