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Feature

The PeopleSoftTouch

PeopleSoft software has forced a Delaware manufacturer to cut paychecks to Mickey Mouse and let failing Wisconsin college students evade expulsion. Guess what software the San Francisco school district owns?

By Jeremy Mullman

Published: November 22, 2000

It is about two weeks before election day, and San Francisco School Board President (and re-election candidate) Mary Hernandez has just explained why she is too busy to participate in a...

Sidebar

The PeopleSoft Touch

Software Hard Times

By Jeremy Mullman

Published: November 22, 2000

If PeopleSoft has had its fair share of software snafus, it is far from alone in an industry that has been plagued by costly, high-profile installation problems: A recent audit of the...

Matt Smith

Death in Toon Town

San Francisco's digital animation district is foundering, and Duke may be down for the count

By Matt Smith

Published: November 22, 2000

Vinny Carrella takes a bite out of his bagel. I sip my coffee. We both look briefly away: at the table, out the window, at the other customers in this upscale yet gloomy Potrero Hill cafe. Duke may...

Dog Bites

Dog Bites

You know, there's an election -- hey! -- we said there's a local election coming up

As told to Laurel Wellman

Published: November 22, 2000

The Silly Season We just can't focus on anything. There's way too much going on this week; even if we didn't already suffer from what we think must be a mild case of attention deficit...

Mecklin

Apocalypse, Now and Then

A measured look at the serious policy implications of recent changes in San Francisco newspaper ownership

By John Mecklin

Published: November 22, 2000

So I was sitting there doing nothing more worthwhile, really, than vaguely feeling good about Thanksgiving and a day off when it struck me that on Thanksgiving morning, I'd be reading two "new"...

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Letters from November 22, 2000

Published: November 22, 2000

Nader. Is That With an "e" or an "i"? Are you happy now?: Matt Smith's article on Ralph Nader ("What's Green and Black and Blue All Over?," Nov. 15) was irresponsible to say the least....

Music

Psychotic Reaction

With a mind-boggling debut album, the Lowdown proves how to love pop music -- to death

By Owen Ashworth

Published: November 22, 2000

In 1984, the Replacements swiped the title for their fourth album from the Beatles. To some this was considered heresy, an act akin to Philip Roth titling a novel The Bible. But there was a...

Music

Behind the Music

Damien Jurado's life is nothing like the bleak, miserable landscape he depicts

By Chris Baty

Published: November 22, 2000

First things first: Damien Jurado is a big guy. He's wide and he's tall, and if he hadn't spent his teenage years listening to punk rock, he probably would have made someone a damn fine...

Music

Pop Philosophy

Great pop songs; pop dance clubs; song of the week

By Dan Strachota

Published: November 22, 2000

Listmaker, listmaker, make me a list Rolling Stone stopped being musically relevant about the time the magazine put Dr. Hook on the cover. So it's not surprising that the Dec. 7 issue's list of...

Music

Johnny Cash; Merle Haggard

Cash: American III: Solitary Man (American) / Haggard: If I Could Only Fly (Anti/Epitaph)

By Lawrence Kay

Published: November 22, 2000

In rock and R&B, there's an obvious premium paid on youthfulness, and an almost reflexive disdain for old coots who keep in the game too long. Country music, by contrast, pays tribute to its...

Music

The Beautiful South; Fatboy Slim

Beautiful South: Painting It Red (Ark 21) / Fatboy Slim: Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars (Astralwerks)

By Mark Athitakis

Published: November 22, 2000

When the Housemartins disbanded in 1988 -- killing off what was, hands down, the finest Christian Marxist folk-funk-pop-soul protest band to come out of England ever -- its members took divergent...

Hear This

Hear This

The Kirby Grips

By Sam Prestianni

Published: November 22, 2000

The Kirby Grips saved my life. It happened one evening a few months back while I was caught in gridlock on the way to San Francisco Airport. While attempting to suppress an episode of escalating...

Eat

Soup's On

Just Won Ton

By Matthew Stafford

Published: November 22, 2000

Just Won Ton sounds like something out of a Saturday Night Live routine, the culinary equivalent of the store that sells Scotch tape and only Scotch tape. But despite its...

Eat

Building a Better Burrito

Tlaloc

By Greg Hugunin

Published: November 22, 2000

Having consumed hundreds of members of the species over the past two decades, I could easily fill this page with thoughts on the burrito (technically, just about anything wrapped in a flour...

Social Grace

Social Grace

The Gentle-Reminder Machine

By Social Grace

Published: November 22, 2000

Dear Social Grace, Please help me. A pregnant friend has been in the hospital for the past month due to a high-risk pregnancy. Her baby shower was put on hold, and preparations were made for the...

Film

Sexual Reeling

Philip Kaufman's Quills is a harsh, lush lecture on sensuality and censorship

By Gregory Weinkauf

Published: November 22, 2000

Assessing the merits of Quills , the lusty new feature by director Philip Kaufman ( Henry & June ), it's tempting to seek correlative characters from popular movies, to illustrate just how...

Film

Call Him "Security"

Bruce Willis is the unwilling superhero in M. Night Shyamalan's dazzling comic book

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: November 22, 2000

Unbreakable is such a quiet film that whenever a character speaks above a whisper, it sounds like the shattering of glass in a monastery. It's also a terribly sad movie; almost no one cracks a...

Reel World

Reel World

Matthew Robbins; Stuart Gaffney; 2001: A Space Odyssey

By Michael Fox

Published: November 22, 2000

Bingo! Shedding years of Hollywood hesitations, veteran San Francisco writer/director Matthew Robbins is gearing up for "Action!" again. "Guillermo del Toro and I have partnered on a lot of...

Zoom Lens

Zoom Lens

Holiday Films for Children

By Joe Mader

Published: November 22, 2000

Like gargantuan, top-heavy balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, this season's "family-oriented" Hollywood holiday films take a couple of lovely children's classics and inflate them out...

Night&Day;

Baby Jesus, Reborn

Black Nativity

By Michael Scott Moore

Published: November 22, 2000

Langston Hughes' Black Nativity is a "gospel song play," which means a brief play about the birth of Christ with a whole lot of gospel songs. It ranks with The Hard Nut as an irreverent,...