Living Above the Fold

Life isn’t easy for thirteen-year-old paperboy Peter Paddington: He weighs two hundred pounds, he’s at the bottom of the school social ladder, and he’s struggling with strange new feelings about his male classmates. Even worse, his body is changing in unexpected ways — his nipples have started puffing up and speaking to him, urging him to act out his deepest desires.

Review: The Secret Fruit of Peter Paddington (East Bay Express, August 31, 2005)

Guitarist David Sturdevant was nervous about his audience. They were tough. They were unforgiving. And they were five years old.

He was working for the first time as an artist-in-residence in Caren Nelson’s preschool class at Washington School last year. “I was apprehensive at first about working with such young children,” said Sturdevant, who also plays in the jazz and blues-style San Francisco Medicine Ball Band. “I thought they wouldn’t be interested in the music I do; I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep them involved. But it turned out they were very receptive to all sorts of music.”

Back Door Arts Programs (East Bay Express, August 17, 2005)

In “The Accidental Connoisseur,” Lawrence Osborne undertakes a formidable task: writing an unpretentious book about wine. He starts strong, describing his youth as a good Catholic boy in London, where wine was an awe-inspiring holy drink, imbued with a mystical quality that belied its earthy origins in fermented grapes.

Review: The Accidental Connoisseur (San Francisco Chronicle, April 4, 2004)

Romy Mimi Ilano, 34, draws comics. But her work doesn’t look like the strips in the daily newspaper. Instead, it’s brimming with surreal, free-associative images—cat-headed women, killer cupcakes, a living scarf that eagerly whimpers, “Meep! Meep! Meep!” as its wearer stuffs it into his coat pocket. Then there are the strange storylines, which segue smoothly into totally unrelated plots, each a hodgepodge gumbo with its own dream logic. Ilano, who lives in Oakland, names autobiographical cartoonist Lynda Barry as inspiration. Clearly, though, her fluid, meandering stories and blunt, aggressive linework are all her own.

You Call This Funny? (East Bay Monthly, July 2010)

When Andy Morrison started law school, he expected to find a job as soon as he graduated. But after earning a JD from the University of San Francisco in 2008, Morrison found himself confronted by a narrowing recruitment pipeline. A study released by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) found that in the past year, law firms have cut on-campus recruiting by up to 30 percent, and a number of offices nixed 2010 summer programs outright. The rate of offers for entry-level law firm positions to summer associates also fell by 20 percent.

Dreams Deferred for Law School Graduates (California Lawyer, July 2010)