Author Archives: Wallace Baine

By WALLACE BAINE
Since the Academy Awards are upon us, let us interpret a new poll about the most liked and disliked states in the U.S. through the prism of Sally Field’s famously gushy Oscar acceptance speech 25 years ago:
America, you hate us here in California – you really hate us.
Indeed, a new poll by Public [...]

It’s a new year, which means a new beginning for those of us in the news media. We are human – or, at least, convincingly human-like – which means that we make mistakes. It is my policy to clear my conscience at the beginning of every year to make way for fresh guilt and new [...]

Welcome to the first ever live blogging of the Baine family Christmas morning – which should also be the last ever blog post created on this beat-up old laptop I’m using. Let’s just say I see a new dual-core MacBook Pro in my immediate future, unless Santa is a total flake, which certainly can’t happen [...]

Surfers in Santa Cruz County generally don’t need much in the way of persuasion to get into the water. But next week, the producers of an upcoming film are counting on surfers to come out to Pleasure Point in big numbers.
Walden Media, which is producing a film based on the life of the late Santa [...]

You can still hear the faint echoes of “Durbin Day” down at the Beach Boardwalk, and here we are again, looking at yet another potential pop star shooting into the stratosphere out of Santa Cruz.
His name is Chris Rene, and he floored judges on the opening episode of the new show “The X Factor” on [...]

We don’t have a word to adequately describe what happened to Dan and Lynn Wagner 10 years ago. “Tragedy” doesn’t quite get at the dimension of it; “nightmare” is entirely too cheap.
For many parents – or, frankly, most anyone with loved ones in their lives – it is literally unimaginable.
On Sept. 22, 2001 – in [...]

OK, let’s see a show of hands. How many of you, this Labor Day, identify with the term “middle class”?
C’mon, raise those hands high. Say it loud – I’m middle-class and I’m proud!
Really? Is that all? That’s not many. And what’s with all those sneers out there? What, you don’t like that word, “middle [...]

When the East Coast earthquake hit last week, I was on the phone to Washington D.C., talking with the Devil.
Yes, there are many devils in Washington these days, depending on where you’re standing. But this particularly one has managed to make herself the Evil One to at least two wholly separate demographics, each of which [...]

Yep, you saw that right: Santa Cruz’s own Sista Monica was part of the “So You Think You Can Dance” madness Wednesday night. Her song “Show Me What You’re Working With” was used to showcase Tadd & Melanie. Monica, we bow to your magnificence.

If you haven’t gotten yet to experience Cabrillo Stage’s “Hairspray,” Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s new season or the Cabrillo Music Festival, then do so immediately, because as all poets labor to tell us, time passes without remorse and what’s here today will go poof tomorrow.
Still, even as summer dies — excuse me, reaches late middle age [...]