Today’s “cleaned up” Bay to Breakers race is supposed to be without booze, floats, urine, vomit and folks who run without paying the entry fee. But people still get to prance naked and wear outrageous costumes.
- Looks like the end of the line for TV attorney “Tax Lady” Roni Deutch, who announced she’s closing her Sacramento practice of 20 years and surrendering her law license while denying that she bilked clients out of $34 million.
- What do you call a prominent journalist who regularly reports on Obama administration foreign policy while moonlighting as a Middle East advisor to the President? Answer: CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
- So far officials at Leadership High, the Hayward charter school, are sticking by their guns to cancel the prom and a trip to Disneyland for graduating seniors as punishment for a food fight that trashed the school’s cafeteria.
- Former Silicon Valley CNBC tech reporter turned PR hack Jim Goldman won’t be fired for his clumsy smear of Google on behalf of PR giant Burson-Marsteller’s client Facebook, making both look stupid in the process. His bosses are apparently cutting him slack for being a newbie.
Sunday read: Kenneth Turan’s review in the L. A. Times of a new documentary that explores why Harper Lee never wrote another book after “To Kill a Mockingbird” and hasn’t given a real interview since 1964. - Now that Cal stands to get an extra $20 million or so a year as its share of the rich new Pac-12 TV contract, it does seem that athletics director Sandy Barbour and Chancellor Robert Birgeneau were a little hasty in their penny-pinching of Cal baseball and other sports.
- Public radio station KALW may not have the fanciest digs in converted classrooms at San Francisco’s John and Sala Burton High School, but it’s doing something right: the station just turned 70.
- Tortured media plug from last week: “Katie Couric plans to announce on Friday’s ‘CBS Evening News’ that her last night anchoring the broadcast will be Thursday, May 19, according to a CBS source.”
- HBO acquired the rights to NYT reporter Diana Henriques’ Bernie Madoff tale “The Wizard of Lies” and announced that Robert De Niro has agreed to be cast as Madoff.
Comedienne-author Chelsea Handler makes a 4 o’clock stop at Berkeley’s Books Inc. today. - In the corrupt cop sweepstakes, East Bay Express’ Robert Gammon had SFPD undercover guys slightly ahead—until ex-Contra Costa sheriff’s commander Norman Wielsch and some of his buds were implicated in running a Pleasant Hill brothel.
- BART is now talking about a pilot program to allow passengers to report problems using text messages. As in, I presume: “This train needs a mop and broom.”
- Happening place: downtown San Jose, which, during eight days starting Thursday will see two Prince concerts, two and maybe three NHL playoff games involving the Sharks, and a couple of performances of the musical “Glee Live!”
- From San Francisco “Botox Mom” Kerry Campbell, after injecting her 8-year-old beauty pageant daughter with the stuff: "All I want is for Britney to have the best start in life, so it is easier for her to become a superstar."
