The James Logan Courier

By Sharon Noguchi
San Jose Mercury News (MCT)

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Home-schoolers across California won't need to rush back to class themselves to continue educating their children.

In a highly unusual move, a state appeals court on Friday reversed its earlier decision and declared that home-school parents don't need teaching credentials.

The decision by the Los Angeles-based second district court of appeals had home-schooling advocates rejoicing in California — home of more than 160,000 home-schooled students — and across the nation.

By Rafer Guzman
Newsday (MCT)

If you've shopped at corporate retail lately, you may have noticed that little of the clothing actually looks new. Faded T-shirts, frayed trousers, "destroyed" jeans — everything appears weathered and well-worn. That's appealing to those younger than, say, 20: They haven't lived long enough to make anything look lived-in.

So it is with the ripped and patched blue jeans at the center of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2." And the movie itself has an aspirational quality: Its vision of college life will look much more grown-up to those who haven't yet enrolled.

As with the first "Traveling Pants," in 2005, this sequel follows four young high-school friends based on characters in Ann Brashares' best-selling novels. Now everyone's a little older: Sensitive Lena (Alexis Bledel) studies art; down-to-earth Carmen (America Ferrera) works backstage at a Vermont theater; alt-rocker Tibby (Amber Tamblyn) attends NYU's film school; tomboyish Bridget (Blake Lively) joins an archaeological dig in Turkey.

By Rafer Guzmán
Newsday (MCT)

Veering wildly between red-eyed stoner humor and blood-red violence, "Pineapple Express" is an uneven but entertaining action-comedy that answers a question you've probably never asked: What if someone gave Cheech and Chong a shot of testosterone and a couple of Uzis?

They might look something like Seth Rogen ("Knocked Up") and James Franco ("Spider-Man"), who make an unlikely but appealing comic team. Rogen stars as Dale Denton, a cuddly knucklehead who livens up his job as a process server by adopting various disguises. Franco, hiding his good looks under a Tiny Tim wig of long, scraggly hair, plays Dale's pot dealer, Saul Silver, an amiable wastrel with a sweet, almost beatific soul.

"Pineapple Express," named after one of Saul's more potent strains, initially features little more than slack-jawed dope jokes: One montage of Rogen sucking down smoke in different ways nearly provides a contact high. But just when your eyes start narrowing, "Pineapple Express" snaps awake. After witnessing a drug dealer (Gary Cole) and a corrupt cop (Rosie Perez) execute a man, Dale hastily flees, leaving behind a smoldering roach that points straight to him and Saul.

By Carrie Rickey
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)

Funniest pot joke in a movie?

The moment in "Up in Smoke (1978) when the blissed-out Cheech, having sampled a doobie the size of Baja California, asks, "How'm I driving?" and the blitzed-out Chong answers, "Um, I think we're parked"?

Or when The Dude (Jeff Bridges), the bowler/stoner of "The Big Lebowski (1998), hallucinates tumescent pins and balls that resemble private parts dancing?

By Roger Moore
The Orlando Sentinel (MCT)

The whirl of hormones, high hopes and hysterical drama that is high school earns its close-up in "American Teen," a smart and revealing look at the Class of 2006 in Warsaw, Ind.

It's all here — well, most of it. The high school cliques (jocks, nerds, "in betweens"), the "mean girls," the social and parental pressures. Kids look for purpose, fumble for love, grapple with their future, break the rules (and a few laws) and text like mad in Nanette Burstein's documentary, 95 minutes of "real" culled from 1,200 hours of footage.

There's Colin, the Leno-jawed basketball jock whose Elvis-impersonating dad keeps pressuring him to shoot more because it's either a college scholarship "or the Army."

The wealthy and pretty Megan is the classic "mean girl." But even pretty, popular rich girls have pressures — getting into Daddy's alma mater, for instance.

From wikipedia:
Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933), was an American lyrical poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri.

Throughout her life, Teasdale suffered poor health and it was at age 9 that she was well enough to begin school. In 1898 she went to Mary Institute and to Hosmer Hall in 1899 where she finished in 1903.

Read Helen of Troy and Other Poems by Sara Teasdale, one of four of her books available free from Project Gutenberg.