Davisville Archives

Davis film critic Derrick Bang returns to Davisville this week to talk about some of the big December movies, including The Hobbit debuting Dec. 14, and Quentin Tarentino’s Django Unchained “southern,” which opens on Christmas. We also take up related questions about movies, such as the continuing slump in ticket sales. He blames the degraded experience of going out to a movie, including the pre-show commercials and mediocre presentation—but says the three Davis theaters do a consistently good job in sound and projection. Maybe that’s a selling point for a city banking on arts and entertainment as a major draw for downtown. We also get Bang’s take on the best, and worst, holiday movies through the years. His list of the best is thin on recent titles, compared to his list of the worst.

For my Halloween show, I thought it’d be fun to talk with the people behind Cool Patch Pumpkins at the north edge of Dixon, just southwest of Davis. Guinness World Records says the farm has the world’s largest temporary corn maze (53 acres this year, with a path 2.5 miles long). Cool Patch co-owner Matt Cooley obliged, and told me things about the farm I hadn’t read or heard before. For example: They end up with a lot of shoes. Some pumpkin hunters amass so much gummy clay on their soles after a trek through the patch, they abandon their footwear next to their cars when they leave. Other facts: The Cooleys (Matt and his brother Mark) thought about adding a mud pit, to go with the hay bales, scarecrows and corn bath; they might move the maze south of Interstate 80, and/or offer two mazes, one harder than the other; and Matt gets calls in the middle of the night about or from people lost in the maze. People ask him if the maze is haunted, and he says no, except if you’re out there alone in the night amid the rustling stalks, and a bird suddenly takes off skyward near you … yeah, it can be scary.

Fraud, online and otherwise, exists in Davis as it does anywhere. But the local experience isn’t always the same as it is in other places--for one thing, two years ago our town was visited by the ”Crying Girl.” Low-crime Davis also views itself as a positive, can-do town, which can have a lulling effect. Today's guest is Elaine Roberts Musser, shown here, a Davis attorney who specializes in consumer protection and law concerning the elderly.

Most people would probably agree that one of the key public problems this fall—for the last several years, really—is the scarcity of jobs. To size up the local prognosis, today’s show interviews Rick Reed. He has surveyed area employers several times a year since 1992 for what is now a quarterly employment forecast, the Pacific Staffing Employment Trends Survey. He last appeared on Davisville a year ago, when he correctly forecast job growth for the region. According to the California Employment Development Department, the Davis unemployment rate was 6.7% in July, down from 7.6% in summer 2011; Yolo’s rate was 10.5%, down from 11.8%; and regional unemployment was 10.7%, down from 12.3%. Of course, those numbers are still much worse than they were in 2006. On today’s show we discuss why the job market has improved since 2011, plus the most promising sectors for growth. Reed also looks ahead. ... “There is an optimism among employers that there wasn’t, even a year ago.