Roller Coaster

Holy Redeemer Catholic High School mixed roller coasters and science in an experiment in fun during class on March 27. Science teacher Cathi Garcia challenged her eighth grade students to come up with a roller coaster using five different materials which caused a reaction at the end. Coasters ? short and winding and tall and treacherous ? were placed in the school?s auditorium. A marble raced down tracks made of tubing, metal and rubber then landed, creating a variety of reactions ?

We have all seen the commercials. "More bang for your buck!" And that's the golden truth for this western themed roller coaster, Silver Bullet, at Knott's Berry Farm. Silver Bullt is a suspended roller coaster that zooms guests through six inversions to a height of 146 feet above the ground. Two minutes and 9 seconds is all it takes to cover 3,125 feet of unbelievably smooth track, even through the loops and spirals that make you feel like you are flying free like a bullet. Being called Silver Bullet, one would assume that the track or cars would be silver.

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson It feels like I've been riding an emotional roller coaster for the past two weeks. I've enjoyed many wonderful highs with family and friends. We've had people over for meals, barbecues, to play games or just to visit. It's actually been pretty nonstop. One friend watched the comings and goings one afternoon and said, "Why don't you just get a revolving door for your front door?"

Amber Willard NORTHEAST GLENDALE -- While most students at Glendale Community College were sweating out their finals, 20-year-old Margaret Salazar was loading bags of donated food and clothes into her car Wednesday to take them to Catholic Charities. The donations came from fellow students and workers at the college and were the last installment of yearlong collections of the Active Charities Team. The club was started in October by Salazar and friend Patrice Algiers.

Lauren Masters Four years ago, Bryan Goldsworthy took a look at his life as an assistant at "Access Hollywood" and decided to change it. The La Crescenta native wanted to make a movie -- not a revolutionary idea in Hollywood, he knows -- but unlike so many others, the freshman director and producer finished his project. It wasn't easy, though. He had to take almost a year off between filming the first and second halves of the movie. "Searching for Wooden Watermelons," a story set in rural Texas about a woman torn between a commitment to herself versus her family, hit Blockbuster stores last week in Glendale.

NORTHEAST GLENDALE — For a conference match victory to happen sometime soon, the passing will need to improve for the Glendale Community College women’s volleyball team. It didn’t take long for Glendale college Coach Yvette Ybarra to isolate the facet of the game that the Vaqueros struggled in most during a Western State Conference South Division match against visiting College of the Canyons on Friday night. Canyons keyed in on Glendale college’s passing deficiencies to record a 21-30, 30-19, 30-26, 30-16 victory.

GLENDALE ? In anticipation of more than $5 million in one-time state funding for next year's budget, Glendale Unified School District trustees asked staff members to create a list of priorities to partially restore $9 million in jobs that were sheared over the past two years. But Glendale Unified staff members are concerned that some or all of the anticipated money will only be available once and that the state might restrict how the district can spend it. "We have reduced so much in our district and now that we are getting these funds, how should we spend them?"

Edgar Melik-Stepanyan Mike Gaudino needed help from someone. Anyone would do. If it was the last player off the bench or a starter, one of Gaudino's teammates had to step up for the La Canada High boys' volleyball team to win in the Rio Hondo League. La Canada's Joe Hummel, Andrew Watson and Andrew Lee took the challenge on Thursday, and each of them contributed in big ways in a key match. Gaudino had a monstrous match, finishing with 43 kills, but he knew he couldn't have done it alone.

Rima Shah It's never a pretty scene when the hit man hired to kill your wife fumbles the job, and the wife finds out. That's what happened Sunday afternoon in a spacious Glendale home. The curses flying around the dining table were, therefore, no surprise. But, thankfully, no real murder contract actually existed. The fiery accusations and unmentionable curses were read from a script, as a group of young filmmakers got together to rehearse for an independent movie set to film in July.

LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE — It was a defensive stalemate that transformed into an offensive roller coaster. It was two highly-ranked football teams playing as such. And it was the closest — and most exciting — “Battle of Foothill Blvd.” in years, as St. Francis High rallied and then fended off a very game Crescenta Valley, 28-21, in the teams’ annual nonleague meeting Friday night in front of a jam-packed Friedman Field. “It was a great game,’ said Falcons Coach Tony Zarrillo, whose team, ranked fourth in the CIF Southern Section Southeast Division, fell to 1-1. “As high school football games go, it was a terrific game.

Reece LoCicero has been a regular at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles for most of his life. Some employees there even know his favorite video games. The 4-year-old is scheduled to be back again today, this time for a surgery that's never been done on someone so young. He's been frequenting doctors since he was a 10-month-old, and in that time he's been treated for recurring skin sores, internal bleeding, asthma and fevers of up to 106 degrees. It has perplexed doctors as much as it's drained the Montrose family's ability to make ends meet.

For those wanting a good laugh, "CHiPS the Musical" has plenty. I've seen few shows as sharp as this one, and all the praise must go to the Troubadour Theater Company. A talented ensemble of actors, comedians and musicians, the Troubies, as they like to call themselves, have been performing on Southern California's stages for 15 years. Some of their most recent work pokes fun at everyone from Stevie Wonder ("It's a Stevie Wonderful Life") to Shakespeare ("Hamlet, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Denmark")

LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE — It was a defensive stalemate that transformed into an offensive roller coaster. It was two highly-ranked football teams playing as such. And it was the closest — and most exciting — “Battle of Foothill Blvd.” in years, as St. Francis High rallied and then fended off a very game Crescenta Valley, 28-21, in the teams’ annual nonleague meeting Friday night in front of a jam-packed Friedman Field. “It was a great game,’ said Falcons Coach Tony Zarrillo, whose team, ranked fourth in the CIF Southern Section Southeast Division, fell to 1-1. “As high school football games go, it was a terrific game.

Holy Redeemer Catholic High School mixed roller coasters and science in an experiment in fun during class on March 27. Science teacher Cathi Garcia challenged her eighth grade students to come up with a roller coaster using five different materials which caused a reaction at the end. Coasters ? short and winding and tall and treacherous ? were placed in the school?s auditorium. A marble raced down tracks made of tubing, metal and rubber then landed, creating a variety of reactions ?

Time does not stand still, and neither does taste. It was the early 1980s, and for some reason I had ended up at my girlfriend’s mom’s real estate office in the Valley. I think I was there to use her typewriter for a college project. It was an innocent time. Well, sort of. Kinkos was somewhat of an obscure copy shop, and Loehmann’s was one of the few outlets where stylish but bargain-savvy women could keep their wardrobe ahead of the rest of the pack. Meanwhile, Glendale was (switch to Elmer Fudd’s voice)

NORTHEAST GLENDALE — For a conference match victory to happen sometime soon, the passing will need to improve for the Glendale Community College women’s volleyball team. It didn’t take long for Glendale college Coach Yvette Ybarra to isolate the facet of the game that the Vaqueros struggled in most during a Western State Conference South Division match against visiting College of the Canyons on Friday night. Canyons keyed in on Glendale college’s passing deficiencies to record a 21-30, 30-19, 30-26, 30-16 victory.

A marble rolled down a slide and into a funnel, where it spun and slid until it went through a miniature basketball net. Using a marble as one of their tools, Holy Family Grade School students were designing and engineering roller coasters. The marble was used to test speed and momentum. "It was basically just trial and error," 13-year-old Kalene Castillo said. "I would say it takes a lot of elements to get the [roller coaster] to work." The roller-coaster project was part of a science lesson about the physics of motion.

GLENDALE ? In anticipation of more than $5 million in one-time state funding for next year's budget, Glendale Unified School District trustees asked staff members to create a list of priorities to partially restore $9 million in jobs that were sheared over the past two years. But Glendale Unified staff members are concerned that some or all of the anticipated money will only be available once and that the state might restrict how the district can spend it. "We have reduced so much in our district and now that we are getting these funds, how should we spend them?"

We have all seen the commercials. "More bang for your buck!" And that's the golden truth for this western themed roller coaster, Silver Bullet, at Knott's Berry Farm. Silver Bullt is a suspended roller coaster that zooms guests through six inversions to a height of 146 feet above the ground. Two minutes and 9 seconds is all it takes to cover 3,125 feet of unbelievably smooth track, even through the loops and spirals that make you feel like you are flying free like a bullet. Being called Silver Bullet, one would assume that the track or cars would be silver.

Rima Shah It's never a pretty scene when the hit man hired to kill your wife fumbles the job, and the wife finds out. That's what happened Sunday afternoon in a spacious Glendale home. The curses flying around the dining table were, therefore, no surprise. But, thankfully, no real murder contract actually existed. The fiery accusations and unmentionable curses were read from a script, as a group of young filmmakers got together to rehearse for an independent movie set to film in July.