Reporter’s Notebook

CALVIN NI, 16, APPEARED BEFORE THE CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD last week to offer some advice about budget priorities.

The Clark High School junior called on the board to direct more money to "functionality" as opposed to school aesthetics.

"I like toilets that flush," he said.

JAMES HAUG

BACK IN THE DAY, WHEN THE SILVER SLIPPER GAMBLING HALL was still on the Strip, Gary Reese -- now a Las Vegas City Council member -- tried to convince his daughters that the giant neon slipper out front belonged to Cinderella.

He told the story last week when the restored neon Silver Slipper sign was dedicated along with other vintage neon signs on Las Vegas Boulevard.

"I don't know if they ever bought it or not, but to me it's always been Cinderella's slipper," he said.

The size of the thing -- 12 feet by 17 feet, according to the city -- might warrant a rewrite of ye olde fairy tale.

In our version, Cinderella's cruel stepmother and jealous stepsisters kidnap her after she makes a big splash at her showgirl audition and dump her at the Nevada Test Site, where the radiation turns her into a giant. She gets revenge by crushing her stepfamily's home, then goes on to fame and fortune by starring in "Attack of the 50-Foot Woman."

ALAN CHOATE

TALK ABOUT ADULT THEMES. A hearing on whether Green Valley High School students could perform the plays "Rent" and "The Laramie Project" featured a reference to a pornographic "classic."

District Judge David Wall tested the argument that schools have a right to control their curriculum when he asked Tegan Machnich, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, what stops a school from showing the 1978 film "Debbie Does Dallas."

Needless to say, the pro bono attorney blushed, but clarified that schools could control their curriculum within reason and still allow public dissent.

The judge later ruled in favor of the plays going forward.

JAMES HAUG