Celebrities join S.F. schools' meditation

So, David Lynch, Russell Brand and Barry Zito walk into a high school auditorium.

While that might sound like the start of a weird joke, that eclectic combination of celebrities (surrealistic film director, zany British actor and Giants pitcher, respectively) sat in a San Francisco high school auditorium Monday with 700 students and ... meditated.

Brand also dropped the F-bomb once or twice, briefly mentioned ex-wife Katy Perry and described Zito as a "baseball Jesus Christ."

The event at Burton High School celebrated the sixth year of the district's Quiet Time program, which uses transcendental meditation techniques to help students focus and stay calm despite the stresses of school or home.

The program is sponsored by the David Lynch Foundation. Lynch, a 40-year practitioner of transcendental meditation, promotes it in schools across the country.

While the practice has been controversial in the past - considered by some as religious or cultish - it has gained increasing acceptance in schools, with research backing up better student behavior and higher academic performance.

Zito and Brand are among celebrities that use and support the technique.

Brand told the students he "f-ing hated school" when he was their age. Meditating "helped me access something inside of me that I tried to find in many other ways, through money, fame, sex, drugs," Brand told the students.

Though he struck the profanity, Zito was equally enthusiastic about the technique. He learned to use transcendental meditation in recent years to help turn off the negative comments directed at him on television, on the streets or in bars.

"I stopped putting so much stock in what other people thought of me," he said. "My inner voice started to get a little louder than every one else."

The program is in several schools across San Francisco and has improved attendance and test scores while reducing suspensions, said Superintendent Richard Carranza, who learned the technique last June and continues to use it twice a day. He attributed a 65-pound weight loss to it.

"When I talk to superintendents across the country (about Quiet Time), they think we're nuts," he said. "They say, 'That is so San Francisco.' Then we show them the numbers."

Students at the event Monday said they learned the technique in school - which includes closing their eyes and sitting quietly for 15 minutes or so. They are supposed to concentrate on a particular mantra or sound while clearing their minds.

"But you're not supposed to be thinking about (the mantra)," said Jamie Guan, a Burton High senior. "It's supposed to come to you."

"Sometimes it works," said classmate Alyana Feliciano. "Sometimes it doesn't."

- Jill Tucker

Tit-for-tat: If any first graders are looking to swap their juice boxes for energy drinks, City Attorney Dennis Herrera says he knows who is at fault.

Herrera filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against Monster Energy of Corona (Riverside County) for marketing to kids, just one week after the beverage company sued him for demanding they lower the level of caffeine in their drinks and stop advertising to youth.

"Monster Energy is unique among energy drink makers for the extent to which it targets children and youth in its marketing, despite the known risks its products pose to young people's health and safety," Herrera said in a statement. "As the industry's worst-offender, Monster Energy should reform its irresponsible and illegal marketing practices before they're forced to by regulators or courts."

Herrera singles out Monster's hip marketing slogans like "pound down" and "chug down" as evidence of the youth appeal and said the company's "Monster Army" website uses children as young as 6 years old.

The Food and Drug Administration has received five reports of deaths and multiple injuries allegedly involving Monster Energy, according to Herrera, but the company has disputed the safety concerns.

- Neal J. Riley

A new retreat: The Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco is building a new clubhouse in the Western Addition, a 30,000-square-foot center with a swimming pool and art studio.

The new clubhouse, publicly announced Tuesday, will be named after Gap founder Don Fisher, who supported the youth organization for more than 40 years, said Rob Connolly, president of the San Francisco Boys & Girls Clubs chapter.

Gap - through employee donations and matching corporate grants - will kick in the first $1 million. The nonprofit will still need to raise another $8 million.

"We need to use this as an opportunity to have others follow Don and (his wife) Doris' legacy of being very very generous in the city," Connolly said. "It is expensive to do anything in this city."

The new Western Addition clubhouse at 380 Fulton St., will replace the Ernest Ingold Club in the Upper Haight District.

The city has changed since the Ingold clubhouse was built. Moving it closer to the children it serves will give them a safe haven in a neighborhood with a high concentration of poverty, gangs and violence, Boys & Girls Clubs officials said.

Fisher, who died in 2009, would have liked that the new club will have a pool and would have been embarrassed and thrilled to have it named after him, said his son, John Fisher.

"I think my Dad had a fundamental belief that if you didn't provide activities for young kids, especially young kids from underserved communities, if you didn't provide them with opportunities ... that you were going to have real problems," Fisher said. The new site is expected to serve 2,000 youth a year, ages 6 to 18, and feature an art studio, learning center, competition-size swimming pool and a high school-size gym.

For more information about the new clubhouse or to donate, go to www.kidsclub.org.

- Jill Tucker

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