It’s a seller’s market; homes in Venice Beach are selling for an average of $1,440 per square foot.

Headed to the fair Sunday? Here are a few things to do.

Michael McDonald/Boz Scaggs

Five-time Grammy Award winner Michael McDonald’s will be performing some of his top 10 hits including, “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” and “Sweet Freedom” American singer, songwriter, and guitarist Boz Scaggs will also be performing. Show begins at 7 p.m.

Where: Pacific Amphitheatre

How much: Tickets start at $30 and include admission into the fair.

Mariachi Sol de Mexico

Listen to Mariachi Sol de Mexico perform some of the finest mariachi music and enjoy the sounds of Mexico history. Showtimes at 1:30 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Where: The Hangar

How much: Tickets start at $20 and include admission into the fair.

Family Magic Show

Watch in amazement as magician Frank Thurston puts on a show with a comedic twist. Showtimes: 2 p.m., 4 p.m., and 7:30 p.m.

Where: Explorium Stage

How much: Included with fair admission.

Fun Run 5k

Gather your family and friends for the 9th annual OC Fair Fun Run 5k. Event begins at 8 a.m.

How much: Children (5 and under): $5. Children (6 – 15 years old): $30.  Adults (16 and over): $45. Price includes fair admission. Register online.

Where: Blue Gate

Cookie Decorating Class with Chef Stéphane Tréand

Learn from the best! Join world champion pastry chef Stéphane Tréand for a cookie decorating demonstration for kids and teens. Sign up early—space is limited!

How much: Included with fair admission. Demo begins at 5 p.m.

Where: OC Promenade Culinary Arts

A surfer reported seeing a shark close to shore in San Clemente, prompting officials to shut down the water until 3 p.m. Saturday, August 5.

The sightings happened at about 11 a.m., when a surfer saw the fin several times anywhere from 40 to 100 yards from shore off Linda Lane Beach.

The shark was estimated to be about 10- to 11 foot, according to lifeguards.

“He said he surfs San O all the time so he’s seen them before, it seemed pretty reliable,” said San Clemente lifeguard Ian Burton.

The stretch of beach closed spanned from a mile north of the pier to a mile south of the pier.

San Clemente beaches were busy with shark sightings earlier in the year, especially after a woman was bit while out in the water at nearby San Onofre State Beach, with regular sightings at the pier and North Beach.

Sightings have cooled in the past month, with the last sighting at San Clemente city beach reported June 27.

Firefighters rescued a man who fell into a waterfall near Lake Elsinore on Saturday, Aug. 5.

The unidentified man fell approximately 30 feet into the Teneja Falls, a recreation area in the Ortega Mountains west of Lake Elsinore, according to Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department.

A Cal Fire helicopter and crew extracted the man from the remote area and took him to a ground ambulance, which transported him to a hospital for treatment of moderate injuries, the fire department said.

The waterfall is the biggest in the Cleveland National Forest’s San Mateo wilderness area and is reached via the Santa Rosa Plateau in the Cleveland National Forest.

Hordes of women over 40 howled like teenagers and were easily reduced to tears. Who could cause such a commotion? Yes, Barry Manilow was back in Southern California for a sold-out Forum gig. It was originally scheduled on Mother’s Day, but postponed due to the veteran singer’s sprained vocal cords.

The average age of “Fanilows” in Inglewood actually skewed much older. No surprise there: Barry Manilow’s successful run on the Billboard pop singles chart began in 1974 (adult contemporary radio hits continued throughout the ‘80s). Since then, he’s put out more than a dozen concept albums that continue to resonate with longtime followers. During the 2000s, a “Greatest Songs” series of love songs and standards all went gold or platinum.

Last spring, Manilow released “This is My Town: Songs of New York,” a great musical love letter to his hometown of Brooklyn and surrounding areas. Manilow mixes impressive originals such as “Coney Island” and “Lovin’ at Birdland” with covers made famous by The Crystals, Petula Clark, The Drifters, Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, Jay-Z & Alicia Keys (!) and others.

On Friday, an electronica mashup of Underworld’s “Born Slippy” and past Manilow hits served as a festive introduction. Then the 95-minute show kicked off in standard fashion with the jubilant “Daybreak.”

Although the affable entertainer, now 74, stopped doing large scale tours in favor of sporadic live appearances, he said onstage that watching news channels such as CNN “where everybody is so angry” all the time made him realize “people need uplifting music again. So I’m back reporting for duty.”

Supported by a large band that included horn and string players, plus three backing singers, Manilow was in fine vocal form throughout and managed to hit all the high notes (even if it meant a few pained expressions from old plastic surgeries).

He introduced the ballad “Somewhere in the Night,” by lamenting how music on the radio today often lacks melody. In a recent interview, Manilow admitted “Can’t Smile Without You” was one of his least favorites to do live, but he seemed to have fun with it here.

Much of the arena was up and dancing for a vibrant “Bandstand Boogie” (the theme to Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” TV show from 1977-87). The sleek title track from “This is My Town” and “On Broadway/New York City Rhythm” were standouts and the only newish songs played. The latter featured an anecdote about Times Square and whimsical rotating piano/keyboard turns by Manilow and his band.

Alone at the keyboard, Manilow did the quiet, emotionally resonant ballads “I Am Your Child” and “All The Time,” where he recalled early days making the NYC piano bar rounds and “feeling like a misfit.” Back at the black grand piano, the ultra-dramatic “Even Now” and its sustained vocal note whipped the crowd into a frenzy. A snappy “duet” with Judy Garland seen on the screens for “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” (heard on 2014’s Grammy-nominated “My Dream Duets”) worked well.

What followed was the usual sturdy hit parade, including a romantic “Weekend in New England” (prompting loud female squeals), an upbeat take on The Four Seasons’ “Let’s Hang On” (on which Manilow palled around with his singers) and “Somewhere Down the Road” (capped by a moving a cappella bit).

Manilow introduced “Could it Be Magic” by explaining how it was inspired by Chopin and his thoughts on Donna Summer’s dance hit version. A segue into the disco arrangement was just average. Toward the set’s end, Manilow belted out his dramatic showstoppers “I Made it Through the Rain,” “Mandy” (with the now standard 1975 “Midnight Special” TV clip accompaniment) and “I Write the Songs” (driven by swelling orchestration and assistance from the Los Alamitos Show Choir) with ease. “Copacabana (At the Copa)” brought everyone to their feet again for the party time finale.

Barry Manilow

When: Friday, Aug. 4

Where: The Forum, Inglewood

Tarek and Christina El Moussa aren’t letting their pending divorce get in the way of business.

The Yorba Linda pair’s latest venture: Executive producing a new flipping show on HGTV. “Chi-Town Flip,” a reality show about a couple of Chicago house flippers, airs Sunday, August 6 on HGTV.

HGTV says:

“As a former police officer, cleaning up neighborhoods is something Bryan Segal knows well. Now he makes Chicago’s streets safer in a different way — one renovation at a time. He and his wife, Maira, are not afraid to go into rough neighborhoods and tackle the big projects to build beautiful homes and turn a profit.”

The network describes the first episode this way:

“Bryan and Maira modernize a historic Craftsman home in the beautiful Chicago suburb of River Forest, IL. They remodel the kitchen and living spaces by keeping the old-world charm and creating an open floor plan that features stylish accents and custom-built features. The transformed exterior creates much needed curb appeal and brings the 1919 home back to its original glory.”

Despite the tabloid frenzy surrounding their split, the El Moussas, stars of HGTV’s original “Flip or Flop,” intend to keep working together, and they plan to expand their production company, Sky High Media, according to Variety.

“(Tarek) El Moussa says the pair plan to develop and produce even more shows in the home-improvement space,” the story said.

Meanwhile, the divorce could be tossed out if the case, filed in January, doesn’t get rolling, according to a recent notice from the court.

Did you miss?

Are Flip or Flop’s Tarek and Christina getting divorced or not? The court wants to know

Orange County’s ‘Real Estate Wars’ gets a new TV premiere date

If sold at asking price, the estate would be the most expensive property ever sold in Los Angeles.

The 456-foot Lürssen gigayacht will have two helipads, mega-tenders, and the ability to explore the globe.

Starting in November, White Desert will whisk guests from Cape Town to Antarctica in a plush private jet.

SACRAMENTO — Years ago, during a debate with a public school superintendent over the issue of educational choice, I suggested that we shut down the public schools in their entirety. Then we could “buy” education the way we buy other crucial things. We don’t expect government to build our houses (think housing projects) or our cars (think Yugo), so why our schools?

It was a thought experiment, meant to stir up discussion. Most of the audience then — like readers today — find this idea to be insane. Rather than debate the merits of a radical concept, I wanted to use today’s column to point out the absurdity of the current way we purchase education for the young, with a recent Anaheim dispute serving as a case in point.

Anaheim Elementary School Board trustees voted in late July to allow parents to convert the ill-performing Palm Lane Elementary School into a charter school. School officials have spent more than $800,000 in taxpayer money and two years battling mostly low-income parents over their effort to become the first Orange County school to use the so-called “parent trigger” law. The district had little choice but to relent after a recent comeuppance from the courts.

The law, officially known as the Parent Empowerment Act, “creates a process which allows parents of students in low-performing schools to sign a petition to implement one of the intervention models,” according to the California Department of Education. Those models include replacing staff, turning the school into a charter, adding new programs or closing it down.

In 2014, the Anaheim superintendent sent letters to parents noting that the school “failed to meet the English-language arts and mathematics proficiency targets.” Many parents already knew that Palm Lane was failing the kids, so they decided to pull the proverbial trigger. School officials in general tend to dislike accountability laws and charters, so it wasn’t surprising that, instead of helping the parents, Anaheim officials fought them.

Those who want to see how poorly the district treated the parents need only read the California appeals court’s decision from late April. As the ruling detailed, former state Sen. Gloria Romero, the Los Angeles Democrat who authored the trigger law and was assisting Anaheim parents, complained to the district that anonymous people identifying themselves as district employees had been calling petition signers and telling them that their names don’t “match” school records.

“Even if you are personally opposed to enforcement of the parent trigger law, I am sure you do not wish for these parents and their children to suffer unnecessarily,” Romero wrote, according to the court. “Obviously, your callers should stop making statements that sound like the parents are accused of wrongdoing, and the callers should identify themselves.”

Romero suggested the district work with the petitioners to verify the signatures. But the district rejected the petition. It claimed that there weren’t enough valid signatures, denied that Palm Lane was subject to the Parent Empowerment Act, and argued that petitioners lacked a required document and a specific description. This should disabuse anyone of the idea that parents and students are in any way “customers” in the current public school monopoly.

Fortunately, the trial court rejected the district, and the appeals court rebuked it on every major point. Now the parents have 90 days to decide how they want the school to operate. It’s a great victory, of course, but their kids have had to endure a poorly performing school for two more years as their parents, already busy earning a living, had to mount a political and legal campaign. The parents now have to learn how to create (or hire) a quality school.

Let’s put that scenario in the context of a grocery purchase. Nothing’s more important to people’s lives than food, right? We want everyone to have access to healthy food. So the government creates a tax-funded grocery store in each neighborhood designed to serve all the people living within certain artificially created district boundaries.

This is so important that you might move to a neighborhood just because you like the food choices there. But let’s say you’re not wealthy and you’re stuck in a neighborhood with a store that offers few produce choices, bad service and rotten meats. In a competitive system, of course, you would buy your groceries elsewhere. In this one, you have no choice but to go to the Surly Mart.

Under an admirable new law, you could, of course, spend the next two years organizing your neighbors and fighting in court to force changes at the store — over the well-funded recalcitrance of the current management. If you succeed, you get to spend time figuring out how to design and manage a grocery store operation. Lucky you.

Yet, our similarly designed public school system is supposedly more sensible than letting school operators succeed or fail based on their ability to meet the needs of customers. Which system really is crazy?

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. He was a Register editorial writer from 1998-2009. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.