The time is now: #dadcore magazine

Big News! @40goingon28 and I just got hired by Buzzfeed to write daddyblog listicles! #notreally http://t.co/TwUCsiu8hq
— Burrito Justice (@burritojustice) November 18, 2014

Why stop at listicles? THINK BIG, MAN.

Dadcore is about knowing how to make a dinner consisting entirely of white foods and also how to make a Manhattan with one hand while holding a baby in the other.

Dadcore is knowing the people in those "Swagger wagon" ads are tools.

Dadcore is being able to discuss the relative musical merits of One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer.

Dadcore is being able to change a diaper in under 90 seconds.  IN AN AIRPLANE LAVATORY.

Dadcore is real.

Why things are not going to work out for Buzzfeed and me

Famous web site Buzzfeed is looking to hire a "Staff Writer, San Francisco."  Since I already staff write just for fun and enjoy lazily daydreaming about leaving the choking conformist corporate culture of my current job I decided to see if I'd be a likely candidate to staff write for Buzzfeed.  No, it turns out, I would not.

First, I am over 25 and have a decent haircut, and it says right there on the site "NOTICE: WE DO NOT HIRE ANYONE OVER 25 OR ANYONE WITH A NORMAL HAIRCUT."

Here are the "Responsibilities" meaning what I would be doing during the time I'm not looking at other, better web sites.

I could do this!  As long as I don't have to ever, ever say "tech/startup space" out loud.  Blech.  Blech.  I like contributing to the conversation about culture and I try to do that every day.

Here we have requirements, which is the part I like to call "WHY I WON'T BE HIRED TO BE STAFF WRITER FOR BUZZFEED"

You see that Buzzfeed is so fucking TERRIFIED of haters that they had to put in "No haters" TWICE, once with an exclamation point!  NO!  HATERS!

Well, on behalf of me and other haters, fuck you, Buzzfeed.  You won't silence us!

(Also, BUZZ FEED, I have to check the manual but I think "18 Times Paris Hilton Committed Gloriously Bad Crimes Against Fashion" is the work of a HATER so you may yet have haters on staff!  Commence your purge of haters AT ONCE!!!)

Let's see what else.  I'm not 100% sure what emotional intelligence is but I probably have that.  I have the ability, but not the willingness, to take the perspective of others, so I'm good there.  My dog had a "positive, curious, playful disposition" but I couldn't say I do.

Ok then. This has been 17 Great Reasons Why I Won't Get a Job at Buzzfeed.

Watch me go full Comic Book Guy on this clip from Parenthood

Parenthood is a soap opera for grownups about members of an extended family that supposedly live in the Bay Area.  It's also pretty clearly shot in LA, and because The Wife is now extraordinarily tired of me shouting at the TV "THAT'S NOT SAN FRANCISCO!!!  THOSE PEOPLE JUST PARKED IN FRONT OF THEIR HOUSE LIKE IT WAS NO BIG THING!!! THEY'RE OUTSIDE AT NIGHT IN T-SHIRTS!!!!," I'll have to take it to the Internet again.  *shakes fist*

In the last episode, two of the characters supposedly are going to see a band at the Elbo Room, which is an actual real place in SF (for a little while longer, anyway).  (You can watch the scene here; fast forward to about 27:20.) This is what the actual Elbo Room, which is on Valencia, looks like:

Photo via Pinballnews.com, which is a real thing and had the best picture of the Elbo Rom I could find after looking for 35 seconds

And in the Make Believe Fantasy World of Parenthood, this is what the Elbo Room looks like:

Huh.  Not bad, actually!  They sorta got the sign font right and even included the corner doorway.

But look at this, down the side of the club:

Can you see the Transamerica Pyramid from Sycamore and Valencia?  I don't think you can.  Also, guess what, Sycamore Street?  You are now served by a cable car!  (It's slightly visible lower left, and you can see the tracks there.)  DING DING!  As all establishing shots in San Francisco must begin, a cable car passes through at the beginning of the scene.

Then it goes from merely inaccurate to absurd.  As one of the characters, Crosby, approaches the door, he is searched by a bouncer wearing a headset.

A bouncer wearing a headset.  At Elbo Room.

The bouncer reaches into his jacket and pulls out Crosby's "weed."

The idea that the doorman at Elbo Room would (1) search someone's jacket pockets, (2) pull out a baggie of marijuana, and (3) not let the person enter Elbo Room carrying said marijuana is about as likely as the Elbo Room having a VIP lounge where professional athletes order bottles of Ace of Spades and make it rain.  Any two-bit stoner who can roll a joint has a medical marijuana card.  Plus is weed even illegal any more?

Crosby protests that all he wants to do is "burn a little leaf in the toilet."  We're done here.

Rustin Canseco speaks

Ref: here, here, here, and here.

Think about that.

Best airport food is at DFW? Come the fuck on.

A couple of days ago Internet dinosaur Yahoo! (or is it just Yahoo now, sans excitement) went and published a list with the unwieldy title "Every Important U.S. Airport, Ranked by Its Food and Drink," when they could have just said "Best Airport Food" or gone full Upworthy with "Every Airport Serves Food. Which One Has The Best Will Shock You."

[DIGRESSION ONE: It was actually 3 days ago, so I guess it wasn't a "couple" of days ago, but really, can't a "couple" be up to 4?  Like if you said "I'm meeting a couple of friends at Hometown Buffet" would that ALWAYS mean EXACTLY 2 friends, or could it mean a loose assemblage of up to 3 or 4?  Maybe just 3.]

[DIGRESSION TWO: No, seriously, I really want to know why Upworthy, and Upworthy alone, has a stylebook that calls for Capitalizing The First Word Of Every Title Including The Articles Like A And An And The.]

Like everything else they do, Yahoo fucked it up.  Let's cut right to the chase: they said the airport with the best food in America was human stockyard Dallas-Fort Worth.

If you have ever flown on American Airlines, then you know the sinkhole of human misery and pathos that is DFW.  Long lines of dead-eyed humans dressed for a slumber party in a Third World dumpster shuffle aimlessly on and off the TRA'AIN from one endless terminal to the other.  Luckily, there is a plethora of tasty and nutritious food to satisfy these weary travelers!

Not really.  Here's what you get in Terminal C:

I know what you're saying.  HOW COULD IT BE BAD IF THERE'S A WENDY'S.  Of course you're right.  Wendy's is magical.  But does a Wendy's and an Au Bon Pain and a Chili's Too make for the Best Airport Food? No.

(Also, WTF, Taco Bell Express?  Taco Bell is pretty fucking fast already.  I can't imagine how you make it express.  I guess you could have a Food Product Gun that shoots a pre-made slurry of Meat Substitute and spray cheese into either a hard or soft edible wrapper, but that's about it.)

Don't come at me with your Grove Natural Snacks.  That's yogurt covered raisins in a plastic pouch.  The rest is all garbage.  I've eaten at the Texas Stadium Skybox Bar & Grill and it tasted like someone put McDonalds into a food dehydrator and then reconstituted it in gasoline.

SFO came in second.  Just for comparison's sake, here are your options in SFO Terminal 2:

Andale Mexican Restaurant

Burger Joint

Cat Cora

Lark Creek Grill

Napa Farms Market

Peet's

Starbucks

The Plant Cafe

Pinkberry

Vino Volo

Wakaba

But yeah, I guess Manchu Wok would beat the shit out of grilled steelhead salmon with mashed potatoes, broccoli, and sundried tomato-bacon vinaigrette. 

Redistributing wealth for fun & profit: a Thought Experiment

Voters in Arkansas seem ... confused?  For lack of a better word?  They just voted to raise the minimum wage in their state, which, fantastic!  Good for them.  The minimum wage is way too low.  They're only raising it to $8.50 an hour but that's probably like $50 an hour here.

Guess how much this 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath with fenced yard and carport in Bella Vista is?

$675.  Let that sink in for a minute.

Anyway, Arkansans seem confused because in addition to the highly progeressive and populist move of voting to raise their minimum wage, they also voted to the Senate a guy named Tom Cotton who is against raising the federal minimum wage but because he is so breathtakingly devoid of principle announced he would vote for the Arkansas minimum wage hike because he knows how to read polls and wanted to win an election.  It worked.  He won.

Arkansas is a good state to use to think about income and wealth disparity in this country because the per capita personal income there is $34,723 which ranks 45th out of 50 states and is also home to the mind-bogglingly wealthy Walton family of Wal-Mart fame who probably drag up the per capita median income a few grand just by being there.  The Waltons are particularly venal and loathsome because they are the richest family in America with a combined net worth of $152 billion and pay their workers so poorly that many of them have to go on food stamps to live.

So here's a Thought Experiment.  In some state with a low per capita income that also has ballot measures - a state like, say, Arkansas - get the following ballot measure before the voters: a 5% surtax on all incomes above $1 million, with the proceeds going to everyone with an income under $34,723.  Now, ideally, I'd like to just distribute it in the form of crisp $20 bills or I guess a personal check but that might even be too Communist or Socialist or Fascist or whatever combination of those that radio hosts would use, so you could cut the state income taxes of everyone who makes $34,723 to a rate that matches the money collected from Richie Rich.  (Looks like the current rates are between 1 and 7% for that bracket - should be a nice savings!)

Isn't this just a naked redistribution of wealth?  FUCK YEAH.  About time we start redistributing it down instead of up, like they're doing in Kansas, where the latest tax cuts benefit the wealthiest people.

What would this accomplish?  Well, for one thing, it would help out the people who need it the most.  For another, it would tell you whether people are so beguiled by Tom Cotton types that they're willing to vote NOT TO ACCEPT FREE MONEY if it means taking a little bit away from people who make more per year than they will in their working lifetimes.  If they won't pass the Free Money For You From Some Caviar Chomping Dbag Act of 2016, then fuck 'em, we tried.

(P.S. Even in dark red states like Georgia a majority of people want to raise the minimum wage.  SOUNDS LIKE A ISSUE THAT MIGHT BE GOOD FOR DEMOCRATS.  If they weren't so good at losing they might want to pick that up.)

2014 Biggest Voting Surprises

I just voted down at City Hall! No one asked me for my ID because I'm white.  I'm pretty good at voting because I've done it for a long time with varying levels of success (still mad at u, stupid AL GORE).  But in SF the ballot is like 10 PAGES LONG and I'm busy and don't study as much as I need to and some things still surprise me.

1. Nancy Pelosi is running for Congress!  She hasn't run that many ads that I've seen.  I voted for her because I like Nancy Pelosi Drive in Golden Gate Park.  Little heads-up would have been good, though.

2. There's like a whole page of just judges.  Mostly it's just YES or NO.  I voted yes for everyone EXCEPT ONE because I like to keep them on their toes.

3. Oh shit, this year you have to vote for your favorite attraction.

I wrote in "Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater" but I hope Coit Tower wins. If you voted for Fisherman's Wharf I don't even want to talk to you.  The campaign those people ran was DESPICABLE.

4. I studied the David Campos vs. David Chiu race pretty hard but I DIDN'T GET TO VOTE IN THAT ONE.  What a fucking ripoff.

5. I voted no on the soda tax because get back to me when you start taxing LITERAL BAGS OF FUCKING SUGAR.  Do you know how much sugar is in a 1-lb bag of sugar?  ONE POUND.  That's so much more than is in a Coke.  If we are gonna tax sugar, go all the fucking way or go home.

6. Nobody's running against Carmen Chu for Assessor!  She must be good at assessing.

7. After I was done I didn't even make it back to the counter before some lady approached me and said "All done?" and then took my ballot.  WAIT DO YOU EVEN WORK HERE? I think I just got voter frauded.  Where are you, my Republican legislator friends?  HELP.

8. THIS IS NOT A JOKE, NON-SAN FRANCISCANS, but this year we had to fucking VOTE on whether to have artificial turf soccer fields and what kind of height restrictions to have at Pier 70.  This is ridiculous.  Next year we will have ballot propositions like "What should the first movie be at Dolores Park Movie Night" and "Should I pay for a garage or park in the street" and "What's your favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry's" and "Who's Sharon? I have her name and number but don't remember anything about her."

Anyway, you deserve to be heard, so get out there and vote if you have political sensibilities similar to mine.  If not, it's a fucking hassle and waste of time and you might as well just stay home.