It's time once again to review the San Francisco Giants' walkup songs

Just like we did in 2012!  Man, that was two World Serieses ago.  Time flies, etc. I should have been doing this annually but I fell down and couldn't get up.

Let's reprint this Explainer from 2012:

(Walk-up music, if you're not a baseball fan or something, is the music played in the stadium in the time that it takes the player to walk up to the plate - ergo, "walk-up music." For pitchers, it's usually the music that plays when they're warming up. But more than simply that, it is a window into the soul of the player, and should be regarded as such.)

Some players have more than one walkup song.  That's great!  You go, girl.  I, however, am compelled by no law, earthly or spiritual, to discuss every one of your songs.

OK, on to the show.

THE RESPECTABLE

Brandon Belt, "99 Problems" (Beyonce's husband) - Iconic, but I'm not sure it sends the right message when you're coming up to the plate.  What if one of your problems is you let your right shoulder drop?  But you can't argue about the song.

Derek Law, "I Fought the Law" (The Clash) - What you did there, I see it.  But this is such an incredible get-fired-up song that every relief pitcher should use it, whether or not they're named Law or Clash or Joe Fucking Strummer 2.

Brandon Crawford, "Fuck Up Some Commas" (Future) - Finally, a song about the Oxford comma.  I don't know what part of the song they play when Brandon is actually walking to the plate but it is almost guaranteed to have a "fuck" in it and for that it's all worth it.  (Is this the only rap song to mention Groupon by name?  I hope not.)

Sergio Romo, "El Mechon" (Banda MS) - This song is as much Sergio's #brand as facial hair, fist pumping, and striking out Miguel Cabrera.

Javy Lopez, "The Humpty Dance" (Digital Underground) - Javier Lopez is about as old as me so this makes sense.

Joe Panik, "Moment of Clarity" (Beyonce's husband) - It will not surprise you to learn that Jay-Z is heavily represented on every team's walkup music roster.  It's probably because he has a lot of songs that sound like anthems and also sound great in a booming, echoey stadium.

HARD ROCK

Hunter Strickland, "You Shook Me All Night Long" (AC/DC) - I have a fraught relationship with Hunter Strickland. I think he's come into his own as a relief pitcher but he will never know that because he blocked me on Twitter two years ago and APPARENTLY HOLDS A GRUDGE.  Let's be friends, Hunter.  I know I said some very mean things about you but that's back when you were giving away home runs like cops give out badge stickers.  You're better now, and so am I!  We cool?

George Kontos, "Harvester of Sorrow" (Metallica) - Whoever harvests beets, if you ask me!  WACKA WACKA

Will Smith, "Stranglehold" (Ted Nugent) - Oh, too bad we just acquired Will Smith yesterday and now HE HAS TO LEAVE.

NEVER CHANGE, BUSTER

Buster Posey, "Hell on Wheels" (Brantley Gilbert) - Same walkup song he's had since at least 2012, and probably his whole life.  I doubt Buster gives a shit, and some teammate in Salem-Keizer probably picked this for him and he was like "Fine with me, I only care about my family, the Lord, and the Game."

MEANWHILE ON PLANET HUNTER PENCE

Hunter Pence, "My Boo" (Ghost Town DJs) - I don't know why this cracks me up.  Maybe because of this video, using the same music:

this is probably the best thing I have ever done with my life pic.twitter.com/hBy0xkyAqo

— ◢ M I K E D I V A ◣ (@mikediva) May 6, 2016

Life-affirming.

SOUNDS PAINFUL

Kelby Tomlinson, "Christ In Me" (Jeremy Camp)

ADDENDUM

Hope you don't have anything to do this afternoon, because this site compiles walkup music for EVERY PLAYER IN MLB.  Let's see who can find the Worst Walkup Song of All!

(SPOILER: I figured I'd just go straight to Bryce Harper and win AND his are bad but not The Absolute Worst.  He has 5: J. Cole, Sinatra, Bieber, Bassnectar, and Moby.  I am not in the least bit surprised that Bryce Harper finds it necessary to have 5 walkup songs.)

ARTISTS WHO RETURN NO RESULTS WHEN SEARCHING ON THE DATABASE OF ALL WALKUP SONGS IN MLB

Animal Collective
Architecture in Helsinki
Rod Stewart
Elvis Costello
Train
Lionel Richie
Lana Del Rey

PLAYERS WHO USE AT LEAST ONE SONG BY WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Prince Fielder

Is Mission Park Over?

It's a different Mission Park these days, and Olu knows it.

"Yeah, it's different," says the medium-term neighborhood resident. "These kids moving in.  With the skateboards.  And their apps."  His eyes narrow.  "And all the laundry services."

Mission Park is a vibrant, free-spirited neighborhood we created as a joke on Twitter.  It encompasses some of San Francisco's most sought-after territory, from the J-Church stop at Dolores and 20th to that bougie coffee place around the corner from Duc Loi.

"Fucking seven dollars for a fucking waffle," Olu notes.

He can remember when Mission Park was a different place.  "There was a different guy who sat at the corner at the 500, I think," he recalls.  "Don't know what happened to him.  Maybe he died."

Map courtesy of Burrito Justice, who whips these things out like you wouldn't believe

Like it has in the rest of this churning, pulsing city caught up in a new gold rush where the gold is Internet things and not gold, change has found Mission Park.  And not all residents think it's for the better.

"Look, I know that change is inevitable," said Stephen, a medium-term Mission Park local. "But I would appreciate it if the neighborhood would be more the way I like it and less the way other people like it."  He's got no time for dog-walking apps.  "I walk my dog eight times a day just fine on my own, and I don't need any app for that."

Others, like TK, who doesn't live in Mission Park but likes to visit there, take a more measured view.  "The fuck do I care?" he said on a recent sunny afternoon.  "I don't live there.  Not my fucking problem."

Still, there are parts of Mission Park that will never change, new faces or not.  "There are still a lot of human feces on this street," says Stephen.  The heart of Mission Park beats on.

UPDATE:

Since this post was originally written, Mission Park has changed once again.  It's growing, and not everyone is happy about it.

"I'm not happy about it," said Olu.

The new new Mission Park. Coming to your block soon.

Coldplay is a gift

Fey British Mom-rockers Coldplay were announced as the halftme entertainment for Super Bowl L.  Predictably, everyone lost their goddam minds.

Colplay playing the Super Bowl? Will they play that one that sounds exactly like all the other ones and is also terrible?

— Andrew Stoeten (@AndrewStoeten) December 4, 2015

Coldplay? seriously? One more reason Goodell must step down

— Matt Powell (@NPDMattPowell) December 4, 2015

Coldplay for a Silicon Valley Super Bowl sounds about right for some reason.

— Niners Nation (@NinersNation) December 3, 2015

Chin up, footballers! It could be so, so, so much worse. Just check out this list of Super Bowl halftime performers.  It is truly a dark tome.

FOR THE FIRST FEW YEARS, it was mostly marching bands, which is fine because no one cares and you can go get more Jell-O with marshmallows in it and a Hershey bar or whateverTF they ate in the late 60's.  The producer of the Super Bowl IV halftime show, in 1970, no doubt had a headful of the cheap and plentiful blotter acid that flooded the market back then because he booked Carol Channing and the Southern University Marching Band, two entities that had almost certainly never been in the same room together.

Super Bowl V, 1971, featured the first appearance of Up With People, a "musical" sensation so bland and earnest it makes It's a Small World look like Cannibal Corpse.  Up With People would return to darken the Super Bowl stage again and again, in 1976, 1980, 1982, and 1986, before they were blessedly sent to a re-education camp in the North Dakota desert and never heard from again.

UPDATE: Commenter Stoney claims to have no memory of Up With People!  Let's fix that.


Shoulda kept your mouth shut, big man.

What we think of as the Event Halftime didn't really start until Michael Jackson did it in 1993.  (Don't even try to suggest it started in 1991, with "New Kids on the Block (NKOTB), Disney characters, Warren Moon, 2,000 [presumably terrified] local children, and audience card stunt")  Suddenly Carol Channing, the USC Trojans Marching Band, and UWP were shunted to the side to make way for more palatable artists like The Blues Brothers (1997) and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (1999).

The path to Coldplay was paved by similarly self-important anthemizers U2 in 2002.  Somehow-younger-seeming-than-U2 Paul McCartney was in 2005 and the Stones in 2006 but surprisingly not Elton John or Paul Revere and the Raiders in 2007.

(I started looking into this because Olu texted me about Peter Hartlaub's suggestion that Huey Lewis play the SB and I was honestly shocked Huey has never played a SB.  Is there any more perfect SB artist?  He's as smooth and featureless as a beach pebble, and even has an album called "Sports."  It's amazing the NFL didn't invent him solely for the purpose of playing halftime shows.)

So in closing, stop bitching about Coldplay.  At least it's not Charo with the Southeastern Missouri Marching Beavers or whatever they have.

Today in Our Garbage City: Civic Design by Chuck E. Cheese

If you think the Country Bear Jamboree at Disney World is cultural caviar, I've got some good news, via Willie Brown's weekly column in the Chronicle:

If things go according to plan, Tony Bennett won’t be leaving his heart in San Francisco much longer.

He will be keeping it here as part of bigger-than-life statue atop Nob Hill, in front of the Fairmont Hotel.

The sculpture is being made by local artist Bruce Wolfe. Tony will be posed as if he were singing, and the statue’s base will be rigged with technology that will play his signature “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” whenever someone walks by.

Fundraising for the project is being lead by Charlotte Shultz and Fairmont general manager Tom Klein. The idea is to honor the song, the singer and the Venetian Room, where the singer and song came together to make so much magic.

It’s going to be one heck of a tourist draw. Can you imagine how many people will be hopping on those little cable cars that climb halfway to the stars for a selfie?

The hope is to have it done by August, when Bennett will celebrate his 90th birthday.

Madre de Dios.  A robotic Tony Bennett, doomed for all eternity to sing one song over and over and over again.

At least until the Robot Revolution happens and the Bennettron 3000 is free to exact a horrifying revenge on Charlotte Schultz and Tom Klein.

Seriously though, Jesus fucking Christ, who thinks this is a good idea?  I also have some technical questions about how this is going to work.  If it sings "whenever someone walks by," does it start over again?  Because a lot of people walk by there and I'm imagining the first 2 notes of the song on an endless hiccuping cycle.  Or will the song just be playing all the way through, 24/7?  HOPE YOU LIKE THAT HOTEL GUESTS.  Some VP of sales from Cincinnati, driven mad by sleep deprivation, is going to yank Tony's robotic voicebox and become a civic hero.

This is the kind of cheeseball garbage that fucking Myrtle Beach would turn down for being too tacky.  There are a million ways to honor Tony Bennett but this is the worst anyone could think of.  Why don't you just loose an army of Roombas with speakers taped to the top, circling the city nonstop, each blaring the song on infinite repeat?  Then everyone can enjoy it!  

Seriously, what the fuck.

Should you change the name of that school? Here's a simple test.

Towards the end of another Debra J. Saunders fiasco, this one about renaming stuff that's named for Confederates (like, who knew there were three elementary schools in California named for Robert E. Lee?), there's this little anecdote:

"The bill," BTW, is SB 539, which bans naming state or local property after "an elected leader or senior military officer of the Confederate States of America," but exempts the "renaming of a city, county, or other political jurisdiction" with a Confederate name, so Fort Bragg gets to stay Fort Bragg if it so wishes.

(Fort Bragg, as you may not realize, was named after Braxton Bragg, a guy who was a Confederate general, but was apparently named after him before he became a Confederate so it's OK? I guess?)

Before we move on, let's just pause and admire Deb's phrase "Confederate name jihad," because only Debra J. Saunders would call a move to stop honoring traitors a "jihad."  Christ.

Anyway, we've been getting this a lot.  "But where do you draw the line?  George Washington owned slaves!  Maybe we should remove his name from everything too!"  GOP Assemblyman James Gallagher makes the same argument above, vis-a-vis Earl Warren.  Andrew Jackson was a total shitbird, but Jackson Street in SF is still Jackson Street.

So let me suggest a simple test we could use to determine whether or not to remove someone's name: DID THEY ENGAGE IN WAR AGAINST THE UNITED STATES?

Voila!  The scales have fallen from my eyes.  Now this shit is easy.  Robert E. Lee is out and FDR gets to stay.  We don't have Emperor Hirohito High School, so why one named after Nathan Bedford Forrest?  (That was thankfully changed in 2014.)  So that's the rule.  Sorry, Taliban Technical High School.  That has a ring to it, but it's a non-starter.

Towns are harder because they're not a discrete entity like a school.  Thousands of people don't put their elementary school as their return address every time they mail a letter and the rest of the country doesn't commonly refer to a middle school when trying to find a place to stay that's close to Mendocino but cheaper.  So I get the exception for that.  (Although changing the name of a town has been done before.  Even as we speak, I'm in beautiful downtown Yerba Buena.  More recently, Hot Springs, New Mexico changed itself to Truth or Consequences, NM, to win a fucking radio contest. America!)

ONE FINAL NOTE.  This is not to say that you have to change the name ONLY if someone waged war against the US.  After all, the Richard M. Nixon Freeway quietly became the slightly less interesting "Marina Freeway." There's always going to be exceptions.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: My monastery floors are better than your monastery floors

Sorry this is so late.  The past two weeks daycare has been closed so I've been babysitting I mean parenting in the mornings which means I've been cycling between the park, the bus[*], back to the park, and then the couch to watch Big Hero 6 AGAIN AND AGAIN.[**] This means I have less time for the Things That Matter, like blogging and whatever the fuck else it is I do.

[*] The kid loves Muni so much.  She thinks it's magical and wants to ride the bus or the train whenever possible.  JUST WAIT, KID.

[**] Her taste in Big Hero 6 is now exquisitely refined to the point where sometimes she just wants to watch "THE MASK THE MASK THE MASK" - i.e., any action sequences featuring the villain, who wears a kabuki-type mask.  Also, it's a pretty good movie so I guess we're lucky.

ON TO THE SHOW.  Ruh Roh is still trying to move the A/C unit on Octavia.  Whilst showing some idle rich around, he drops the, to my mind, stunning detail that the floors were taken from a "Benedictine monastery in Austria."  WHAT THE FUCK.  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.  This had better be a lie, or it moves that apartment from "ugly" and "uncomfortable" to "actually evil." We can at least be consoled with the fact that tearing up floors from a monastery to put them in your yuppie box is a fucking 100% guaranteed express ticket to a Hieronymous Bosch-style hell.

GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEW LOCATION

Roh's also in on the Bernal Heights place from last week - you remember, the one that's in a slum so grotesque it makes a Rio favela look like Chestnut Street at brunchtime.  He's representing some potential buyer and human-shaped eye roll Andrew has the seller.  They sit across a table from each other and negotiate like two mildly developmentally disabled fifth graders playing Risk.  The place sells for $1.9 million.  Everybody eats salad.  The universe continues to entropy.  Eventually - not soon enough for my taste - the Sun will swallow and vaporize  the Bernal Heights property.  It will then be worth much less.

Meanwhile, Justin has been engaged by a dentist who may not be a dentist but might be an actor playing the dentist from "Little Shop of Horrors" because that's what he seems like.  He lives in a penthouse in Pacific Heights and is friends with Kathy Hilton and had his picture taken with Prince Charles once so I guess that's about everything you need to know.  He wants to sell his place for $4,000,000,000 or something.  Justin can't make anyone pay that much.  He laughs nervously and everyone dies.

Back at Andrew's place, his gay fiancee says he maybe wants to fuck some chicks.

IT'S GO TIME on Monastery Manor.  The seller, a pointy man with round spectacles, insists on $2.6 million.  Roh's seller won't pay a penny more than $2.599 million.  This isn't a joke!  I'm not making this up!  In the big-balled high-pressure world of real estate, YOU WIN if you convince the seller to accept 99.9999997% of his asking price.  I wish spectacles had turned him down.  "YOU INSULT ME WITH YOUR PROPOSAL. I SHALL BROOK NO FURTHER TALK OF THIS SORT.  GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR."  Instead, that jackoff takes it!  HAHAHA YOU JUST GOT ROBBED, MY MAN.  $2,599,000 instead of $2,600,000!! What a fucking rube.  You think thousand dollar bills grow on trees?  Idiot.  Whew boy.

[Ed. note: I'm well aware that many, if not most, places in SF go for over asking in today's go-go Webvan Pets.com-style economy. For whatever reason, that doesn't happen that much on this show. Maybe they're all overpriced to start with? Anyway, fuck these people.]

Things that used to be cool or at least tolerable and are now almost certain dbag markers

Audis

Mohawks

Superpremium vodka

Coachella

Private planes

Cologne

MDMA

Working in the technology industry

Burning Man

Being a DJ

SOMA

Regrettable online fundraising campaigns through history

By now, you know the drill: do something awful, get a lot of press, and someone sets up a fundraising page and you are handsomely rewarded.  (Here's just the latest example.)

If only GoFundMe had existed in the past.

The Bachelor: Badlands, or Worst Lands?

Was it just me, or was this episode boring as fuck?  I mean, we all put up with a lot to watch this shit, but this one really seemed to drag for some reason.  Anyway, we pick up in media res with The Widow Kelsey collapsed on the floor, suffering from a seemingly fatal case of crazy bitch.  Medics (Australian, I think - is there some reason why every reality show is contractually obligated to use Australian medics?) huddle around, trying to pump sane juice into her.  Sadly, she lives and returns to the Girl Cave cackling madly and talking about brownies.

So now we have a Rose Ceremony up top!  It's like going through a car wash backwards.  Teen Mom and Who The Fuck Is Samantha are out.  Samantha, we hardly knew ye.  Good luck in your new location.

We have unquestionably run out of locations to visit because we're going to Deadwood, South Dakota.  Oh, for a Deadwood/Bachelor crossover so I can hear Al Swearingen telling Kaitlyn that the only motherfucking reason to live is to make sure that other fucking cocksucker dies.  ABC has also run out of hotel budget because the girls are staying in a Holiday Inn with a corrugated steel exterior that looks like it was just flown in from Guantanamo.

What a fucking dump.  Anyway, one on one date with Becca, who looks like she played softball in college and orders her lingerie from J. Crew.  Unbelievably, she says she's never ridden a horse.  That is a bunch of bullshit, Becca.  There's some outdoor shit and horseback riding and a campfire and I don't know how she's going to eat that kebab because she never fully opens her mouth.  Farmer hits her with his usual "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" question and she says "Heading up the entire East Coast region!"  Not really.  I don't know what she said but I'm sure it was boring.  They have a long sleep-inducing conversation about feelings and I can tell she's a virgin because she wants 4-6 kids.

Group date!  These fillies are going to write some country music, aided by a park bench hobo and a carpet salesman wearing a cowboy hat.

Oh, it's famous country music people Big & Rich.  I like the bum looking one, he seems like he's drunk the whole time.  There's a lot of nothing and then Farmer gets up to sing.  He sounds like a Downs kid doing karaoke.  Of course Cruise Ship Carly sees this as her *BIG* *MOMENT* and does a full single spotlight ballad.  Then her eyebrows leap off and perform "La Cucaracha" to a mostly disinterested room.

Day turns to night and we're still hanging around this bar.  Just between you and me, Deadwood appears to be such a fucking tourist hole it makes Myrtle Beach look like Brussels.  Jade says she can see herself being in Iowa but she's from LA and she's thinking Field of Dreams instead of existential boredom and corn.  Farmer grabs SparklyBritt and they run off to a Big & Rich show, which is Britt's "virgin country music experience" like she's just desperate to have something virgin about her.  There's some rose thing and B&R play their carefully calibrated corporate rock/country.  They're like Kid Rock without the edge.  When they go back to the rest of the chix, everyone is SO MAD.  At least Baby Voice manages to squeak out that she's "here for the right reasons," so it's not a total loss.

Let's get to tonight's Main Event, the Widow Kelsey vs. Virgin I Cage Match of Death!!!!!!!  Everyone hops into a helicopter and flies over Mount Rushmore.  Virgin "literally with this can't even" and that might be the most coherent thing she's said so far.  Anyway, they land in some Badlands where there just happens to be a canopy bed and the whole thing looks like a Pink Floyd album cover.  Virgin puts Kels on blast and tells Farmer how everyone just hates her so much.  Natch Farmer immediately snitches her out to Kels, who sadly doesn't kill the Virgin.  Everyone cries.  Virgin would be a good match for anyone looking for an emotional Costa Concordia who needs psychiatric treatment if she gets a raspberry filling chocolate from the See's candy mix.  In the smartest move of the season, Farmer kicks them both off and that's it for this week.

Next week we're probably going to Bloomington Indiana, the way things are going so far.

Jim Harbaugh's Twitters are the ravings of a lunatic

Former 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh just took to Twitter and MAN IS HE EXCITED.

"Anything less than a man's best effort cheats himself! Demeans him! Spoils him! Ruins him! Cheapens him! Emerson
— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) January 16, 2015

Emerson! Loved to use! Exclamation points! Didn't he!

His whole Twitter stream is like this.  It's like somebody gave molly to a Labrador.

Attacking this day with Enthusiasm Unknown to Mankind
— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) January 15, 2015

That's a lot of Enthusiasm! But I wonder what kind of Enthusiasm is Unknown to Mankind. ALIEN ENTHUSIASM. Jim Harbaugh is an alien.

Some of the tweets read like someone is holding a gun to his head and forcing him to type them:

Life at Michigan is Great! Great with a capital "G!"
— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) January 14, 2015

YES EVERYTHING IS GREAT. WHY DO YOU ASK. IT'S SO GREAT. SO SO SO GREAT.

Now following Pope Francis @Pontifex. Go Blue!
— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) January 8, 2015

Pope Francis is a Michigan fan? Oh shit, wait til Notre Dame finds out about this. They'll dump Catholicism and become a Greek Orthodox school. Notros Damos.

Also, Jim Harbaugh's dad looks EXACTLY like Jim Harbaugh with old man makeup on:

Have a good weekend!

World Series Game 1: Boring

I'm not gonna say that I have amazing predictive powers, but do I have amazing predictive powers or what?

(CAVEAT 1: Only if you consider 7-1 a "blowout." 7-1 could be a blowout!)

(CAVEAT 2: Please ignore the Readers Digest Large Print Edition font size but I'm so old I wear contacts AND use reading glasses sometimes and setting my iPhone font size to "Elderly Man" is the only way I can read/write texts without putting on glasses.  I'm at an age where every male in my peer group has to lift up their glasses to look at something you're showing them on your phone.  Don't laugh, you're going to get old and die someday too.)

OKAY THEN.  Here's the Giants plan: (1) Lay low for a whole season and don't make anyone think they're a contender; (2) Sneak into the playoffs via a one-game play-in system that didn't exist a few years ago; (3) Rough up the other side's ace in the first inning of Game 1, just like the last Series they went to.

First inning: Fucking GREGOR BLANCO gets a leadoff hit.  That should be the sign that something is very wrong.  I'm sure Gregor Blanco is a very nice man but he is not a major league leadoff hitter except oh maybe he is.  There's some silliness with Buster Posey getting thrown out at home AGAIN and then boom, Hunter Pence home run.  3-0.

“It was really loud in my head,” Pence said.

I bet it's always really loud in your head, Hunter.  Anyway, thanks to some early runs and then the coolly efficient killing machine known as Madison Bumgarner, a human lawnmower who is expressionless as he destroys and thinks mercy is for suckers, this game was boring.  Admit it, you were bored.

It gave us time to reflect on other things.  LIKE IS KEN ROSENTHAL REALLY THAT TINY??!!?

Not Photoshopped, I swear to fucking God

WHAT THE FUCK.  That's a railing behind him and then that oddly malevolent guy has to be, what, at least 6, 7 feet back.  Let's do some math.

I don't want to bore you with the calculations, but my scientists inform me that Ken Rosenthal is about three and a half feet tall.  He is a tiny Reporter Pixie, plucked from the Magic Forest to annoy the fuck out of us on Fox.

That's about it.  Nothing much happened.  One Royals guy hit a home run, and Billy Butler, whose head is as spherical and featureless as an orange, came close to one but missed and he looked so sad and little leaguer that The Wife actually felt bad for him.

Let's don't kid ourselves.  It's not over.  The Royals are an actual baseball team with real players and Madison Bumgarner can't pitch every night.  Actually, he probably could but that wouldn't be fair.  Anyway, more games coming.  It's going to be really loud in our heads.

Types of annoying people RANKED

Types of annoying people RANKED
— Cuhsandra (@Cuhsandra) October 7, 2014

OK.

28. Obviously fake name at Starbucks

27. Three abreast walkers

26. Bad tippers

25. Burning Man people who are super into being Burning Man people

24. People who don't give up their seats to the elderly or the pregnant or the disabled or someone holding a small child on public transit

23. No turn signal

22. Clerks who turn bills so they all face the same way before completing a transaction

21. Boston Red Sox fans

20. People who order five sandwiches in the deli line

19. People who constantly quote movie lines instead of having their own sense of humor

18. Weekend sports anchors

17. Relatives on Facebook who only post crazy right-wing crackpot stuff

16.  Bicyclists on the sidewalk

15. Loud bros

14. Takes way too long at the ATM

13. "I don't own a TV"

12. Has very specific diet; wants to make sure you know all about the diet and what they can and can't eat

11. Kid Rock

10. SFGate commenters

9. People who stand on the left side of the escalator

8. Teens

7. Sidewalk clipboard fundraisers

6. People who date your ex

5. Dudes who obviously ogle women and catcall and shit like that

4. Responds to lengthy text asking a question with "K"

3. People who leave voicemails

2. Loud cell phone talkers

1. Everybody else in general

Shall I Compare Thee to a GrubHub.com: Shakespeare's lost app sonnets

Hark! My raiments rest in shoddy pile
Washing them is not worthwhile
A mighty colossus such as me
Hath no time to bother with drab laundry
Upon my smartphone I shall depose
Some luckless sap to wash my clothes
Washio it seems is the poor man’s name
Collecting my breeches be his game
What happens then I know not
Preoccupied by more important thought
I do know that in a few days’ time
My tunic’s returned in condition prime
For this, I am charged a reasonable fee
I am become the lord of all laundry!
I suppose the matter of making a dime
Is something Washio will work out in time.

I stumbled frantic down the lane

Past shelter unwelcome and profane

“Hark!” I cry, “I just need a spot

“To sit and gather up my thought.

I want neither office nor abode

Just a squat with chair and commode.”

Whilst searching through the iTunes store

My eyes lit upon a major score

“Breather!” my hungry eyes devoured

“Renting rooms by the hour!”

No longer the domain of hotels sleazy

Now copping a room is Internet-easy

Wink wink nudge nudge now you be nice

You shan’t corrupt your room with sin or vice

“Sure thing, Breather,” I commend

Whilst entering room with my lady friend

Such sweet business we will conduct!

Breather cleaning crew, sorry, you’re fucked.

What sweet sounds drift from above?

Is it the voice of the one I love?

Ah! Look, here upon the iPhone screen

A booty text from my sweet colleen

But she is in the Mission though

And I atop shining Potrero

But my phone bestows on us a gift:

Some Prius-driving dork from Lyft 

Into this stranger’s carriage I slip

And pray he speaks not this whole trip

It’s like a cab, but sketchier so

Who needs workers compensation though?

Forward! Advance, sharing economy!

To my lover hurry me!

And if I should die lest he be running late

I pray for my heirs to litigate.

One eve a lover whom I sent my nudes

Fell ill with a serious case of the rudes

Posting my privates far and wide

Driving me nearly to ex-icide

If only there was some way to share

Pics that would vanish into the air.

Aha! Snapchat offers features free

They claim doth protect my privacy

Don’t speak to me of screencaps or hacks

I want to believe my pics free of attack

A simpleton, I am comforted so

By the founder, a raging Stanford bro

And soon I am sure th’ love of my eyes

Will be a means to advertise.

What would it actually take for Roger Goodell to get fired?

Everybody wants Roger Goodell fired!  Ann Killion at our beloved Chron says "Emperor Goodell's reign should be suspended indefinitely."  He's not a real emperor, I don't think.  Emperor of Fucking Up, maybe.  ZING.  Meanwhile, Grantland wants to know "What Does It Take to Get Roger Goodell Fired?" and even Vice has managed to look up from the cocaine table long enough to muse "Wait, why hasn't NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell been fired yet?"

So yeah, what would it take?  Let's look at some scenarios.

ACTION: Roger Goodell deletes NFL's Season Recording of "What Not to Wear."

EXPLANATION: "Come on, it's like the same thing every episode.  There is no way you were going to watch all those.  We were at 82%.  Come on."

RESULT: NFL glares at Goodell; Goodell not fired.

ACTION: Roger Goodell calls Cowboys fans "the most loathsome, repellent sacks of supposedly organic matter ever to leak excrement onto the Earth."

EXPLANATION: "Well, it's true."

RESULT: Nothing.  It is true.  Goodell not fired.

ACTION: Roger Goodell drafts Wes Welker in the first round of his fantasy draft.

EXPLANATION: "I like him. He plays with a lot of heart."

RESULT: Roger Goodell's fantasy team, "Great Players in the NFL," loses week 1 by 81 points to "Peyton's Manhole."  Roger Goodell not fired.

ACTION: Roger Goodell lists Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me" as "My ATF Song" in a Tumblr questionnaire that's going around.

EXPLANATION: "Pink totally rules! This song is so badass."

RESULT: NFL stares at Roger Goodell for a long time and then walks away.  Roger Goodell not fired.

ACTION: Roger Goodell tries to claim 3 different pints of Ben & Jerry's are "one item" to get under 12-item threshhold.

EXPLANATION: "They're all the same thing. They're all ice cream.  You could put them all in one bowl together."

RESULT: NFL explains that the test is whether the scanner beeps more than once.  One scanner beep = one item.  3 pints = 3 items.  Goodell sent to regular line behind a woman with two overflowing carts and 5 children aged 3 to 9.  Goodell not fired.

ACTION: Roger Goodell is short 50 cents to purchse Funnyuns at Pak N Go in Arlington, Texas.  Takes 50 cents from Jerry Jones's change cup in car while Jerry Jones uses bathroom.

EXPLANATION: "It was only 50 cents."

RESULT: Roger Goodell is fired.

Grover Norquist went to Burning Man and doesn't understand how it works

Ugh, more Burning Man stuff.  Sorry.  Just ignore this if you want.  It's just been bothering me and this is where I let my grumpy-old-man-writing-letters-to-the-editor hang out.

Grover Norquist is a noted ultraconservative and anti-tax crusader who famously declared that "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."  Like a puppy you don't want!

Anyway, Grover decided he wanted to go to Burning Man because "There's no government that organizes this. That's what happens when nobody tells you what to do. You just figure it out. So Burning Man is a refutation of the argument that the state has a place in nature."

Right off the bat, Grover has a few misconceptions.  It's not like 60,000 people just materialize in the remote Nevada desert and organize themselves into a semicircle of camps.  While it's not controlled by a "state" per se, the Burning Man organizers most certainly do serve as a "government."  There are SHITLOADS of rules about what you can and can't do.  Here's a whole page of them. No tampons in the Porta Potties.  Never start a fire on the playa.  No audio systems stronger than 300 watts.  All cars must be licensed.  MAN I AM FEELING THE BOOT OF THE GOVERNMENT ON MY THROAT.  Grover's apparent idea that it's rule-free libertarian wonderland is a fantasy.

So he went and wrote about it for the Guardian.  His article has all the usual first-timer wide-eyed crap about naked people and drugs, but a few passages stood out to me.

A community that comes together with a minimum of “rules” demands self-reliance – that everyone clean up after themselves and help thy neighbor. Some day, I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this. I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man.

If you want to live in Burning Man for a year, Grover, be my guest.  I have a few questions, though:  Who's going to bring in the food and water you'll need for a year?  After 3 or 4 months, the camp next door is going to get sick of you showing up every day with your plate out.  Who's going to pay for that food?  More importantly, who's going to maintain the roads that whatever vehicles that bring the food will travel on?  Will Burners leave and voluntarily go on road-paving details?  Because government bad.

What about if someone gets sick? If there's a doctor at Year-Long Burning Man, he's going to be working his fucking ass off providing gifted health care to everyone.  Is that fair?  Who's gonna pay for medical supplies?  What if the person who gets sick doesn't have any money or any shiny beads to trade?

What if Year Long Burning Man gets attacked by the Cliven Bundy Ranch Militia?  You can't bring guns to Burning Man, so who's going to defend you and your fellow Free Society lovers?  Certainly not that bad old government.

(Incidentally, I wonder if Grover, the author of "Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives" knows that he is NOT AT ALL FREE to bring guns to Burning Man.)

Also, the Burning Man political convention is too silly and juvenile an idea to discuss, but it would make for great TV.  I'd fucking love it if Mitt Romney gave a speech about how everyone in the audience had lizard heads with fountains of pure light streaming from them.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of what he says is pretty true, about how you need to be self-reliant at the event and everyone gives of themselves.  I think he's trying to make the point that this kind of attitude and behavior could be writ large in society and we'd all live in a government-free boho paradise, but this is the kind of thinking that most people leave behind when they start high school.  The fact is, Burning Man is a tightly controlled, self-selected community where everyone knows they have to provide for themselves.  When I went, I spent about $2000 to do that.  That money didn't come out of thin air.  In Grover's Burning Man fantasy, what about the people who don't have $2000?  What becomes of them?

Of course Grover Norquist is welcome to go to Burning Man.  Anyone is.  But trying to promote it as some kind of tax-free libertarian fantasyland is ridiculous.

OK, that's it for Burning Man for this year.  Hopefully all years.

We have received some disturbing video

Let's momentarily set aside our own little Tiananmen on the Mississippi and review some disturbing footage we have recently received here at 40GO28 HQ.

First up is Sarah Palin.  Remember that this woman once had a reasonable chance to become President of the United States.  Well, not really, but much closer than us.  If just 12 or 13 states had changed their mind and swung McCain's way, and then he was accidentally shot in Florida while trying to go to the dentist or buy a newspaper, today we'd have President Palin telling Vladimir Putin to get his troops out of Usain Bolt.

Here's the video:




She appears to be - and I say appears to be because I'm not sure Sarah Palin even knows what she's saying - responding to the claim that a worker in America should be able to survive on the minimum wage, which I personally think is a reasonable proposition but not Sarah Palin.

(Credit to some poor bastard intern at Slate who had to transcribe this group of words that were put together and tumbled out of this lady's mouth in no particular order)

"We believe?” Wait, I thought fast food joints, hurh. Don’t you guys think that they’re like of the Devil or something ... Liberals, you want to send those evil employees who would dare work at a fast food joint that you just don’t believe in, thought you wanted to, I dunno, send them to Purgatory or somethin’ so they all go vegan and, uh, wages and picket lines I dunno they’re not often discussed in Purgatory, are they? I dunno why are you even worried about fast food wages because ... Well we believe in an America where minimum wage jobs, they're not like life time gigs, they're stepping stones.

There appear to be at least two ideas going on here.  One is that "liberals" don't like fast food joints, so why would you care what happens to the people who have to work there?  Oh, Sarah.  This may be a difficult concept for you to grasp, but it's possible to not endorse a product but still care about the people who are forced to work to produce that product.  I feel terrible for the poor schmucks who have to put together your brain-damaged drivel and put it on the Internet!  See?

Also, we're liberals, we don't believe in Purgatory, although watching this video is probably a close approximation.

The second idea is at the end.  Minimum wage jobs aren't supposed to be "life time gigs," but stepping stones.  OK then!  You need to get off your ass and CREATE SOME MOTHERFUCKING JOBS and then hire some fast food workers.

Video #2 is an advertisement for Modelo Especial, an unexceptional Mexican beer that wants to grab the dbags-who-think-they're-hipsters market.


Although the problems with the scenario depicted in this ad are legion, here are my main points:

1. "Good thing you invited Tommy, who triples your street cred."  What, because he's wearing an Urban Outfitters beanie and some Warby Parkers and didn't shave today?  Maybe he triples your street cred in a nursery school or an Applebee's.

2. "You order three Modelo Especials, earning seven slow nods from the crowd."  When is the last time you gave a fuck what some 20-something toolbag at the bar was ordering, let alone gave a "slow nod" to indicate your approval?  If seven people a a bar gave me a "slow nod" when I ordered a cheap Mexican beer I would assume they were all in town for a Parkinson's convention.

3. "Then you remember your ace in the hole, Dylan, and his encyclopedic knowledge of garage rock."  OH GREAT THE THREE GUYS HERE FOR THE FIRST TIME ARE TAKING OVER THE JUKEBOX WITH THE ONLY SONICS SONG ANYONE KNOWS BECAUSE IT'S ALREADY BEEN IN 28 COMMERCIALS.  Great going, Dylan.  Your encyclopedic knowledge of commercially palatable garage rock is going to get all our asses kicked.

I'm apparently not the only one bothered by this ad.

That classic question: If you had a time machine, would you go back and kill the person responsible for the Modelo Especial commercial?
— The Tens (@thetens) August 19, 2014

Your Outside Lands timeline for today

12:05 Shotgun beer under the Crossover Drive bridge.

12:10 Enter festival grounds. Idly wonder who or what Night Terrors of 1927 is.

12:12 Oh, they're one of those swooping chorus electro pop bands.

1:43 Stop by the "USPS Janis Joplin Tribute." Now even the fucking mail is sponsoring acts at music festivals.

2:15 Run the Jewels. Hey, a black person! On stage, anyway.

3:05 In case your Mom is with you, "Magician Jon Armstrong" at the "Gastro-Magic" stage. Does Magician Jon Armstrong do food magic or something? Maybe he can make monkfish edible.

4:03 Eat mushrooms.

4:15 Attempt to dig up bottle of Fireball you buried last week.  Dig up raccoon skeleton instead.

4:48 Mushrooms beginning to take effect.

4:50 Decide to wear raccoon skull.

6:15 Is Bear Hands real or did Vice make them up? Why are they rotating in space and shooting out plumes of color?

6:28 Ascend to Third Plane of Astral Reality. Disappointingly, no complimentary food on this plane.

6:44 Visit the This Is Fucking Offal food truck, order sheep's gall bladder sliders.

6:56 Vomit up sheep's gall bladder sliders.

7:18 Halfway through Tegan & Sara remember you don't like Tegan & Sara.

7:22 Realize that all 120,000 people here are now heading towards Kanye stage.

8:40 Get to back of Kanye crowd.  I can see him!

9:38 Disjointed crying.  Escorted out by security.

What's going on with the Top 3 songs in the country right now?

Dedicated readers (or reader, I suppose) know that from time to time we like to put our ear to the railroad track of popular music and get our skull crushed and mangled by whatever the Billboard Top 3 songs in the country are right that day.  It's been a while!  Let's do it again.

The Number One song in the country right now is - and I am having trouble with superlatives here - one of the Worst Songs Ever Created by Man.  It's called "Rude" by a band called Magic! with an exclamation point so you know they're EXCITING!  It's barely even a song.  Whatever you do, don't click "play."


You did it.  You clicked "play," didn't you?  I'm sorry.  Look, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here because Jia Tolentino at the Hairpin has already done a brilliant longform takedown of this song that is so good that you'll want to print it out and frame it.  Suffice it to say that not only is this a bad song; the creators should be put in Gitmo and terrorists should be released to make room for them.  Released to Canada, though, since Magic! with an exclamation point is from Canada.  (And the phrase "Canadian reggae fusion band" is the scariest collection of words since "Guy Fieri's donkey sauce".)

Let's put that unpleasantness behind us and move on, to Number Two: "Fancy," by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX.


Iggy Azalea is inspirational proof that even a knockout blonde from Australia can somehow make it in the entertainment business.  I'm not even going to attempt to unpack the layers of cultural appropriation going on here.  Maybe I don't get it because I'm not in the "murda bizness" like Iggy Azalea.

I don't really have much else to add about this song.  I give it three "whatever"s.

Number Three is "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith.



The best of a bad lot, I guess.  I don't really know anything about Sam Smith but I gather from the 3 minutes of online research I just did that he's renowned for his incredible vocal range and whatever that's fine good for him.  The song is a little boring but I guess it's heartfelt and that's more than you can say about the other two.  So good for you, Sam Smith.

Out of curiosity, I checked to see what the Top 3 songs were 20 years ago today.  Ready for this?

1. "Stay" - Lisa Loeb
2. "I Swear" - All-4-One
3. "Fantastic Voyage" - Coolio

So that proves it!  Music really was always better 20 years ago from any given date ever in the history of time.  In 2034 we'll be pining for the emotional resonance of "Rude" by Magic!.  No, that will never happen.  That is not true.

One final note.  In looking at the Top 10 I noticed that #6 is "Maps" by Maroon 5 and at first I got really excited because I thought Maroon 5 was covering the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but disappointingly it's a completely different song.

Sometimes missing out is for the best, SFGate

OK!  Hopefully no one else dies for a while so we can get back to doing what we do best: SPOUTING ILL-INFORMED SNARK ABOUT THINGS WE HAVE ONLY SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT!

Let's start with this SFGate article by Heather Knight entitled "Is S.F.'s too-cool attitude a turnoff?"  The gist of the article is that San Francisco is missing out on all kinds of cool stuff because, I think, we make it too hard to build things or make things or host things or whatever here.  Here are the things the article says we were too cool for:

1. Another America's Cup
2. A new 49ers stadium
3. George Lucas' "art" museum

To be fair, Heather has a point with the 49ers stadium.  The City - and by The City I mean Gavin Fucking Newsom - did not do enough to try and keep the 49ers in San Francisco.  I will totally grant you that.  The rest, however, is pretty much bullshit.

ANOTHER AMERICA'S CUP?  ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND HEATHER KNIGHT.  Do you even remember the last one?  THE CITY LOST MONEY ON IT.  This is an event so few people give a shit about that THEY HAD TO PAY TO PUT IT ON TV.  The way I understand it, with other sports, thee TV people actually pay the sports people for the right to broadcast the sport.  Not the America's Cup!  I guess the 0.000001% of America that has any interest in sailboat racing is used to buying TV networks though.

Anyway, point being, if you think SF really lost out on something by losing the privilege of hosting a bunch of Scrooge McDucks' boat race and taking a bath on it in the process, we'll have to disagree.

Then there's the George Lucas Ego Monument.  I'm no Star Wars geek or anything but I get the impression that all those nerds think George Lucas really fucked up the franchise with the later movies.  Basically he wanted to take some of his huge wet gobs of money and plop down a museum wherever the fuck he wanted it, in this case Crissy Field, a beautiful open space that was lovingly restored just a few years ago.

I wasn't crazy about the renderings for the museum either

So when the Presidio Trust said he couldn't put his museum there the City offered him another PRIME FUCKING SPOT on the waterfront but had the UNMITIGATED GALL to ask George Lucas, who has the net worth of $unlimited and could buy Chile on a whim, to kick in a little for the fucking site.  So George Lucas got Chicago drunk on Fireball shots and Chicago giggled and gave George Lucas a prime waterfront spot for $1 a year.

OH SHOOT.  What did we miss out on?

You have got to be shitting me.  We've already got a Maxfield Parrish, and it's located exactly where it belongs, in a bar.  The Vargas is nice if you're decorating an L.A. porn producer's house in 1988.  And hey!  It's a DVD cover!  I get the strong feeling that the gift shop at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be larger than the galleries.  The point is, we hardly need a tourist trap museum with a questionable collection to be considered a world-class city.  I just can't work up a lot of grief over losing this thing.

[STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Of course there's all kinds of stuff SF could do differently, it's probably too hard to get things done in this town, blah blah blah, we all know that.  I'm just talking about these two things in particular.]

Drama at 30,000 feet! Also at 30 feet.

Thanks again to everyone for the kind words on my Dad's passing.  We were just coming home from the funeral yesterday when Frontier flight 663 from Denver to SFO EXPLODED WITH DRAMA which in turn cheered me up a lot.

We were in row 2 so a lot of this happened behind us.  We first became aware that there was a Situation when a middle-aged white lady and a tween Middle Eastern-appearing boy with a wispy mustache and socks with sandals approached the two flight attendants standing in the galley at the front and started talking excitedly.  Naturally I RIPPED my earbuds out and tried to hear what was going on but couldn't really make it out except for the FAs telling them they'd take care of it.  They left and went somewhere, back to their seats I guess.

Then he was up front.  The Troublemaker, who I'll call "Brad" because he looked like a Brad, was maybe late 30's, wearing flip flops and a bead bracelet and about three days of stubble.  He didn't look very good.  He stood motionless facing the galley until one of the FAs asked what he wanted and I guess he said the bathroom because she pointed out the door, DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF HIS FACE.  He went in and didn't lock it, natch, so then the FA had to tell the HUGE guy who came up next not to go in.

OK.  HERE WE GO WITH THE EXCITING PART.  Brad comes out of the lavatory and starts talking to the FA.  He has sort of a vacant look and I know RIGHT AWAY he's asking for another drink.  I can't hear what FA is saying but I can tell she's saying no.  It goes back and forth for a while.  Then he starts talking about how he doesn't like people stealing from him!  I guess he thinks he already paid for drinks and didn't get them?  She tells him over and over to go back to his seat.  At this point I'm looking around to see who else is nearby in case there's a rumble.

OK.  Huge Dude comes out and is behind him.  Argument is escalating.  BOOM, now the guy in 1D is up.  He looks like a cross between Sam Elliott and Nick Cave and appears to be about 60 but has full sleeve tattoos that he either got in a biker gang or in prison.  I noticed him quietly radiating menace earlier.  I am pretty sure Brad is about to die.  But wait!  Sam Elliott has a solution.  His female companion has pulled $10 from her purse and Sam Elliott gives it to Brad.  "You want money?  Here's your money.  Now go back to your seat."  You have to imagine this in the Sam Elliott voice.

At this point, Brad is standing between a Human Retaining Wall and probably the former president of the Hells Angels.  He squeaks out some more protests but you can tell he knows he's beat.

"Go back.  To your seat," Sam Elliott says.  I'm scared of him and I'm in my seat and haven't done anything wrong.  Brad slowly walks away in that shitfaced look-at-me-balancing-aren't-I-doing-great way.

Everybody sits down.  Sam Elliott is talking to the guy in 1C, across the aisle.  "It's no big deal. He just drank too much," Sam Elliott says.

Not everyone agreed with Sam Elliott's take.  The FA told us all not to get up when we land.  For most airline passengers, this is akin to asking them not to breathe.  There is NOTHING airline passengers like more than LEAPING into the aisle the nanosecond the plane's discernible movement stops.  But they do it!  On come about 5 SFPD officers.  Brad leaves with them sans protest.  Wife and Beyonce and I all get off the plane.  Sam Elliott goes off to drink an entire bottle of tequila in one gulp and intimidate some rattlesnakes.  Human Retaining Wall eats a KFC franchise.  Brad spends the night in jail.  Life goes on.