I'm on hiatus

It's that time of year. Time to engage in some uncomfortable air travel and see the relatives and whatever.  I'll be back.

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.

#almondshaming

Remember how everybody used to smoke?  (Does not apply if you're a millennial; watch Mad Men and you'll get the idea.)  Now hardly anybody smokes.  I even used to smoke and I quit.  One thing that happened is that everybody who smoked died.  Also, people started looking at smoking as gross and nobody wanted to be around it.

By now, you know that almonds take a gallon of water APIECE to grow.  Think about how much water we could save if people stopped eating almonds!  So here's my idea: a massive PR campaign making almond eating as shameful as smoking.

Here's a few I threw together just to get us started.

(Quick note, I haven't registered Noalmonds.com yet, somebody better get on that before Big Almond swipes it out from under us.)

We'll also need to lobby local governments to set up NO ALMOND ZONES in restaurants and bars.  "Almond consumption only in designated areas," like by the compost bin.

Might take 15-20 years, but we can make almond eating so repulsive and shameful only West Virginians will do it.

Gentrification Penance: an exploration

Recently had an exchange on the Twitter in which an understandably concerned Conscious Person wondered aloud about what she should do to repent after booking an Airbnb in Oakland. Airbnb, you see, has been linked to such ills as people getting evicted so owners could Airbnb the place or usable rental units being used as de facto hotel rooms instead of regular housing stock the city so desperately needs.

Of course, she was asking tongue in cheek (or so I assume) but it got me thinking, couldn't we avoid a lot of hair-pulling and mouth-wailing if we could just set up an easy Gentrification Penance system?  Like they used to do (or still do, I guess, I don't know, I'm not #blessed) in the Catholic Church?  The way I understood it is, you pushed over a cyclist out of Sidewalk Rage but then on Sunday you'd confess and if you said 33 Hail Marys or Jesus Is Just Alright With Mes than all is forgiven, right?  Here are some ideas.

SIN	PENANCE
Buying something at artisanal tchotchke shop that used to be shoe repair store	Buy 3 ice creams from jingle bell ice cream cart man; give to local urchins
Saying "Sorry they got evicted, but they should learn how to code"	Fingers bitten off and eaten by pit bull with tetanus
Subletting your $1100 studio to a web designer from Illinois for $2300	You are revealed as former moderator of Backstreet Boys fan forum; also, lose apartment
Double parking your $100,000 car on Valencia in bike lane	Metal recyclers get 20 minutes alone with car; entire carafe of Blue Bottle dumped onto calfskin interior
Using a bot to score highly coveted restaurant reservation	All meals for rest of year from Jack in the Box at Geary & 10th
Loudly talk about your startup in the middle of a bar	Alcohol-free 4 Loko
Buy building; Ellis Act all tenants; resell as TIC	All assets seized; building returned to former tenants; your home given to first homeless people who wander by; new job as sign spinner outside doomed housing development in Phoenix during summer
Shopping at Local Mission Market	Everyone laughs at you

These mugshots from 1870's England are fantastic

It's 4 pm on Friday!  Nobody's reading this. I guess you're reading it in the future. Anyway.

Whilst perusing the Internet, I recently came across this dynamite gallery of mugshots of criminals in Newcastle, England between 1871 and 1873.  It's like the Bustedmugshots.com of 19th century England!  FASCINATING.

Here's John Grieveson.  He got busted for stealing pigeons!  That implies people wanted pigeons, for some reason. I guess to eat, ew.  Anyway, put a hoodie on John and you could plop him down in Dolores Park this afternoon and nobody would notice.  Except they would go "HEY MAN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU EATING PIGEONS!"

William Brankston did a month bit for stealing four rabbits.  Lots of animal thieves in Newcastle.  Anyway, he looks like a kindly hobbit.  Also, love the coat.

Hey, if you're a girl, have you ever said to yourself "I HAVE GOT TO HAVE THOSE BOOTS!"  I bet you have.  That's what Alice Mulholland said, too.  Except she didn't pay for them and did three months in gaol.  (NOTE: Many of Newcastle's Most Wanted do the hands-clasped pose for their mugshot.  I guess that was the Style of the Day.)

OK, you guess:

What do you think Edward Shevlin stole? BOOZE, RIGHT?  That's what I thought too!  Nope, it was a coat.  Hopefully not the one he's wearing here, because that shit is BUSTED.  He is from Ireland, though, so that explains why he looks shitfaced.

James Richley stole trivets.  Trivets!  Which, CBS helpfully tells us, "were used as supports for kettles."  James Richley is not the kind of man who WOULD SET A KETTLE DOWN UPON A TABLE WITHOUT A TRIVET.  GOOD DAY TO YOU, SIR.

Last but absolutely not least, the star of our show:

Robert Hardy, ladies and gentlemen.  I think he's a bartender at Pop's, no shit.  The next time you're in Pop's, casually ask the bartender who looks like this guy about time travel and see if he spooks.  Anyway, Robert Hardy served four months in Newcastle Gaol for "stealing ale in 1873 with two accomplices." RIGHT FUCKING ON.  You go steal your pigeons and rabbits, other Mugshots of 1870s Newcastle.  I'll just be over here having some ales with Robert Hardy.

ALES TIME!!!!!!!!

Have a good weekend.

More bullshit on the drug war front

Apart from picking which lucky SOB is going to get to undeservedly claim credit for the inevitable economic recovery that will happen in the next 4 years, voters in some states are also going to decide whether to legalize pot.  Predictably enough, people that make their living from pot being illegal are harshing everyone's mellow.

"Next month in Colorado, Oregon and Washington states, voters will vote on legalizing marijuana," Peter Bensinger, the moderater of the call and former administrator of the DEA during President Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, began the call. "Federal law, the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court decisions say that this cannot be done because federal law preempts state law."

Bensinger added: "And there is a bigger danger that touches every one of us -- legalizing marijuana threatens public health and safety. In states that have legalized medical marijuana, drug driving arrests, accidents, and drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed. Drug treatment admissions are up and the number of teens using this gateway drug is up dramatically."

Ugh, Huffington Post, it's "moderator," not "moderater."  Anyway, STOP THE PRESSES: Former DEA Administrator against taking some kind of small drug law reform?  SHOCKING.

Let's leave aside the question of federal preemption because that's boring and he's basically right anyway.  Instead, let's look at Chicken Little's second claim, that "[i]n states that have legalized medical marijuana, drug driving arrests, accidents, and drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed."  Wow, that's terrible!  Also total bullshit, as you might have gathered.

In my 10 minutes of Internet research, I couldn't find good stats on "drug driving arrests," but, surprise surprise, "accidents" in states that have legalized medical marijuana (and by "accidents," I assume he means "fatal car accidents," not "accidentally eating an entire bag of Cheetos" har har har) have actually FALLEN.

Comparing traffic deaths over time in states with and without medical marijuana law changes, the researchers found that fatal car wrecks dropped by 9% in states that legalized medical use — which was largely attributable to a decline in drunk driving. The researchers controlled for other factors like changes in driving laws and the number of miles driven that could affect the results.

Medical marijuana laws were not significantly linked with changes in daytime crash rates or those that didn’t involve alcohol. But the rate of fatal crashes in which a driver had consumed any alcohol dropped 12% after medical marijuana was legalized, and crashes involving high levels of alcohol consumption fell 14%.

The "drug overdose death" claim is just bizarre, because if he's hinting that people are dying from overdosing on medical marijuana, he's obviously very, very wrong.  In fact, most drug overdoses - about 74% - are due to prescription drugs.  And the rate of prescription drug overdose in New Mexico, for example, a state without medical marijuana, is about 3 times the rate of prescription drug overdose in California, a state that has medical marijuana.  Therefore, I'm calling bullshit on everything this asshole says.

And that, in a nutshell, has been the problem with drug education and with trying to discourage kids from taking drugs.  You tell kids, essentially, "the first time you ever smoke pot you're going to go crazy and die" or "the first time you have a line of coke you will become addicted and end up giving blowjobs behind the Pak N Save for a hit" and then kids try smoking some pot or snorting coke and none of those things happen. In fact, it turns out just fine - better than fine, actually, really fun - and that's it, you just lost all credibility.  Why should I believe you when you say that I really can get addicted to heroin quickly, which is actually true, when you lied to me about everything else?

Anyway, I hope they do legalize pot in those states and it inexorably leads to pot being legalized everywhere.  I don't smoke pot any more, but from past experience, on the harm scale, it's somewhere between Benadryl and Jack Daniels.  Hardly the nightmare Mr. Bensinger envisions.

So, on that note, Mom's flying into town today and the whole family is off to Yosemite for a couple of days where, I imagine, Mom will tell Half Dome she's disappointed in it and why couldn't it have been a Full Dome?  Maybe some medical marijuana wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

Signs of TRYING TO HAVE A GOOD TIME SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE

WebMD! When they're not convincing my sister she has cancer, they're busy telling us what the symptoms of alcoholism are. WHAT:

Signs of alcohol abuse

• You have problems at work or school because of your drinking, such as being late or not going at all.
• You drink in risky situations, such as before or while driving a car.
• After drinking, you can't remember what happened while you were drinking (blackouts).
• You have legal problems because of your drinking, such as being arrested for harming someone or driving while drunk.
• You get hurt or you hurt someone else when you are drinking.
• You keep drinking even though you have health problems that are caused or made worse by alcohol use, such as liver disease (cirrhosis).
• Your friends or family members are worried about your drinking.

Yeah, my friends or family members are worried about my drinking. WHEN I DON'T BUY THEM A ROUND WOCKA WOCKA

You want to know the real Signs of alcohol abuse?

• You took home somebody you met at R Bar
• You laughed out loud watching a Will Farrell movie
• You listen to a Carrie Underwood song on repeat more than 8 times
• You found a Zima at the back of the fridge after a party and drank it
• You found some mouthwash under your laundry in the closet and drank it
• You found a drink someone left on the bar at Li Po and drank it
• You made Kraft Mac n Cheese after 8 pm
• You played "Sexy and I Know It" on a jukebox
• You're a member of my family

"You might not realize that you have a drinking problem. You might not drink large amounts when you drink. Or you might go for days or weeks between drinking episodes. But even if you don't drink very often, it's still possible to be abusing alcohol and to be at risk for becoming addicted to it," WebMD says. Shut up, WebMD. It's Friday.

In response to some reader complaints, we are launching a new feature

On Friday, Allan over at Mission Mission linked to our story about people talking at shows. Some people commented! They will do that. One person said "grandpa," which is mean because, while I am old enough to be a grandparent, I am not actually a grandparent. Unless that person meant it in the Sexy Grandpa sense, in which case, RIGHT ON.

But then another commenter said:

his whole blog is a moan – and he goes on about being like a 28 year old (when he’s 40) or something. Old, old, old – not physically but has the mentality of a conservative Victorian…

Kinda has a point. I do tend to bitch a lot on here. I do have to dispute that I have the mentality of a conservative Victorian, though. Maybe a Sexy Victorian.

Anyway, in an effort to make this blog more positive and less of a moan, we are introducing a new feature: Universal Pepsodent Super Fun Hour!!!!!



What we do for UPSFH is we pick one thing that we like and we talk about how awesome it is. This is designed to counteract the normally dyspeptic and misanthropic nature of this blog and instead suffuse you, the reader, with a sense of warmth and well-being that you will carry with you throughout the day.

For our inaugural Universal Pepsodent Super Fun Hour, we pick A FEW GOOD MEN, the 1992 Aaron Sorkin-penned military-legal drama starring TOM CRUISE and DEMI MOORE and with the totally killer JACK NICHOLSON monologue that we all love.



A Few Good Men is one of those movies that I always watch through to the end when I pass it flipping around on cable. And since it's on TNT every Saturday, I've seen parts of it hundreds of times!

Look, it's not Citizen Kane or even the Citizen Kane of military-legal dramas. Well, maybe it is, but I can't think of others right now, but it's a well-written, sort of well-acted drama that keeps you engaged without being too tense. The perfect thing when you're hungover on the couch on a Saturday having Outdoor Guilt because it looks nice out but you just don't want to go out.

I celebrate you, A Few Good Men. You are worthy of being featured on the very first Universal Pepsodent Super Fun Hour!

Today's Worst Groupon of the Day

$9 for 10”x17” Personalized Letter from Santa ($19.99 Value)

Jesus Christ. Is this what it's come to?

Wait, I think I can make out the text!

Dear Insert Child's Name,

It has been a cold and snowy winter here at the North Pole. Making presents for all the children is hard, but not as hard as parenting! Keeping up with you little shits while Dad and Mom are trying to put together some semblance of a living wage in this postmodern fuckhole we call an economy can be very taxing. So when they get home from a day of eating shit to placate their demented paranoid schizophrenic boss, they don't really have time to break out the old calligraphy tools and pen a faux letter from the God replacement we call "Santa." So they hired this company to do it instead! They know how much you love insert name of store-bought crap here and insert $5 check from Grandma here, so you'll be getting that. Now they're going to have a box of wine and glaze out to NCIS so please shut up.

Also, fuck paying $19.99 for this shit. 9 bucks sounds more their speed.

In other news, making the usual Thanksgiving trip to the Red States, so updates may be severely limited, etc. You'll be fine.

What are your Panhandler Rules?

If you're like me (and there is almost no chance of this, I realize that, it's just an expression), on your daily perambulations through the City, you encounter a variety of panhandlers, homeless and otherwise. As with most things in my life, I'm often perplexed about how to handle this fraught situation and so I'm croudsourcing this issue to find out what it is you do.

As I work in the Civic Center area, which is part of/maybe just immediately adjacent the Tenderloin, I see some of the same panhandlers every day.

There is the oddly well-put-together woman who I've written about before who posts up at the corner of Grove and Larkin during commute hours (she's there roughly 7:30-9 am and then 4 to about 6 pm) silently holding a sheaf of Street Sheets and who doesn't look homeless or even really troubled in any way; in fact, she would not be out of place waiting on you in a diner or something. NOT HOLDING THAT AGAINST HER; I'm just saying, it's kinda weird.

(I wrote that prior post about her in 2009. She's still out there, basically every day. I continue to be really curious about what her deal is but I really don't want to stop and talk to her because I pass her every day, usually twice a day, and I don't want to set up a thing where I have to stop and talk to her every day. It has nothing to do with her being homeless; I don't want to stop and talk to anyone twice a day. I'm not one of those people who hangs around their corner store trading neighborhood gossip or that kind of thing.)

(OH SNAP I just looked at the Google Street View for Grove & Larkin and thought I saw her but it's just some chick with a coffee. Goes to show how normal she looks.)

There's the Bearded Disheveled Guy Who's Always Reading a Paperback Book. He can be found in Civic Center Station pretty much all the time. I've actually given him money before.

There's a whole crowd that hangs out around the Main Library. One of them is a guy who wears Rollerblades all the time and skates around passing a football back and forth with one of his comrades. In all fairness, I've never seen him ask anyone for money, so maybe he just likes to wear Rollerblades and throw the rock around and hang out by the library.

UNRELATED: Check out the cool Street View Dog on the corner of Larkin and Golden Gate! AWWWWW, PUPPY!!!!

And so on. My point is, when you see your Regular Panhandlers, what do you do? Do you give them money?

Or I guess, what are your usual Giving Money to Panhandler Rules? I mean, in SF, you probably get hit up for money 5 to 12 times a day unless you're Richie Rich and live in Pacific Heights and drive your Volvo to work and your secretary brings lunch to you. So what are your giving money rules? When do you toss a buck at a panhandler?

(RELATED STORY - I remember reading somewhere years ago about an invitation to some fancy-ass party in a part of town where there were obviously panhandlers and the invitation asked guests to not give money to the "outdoorsmen." Outdoorsmen! FAVORITE HOMELESS EUPHEMISM.)

Have a nice holiday weekend at Burning Man or whatever it is you do. I guess if you're at Burning Man you're not reading this anyway.

Also, I'm still on jury duty but hopefully only for another week and then everything will be back to normal.

Also, we're trying out Boxing Room tonight and I'll totally tell you if it's good or what. Smoked Chicken & Andouille Gumbo! FUCK YEAH. Speaking of restaurant websites, THANK YOU FOR NOT AUTOPLAYING DIXIELAND JAZZ ON YOUR WEBSITE BOXING ROOM. I KNOW THAT MUST HAVE BEEN NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST.

OK, I'm done now.

Trip Report: Los Cabos

At my advanced age, I could give a shit about adventure tourism. You and William T. Vollmann can go dodge mortar fire in Tripoli or live amongst the whores of Bangladesh. Fuck that noise, my chief concern is how long it takes to get a drink and why the fucking pool closes at 8:00 pm instead of 10:00.

Well, not entirely. When I go to places like New York or London or some shit like that, I'm super into running around and going to museums and all that jazz. I guess I'm talking about the kind of vacation where you just lay around in the sun and drink. Do kids like to do that still? Oh, I guess everyone has to make it extra difficult and do it on a beach in India (NOT GOA, THAT SHIT IS SO PLAYED, I KNOW) or Bali or Madagascar or some place. I know that the harder it is to get to and the more primitive the conditions the better, right?

Well, fuck that. I'm all about it being easy and that's why we just went to this all-inclusive resort in Los Cabos called the Riu Santa Fe. We got a total deal on this place - like $200 a night, which includes all the food and alcohol you want.

That's right. ALL THE DRINKS YOU WANT. INCLUDED. That means they essentially gave us the room. I've run up $200 bar tabs on vacation in 45 minutes, so you can see why the Riu Santa Fe probably lost money on our visit.

The crowd was interesting. It was basically 50-50 Mexicans (well, I assume they were Mexicans; they were Spanish-speaking and darker-skinned; I mean, they could have been Honduran or whatever but I just got the Mexican vibe from them) and Americans. Seemed like a place where Mexicans go to vacation, too. The line at the Los Cabos airport for the Mexico City flight was longer than for the Phoenix flight, anyway. But I digress. Of the Americans, it tended towards a bit younger and, for whatever reason, sort of Jersey Shore-ish. I mean, a lot of elaborate tattoos and backwards baseball caps and gold chains and chicks who dressed for dinner by putting on skintight electric blue dresses that ended just below crotch level and 6" heels. Interesting. There were also a smattering of older couples and families with kids, and also some Australians.



The resort was huge and loosely organized around this central plaza area that was clearly meant to evoke the plaza in a Mexican town but without any stray dogs or non-English-speaking Mexicans. Instead, there were a couple of outdoor bars and a stage where they had some form of live entertainment every night. Entertainment beyond the bartenders - who, make no mistake, were unflailingly cheerful and incredibly fast - making odd rainbow-layered shooters for the assembled blockheads to enjoy. The entertainment veered from Resort Cheesy to Really Weird, but hey, it was something to look at whilst enjoying as many rounds of free drinks as you could put down before passing out.


Speaking of "free," it's nice to bring a stack of ones if you're coming to one of these places and tip frequently and with gusto. They really appreciate it and it makes you feel like less of a dick for watching someone make your drinks and then just saying "gracias" and walking away with them.




Oh, that brings up the Spanish Problem, which is, how much Spanish do you attempt if you don't really speak Spanish? Everyone who works there speaks enough English to get by, so is it weird or insulting to say "Dos pinas coladas, por favor" instead of "Two pina coladas, please"? I mean, does it seem kinda condescending? I could never figure it out. Also, why did the guy at the restaurant door say "Hola" to Americans but "Buenos dias" to Mexicans? I ended up usually ordering in English and then saying "Gracias" and walking away quickly, oddly ashamed. These are the kinds of things I worry about.

Anyway, the whole thing was a complete success, from a Morning Drinking and Total Relaxation standpoint. The food was actually really good, and the weather was nice and hot, and on the second day we found the quiet pool away from the thumping disco music and Vinnies whooping at each other and so forth. After a few days, though, I couldn't really handle the all-day all-night drinking any more and it was time to split.

The only other thing of note was the HUGE DOUCHEBAG who sat next to The Wife on the flight home. He got on in Phoenix and started braying at her immediately (she was one row ahead of me but I could hear his booming asshole voice from the back of the plane if I wanted) and I learned, involuntarily, that he lives in the Marina and had been in Scottsdale for some reason and had bought 3 bottles of champagne already earlier that day for "Sunday Funday" and just bought a place in "Pac Heights," although oddly it turned out to be near "Washington Square Park, I guess," which is, of course, nowhere near "Pac Heights" and I was trying to read and he blared on and on and on at her and finally I had to put in my headphones and turn up the music so loud it was almost painful just to drown out his piercing drunk voice. OK whew I'm alright now just had to get that out of my system.

(She also said that he showed her "every picture on his phone," and that they were mostly of him.)

The creeping problem of ISWNOCHFS

Found on Twitter earlier today:


Oh, please. Get over yourself. This is a prime example of what I call the If Something's Wrong No One Can Have Fun Syndrome (ISWNOCHFS). You see this kind of thing pretty regularly. Like "There are babies starving and you're still watching Toddlers and Tiaras" or "How can Adam Sandler keep making movies when the world is like this?" Actually that last one is kinda true and I do wish Adam Sandler would stop making movies.

BUT ANYWAY. Point being that this scold above would have you be ashamed for watching Jersey Shore (as long as you're in the "western world," apparently. If you're in Japan or Soouth Africa, enjoy Jersey Shore at your leisure! You're fine!) because there are Problems in the World and watching Jersey Shore doesn't help.

Let's take a look at some different possible outcomes:

Millions watch Jersey Shore ----------> Syria nightmare
No one watches Jersey Shore ---------> Syria nightmare


Millions watch Jersey Shore ----------> Economy in shambles

You and your stupid brother
watch Jersey Shore; no one
else watches Jersey Shore ------------> Economy in shambles

Your cat and Eric Cantor
watch Jersey Shore while
eating In N Out burgers --------------> Economy in shambles; cat and Eric Cantor happy

You see? The number of people and/or animals and/or members of Congress who watch or don't watch Jersey Shore has exactly zero impact on whether or not the World's Crises are ameliorated in any way. The real point of this kind of faux-shaming technique is to say "Look at me! I'm so superior that I would never deign to watch that crap, especially when there are World Crises for me to be Very Upset about! Shame on you for pursuing such a lowbrow entertainment whilst I monitor the BBC feed 24/7!"

THIS IS NOT TO SAY, of course, that we shouldn't all be appropriately concerned about riots in London and the DJIA falling 600 points and starvation in Somalia. OF COURSE you should care about those things. But watching Jersey Shore isn't really going to affect them one way or another. So don't be ashamed. Well, you should be a little ashamed, but just because you're watching Jersey Shore in the fourth season. It all went downhill after Season 1. Duh.

I am going to Arizona

I should be there around 10:30 tonight.

"Are you going to spring training, TK? That's totally rad!!!!"

No. I am not going to spring training. Yes, that would be totally rad, but that is not why I'm going to Arizona. Normally I would be loath to contribute financially in any way to that Godforsaken Tea Party paradise, but unfortunately my Mom lives there and I ran out of reasons why I couldn't come visit her. So off we go. That lunatic already has our days planned out to the minute and I assure you that little or no relaxation is on the sched.

ANYWAY. At least it's in the 70's during the day and NOT FUCKING RAINING. I don't know whether or not I'll be blogging, but I'm sure I'll be dropping my usual bon mots via Twitter. Have a good weekend.

And now, the Winner of the 6-Word Memoir Contest

First off, I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout-out to SMITH Magazine, the originators of the Six-Word Memoir thing. Good job, SMITH Magazine!

OK, we got a lot of good entries here. I carefully considered each one, but, in the end, there can be only one winner. Just like life!

Here are some I liked:

Allan's "Never got to see the Ramones" is a poignant reminder of the fleeting nature of life, not to mention punk rock.

Bob sent me "Daddy isn't coming back, is he?" which has its own sad power. (Incidentally, Bob has some very nice photos, which you can see here.)

Jessica's sentiment, "Fuck it, let's just watch TV" rings true and reflects a life philosophy I can get behind.

I paused at Daisy's "I am not who I say," in light of her admitted history of prevarication, and it added fuel to my theory that Daisy is actually a composite character created by a team of writers.

But I liked my fave right off the bat and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it really is a life story in 6 words. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Winner is:

Leslie's "Sorry I called you an asshole"

So, Leslie, email me with your mailing address and Social Security Number and whatever other kind of info would be helpful and I will rush the incredible prize package worth $5.02 out to you posthaste. Congratulations, and thanks, everyone, for playing!

Here are two activities you should do if you live anywhere near SF

So last night The Wife and I had Grown-Up Night, which means we went to dinner and the theater. They were both great.

Dinner was at The Corner, 18th and Mission. I gotta warn you ahead of time, the menu is somewhat unconventional, but trust me, this is a good thing. Like, there's not the usual beef short rib and flatiron steak and roasted chicken that everyone has. Instead, there's shit like rabbit or sole w/ fennel sausage or chicken thighs, interesting stuff like that. The waitress (who was just as much of a hipster as you'd imagine for a restaurant at 18th and Mission - in fact, the whole staff looked like Vice Magazine) totally tipped us off that the apps were huge, so we just got a couple of those. The Wife had poutine with beef cheeks and some kind of cheese that starts with an "h" like "hourumi" or "hurami" or something like that. It was fucking killer. Poutine's like the national dish of Canada or something and I can see why because it's basically like this thick gravy and meat poured over french fries and it's a good cold weather dish and as you know, it's always about 20 below in Canada.

I got the pork shank over cheesy hashbrowns with some kind of wilted green in the middle and a poached egg on top. THAT'S NOT A LOW FAT FOOD. But man, was it good. Not so good was burping up pork the rest of the night but that's kind of my fault for eating too fast.

Both the apps we got (which were entree-sized, at least for us) were like $11 or $12. 2 glasses of outstanding pinot for $10 each. I almost went for the PBR tallboy for $2 but that's too predictable. 7 out of 10 stars WILL DO BUSINESS AGAIN.

(Confidential to the Corner - do something about your fucking website. The "menu" pages are all blank and it hasn't been updated since May. Seriously, this is SF and your web game has to be on point. Really, I'm not kidding, deal with it.)

Then (after a brief stop at the Latin-American for some whiskey for me and some Stoli for her) we hied ourselves over to The Marsh for Dan Hoyle's show "The Real Americans." The show is based on Hoyle's travels in, for the lack of a better word, the "heartland" and he does a ton of characters based on the people he met. Now, of course you're thinking it's going to be smug and condescending but it's actually not. I mean, I don't think he had to invent the fact that people think Obama is a Muslim or whatever. And people in SF get treated just as badly, or worse, than people everywhere else. As you can tell, it caused a great deal of liberal urban coastal angst in me because we coastal urban liberals worry a lot about this kind of thing. Anyway, it's way more complicated than I can sum up here but we both loved it and it is totally worth seeing.

Then we went home and watched the Giants almost fuck it up in the 9th inning (and shouldn't Bautista be throwing BP or something until he can find the strike zone?). Exhausting.

What Would You Do?: Muni Edition

Let's play ABC Primetime's "What Would You Do?" for a second.

(Incidentally, ABC, what's up with the "go.com" domain names? ESPN, too. Stuck in 1997, are we?)

OK, so let's say you're on the, oh, I don't know, 48 Quintara at around 5:30 yesterday (or the L Taraval or, fuck, the 6 train to the Bronx for all I care) and you take a seat near the back and then realize you're sitting in the middle of a group of baggy-white-t-shirted skateboard-holding kids. Like 4 or 5 of them, maybe 13 years old, maybe 14. The first thing you notice is the heartwarming (for a San Franciscan) multicultiness of this group - there's a white kid, and a vaguely Hispanic kid, and a black kid, and man, it's like MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech brought to life.

Then the next thing you notice is that the Bieber-haired white kid is very slowly and deliberately carving something into the seat with some kind of implement. Like, obviously defacing the bus seat with whatever kind of graffiti 13-year-old white kids are motivated to write these days.

Or let's take another (also actually true) example that also happened on the 48 Quintara on another day with a different Pack O'Yoots (though older, maybe mid to late teens) and one of them is using a fat black magic marker or whatever to mark one of the windows with a big, looping tag.

What do you do?

I'm serious. I never know how to react in these situations. I know that Muni Belongs To All Of Us and that We As Citizens must stand up to protect out property, but I also know that people get killed trying to stop this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's rare for that to happen and blah blah blah but IT ONLY TAKES ONCE when it's happening to you.

So what's the call here? What do you do? Say, "Hey, you damn kids, stop messing up my bus!" or whip out the cell and call 911 or go up and talk to the driver or what? Furthermore, what's most likely to avoid me getting hit in the back of the skull with a skateboard?

Cause I'll tell you what actually happened: nothing. I didn't do anything. The lady next to me didn't do anything. The semi-yuppie guy reading The Economist didn't do anything. Now I feel vaguely bad about it! I don't know.

The Bachelorette: Froggy Went a-Courtin'

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TK's Guide to TV Tonight

That's catchy, huh?

The Bachelorette, tonight, 9-11, ABC.

Man, that snuck up fast! They must have jetted Ali off right after Jake broke her heart and then went on to be on some dance show and appear even gayer, like that's possible. Anyway, she's a "beautiful, energetic and charismatic career-oriented woman from San Francisco," JUST LIKE MY READERS, so you'll all totally relate. Plus, you won't be able to understand all the references in my recap unless you watch. This is it, folks. The one we've all been training for.

Google Image Search result for "Ali Fedotowsky," I shit you not.