Step right up for the worst explanation of why Donald Trump is not a racist you could imagine

There's a hedge fund guy named Anthony Scaramucci who was against Trump but is now for Trump and is now raising money for him. For reasons known only to Anthony Scaramucci, he sat down and agreed to be interviewed by Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Slate group, which I would not say is particularly friendly towards Donald.  The interview is about 20 minutes long and fascinatingly revealing.



At first there's a lot of boring stuff about how Scaramucci - "The Mooch" to friends, apparently - used to support Scott Walker but now supports Trump because Trump is now the Republican nominee.  Whatever, raccoons dig for trash in packs, I get it.  What I wasn't expecting was The Mooch's explanation about why Donald Trump isn't racist to be breathtakingly racist in and of itself.

The relevant portion starts at around 17:30.

OK. So, so, here’s the thing, here’s what happens.  There’s a gigantic arbitrage spread between what people think of him based on what they’ve read about him and snippets of him in the media world and then when people actually meet him – and my wife said this to me, we did a fundraiser for him in East Hampton two Saturdays ago, at Wilbur Ross’s home.  And we were coming out of the fundraiser and my wife turned to me and she said, “You know, I wish people could see him in this environment, answering the questions, getting a full sentence in about the questions, maybe even a paragraph so it’s not sliced on him and not taken out of context, what he said.”

I'm not saying that anyone who uses the term "arbitrage spread" in normal conversation is a dickhead, but it's like wearing a visor backwards - maybe you're a cool guy who just likes turnin' that visor around, but I doubt it.  Anyway, yes, the problem is that DONALD TRUMP IS NOT GETTING THE CHANCE TO GET HIS MESSAGE OUT.  That is seriously what The Mooch (or The Mooch's wife, I guess) wants us to believe.  Stupid press!  Why won't they let him speak?

Wait, it gets so much worse.

But some things are said in jest, and here’s the thing I don’t like about the society right now, if you don’t mind me being a little bit editorialization.  We say some things in jest in the society.  We do have ethnic jokes.  I have been the butt of ethnic jokes in my life.  And I find them humorful.  OK?  There’s also a show called “The Sopranos” that was on for 10 years that took every Italian-American stereotype that you could imagine and manifested itself for one full hour on national TV.  And I met with the Reverend Al Sharpton one day and I said “Hey, why don’t we do The Jacksons?  And we take every racial African-American stereotype, we talk in ebonics to each other, have spinners on the Escalades, and we shoot at each other with Glocks, and we have a whole prostitution ring going, I mean, and so on and so forth, are you guys gonna be sore about that?”  He admitted that he would be sore about it.  But as an Italian-American, you know, I believe in the First Amendment, and I can deal with the fact that we are typecast in shows like The Sopranos, OK?  I get the joke.  And so, he’s not a bigot, and he’s not a racist.

Hey, idiots!  The Mooch is Italian, and The Sopranos used Italian stereotypes, and it didn't bother The Mooch, so quit crying racism!  The Mooch has overcome how Italians were brought to America as slaves and then enslaved here for 300 years and then after they were freed Italians were subject to Jim Crow and the vilest discrimination and state-sponsored killing and redlining and still have a fraction of the family wealth that other Americans have.  Italians have suffered so much!

This is called a "false equivalency," and people honestly believe shit like this.

I don't even know what to say about The Mooch's show "The Jacksons."  I have a hard time believing he related this concept to Al Sharpton because Al Sharpton probably would have punched him in the fucking face if he said this kind of shit, and with good reason.

Finally, NONE OF THIS PROVES THAT DONALD TRUMP ISN'T A RACIST. The fact that "The Sopranos" trafficked in Italian-American stereotypes and it didn't bother The Mooch one bit and The Mooch had the gall to spout every African-American stereotype that popped into his head at an undoubtedly horrified Al Sharpton does not in any way mean Donald Trump is not a racist.  Saying that a judge was unfit to hear Donald Trump's case in court because of his ethnic background makes Donald Trump a racist, OK?

How many Uber/Lyft cars do you think you'd see on a random Sunday drive across town?

For reasons far too boring and stupid to recount here, I spent a lot of the weekend driving around San Francisco and environs.  I actually don't drive all that much and when I do it's pretty much the exact same route - our house to day care or preschool - so I don't see a lot of the town.  On all my perambulations around the City this weekend, I was hit by one recurring thought: HOLY SHIT, THERE ARE A LOT OF UBER/LYFT CARS OUT HERE.

"A lot" doesn't mean much, so I did what any Junior Scientist would do and decided to count.  First, a couple of definitions: an "Uber/Lyft car" will hereby be defined as an car with a visible Uber or Lyft placard (or, most commonly, both) in the window.  90% of the time, in my experience, anyone with a smartphone bracket on the front widshield just above the dash is also one but I'm being strict and requiring the telltale logo.

I decided to start counting yesterday, a seemingly normal Sunday, and I happened to be at 26th and Bryant when I started.  I went from 26th and Bryant to Ocean Beach, taking a not particularly direct path.  Behold, the route:

OK, now for the fun part.  (Or, I guess, the "fun" part).  How many Uber/Lyft cars do you think I counted on a normal Sunday afternoon in San Francisco going roughly across town?  20?  30?  More?

Not even close.  I counted 61.  And that's just the ones I counted while also driving!  I could have easily missed some.  61 seems a lot to me.  For comparison, during that same drive I saw 6 cabs, and 4 of those were on Polk while I was stopped at the light.  Polk is a very big cab street!

There were so many Uber/Lyft cars that my guess would be they represented 1 out of every 4 to 5 cars I saw.  Sometimes they even appeared in bunches.  Here are two in a line waiting to turn left at California and Hyde.

Another time I was boxed in by 3 of them at once, one in front and one on each side.  It was vaguely frightening!  What if they decided to use their powers for evil?

So my first question is "How did all the people using all these Uber/Lyft cars get around before these services existed, back in the Dark Ages of 2003?"  Three answers spring to mind:  (1) For one thing, there are about 100,000 more San Franciscans than there were in 2000, so these new services are needed to transport all the shiny new SFers to and from their coding stations and food delivery incubators; (2) They took cabs or Muni or walked; and (3) People didn't go as many places because life wasn't as interesting in 2000.

I don't know.  I DO know that a lot of these Uber/Lyft cars drive like complete assholes.  I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting one that blithely drifted into my lane on Franklin going about 35 miles an hour.  They routinely just stop wherever they happen to be and throw on the hazards, not giving a single fuck about the line of cars behind them, which is one thing if you're on deserted 28th and Noriega and quite another if - as I saw this weekend - you're on very crowded Fell Street, which is essentially a three-lane freeway with timed lights and on which any impediment immediately causes a blocks-long backup.  And so on.

I'm not advocating getting rid of Uber and Lyft.  I've used their services and may do so again in the future.  But it seems a little crazy that we've allowed this many essentially unregistered cabs to flood the streets with no screening process or driver safety and etiquette class or anything.  61 cars in a relatively short time is a lot.

I posted a snarky response to an Airbnb ad on Twitter. You won't believe what happened next. Or you probably will totally believe it, I don't know.

Last night "Airbnb Action," which I assume is some political lobbying arm/whitewashing patrol of Airbnb, caused a tweet to appear in my timeline, proving conclusively that Twitter has no idea how to target ads.  Me being me (i.e., a snarky asshole), I felt moved to respond.

Har har. Obviously (if you've been following the issue), the reason that the Board of Supres is "pushing new rules" (that is, "enacting legislation according to their City-afforded capabilities") is that the current enforcement mechanisms are comically ineffectual.  Current law requires everyone who rents their place out on Airbnb to register with the city.  So far, "roughly 1,400 of the estimated 7,000 or more residents who rent their homes and rooms have done so, the city estimates." SO, first of all, no one is trying "2 prevent homse sharing;" we were told we didn't need Prop F because the current system works and now the current system definitely doesn't work.  Even the fucking CEO OF AIRBNB didn't bother to piddle with the little city registration system.  Why would anyone else be a sucker and follow the law?

HENCE MY SNARK.

Then some dog got all up in my business.

I guess this means that since Prop F was defeated, Airbnb is now free to do anything they want.  BASED ON OUR NEW POLICY, AIRBNB CAN NOW RAID YOUR FRIDGE ONCE PER WEEK.  PLEASE LEAVE YOUR DOOR UNLOCKED.  THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN.

It went downhill from here.

BAD DOG!  First of all, he or she didn't answer my question.  I asked what we should do when the vast majority of Airbnb hosts are not in compliance.  The response was "No the STR office. #duh They are the police."  I suppose that means we should just let the STR (Short Term Rental, btw) office handle it?  That actually makes sense if you're an Airbnb host and you don't want to bother following the law. #duh.  By the time the STR cops catch up to you, the Earth will have been consumed by the Sun and Airbnb hosts on Titan will be advertising "STUNNING RING VIEWS!!!!"

As if it couldn't devolve any lower, the sad denoument:

Of course. My opinion that Airbnb hosts follow the fucking law necessarily means that I support vandalism.  Also, that is some shitty lettering.  Maybe something like this instead?

The real stupidity about the whole thing is that, based on the link to the Airbnb advertised on Dog's Twitter page, it appears that Dog rents out a room in Dog's house.  I basically have no problem with that (within some limits).  What I have a problem with is someone taking an entire home or apartment off the market and converting it into an illegal, full-time hotel.  Like the one on my block - a 3-bedroom apartment that used to be occupied by 3 tenants and which is now occupied, at $300 a night, by a rotating cast of jackoffs smoking on the stoop.  Or with building owners evicting tenants so they can rent out the rooms on Airbnb.

Is Airbnb solely responsible for the housing crisis in SF? Of course not.  Partially responsible?  Of course. Are rhetorical questions the best mode of making an argument? Not even close.

The Bars That Time Forgot, an occasional series, vol. V: The Embers

I lived on Frederick Street in the early 90's, not far from the now-trendy Inner Sunset, which back then just Just a Neighborhood and not a thing real estate agents put on flyers.  It was just regular stuff.  Still a great neighborhood, just relatively undiscovered, I guess.

One place that didn't want to be discovered was The Embers, a depressing and frightening dive bar at 627 Irving, between 7th and 8th.  The Embers was a small dark room with the usual dive bar accoutrements, like old guys chainsmoking in front of Bud bottles and a surly (at least that's how I remember him) bartender.  You can still get all that stuff today if you know where to look.  But the Embers had one terrifying feature that other dive bars lacked: the walls were covered in pictures of CLOWNS. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It's surprisingly difficult to find pictures of this haunting decor online.  Of course I was young and stupid and it never occurred to me to take pictures.  Back then, taking pictures required carrying a camera around with you, so it wasn't as convenient.  Also, parking was easier.  Anyway.  Luckily, I found some pics on Snapcity.com, and hopefully the owner of Snapcity.com doesn't get mad at me for using them here.

You can get kind of a sense of what was going on from these pictures, but it doesn't really convey the full horror of walls covered in clown pictures.  It was really something.

Jack Boulware wrote a great piece on the bar for SF Weekly:

Neither clowns nor smokes have ruined business for the Embers, which Jack has operated since 1969 at its present Irving Street location, and run in other Geary Boulevard incarnations since 1955. The clown motif began with Jack's wife, who installed four clown pictures originally to fill up a blank wall of the joint. Customers latched onto the idea and kept bringing in more and more clown artifacts, many from all over the world, until today the bar is literally packed with clown images.

"Some girl brought me in one last week," says Jack, a spry 70-year-old in blue striped sport shirt and khakis.

The Embers sadly passed in 1996.  Now it's Pluto's, some kind of faux health food place I think?  I went there once and couldn't figure it out.

Lyric Deconstruction: "Animal Crackers in my Soup"

Shirley Temple, 1935



Oh, look at the cute little girl singing about animal crackers in her soup!  How sweet!

WRONG.  This shit is fucking DARK.  I didn't really know any of the lyrics until I played it for my kid one day and listened.  It was like a Southern Baptist listening to her kid's Faster Pussycat album for the first time.

Animal crackers in my soup
Monkies and rabbits loop the loop,
Gosh, oh gee, but I have fun,
Swallowin' animals one by one.
In every bowl of soup I see,
Lions and tigers watching me,
I make 'em jump right thru a hoop,
Those animal crackers in my soup

Not too bad so far.  But wait, here comes the second verse:

When I get hold of the big bad wolf
I just push him under to drown
Then I bite him in a million bits
And I gobble him right down!

Holy shit, Shirley.  I'm prettty sure holding an animal underwater to drown it is felony animal cruelty.  Can't you just picture the wolf thrashing violently in the water under Shirley Temple's tiny hands, gasping for breath as the curly-haired monster forces the life from him?

When they're inside me where it's dark

I walk around like Noah's Ark

I stuff my tummy like a goop

With animal crackers in my soup!

The image of a menagerie of animals sloshing around and slowly dissolving in Shirley Temple's stomach acid is too much to bear.  I hope they all died a merciful death before she could sentence to the misery of her portable miniature ark.  Also, "goop" as a term for a kind of person must have gone out of fashion at some point in the last 80 or 90 years.  Maybe it should be "I stuff my tummy like a GOOP," but only if by "stuff my tummy" you mean "browse over a carefully curated selection of hand-grown tropical fruits and high-mountain imported quinoa."

It goes on, but more boringly.  Let's focus on the horror.  No wonder it says "Advisory - the following lyrics contain explicit language" on MetroLyrics.

I would say have a good weekend but I don't think that's possible now.

I need a ruling on this restaurant issue

SCENE: A bustling, fairly trendy restaurant in San Francisco.  The kind of place with artisanal cocktails that all have one ingredient you have no idea what it is and waitresses with full sleeves.  The Wife and I are out on one of our very very very very very very rare nights out together.  Baby Beyonce - who is now Toddler Beyonce I guess or even Kid Beyonce, because she's almost 3 and speaks in full sentences and has opinions about things - is being babysat by her great-aunt and great-uncle.

HERE'S WHAT HAPPENS: Having drinks, perusing the menu.  I pick the following option:

OK!  I definitely know what beef is.  I know what braised means.  I kinda know what kohlrabi is - some kind of cabbage thing? Hey, the Times is ON IT.  I know what lollipops and kale are, never had them together, but what the hell, I like them both so it couldn't be that bad.  I even sort of know what bagna cauda is!  It's like a vegetable sauce you dip shit in, like a less-fun fondue.  OK, let's do it.

After the obligatory deviled eggs (seriously, if you have a restaurant and you don't have a deviled egg appetizer you might as well just fucking send your address in to Eater's "Restaurants That Closed" because you are FUCKED), entrees arrive.  It looks fine!  It's a little bit of beef with some green stuff sprinkled around it.

Now, of course, like all restaurants in San Francisco of the aught-teens, it is PITCH BLACK inside and so I'm basically eating blind but I take a couple of bites and it's fine, and then suddenly I take a bite and BOOM my mouth is full of fish taste.  ACK ACK WHY IS THERE FISH ON THIS.  I didn't ask for fish and don't want fish.  And this is like really sharp fishy fish.  Ugh.  My life is ruined.

The Wife sees me convulsing and examines the dish with her superior eyesight.  "It's an anchovy," she says.  WHY GOD WHY.  Why have you cursed my otherwise satisfactory dish with the loathsome presence of anchovies, the broccoli of the sea?

THE DISPUTE: Do I say something to the waitress or not?  Something like, "Excuse me, but I think some mental deficient in the kitchen accidentally sprayed stale fish all over my otherwise edible beef" or "Excuse me, I think someone's pizza from 1975 is missing something" or "Excuse me, please get this the fuck out of my sight."  The Wife says no, so I accede to her wisdom and say nothing.

(Further research conducted IMMEDIATELY after leaving reveals that bagna cauda "is made with garlic, anchovies, olive oil, butter, and in some parts of the region cream." Which, fine, mix them in the BC if you must, but that doesn't mean drape them all over my meat like a fish blanket.)

I guess I should have said something but I'm always like who does that?  I don't want to be that guy.

Anyway, have a good weekend.

The Fuller House teaser trailer, reviewed by someone who's never seen Full House

That's right, I've never seen a single episode of Full House.  It originally aired between 1987 and 1995, or so Wikipedia tells me, a time in my life in which my interests were not aligned with family-friendly TV sitcoms.  I understand that it was set in San Francisco and the Olsen twins were involved.  Beyond that, I couldn't tell you a thing.

There is apparently a sequel series coming to Netflix.  This trailer "dropped" as we say in the cool kids biz, yesterday or something.


I can tell it's set in SF because of the establishing shots of that bridge and Alamo Square.  This is the exterior.  I am informed by Google that it is at 1709 Broderick, vaguely near the bro-y section of Divisadero.  I guess they probably hang out at Lion Pub.

Then there are some long shots of the interior.  It looks expensive.  These people were probably angel investors in Apple or something.  The house is extremely staged.  It is clear no one actually lives there.

BUT WAIT.  At around 1:15, there is a development.  A dog is in the house, apparently alone.

A car horn honks.  Someone says, "Gosh, it feels good to be back.  Hey, can someone help me with these boxes?"  WHAT THE FUCK.  Has the dog just been living in the fucking house alone since 1995?  What has it been eating?  Are there Olsen twins skeletons upstairs, stripped clean of flesh?

More voices.  A group of people approach.  The dog paws madly at the door.  FINALLY, NEW FOOD.  SALVATION.

Fade to black.  Hopefully the next teaser trailer is the now-insane abandoned dog tearing them apart and gleefully consuming their limbs.  THIS SHOW RULES.

Hell is about the size of Canada, a little bigger

So I was reading this interview with Ben Carson about his religious beliefs (Medium-weird, I guess? Hard for me to tell, not being in the game myself anymore) and it says:

He also does not believe in hell: “I don't believe there is a physical place where people go and are tormented. No. I don't believe that,” he says.

Huh, I guess I never thought of it like that.  Like Hell could be an ACTUAL, PHYSICAL place where people go and are tormented.  Like a huge DMV or something.

Well, WHAT IF IT IS?  What if there is a Hell, and it's an actual facility staffed by demons, I guess, where people are physically incarnated to serve out their sentences for lying or killing a rabbit or swearing or whatever?

HOW BIG IS IT?

Well, first of all, let's assume that only humans from Earth go to Hell, and that whatever aliens live on other worlds have their own Hell.  Also, we will assume animals don't go to Hell, because they're cute and Cute Things shouldn't suffer Eternal Torment, with the exception of the Olsen twins.

OK, SO, according to my sources (a shady outfit called the "Population Reference Bueau," as quoted in this BBC News post on the Internet websites), the total number of people who have ever lived is about 107 billion.  That's a lot!  For purposes of comaprison, if every person in America had 336 identical twins there would be about 107 billion Americans in this crowded and, frankly, extremely creepy, America.

Next we will assume that almost everyone who has ever lived is in Hell, because it is way, way, way too easy to fuck up, so there are like 5000 people in Heaven tops.  Everyone else is a Sinner who is in Hell.  5000 people is not statistically significant for our purposes.

I would imagine Hell is fairly densely populated, since crowded is slightly more unpleasant than roomy.  Not like Hong Kong crowded, but maybe like NYC crowded.  The population density of New York City is about 26,403 people per square mile.  (San Francisco, by comparison, is a much spaciousier 17,246 ppsm).

So NYC Hell is about 4,052,569 square miles, or about the size of Canada, plus Peru stuck awakwardly to its side.  All as densely populated as NYC.  Holy shit, that evening commute from Firey Burn And Poke Pit to your house on Gasoline Poured In My Open Wounds Lane is maybe the worst part of Hell. Unless you live next door to Hitler, who has fucking wind chimes.  What an asshole.

HELL IS FUCKING HUGE. It takes the Regional VP for Waterboarding and Telling You What a Failure You Are like 3 hours just to get from Hell Vancouver to Hell Winnipeg (or just "Winnipeg" I guess JOKING JOKING).  All the while flying over a teeming crowded cityscape.  Horrible!

On the other hand, there is a killer Hell halal cart near Hell Saskatoon.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Your Guide to Super Bowl Festivities in Downtown San Francisco

How many times have you thought "Hey, I wish my city was hosting activities tangentially related to a sporting event that will actually be played 50 miles away at enormous civic cost and virtually no return on investment, but with guaranteed headaches and inconveniences for vast swaths of the local population, all for the purpose of enriching a few billionaires and perpetuating a morally questionable sport that leaves some who play it with lifelong diminshed cognitive function?"

A lot, right? Well, FEEL THE EXCITEMENT!!!!!  SUPER BOWL 50 IS HERE!!!*

* Not actually "here."

Check out all the fun events and activities at SUPER BOWL CITY!!!

First you'll want to note the area in RICH OWNER RED.  That's fabulous SUPER BOWL CITY, where you'll be subjected to invasive, airport-style security just to get to the Subway, which you probably shouldn't be going to anyway.  Inside SUPER BOWL CITY you'll find fun activities like OH NO NOT THE PATRIOTS AGAIN, a 36-hour-long loop of Tom Brady throwing an 8-yard pass to a tight end, and BUILD ME A STADIUM YOU LITTLE FUCK, where you can pretend to be a megarich team owner and force a struggling municipality to go to a three-month school year to have enough money to build you a new stadium to replace the one you had them build you just 8 years ago!

Oh no!  What's that sound?  Has an NFL player gotten loose from the Containment Area and is threatening passerby?  Please quickly and quietly assemble at the ROID RAGE EVACUATION POINT for removal by ferry while our team of trained specialists restrains and calms Mr. Hardy.

Down Market Street a bit you'll find CONCUSSION JUNCTION.  Take a monster blow to the head in our Aeneaswilliamsizer and then compete to finish simple tasks like remembering to pick your kids up from school or successfully ordering bottles of Ace of Spades for your boys at XS!  Don't try taking Muni there, though.  We've removed all the busses so limos full of cocaine and champagne can get through!

[PLEASE NOTE: NFL Executives, you will need to check in at the Mayor's Reception/Quid Pro Quo Donation Station upon arrival.  Please remember to discard dirty money in the box marked "ILLEGAL CONTRIBUTIONS HERE." Thank you!]

Want to participate in the fun, but don't have thousands of dollars in disposable income?  You'll be welcomed warmly at the CITIZEN PEN, where you'll find a VCR with a grainy copy of one of the Cowboys-Bills Super Bowls and a box of Bagel Bites.

Also remember, we've partnered with Uber to bring you GUESS THE SURGE all week!  Trying to get home from work because Muni is completely shut down?  That'll be 2.4x normal!  Thanks for playing!

How to Make a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Last night on Twitter a fierce battle broke out. It concerned what duty we owe to our fellow man and the nature of empathy. No, I'm shitting you, of course. What it actually had to do with was how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. If you thought ISIS was bad get a load of some of these psychopaths. We had people buttering the bread first, there was some kind of talk about cheese curds, and one freakshow kindly, albeit misinformed, citizen said to put olive oil in the pan.  I had no idea people were so fucked up.

It's cool, I can help.

Liv Tyler eating a grilled cheese.  From Mario Batali's Instagram, apparently.  I just Googled "Liv Tyler eating a grilled cheese" to find it.  

A GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH, despite its name, is not prepared on a grill, but in a 10-12" saute pan.  There are three ingredients: bread, cheese, and butter.  Olive oil is not an ingredient.  Mayonnaise is not an ingredient. Chipotle aioli is not an ingredient.  Maybe those are ingredients in some kind of grilled sandwich, but not a grilled cheese.

BREAD.  You can use a wide variety of breads to make a grilled cheese.  The Classic GC is on white bread, and if that's your steeze, Orowheat Buttermilk White does a fine job.  Sourdough also makes an excellent GC.  Try Beckmann's California Sourdough, which is fantastic.

You can use other kinds of bread, too.  Dill rye makes a nice GC with aged swiss (as discussed below), although that is certainly a nontraditional GC.  Wheat is usually fine.  Sliced brioche is heavenly, since each slice of brioche is made with about a stick of butter anyway.

Type of bread you can't make a GC with: hot dog or hamburger buns, sandwich rolls, biscuits, croissants, those weird hard little dinner rolls, banana bread or any other fruit bread (which really aren't bread anyway but cakes but I'm wildly digressing now).

CHEESE.  God has given us many cheeses; use them.  The classics, of course, are cheddar and American, but like I said, swiss on rye is a great GC.  I think the Classic GC is American on white bread, but smoky sharp cheddar on sourdough is a [insert 100 emoji] sandwich.  Smoked gouda on almost any bread.  Don't use mozzarella.  It's too stringy and doesn't belong in a GC anyway.

BUTTER.  Use butter.  Not oil, butter.

METHOD.

Here's where shit went south online.  It appears, to my horror, that some people believe you should butter the bread, then put it in the pan.  This is an absurd waste of time that will just end up shredding the bread like wiping dog feces on onionskin.  Do people who do this just enjoy doing everything in the most difficult fashion possible?  Do you boil one penne at a time?  I guess you toast a bagel and then SMASH IT facedown into a pile of cream cheese and hope some cream cheese sticks.  Lunacy.

Let me make it easy for you.  Put a pan on a burner.  Adjust to medium-low heat.  Let it warm.  Place a pat of butter (about 1/2 tbsp) in the pan.  Enjoy it sizzling and melting.  Place your previously-assembled sandwich in the butter.  Slide it around a little for maximum coverage.  Cook for about a minute and hald, two minutes.  Lift up a corner with a spatula and look.  Is it golden brown, with a slight hint of darker crust forming around the edges?  If so, remove it from the pan.  Drop another 1/2 tbsp butter in.  When it melts (and it will be fast), put the sandwich back in, uncooked side down. Turn the heat down slightly.  Another 90 seconds to 2 minutes.  Voila.

There, was that so hard? 

My favorite tweets of 2015

Yes, it's back, for the third consecutive and fourth nonconsecutive time, TK's 2015 Tweets of the Year.  Everybody was very funny this year.  Good job, good effort.

[at club] DO YOU WANT TO DO A HUMAN SACRIFICE "WHAT?" [does stabbing and offering motion] A SACRIFICE, DO YOU WANT TO DO ONE

— YUNG SPIDER GOD (@buttgh0st) January 16, 2015

pic.twitter.com/iLQIEJAdj4

— Ramona (@ramonarae) January 20, 2015

I love that this whole thing is now thousands of people watching a live stream of a guy walk his llama down the street.

— BFF.fm (@BFFdotFM) February 26, 2015

Remember the llamas? I do, like it was yesterday, man. That was good times.

[séance] PSYCHIC: Your father's spirit is with us now GUY: "Dad!!! I'm so happy!!!" (ethereal voice) H I S O H A P P Y , I ' M D A D

— jackson (@tricycle_champ) March 5, 2015

SOCRATES: I am wiser than this man; he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing— DARRYL, SOCRATES' FRIEND: fuck him up socrates

— leon (@leyawn) April 8, 2015

*someone starts having a heart attack* person: is anyone here a doctor?? vegan: im a vegan

— george w kush (@yungshoelace) April 20, 2015

remember when sf was known as a mecca of music and art well that was fun but now we make soylent and shit here’s a lanyard for some reason

— j. w. friedman (@satellitehigh) April 23, 2015

I think "here's a lanyard for some reason" is the killer. It's almost poignant.

how many babies did you send to space, bush. you fucker. how many babies are still up there pic.twitter.com/sdr80EuOQl

— BAKOON (@BAKKOOONN) April 27, 2015

Live around here? No, my kid goes to school here. Oh. (grimace) I'm looking for a nice liquor sto TWO BLOCKS DOWN ON THE LEFT

— miche (@michesf) May 15, 2015

pic.twitter.com/wea59X0CTk

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) May 26, 2015

MAKES U THINK

yesterday when i was riding my bike to work, i saw a woman with a bumpersticker on her car that said I ❤️ MAKEUP and it’s still bugging me.

— jenny_klug (@jenny_klug) June 5, 2015

*firefighter wraps me in blanket after he rescues me* Um I just came out of a fire so I'm pretty hot actually

— pat tobin (@tastefactory) June 7, 2015

I thought this was the Pope's playlist: https://t.co/cvVCAA49AL

— Laura Dolan (@verity6) June 17, 2015

I did too! At least, at first.

pic.twitter.com/B4O5P10M10

— Frances Lefkowitz (@YesFrances) July 14, 2015

How does this only have 29 likes? Maybe it was passed around on another account and got 7 million likes? It should have 7 million likes.

It's a real comment I'm cry pic.twitter.com/BmBs8VUFDn

— Cathy (@catherinebouris) August 5, 2015

I actually went and found the real comment. It's real, or at least appears to be. Amazing.

can this kid be our new president https://t.co/2Jp8e5RDTg

— Lana Berry (@Lana) August 22, 2015

Googling "Can you keep a [weird, possibly dangerous animal that should never be kept as a pet] as a pet?" takes up about half my day.

— Je$sica Benner (@jessicabenner) September 4, 2015

[backstage at a concert] hey guys you mind signing this? [next day at car dealership] rascal flatts is your cosigner?

— brent (@murrman5) September 15, 2015

I LOL every time I think about this tweet, to this day.

"Too soon" -this lady about Pompeii pic.twitter.com/V3TcskR2ng

— Jia Tolentino (@jiatolentino) October 2, 2015

Reading peta's @ replies is my new favorite activity pic.twitter.com/Pfe4FxhQFv

— lindsey (@Lindzeta) October 20, 2015

Benghazi hearings reaching the point where they usually let a position player pitch

— Desus Nice (@desusnice) October 23, 2015

My life has been considerably better since discovering @desusnice's Twitter.

@BenedictEvans that's not what I said

— mat! (@mat) December 22, 2015

What the kids call "pwned."

And just in under the wire, one late but worthy entry:

It's now 2016 here in Hong Kong and not to spoil the future for you, but a portal just opened and OH GOD GIANT ALIEN SPIDERS ARE EVERYWH

— Miss O'Kistic (@missokistic) December 31, 2015

Happy New Year, everyone!

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.

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.

THREAT LEVEL: NERD

I know what you've been thinking.  "TK, I'm already bored of governors threatening to kill refugees who might stray across their state line.  Can you find me any stupider reaction to the terrorist attacks in France?"

OF COURSE I CAN.

From Erick Erickson, prominent right-wing radio host:

An adult wrote that.

The central thesis of this prose poem is that it's too dangerous to see Star Wars because, I gather (although it's not explicit) the Administration can't keep terrorists from doing something involving metal inside a theater showing a Star Wars film.

There are many points here, but just to start:

1. People do, in fact, get shot in movie theaters.  Just not by terrorists from other countries.  

2. There are somewhere around 270 million guns in America. There are around 2.7 million federal employees,  That's only ONE member of the Administration per ONE HUNDRED GUNS. How's one dude gonna keep his eye on a hundred guns?  Can't be done.  If someone wants to shoot you, no, the Administration can't really protect you.  Sorry.

3. Since 2012, 16 people have been killed violently in American movie theaters, 12 of them in one incident (committed by a native-born US citizen who bought his arsenal of guns and ammunition legally, I might add).  That's about the number of people killed in motor vehicle accidents in 5 hours.  The real "threat scenario" is driving to the fucking theater.

4. Nobody gives a shit if you see Star Wars or not. 

Jesus, these people.

Proposition F isn't really about Proposition F at all

Proposition F - the anti-Airbnb ballot measure, for lack of a better pithy descriptor - has become the shitstorm of this election. It's turned comments sections from trash into Superfund-site-level toxic sludge, made Nextdoor even more hilariously unhinged, and filled everyone's mailboxes with the papertrash equivalent of 3 Examiners a day.  It hasn't helped that Airbnb is financing an anti-F campaign that makes the Willie Horton ad look like a Harvard debate club salon.

Forced to do what?  To report to the government when you're sleeping in your own bed, according to this not-at-all fearmongering and hilarious No on F ad.

The actual proposition tinkers with existing regulations in more or less minor ways - reducing the total number of nights you can rent out your place from 90 to 75, and allowing neighbors to sue you if they think you're violating the terms, along with some other stuff - but to hear the anti-Prop F people, you'd think it was the Apocalypse combined with the Cuban Revolution and now everyone will have to leave their houses and let a poor move in.  They also say the current system is working, which is patently bullshit, since we have a newly-operating full-time Airbnb hotel 2 doors down from our house and no one's doing shit about that.

As you can probably tell, I'm lowkey pro-Prop-F, but it doesn't make any difference because Airbnb's Gigantic Fun House of Money combined with a total voter turnout of about 48 people, most of whom work for Airbnb, pretty much ensures that they've got this one in the bag.

Still, it's become obvious to me this isn't actually about the proposition itself.  It's about two views of a changing San Francisco.  A lot of people (me, to some extent, included) see San Francisco changing quickly and, to their minds, unpleasantly, and Airbnb is a very visible, very loud manifestation of that.  Remember that nice family that lived down the street?  They had to move to Fairfield, and now their place has a kegerator instead of a playpen and it's like Phi Delt is recreating the Fall of the Roman Empire there every weekend.  To this group, Airbnb is a huge shining symbol of the New New San Francisco - Our Garbage City - where the tech companies shit all over it and do anything they want because there's a perfectly good city government that they paid good money for.  To them, Airbnb and Uber and all the rest are the New Boss, swaggering around town and telling them exactly how it's going to be now and why your way sucked and the new way is better and just shut up and look at your phone.  There's a velvet rope in front of Bi-Rite now, and it snakes through the Mission to the front doors of Vida.

The others side is a strange agglomeration of super-libertarians who are all IT'S MY PROPERTY I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT and Tech Kids who think anything with a .com at the end shits out cotton candy and genuinely well-intentioned people who really do use Airbnb to rent out an extra room once in a while and don't understand why everyone is so pissed off about that.

So this isn't really a vote about whether or not you should be able to rent out your place for an extra 15 days or whether the busybody neighbor is actually going to get their shit together and calm the voices raging in their head enough to sue you, it's about fear of what this city's becoming or may have already become.  This observation probably isn't unique or even interesting, but maybe helps explain why everyone is so fucking worked up.  Maybe.

The Tech Fuckup Pool: Join today!

The big Airbnb shitshow last week was a hoot!  From the time that one tech company trashed Dolores Park to the time that other tech company painted shit all over the sidewalks (and that's just the ones I remember from the past few months), one thing's for sure; TECH COMPANIES KEEP DOING STUPID SHIT.

Which means it's going to happen again.  Probably soon.

Which means we need to get a pool going.

My initial idea was going to be that you have to pick a tech company AND a type of stupidity, so like if you had "Wash.io" and "Homeless-related" and Wash.io paid homeless people $5 to hand out flyers that said "Don't be as dirty as me" then you'd win.  But there are too many ways in the universe to fuck up, so let's keep this simple.  You just pick a tech company you think will fuck up in the next, say, 6 months, put it in the comments, and if you want to you can make a guess about how they do it but that's not required.  So of course it's better if you say LYFT CHRISTMAS PARTY FEATURES ENDANGERED ANIMAL HORS D'OEUVRES but you can just say LYFT and that will do it.

Will there be a prize?  Of course there will be a prize!  I was thinking about making the prize this "Webvan Advertising Floaty Pen Eskesen Denmark Twist and Click Grocery Service" but if you read the fine print it doesn't even write any more!  Just like Webvan itself, it is sadly defunct.  I don't know, I'll think of something.

The deadline for entries is FRIDAY OCTOBER 30, for no particular reason.  Let's go fuck up, tech companies!

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.

Does rain cause earthquakes? WE INVESTIGATE.

A while back, the National Weather Service - Bay Area posted this on Twitter:

It's basically a graph of historical rainfall in September in San Francisco.  What's the first thing you notice?  BOOM, 5.07" in September 1904.  Typically, there's not a ton of rainfall in any year in September, so 5.07" really stands out.  And of course, about 19 months later, in April 1906, there was a VERY EXCITING EVENT in San Francisco.

So this got me wondering.  DOES RAIN CAUSE EARTHQUAKES.

Answer: YES.

In March of 1957, there was a 5.3 earthquake in San Francisco.  In December of 1955, SF got a ridiculous 11.47 inches of rain.  Remember all that rain last December?  That was 11.70 inches.  That's a lot of rain.  Point being, big rainfall in 1955 was followed by earthquake in 1957.  See the pattern?  PATTERNS ARE SCIENCE.

In December 1889, SF got a ridiculous 13.81" of rain.  This was followed in April of 1892 by not one but two earthquakes within a couple of days, a 6.4 in Vacaville and a 6.2 in Winters.  PATTERNS.

The wettest month in San Francisco history was January 1862, with a Mount Waialeale-like 24.36 inches.  Sidenote, can you imagine if we got 24 inches of rain today?  Local news would have to go to an all-rain format.  Anyway, the rainpocalypse of January '62 was followed in short order by a 6.3 in the Santa Cruz Mountains in October 1865.  December 1864 also had a healthy 8.91 inches of rain, so that probably didn't help.

SO WATCH THE FUCK OUT.  Last December, as I mentioned, we got a very healthy 11.70 inches.  This winter we may get more because of a looming El Nino.

If we get up to double digits in rainfall any month this winter, there will for sure be a bigass earthquake in the next 14 to 36 months.  There is no way this will not happen.  Make peace with your God and say goodbye to your loved ones.  We are all toast.

Million Dickhead Listing SF: This is the end

Friends, we have reached the End of our Journey, but instead of a man fake-proposing on one knee with a garish Neal Lane ring, we instead have a bunch of assholes giving money to a bunch of vipers.  Sigh, such is life.

The producers are obviously trying to make the Justin-Roh conflict a Thing because we pick up with them slapfighting while Strokes Haircut stands limply to the side.  I don't care, this whole thing is obviously staged and lame and even Justin insulting Roh by telling him he's from Hayward doesn't even make it more interesting, even if it is true.

Justin is still trying to sell that firehouse with all the fucking stairs and people are still bitching about all the fucking stairs.  He's trying to talk the owner into putting in a $100K elevator and she won't elevate so she's just going to take it off the market and wait for a "better time" like WHAT THE FUCK LADY what's a "better time" to sell real estate in San Francisco than right fucking this second?  "Nah, I don't want 500K over asking, I want the sky-god Namaroth to personally invest me with the power to transmute objects and rain fire from the heavens onto the skulls of my enemies.  Also a 5-day close.  Those are my terms."

The whole Justin-Roh playfight climaxes with a lunch at Sens where they're trying to make a deal and it makes professional wrestling look like a Ken Burns documentary.  There's some fucking bidding war that's about as exciting as the silent auction at St. Ingrid's Spring Fling.  Whatever.  Later, Justin is finally getting his own place like a real grownup!  Based on the view, I think it's maybe Buena Vista?  You think?

The fact that he's renting a place not in the Marina is shocking to me.  Just picturing him anywhere outside the Marina or South Beach is hard.

Andrew's still dealing with Joffrey and Mom and the $20 million dump in Tiburon.  There's a $17 million offer from a "couple from Norway."  I bet it's the Ikeas!  Isn't Ikea from Norway?  Or Sweden.  One of those.  One of those Viking/blonde/slash through the letter O places.  Anyway, since they seem to be buying it as an investment, Mom thinks they're "not the right people."  FINALLY, someone is discriminating against stunningly beautiful blonde people.  ABOUT FUCKING TIME.  Keep moving, Horgor.  We don't like your kind around here.

Instead of selling to Billy Bookshelf, Mom decides to RENT the fucking place out like it's a studio on Craigslist, except this studio is on 6 acres and rents for ONE HUNDRED FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH.  That better include water and garbage.  Other than the residents.  KA-POW SEE WHAT I DID THERE!!!! PWNED!!!!

Fittingly, Andrew's new office that is under construction appears to be in Pleasanton, from which fiance Paaaaal says he'll "take over San Francisco."  From fucking Pleasanton?  Right, just like the Falklands took over Yorkshire.  Try taking over Tracy first, just to warm up.

So that's it.

SFist or SFGate comment?

Regular readers of SFist and SFGate may have noticed that the comments on SFist stories have . . . . changed lately.  Let's just say that the comment section at SFist, once a fairly SF-representative - and by that, I mean "progressive" or maybe just "stoned," I guess - place, has begun to resemble the comment section at crosstown non-rival SFGate, whose commenters run the gamut from slightly more conservative to batshit crazy.

Let's take a recent local story, as reported in both organs. The story involves a man who was smoking at the West Oakland station and when cops confronted him they say he freaked out and "resisted violently" and then when he was trying to pull a gun out he accidentally shot himself.  I mean, that's what the cops say happened.  I have no idea what actually happened because I wasn't there.  None of the commenters you will read were there either, as far as I know.

SFGate:

And SFist:

Below are a selection of comments.  HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN.  Try to guess which site the comment came from, SFist or SFGate.  Ready?

It usually isn't ordinary tobacco I smell at Bart stations. Now we got a mix of gun smoke mixed in as well. Glad he accidently shot himself before he could shoot anyone else.

Great. Here come the white guilt protests tonight, please don't fuck up my commute home, kthx.

Considering they shut down part of the freeway the other night in protest of a car jacker with a gun getting shot by OPD, I think there will definitely be a protest about this.

Where are the protesters? I guess black lives don't matter in Oakland.

BART should close West Oakland, Fruitvale and MacArthur stations. Trips would get faster and crime would drop. I'd say close 16th St. in SF also but that area is gentrifying quite a bit (except the area right around the BART station, ironically).

This all means something, I guess.

Answers: gate, fist, fist, gate, gate