Lyft, Airbnb, and Unintended Consequences

Because I drive and live in San Francisco, I come face to face with Lyft and Airbnb every single day of my life.  Lyft (and Uber, too) because their ubiquitous cars are constantly stopping in the middle of the street and blocking traffic and turning without signaling and generally driving like they don't give a shit about anyone else.  Airbnb because the sight of a bunch of Europeans with wheeled suitcases and track jackets going into what appears to be private homes instead of hotels is now commonplace.  And there's a full-time Airbnb hotel on my block, as I've mentioned.

It occurs to me that both of these companies have similar origin stories and similar trajectories from high-minded idealism into rank Monolpoly-man-style capitalism.  According to its origin myth (recounted at some length in this excellent TechCrunch piece "Lyft-Off: Zimride’s Long Road To Overnight Success," Lyft (then Zimride) began as a way, basically, to coordinate carpools.

If the Santa Barbara MTD gave Logan reason to question the future of transportation, it was a trip to Africa after graduation with his friend Matt Van Horn that gave him hope: Locals in Zimbabwe used carpooling to get around more efficiently.

“The streets were quiet because nobody was driving, and the government was too busy ruining the country to think about providing services like public transportation,” Logan says. So instead, people piled into shared minivans as a way to get around.

“There was this crowdsourced transportation network where anyone could be a driver and they could set their own routes,” he tells me. It impressed Logan that a country like Zimbabwe, which he says “had close to zero resources,” in many ways had a better transportation network than an affluent city like Santa Barbara. When he returned from his trip, he set out to change that.

Great stuff.  Who could be against a service that puts people going the same direction into the same car, reducing the number of single occupancy cars on the road?

Fast forward to today.  The current business model of Lyft, at least in San Francisco, appears to be: Dump as many untrained drivers, unfamiliar with San Francisco[*], onto city streets as possible, and encourage them to pick up and drop off as many people as possible.  It's gone from Casual Carpooling to a Vast Unlicensed Unregulated Off the Books Taxi Service.

[*] I say this because in my limited experience taking Lyft rides, I have yet to meet a single driver who lived in the city.  Many - if not most - had only a vague idea or none at all about where my destination was.

Airbnb has a similar story.  In the begining it was just a couple of guys renting out air mattresses on their floor for $80 so they could afford their rent.  Aw, that's sweet!  Now it's a global behemoth that pushes city governments around and encourages people to evict their tenants to operate off-the-books full-time hotels.  (Not everyone, of course.  There are still people who occasionally rent out a spare bedroom to help pay the bills.  To those people, Godspeed and have fun.  That's not who I'm talking about.)

What does it all mean?  I guess that people want to make money, and if your beautiful idea to improve humanity doesn't make money, either (1) it will stop being a thing, unless it's a charity, and no one thinks transporting drunk millennials around town is charitable, or (2) someone will monetize the fuck out of it.

Who cares?  We'll be under water or living in a Mad Max style dystopia in 30 years anyway.  Release the hounds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Redistributing wealth for fun & profit: a Thought Experiment

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

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

$675.  Let that sink in for a minute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baseball is life

This season the Oakland A's baseball club spent most of the season wildly outperforming everyone's expectations.  Their payroll was comparable to that of an insurance office or a mid-sized In N Out, but they just kept winning games.  Until it got towards the end of the season and they got tired and then they just lost and lost.  The Oakland A's bumped up against the glass ceiling.  They were the true, gritty American story of pulling yourself out of poverty and rising in the company only to stall out because you didn't go to Harvard.

In the end, they had to play one more game, just for the right to play in the postseason.  They played against the Kansas City Royals.  The Kansas City Royals have been down so long they don't know what up is.  They haven't been to the playoffs since Kurt Cobain was 18 years old.  The Royals are Wal-Mart employees who can never get benefits because they keep getting scheduled for 37 hours a week.  They are hoping for a raise to $8.50.

This game the A's and Royals played was exciting but sad because you desperately wanted both very sad teams to win.  At the beginning the A's were ahead a lot and then the Royals came back and then it was tied for a long time and then the Royals won.  The A's will never make vice president.  They will be Regional Sales Manager forever.  Meanwhile, the Royals just won a free trip to Disneyland but no one has told them that the Angels are waiting to mug them at Disneyland and take their Nikon CoolPix and their iPad and they will go back to the Kansas City Wal-Mart with nothing.

The San Francisco Giants come from money and have been given every chance to succeed and succeed they have.  They won the yacht race in 2010 and 2012 and everything looked good this year until they tripped over their wife's Gucci crocodile shoulder bag and hurt themselves.  Things got dicey the rest of the year and wouldn't you know it, they had to play one game just to get to go on too.  Just like the A's!

The Giants would be playing the Pittsburgh Pirates.  The Pittsburgh Pirates are the Pittsburgh of baseball teams.  They had good years in the past but then everything went to shit for a long time but no maybe there's some kind of renaissance going on?  Hipsters are moving downtown?  Is there a pedestrian mall?  Yes, there's a pedestrian mall.  The Pirates were in the playoffs last year while the Giants played golf on the Big Island.

Poor Pittsburgh thought this was going to be part of the Pittsburghaissance but no.  Madison Bumgarner is a coolly efficient killing machine and he destroyed their plans.  He foreclosed on the pedestrian mall and shut down the radical art space and then burned the historic meeting hall just for the fuck of it.  He celebrated like the Romans did after they leveled Carthage and sowed the soil with salt so nothing would ever grow there again.

Baseball is life.  Most of the time, you lose.  If you're lucky and rich you might win.  It also helps not to get hurt.

I was going to close by saying that the Giants, despite their wealth and power, have zero chance against the Washington Nationals, a frightening team loaded with hitting and pitching and other good baseball things, but, just as in life, never underestimate the ability of rich people to get what they want in Washington.

I'm trying to figure out what bothers me about this article

It's called "I Moved to San Francisco - and Now I Have an App for Everything."  I saw it on Slate, but it apparently first appeared in Business Insider, which doesn't surprise me at all.  It was probably a 43-screen slideshow in its original form.  Business Insider is the worst.

Anyway, amazingly enough, it wasn't the title alone that put me off.  In fact, I've re-read this article three or four times now and I still can't figure out exactly what about it fills me with rage.  Or sadness.  Or some feeling.  I don't even know any more.  I think I'm past the ability to get mad about how we lost San Francisco.  Now I'm just like the French guy weeping when the Nazis march into Paris.

On to the article.  It starts with a description of how convenient everything is near the author's "Upper East Side apartment" in New York City and how there are two Starbucks within 1000 feet of his Dream Pad.  Two Starbucks!  Already sounds like heaven.

Things are more difficult in San Francisco.

It’s not like that in San Francisco, a city where I now have to walk at least 15 minutes up a steep hill to get to my nearest grocery store. Plus, everything closes early. If I want a pint of Ben & Jerry’s at 2 a.m., I can’t just walk to my corner 24/7 bodega like I could in New York. I’m left unsatisfied and ice cream-less.

Shield your eyes, children, so you don't have to see Upper East Side struggle 15 minutes up a steep hill for groceries.  The nearest Starbucks must be way, way more than 1000 feet away.  Maybe even uphill.  Suicide is looking good.

But wait!  In today's San Francisco, there is never a reason to walk uphill or even interact with any of your fellow recent arrivistes.

New Yorkers are probably already familiar with the food-delivery service Seamless, but in San Francisco there’s a Seamless-like app for everything. Your laundry. Housekeeping. Groceries. Car rides. Even booze. And it all comes almost instantly.

Truly we are living in the Promised Land, where even New Yorkers can get instant food delivery in San Francisco.  When we have finished remaking the city, no upper middle class white person shall ever want for anything again.  Starbucks every 999 feet.

I also tried Washio, a service that will pick up your dirty laundry and dry cleaning and have it back to you within 24 hours. Like Sprig, you manage Washio through a smartphone app to schedule your pickup and drop off times. Washio has an army of contractors—or, in startup parlance, “ninjas”—who swing by your place to get your dirty clothes. They also give you a free cookie with every pickup. The first time I tried Washio, my ninja gave me a bonus—a free pair of underwear as part of a cross promotion with another startup. (Yes, you can also get on-demand underwear in San Francisco.)

A free cookie!  I LOVE COOKIES!  And ninjas handing out underwear.  The future will be bright, and we will all wear clean underwear.

(In case you're wondering, unlike your Mom, Washio charges $1.60 a pound to do your laundry, with a minimum 15 pound order, so $24 for your smallest load.  Before we moved and I had a washer/dryer in my house, I used to drop off my laundry at my local wash & fold which charged $1.50 a pound.  I have no idea how Washio is going to make money.)

A dark cloud approaches.  Not everything is right in Magic Startup Land.  A wrinkle has arrived that threatens to ruin Upper East Side's User Experience.

The only negative experience I’ve had so far was with Instacart, an app that sends a personal shopper to a nearby grocery store to pick up whatever you need and deliver it to you within an hour. It works as advertised, but the prices are marked up, and customers run the risk of not being able to get what they want because the store is out of stock. Instacart’s shoppers try their best to find similar items, but in my case I couldn’t justify buying a five-pound package of bananas instead of a normal bunch. 

WHAT THE! The unmitigated GALL of marking up prices when you have a ninja who works on commission and tips doing your grocery shopping for you!  They don't mark prices up at the bodega when I go to get ice cream at 2 a.m.!

So there you go.  It's fun to snark at this and we've had our laughs but I still can't put my finger on what it is about this that bothers me.  Maybe it's just the continuing thread of infantilization, with apps replacing your Mom.  Or maybe that the life the author describes is one in which all the opportunities we used to have for interacting with other citizens - going to the laundromat, grocery shopping, going out to a restaurant - are being replaced by home delivery through your smartphone.  If you never have to see anyone from a different social strata (or, for that matter, a different fucking type of company), it's easy to dismiss their concerns.  Why does the Bayview need a grocery store?  Just use Instacart! Why should I worry about the terrible public transit? I take Uber everywhere. Ew, homeless people. Leaving my apartment is the worst.

It's a lot of things.  Welcome to the New San Francisco, I guess.

I'm back

I left The Wife and Beyonce in Ireland LOL.  No, seriously, I did but they're coming back soon.

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to blog about a funeral, so I'll focus on the plane travel instead.  In fact, I'm going to focus on just my flights back yesterday.

Going from SHANNON (Ireland) to NEWARK was such a joy that it made me start to rethink every bad thing I ever said about United Airlines.  I was in a window bulkhead seat and a tiny Indian woman was on the aisle and there was no one in the middle.  It was like having my own private room.

PICTURED: My bulkhead suite on Flight 24, Cate Blanchett in "Blue Jasmine" (more on which later), my legs + kicks.

I watched 2 movies, both of which I had thoughts about.

MOVIE #1: BLUE JASMINE

WTF?  This may not be the worst Woody Allen movie, but it may be the weirdest.  It's ostensibly set in San Francisco, but the SF depicted bears no resemblance to any actual San Francisco.  There are two or three male characters who are total Brooklyn goombah types who somehow wandered into this film and are totally unlike anyone else I've ever met in 23 years of living here.  If you want immediately identifiable New Yorkers in your movie, Woody, fucking SET IT IN NEW YORK.  Also, there is an unintentionally HILARIOUS scene at a daytime party in Marin in which a bunch of white people in coats and ties dance awkwardly to disco music.  It's beyond bizarre.  Cate Blanchett acts OK, but the whole thing was just so unbelievable that it didn't work.  It's like he just randomly decided to set a movie here and wrote a regular script set in New York and then just filmed it here.  The only believable character was Louis CK playing a philandering sound engineer.  It's also not funny.

MOVIE #2: ENOUGH SAID

AKA James Gandolfini's Last Movie.  It's a little, sweet romantic semi-comedy about some olds who go on some dates.  I generally like Nicole Holofcener movies, as long as you realize that nothing really happens in them.  I wouldn't go out of my way to see it, but it was fine when you're flying over endless ice sheets.

We landed in Newark in a TOTAL FUCKING BLIZZARD and that's where shit went south a little.  Since this was United, they FREAKED OUT AND CANCELLED EVERYONE'S FLIGHTS.  United is like an autistic kid who rolls on the ground screaming if anyone touches his dinosaurs.  Planes could take off but United was decompensating in the corner.  Anyway, they put me on another flight to Chicago and then to San Francisco.  Now, I'm 6'4" and I always pay extra for the Special Legroom seats because I can't fit in the regular seats.  I'm not trying to be dramatic or exaggerate about this; I mean, my femurs are literally longer than the space between the seat and the seat in front.  And since this was a backup flight, NO SPECIAL SEATS FOR TK.  Not to bore you with details, but the 4-hour flight to SF included me having to ask the guy in front of me not to put his seat back, to which he replied "Should have bought a seat in first class."  PRICK.

That's about it.  I'll watch the Bachelor tonight and do the recap tomorrow.  We'll get back on some kind of schedule here.

P.S. I also watched ELYSIUM from Chicago to SF and it was a little long but OK I guess.

Kansas City here I come

Hey! Prior to Monday, I had never been on a plane that was forced to land because there was a hole in it, and then later saw a drunk chinbeard slow dancing with a one-legged lesbian, but I guess if you live long enough, everything that can happen eventually does.

Let me back up.  The Wife, Baby Beyonce and me left SFO Monday morning at like 6 am to go see my extended family in Real America.  First we flew to Denver, which was uneventful except for the guy who locked himself in the forward lavatory and was violently ill the whole time and was taken off the plane by paramedics when we got there.  But hey, there but for the grace of God go I, etc., etc.

The real fun started when we left Denver.  About 45 mins into it, a panicked-looking girl was reseated into the row in front of me and spent the rest of the flight looking back nervously.  The captain came on the PA and said there was a mechanical problem and we'd be landing in Kansas City but NOTHING WAS WRONG and we weren't going to die or anything.  This was alarming because (1) we were definitely not supposed to land in Kansas City and (2) we were probably going to die.

(We found out later that the pressure seal around the exit row door partially blew out during takeoff and there was a hole in the plane the panicked-looking girl could see daylight through and so they evacuated the exit row and decided we should land and instead proceed on a plane with no holes.)

So we landed in Kansas City.  This was about 1:30 p.m.  I don't know if you're familiar with the KC airport but it is a fucking mess.  There's a security checkpoint for like every three gates, so we were trapped in this little area because we didn't have boarding passes that said Kansas City on them and so we would essentially be Ghost Passengers who couldn't get back into security and were Citizens of No Country and would probably be disappeared just to save Frontier Airlines any more hassle.  They finally decided to let us out so we could get something to eat at the Budweiser Stadium Club instead of the little snack bar by Gate 78 that only sold yogurt and power bars.

Hours passed.  People trickled back to our original gate slash waiting area.  By now it's like 6 pm and we've been promised that a replacement part was arriving on a 6 pm flight.  By this point, as happens whenever you throw a bunch of people into a crisis situation together, a sort of society had formed.  Over here, the floppy haired kid with a skateboard was bonding with a Tumblr-looking chick with glasses.  Another woman had spread out her collection of Essential Oils and was explaining their utility to a perfunctorily interested audience.  Meanwhile, a loudmouthed know it all hypochondriac lesbian who had been sitting in front of us on the plane was still braying away to anyone within earshot ("ALLERGIES? I have so many allergies I take 20 milligrams of prednisone every day."  "If I don't eat something I go into a semi-diabetic kind of shock.") I knew she was a lesbian because she had been braying about her girlfriend to the guy next to her in front of us and also because of her extremely short frosted tips hair.

Around 6:30, a late-30's early-40's chinbeard I had seen before approached the lesbian and wordlessly embraced her and started slow dancing with her.  He was very, very, very drunk.  She seemed only a little surprised by this.  "I'm so sorry about your Mom," she said.  She had to break it off when she got a phone call and he wandered away.  Amazingly, the phone call was a fake girlfriend call from the Essential Oils lady who was SITTING RIGHT THERE and, unbelievably, already had gotten the lesbian's cell number.  (Later we learned via the lesbian that Chinbeard was on his way home from his Mom's funeral and was very upset and drunk. She said he was very brave to start slow dancing with her.)

Right as some guy was in the middle of an excruciatingly boring story about how his bus broke down, we got word that Frontier was putting us up for the night in Kansas City and we would all leave tomorrow.  We were told to go get our bags and get in line to rebook for tomorrow.  This Bataan Death Line was endless and painfully slow.

Luckily I had dispatched The Wife and Baby Beyonce to get our luggage and got in line relatively early; we got to the front after about 45 minutes.  I heard it took 2 1/2 hours to rebook everyone.  I cannot fathom what took so long.  Can't you just hand everybody their same seats they had today?  Why was this harder than the math section of the SAT?

We were assigned to the Comfort Inn, which was fine, I guess.  (The guy in front of us as about to get the Comfort Inn too when another guy appeared next to him and said to the Frontier person, "No, he wants to go to the La Quinta." Then he turned to the guy. "A bunch of us are going to the bar at the La Quinta. Come on!"  I didn't know that La Quintas had bars. The guy smartly took Another Guy's suggestion and went to the La Quinta.)

That's about it.  We finally made it to our destination the next day. 

POSTSCRIPT ONE: How did I know the lesbian only had one leg?  In the shuttle to the Comfort Inn, she had to have a special seat so she could accomodate her fake leg, which I guess doesn't bend or something.

POSTSCRIPT TWO: To make up for the hassle, Frontier issued $150 vouchers to everyone who bought a ticket on the Doomed Exploding Plane Flight.  The Wife and I used our miles to book the ticket, so we got squat.  Our 8-month-old daughter now has a $150 voucher.  I wonder where she'll go!

Get out there and earn a gold star today!

Original version of this via Lindsey. I just growed it up a bit.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

NEXT!

And the latest entry in the Techies Ruin Everything genre comes from......The East Bay Express!  The East Bay Express, ladies and gentlemen.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Please hold your applause.

Their entry is called, for some reason, "The Bacon-Wrapped Economy."  Here's a sample:

And that brings with it a whole host of disparate side effects: The arts economy, already unstable, has been forced to contend with the twin challenges of changing tastes and new funding models. Entire industries that didn't exist ten years ago are either thriving on venture capital, or thriving on companies that are thriving on it. It is now possible to find a $6 bottle of Miller High Life, a $48 plate of fried chicken, or a $20 BLT in parts of the city that used to be known for their dive bars and taco stands. If, after all, money has always been a means of effecting the world we want to bring about, when a region is flooded with uncommonly rich and uncommonly young people, that world begins to look very different. And we're all living in it, whether we like it or not.

Yeah, I know, we've all read this article before.  Maybe even last week!  Anyway, it goes on in the usual vein for a while - People are throwing lavish parties! Newly rich kids aren't very smart about money! - without ever reaching any firm conclusions.  No biggie, there'll be many more of these to come.  MY PERSONAL FAVORITE PART was about TaskRabbit and those other services where you hire people to do things.  Specifically:

According to Molly Rabinowitz, a San Franciscan in her early twenties who briefly made a living doing this kind of work — though she declined to reveal which service she used — many tech companies give their employees a set amount of credit for these tasks a month or year, and that's in addition to the people using the services privately. "There's no way this would exist without tech," she said. "No way."

At one point, Rabinowitz was hired for several hours by a pair of young Googlers to launder and iron their clothes while they worked from home. ("It was ridiculous. They didn't want to iron anything, but they wanted everything, including their T-shirts, to be ironed.")

Well, yeah, Molly.  Maybe you missed the WHOLE FUCKING POINT.  The idea of these services, as I understand it (but which perhaps Molly is not clear on) is that you hire someone to perform a task that you don't want to do.  Shockingly, one of these tasks could be IRONING.  Perhaps Molly thought TaskRabbit paid you to drink coffee and lazily thumb through US Weekly? 

DISCLAIMERS: (1) I do not mean to suggest that there are no problems with the current tech boom; there most certainly are, but recycling the same article over and over isn't getting us any insight. (2) You should never iron your t-shirts.

Serving California and the world – since 2008

Dear Loyal Customer,

We admit it. We made a mistake.

We know you’ve come to count on 40 Going On 28’s wry blend of news, information, and humor, and you’re understandably distressed when there are no new posts for a while. You feel like you’re not getting the service you’ve paid for, and you’re right.

Although we hate to make excuses, we have to tell you that the last few weeks have been kind of a trial and whatnot. We’ve been in the process of completing a rather complex transaction we’ll tell you more about later, but suffice it to say at this point that we’ve been dealing pretty much 24/7 with a parade of idiots that make your typical preschool class look like a meeting of Phi Beta Kappa at M.I.T. Seriously, it is sort of mind-boggling that the people who are in charge of managing one of the most complicated things you’ll ever take part in can’t figure out what the fuck they’re doing. It’s frustrating!

But we know what you’re thinking. “Boo hoo, like I give a shit. WHERE’S MY CONTENT.” Fair enough. We’ll be back on track pretty soon with all the rage and bile you’ve come to expect and need.

We value your loyalty, and appreciate your patience during this trying time.

TK

Lyric Deconstruction: "American Ride"

Toby Keith, 2009

Winter gettin' colder, summer gettin' warmer.
Tidal wave comin' 'cross the Mexican border.
Why buy a gallon, it's cheaper by the barrel.
Just dont get busted singin' Christmas carols.

By this point, about 24 seconds into the song, you're probably thinking "Oh no, here's some more Toby Keith retarded bullshit," and you're partially right. It's difficult to put a charitable spin on "Tidal wave comin' cross the Mexican border." And if you have any reports of anyone being arrested for singing Christmas carols, do forward them.

That's us, that's right
Gotta love this American ride.
Both ends of the ozone burnin.
Funny how the world keeps turnin.
Look ma, no hands.
I love this American ride.
Gotta love this American ride.

I feel like I really don't have to explain that ozone degradation and the rotation of the Earth are two widely disconnected phenomena. I mean, we could lose the entire ozone layer - indeed, the entire atmosphere - and the world would keep turnin, for billions of years. It's angular momentum, a widely-understood property of physics. So it's really not that funny that the world keeps turnin. IT'S NOT FUNNY AT ALL.

But wait! You have to see the video to appreciate this song. I mean, it's a terrible video, but it makes clear that this song is an equal opportunity hater.



There's a fascinating scene that begins around :40. We see the classic American Gothic couple, only they're getting foreclosed on! And what's replacing the family farm? Big box stores!

Now wait a minute. Isn't the guiding principle of unfettered capitalism that you should be free to do whatever you want with your money? So if you're Best Buy or whatever and you want to buy a farm and put up a store there, you should be able to, right? So what's the problem, Toby Keith? What are you, some kind of socialist?

Momma gets her rocks off watchin' Desperate Housewives.
Daddy works his ass off payin' for the good life.
Kids on the YouTube learnin how to be cool.
Livin in a cruel world, pays to be a mean girl.

I guess this is more or less the standard kind of workin-hard-to-make-a-buck-my-wife-don't-understand country music stuff. Hard to have any problem with that.

Chorus

At this stage in the video, we are presented with two interesting animated images. The first is Pat Robertson riding George W. Bush like a horse. Let's set aside the extremely disturbing aspects of this tableau and try to divine what's implied here - that Bush was a tool of the Religious Right? Meh, he certainly had that potential, and God knows what would have happened, but 9/11 kind of took the focus off those nutbags.

The second image is Obama being carried aloft by Wall Street bankers. Hard to argue with that. In fact, that's probably the most straightforward and accurate political commentary in the whole thing.

Poor little infamous, America's town.
She gained five pounds and lost her crown.
Quick fix plastic surgical antidote.
Got herself a record deal, can't even sing a note.

Hmmmm. Well, Dominique Ramirez, Miss San Antonio, did, in fact, lose accuse pageant officials of taking her crown when she gained weight. But I have no information that she got herself a record deal.

(I initially thought this was a backhanded slap at Carrie Underwood, another former pageant contestant who got herself a record deal. But I think the consensus is that she's a perfectly fine singer, although, I confess, I'm not really down with the Nashville gossip.)

Plasma gettin bigger, Jesus gettin smaller.
Spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars.
Customs caught a thug with an aerosol can.
If the shoe don't fit, fits gonna hit the shan.

I have to confess, when I first heard this, I thought "I, for one, am glad that plasma is widely available! It's a valuable life-saving tool that doctors in emergency situations use every day!" Oh, wait, he's not talking about that, is he. Oh, he means TVs.

Well, so what if TVs are getting bigger! That's progress!

I won't even bother with the frivolous lawsuits thing. Yawn.

The last line is completely impenetrable, and I assume the songwriters just ran out of gas at the end. Just as I have here.

Chorus

Does the weather suck? Yeah, but not as bad as I thought.

While the middle part of the country feels God's wrath for its many shortcomings by roasting in record heat, we sinners here in San Francisco are also being punished by the Almighty, in the form of just generally shitty weather. It's overcast and foggy and never gets much about 60 degrees.

I know the only thing more boring than blogging about the weather is blogging about blogging, but I'm starting to get the SAD real bad and so it got me to thinking - is this an extra-shitty July so far, or do we just forget every year about how shitty July in San Francisco is?

So I decided to do some Burrito Justice-style research and, you know, marshal some facts and shit and find out. I went to Weather Underground and looked at the high temps for July (and the last week of June, as long as I was there), and then wrote them all down on a clipboard while reading them off the screen out loud to myself. "72, 73, 68, 69," I'd say, and then write write write. It took about 15 minutes and looked like this:




Here's the short answer: Except for today, it's not appreciably worse than any other July in the last 10 years. Except for 2008. Let's look at the numbers.

So far, the average daily high temperature for July this year has been 70. That's pretty much exactly normal. Last year it was 72 through this date, and 71 in 2009, and 70 in 2006 and 2004. 2008 was a hot one - 74 average, but that's because it was really really nice from the 7th to the 11th, like high 70s and 80s.

There have been some bright spots this July. Remember when it was 80 on the 1st? That's the hottest July 1st in the last 10 years. Same with the 84 on the 3rd. Hell, it was 69 on the 10th, just like on the 10th of 2010 and 2003.

The only weird thing will be if it doesn't get above 59 today. If that's true, that will be the lowest high temperature for July in the last 10 years. That fucking sucks, I'll give you that. But overall, so far it's not a bizarrely off July.

I will tell you this, though: That last week of June we just had was the coldest last week of June in the last 10 years. Average high: 66. Last year was 70 and the year before that was 76. So maybe it's just the cumulative effect, starting in June.

(Does anyone remember June 2003? The last week's average high was 83! 3 days of 90s in a row! Jesus!)

So hang in there. It's just the usual shit.

Adventures in Dentistry

I'm pretty loyal to my service providers and if I find something that works, or at least is unobjectionable, I stuck with it, which explains why I had been going to the same dentist for like 18 years. Well, really, just the same dentist's office, since the actual dentist has changed maybe 3 times and the entire staff has turned over except for one receptionist who always calls me by name and who, come to think of it, I guess I have one of the longest relationships of my adult life with.

But after 18 years I got restless and decided to take a walk on the wild side and see what else was out there. BIG MISTAKE. I went to this other dentist in the Mission who was actually kind of cute but I felt like she was kinda phoning it in. I mean, if it doesn't hurt, they can't be doing a good job, right? Plus the receptionist didn't habla Ingles all that well and I was never 100% sure when my next appointment would be because I didn't want keep saying "Excuse me?" or "I'm sorry?" with my head cocked to the side like an idiot.

So I went back to Old Dentist after like a year and a half. Old Dentist took me back but decided that I MUST BE PUNISHED FOR MY TRANSGRESSION.

Old Dentist took a look at the X-Rays and did that thing where they stick the probe up under your gums and go "3-2-3, 3-3-3, 3-4-3" and then when they say "4-5-4" the dentist and the hygienist look at each other and cluck disapprovingly. It seems that I needed a DEEP CLEANING. If you're unfamiliar, a deep cleaning is where they peel your gums back and hammer away in there with a diamond bladed chisel and also a stick made out of wolverine teeth and a radioactive gun that shoots gamma rays and pain-water into the roots of your teeth.

A deep cleaning is also a useful way of learning valuable information from a rival!

It takes two sessions because they can't novocaine your whole face at once or you'll wander into the street and die or else starve to death because you can't put food into your mouth without it falling out. So each session's like an hour and a half and the Russian hygienist is going SCRAPE SCRAPE SCRAPE and you can feel it in your skull even if you can't in your mouth because they hit you with 4 novocaine injections - no shit, FOUR - and on the whole it's not a particularly satisfying experience.

SO YESTERDAY I go back for the followup and that Russian is "You are flossing daily, no?" and I was like "YOU BET YOUR ASS I'M FLOSSING DAILY SVETLANA" and then I go "You know, that deep cleaning was like 3 weeks ago and I'm not even sure why I'm here" and she says "After deep cleaning, some patient need to return every 4 month," and I was like "NOT THIS PATIENT, YOU CRAZY RUSSKIE." She strapped on her gear and went to work for another 40 minutes with the saw and the high-pressure radioactive Water Pic and then pronounced me GOOD TO GO for another 6 months.

The moral of the story is: if you like your dentist - and by that, I mean if your dentist isn't psychotic or molesting you while you're unconscious - for God's sake, don't cheat on him/her. It's not worth it.

(Oh, one ironic note: Guess who needs a deep cleaning now? MY DOG. I wish I had gotten to be fully anesthetized like he does! Lucky sonofabitch. LITERALLY. KA-POW!)

The 7 Most Annoying People You Will See at Your Office Holiday Party

1. Handsy McBoss

Oh hey, whoa, I know you’re my boss and everything, and yeah, I like you just fine, but you’re kind of putting your arm around me in an uncomfortable way and your breath really smells like Seagram’s 7 and not in a good way and I’m glad that you like me as a person and not just as a member of the team but I sort of need to get away from you right now. I’M GOING TO START SCREAMING THAT YOU’RE GIVING ME A RAPE FLASHBACK IF YOU DON’T LET ME GO oh whew that’s better. Don’t look so sad. It’s me, not you.

2. The Drunkretary

By day, she’s just a normal, if over-made-up, receptionist from Danville or Dublin or one of those “D” suburbs, but tonight is her night to LET SHIT ROAR because them DRINKS IS FREE and WHOOOOO KARAOKEEEEE!!!! She can be spotted hovering near the DJ booth asking for Katy Perry songs and later asking if you like to “party.” SPOILER: You like to party. That’s why you work in a different branch next year.

3. Broseph from Sales

LET’S DO SOME SHOTS BRAH. OK, did some shots. LET’S DO SOME MORE SHOTS. Jesus, Broseph from Sales, how are you still upright? I just know you as the loudmouth who drives an Audi A6 and talks about fantasy football all the time. I’m not sure that I want to be buddies right this second, especially since you seem determined to give out alcohol poisoning instead of STDs, for a change. Where’s the rest of the Alpha Mousse Gang? Why are you still talking to me?

How awesome is this picture? It's from some article about how to act at an American holiday party. I'm not sure I'm 100% down with the implications of this picture vis-a-vis how to act at a holiday party.

4. Married Linda

Your husband sure is out of town a lot, Linda. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have lost a few pounds, but please don’t touch my abdomen any more. Huh, no, I haven’t really thought about where I’m going after the party. Probably just home. Yes, MY home.

5. Bob Who Knows You for One Thing

Remember about a year and a half ago when you went to Chicago to see that girl you don’t even talk to any more? And you happened to mention to Bob that you were going to Chicago? Now every time you see Bob, that’s his only point of reference for you and he’s all “Hey, it’s Mr. Chicago! How’s things in the Windy City? Say, what about those Bears? DA BEARS! HAHAHAHAHAHA.” So you have to smile and nod patiently and explain to Bob that you haven’t really been to Chicago or thought about Chicago since last spring and then he’ll look a little crestfallen and you’ll both stand next to each other watching Sylvia try to dance and awkwardly not talk about anything until you pretend to see someone you know and walk away.

6. Don who is “down” with the African-American guy

So you’re talking to Jason, who happens to be African-American, about what he did on his birthday last week and here comes Don from Accounting and oh no oh no here he goes. “SUP MY BROTHAAAAAA,” he says. Don, you are Don from Accounting, not Snoop Dogg, why are you talking like that? “Not much, not much, just keepin’ it real,” Don says when asked what he’s been up to. If washing your Chevy Astro in your driveway in Rohnert Park is “keepin’ in real,” then yes, you have been keepin’ it real.

7. Nikki Overshare

Nikki’s cute enough I guess and she’s fun to talk to and I don’t see her that often and OH GOD NO I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR UTERUS GETTING SCRAPED um maybe I can redirect the conversation to over here about how I saw my family over Thanksgiving and JESUS NO I DID NOT KNOW THAT YOUR UNCLE TOUCHED YOU INAPPROPRIATELY WHEN YOU WERE FIVE AND SWINGING ON HIS SWINGSET. Do I have to reveal something now too? I shoplifted a Penthouse Letters from an airport newsstand once! No I didn’t I just made that up! I have to go now!

This concerns food trucks, so it might be the most SF thing you read all day

All due respect to Ramona Emerson, there is nothing San Franciscans like more than (1) food trucks, and (2) blogging about food trucks. So if you're a San Franciscan, prepare to have your mind blown.

I've been stalking the Seoul on Wheels Korean BBQ truck for a while now. One time we heard that it was going to be parked down by the Ballyard, so Olu and I trucked down there but it was nowhere to be seen. Now it Twitters its location everyday so there's no tragedy like that.

Lo and behold, come to find out that a bunch of food trucks will be gathering in Civic Center Plaza, very close to my Work Station, every Friday as part of something called Off the Grid. And my long-sought target, S.O.W., would be one of the participants this week.

L-R: Crack Cocaine, Liquid Heroin, Pork Buns

Hied myself down there w/ 2 coworkers and loaded up a combo rice plate (N.B.: This is not on the menu, but I found them very accommodating when I asked for a combo and also for some kimchee on the side). Left them waiting in the pork bun line because it's kind of raining and I didn't want to eat it cold. Voila:



THE VERDICT: Very good! I liked the spicy pork somewhat more than the bulgogi, which means "beef." The kimchee was nice and crunchy and spicy but not incinerate-your-mouth spicy, which I am most definitely not down with.

Fuck you.

Could have done without the broccoli. Broccoli is an instrument of the Devil and is way worse than masturbation or the New York Yankees, no matter what anyone tells you.

Coworker who I had abandoned to drown in the drenching rainfall / slight drizzle was surprisingly forgiving, and in fact gave me a segment of her chicken tikka masala burrito from Curry Up Now, and is there some requirement that food trucks have cutesy pun names? Guess so. Anyway, it's exactly what it sounds like: C.T.M. wrapped up, burrito-style, in thin Naan and is delicious but a little spicier than expected. Good, though.

Going back for pork belly buns in like a half hour.

OK, here are my Proposed New Food Truck Concepts:

Jerk Me Off (Carribean chicken & rice)
Let's Get Bulgur! (Tasteless vegetarian cuisine)
Domo Ari-Scot-o (Japanese/Scottish fusion)
Mesquite on Your Face (BBQ)

Here's a not very interesting story about what I did this weekend

So I was up at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe this weekend. No way I paid the $285 a night they want (!!!). It was some big meeting for The Wife's company which means that they went to a one hour meeting and the rest of the time they all got drunk and did whatever it is they do. We got a free trip to Tahoe and a big banquet and lots of free booze.

I have a few observations about late May 2010 in Lake Tahoe:

- It snowed the whole time. I asked a bro who worked there if that was unusual for late May and he said he didn't know, he had just moved there from Kona. Kona!!! It must not take long to lose that island tan, because homeboy was white as a sheet.

- I shouldn't gamble. I'm too stupid to gamble. Or drunk. I was kinda drunk on Friday night and was playing blackjack and it got into my head that it would be a good idea to split a pair of 6's. You know what? It wasn't a good idea. (Apparently splitting 6's is acceptable in some circumstances, but I don't even think I looked at what the dealer had.)

- Here's how roulette doesn't work: "It's been red the last 4 spins, so this one's gotta be black." Also, it rarely lands on 27.

- For whatever else you can say, it was really beautiful up there. (Cell phone pic; sorry for quality):

- BONUS PIC: Snow on my car.

That's a sweet ride, man.

TWO OTHER THINGS:

1. Re the "Lost" finale (SPOILER COMING THIS IS ALL THE WARNING YOU GET) - so, what, it really was purgatory or limbo the whole time? Because they repeatedly said publicly it wasn't that. I think they kind of just gave up. Bleh, whatever. I feel like I wasted a lot of time watching that show now.

2. I'm no baseball genius or anything, but something needs to change with the Giants. Getting shut out in 2 consecutive games against the A's is a sign of a very, very, very serious problem with the offense. Very serious.

Porn at work: No.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Why I want to work at American Apparel

I get a lot of hits on this blog from people Googling “Why I want to work at American Apparel,” because one time I posted a thing about working at American Apparel. I assume that American Apparel has some question on their application asking the Prospective Applicant why he or she wants to work there. It is kind of desperately sad that people have to Google that shit to come up with an answer.

So in the interest of helping all you kids out there who wish I would just stop with the editorializing and get to the good part, here’s an answer you can just copy ‘n paste:

Why I Want to Work at American Apparel

By your name here

Nietzsche once said, “Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.” This may be true in some circumstances, but my admiration for American Apparel is so strong that I want to strive not only to possess it, but also to help others to do the same. Given that our time on Earth is both fleeting and precious, we behoove ourselves to spend the time until we shuffle off this mortal coil being fashionable, nay, creating fashion, be it with a Cotton Wide Stripe Jersey Cardigan or a Nylon Spandex Stretch Lace Diamond Grid Bodysuit. Rage, rage against the dying of the light in a Stretch Twill High-Waist Side Zipper Short! We are only as good as our Flex Fleece Zip Hoodies.

Yes, death awaits us all. But when the inevitable occurs and I am summoned home by my Lord, I have but one wish: that those who knew me should honor my name and say “Your name here lived his life. He shone like a star. He did not just work – he worked at American Apparel.”

Here's a sign: You are capable of a workplace homicide

Collected today on Yahoo's front page:

Haha. I LOVE IT. Dude is staring at her with MURDEROUS RAGE. "Oh my God, that bitch is about to say something. Here it comes. She's about to open her fucking mouth and let some inanity about the weather or some teabagger socialism shit out of that stupid-hole. And then I will jump across this table and fucking wring her fucking neck. Go on, bitch. Make my day."

Happy Friday, everyone! Did you see that Niners-Bears game last night? Christ, I've been to more entertaining middle school junior varsity games. Hey, Jay Cutler: your guys are wearing WHITE. FYI.

Things I'm liking today:

1. Taking BART to work

2. This Fresh Air about the Yakuza in Japan. Man, they even build better gangsters in Japan. Motherfuckers so badass they got business cards. I want to read this guy's book.

3. Generic's blog. Dude gets it.

4. Sons of Anarchy. Wait, that wasn't the season finale? Why was it 90 minutes then?

5. Max Silvestri's Top Chef recaps. One of the funniest things on the Internet.

Things that have pleased and displeased me recently

Pleased:


- Continental Airlines is my new airline.

Believe it or not, I am here to actually praise an airline. I was an American Airlines man for years and years, but I'm so on Continental now it's not even funny. Look, airlines have treated us all so bad for so long that we're pathetically grateful any time anything goes right, but Continental even beats that out. To wit:

1) You can select an Exit Row seat 24 hours before the flight when you check in online. FOR FREE. Can't do that at all on American, and Northwest charges you $40 or so for it. For someone like me, who's 6'4" and basically HAS to have an Exit Row, this is a fantastic advantage.

2) They actually give you free food. I know, that's no reason to choose an airline, but isn't it kind of nice?

3) Every flight I took on this trip - every single one - was almost exactly on time, or was within 15 minutes or so.

So bon voyage, American. You can suck it. I'm all about Continental now.

(If you work for Continental and you're reading this, I'm not shamelessly shilling for free First Class upgrades, but if you want to toss some my way, I'm sure we can continue to see glowing reviews here on the site.)



Displeased:

- I know SF is hurting for money and everything, but this is ridiculous. The Wife parks her car on a street near our house where we've been parking for years. The only parking restriction is street cleaning, 2nd and 4th Fridays, from 8 to 10. She parks it and doesn't go by it for days. Then one day last week she goes to use it and there are THREE TICKETS ON IT. Why? Because at some point in the prior few days, the city threw up residential permit parking only signs and then started slapping tickets on her car.


OH HELL NO. We're protesting this shit. How about a little warning next time, fuckers?