I haven't hit bottom yet

- I'm currently listening to the Vanderbilt-Mississippi State game on streaming Internet radio. Maybe I have a problem.

Chris Nickson is starting? WTFF?

UPDATE: Now watching streaming VIDEO on ESPN 360. God, I love the fucking Internet. Now, if Vandy could just get a first down, we'd be all set.

- "Recent rallies starring McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have aired openly hostile and anti-Obama rhetoric - even cries of 'terrorist,' 'liar,' 'off with his head' and 'kill them,' which have gone unchallenged from the stage." Klassy.

- The Sister, as it turns out, is a surprisingly good blackjack player, even if she has no idea what doubling down or splitting is. She's just got good instincts, I guess. She will learn, in time.

- Dodgers down 2 games to none? Yes, please!

Today's Top 5

1. Who are the undecided voters?

Paste eaters, nitwits, tiger petters, people who lose arguments to babies.



2. Mad Men

Season 2 is even better. Amazing, but true.

3. I'm going to Portland next weekend

For a wedding. If not for the skinheads, the crank, and the soul-crushing constant rain, Portland would be a pretty great place to live.

4. Hey, at least I'm not retiring for another 25 years.

Maybe by then my IRA will be back to where it was this time last year.

5. Vanderbilt football

When are you going to get sick of me talking about this? If they win tomorrow, prepare to become very, very sick indeed.

Happy Friday, everyone! Whatever you do, don't forget the Lit Crawl tomorrow. Basically, everywhere you go in the Mission there'll be writers drinking and reading their stuff. Writers drinking! What a shock!

Tamales, Vanderbilt, etc.

- Last evening, about 6:30 p.m., backyard of Zeitgeist, with a cold Steelhead Extra Pale and a pork tamale from the Tamale Lady. One of those moments when life is just fine.

It was Super Hot Irish Girlfriend's first Tamale Lady tamale! Can you believe that? She loved it, natch. Incidentally, pay no attention to the haterz on Yelp who diss her tamales. Look, the lady cooks them in her kitchen and brings them to you at Zeitgeist. They have rice and pork or whatever in them. They are delicious.

- Let us now praise the Vanderbilt Commodores, who are 5-0, ranked 13th in the country, and are having their best start since 1943. 1943!!! Hard to find anyone who even remembers them playing at the foot-ball back then. It's hard to explain the significance of this to someone who didn't grow up with this team like I did, but let me try. It's like France invading Germany, and winning. Anyway, barring some exceptional collapse, this is the year they finally make it back to a bowl game. That being said, if anyone's capable of an exceptional collapse, it's Vandy.

- I'm just going to come out and say it. That debate last night was bor-ing. BTW, Paddy Power now has Obama at 2-11 to win and McCain at 7-2. That's a better indicator than most polls you can look at.

- I'm kinda bummed I missed the District 9 Supervisor debate, which sounded infinitely more interesting and fun. For a truly laugh-out-loud rundown of the proceedings, please refer to Will Harper's piece in SF Weekly. Hilarious.

Litquake Afterparty, or how I lost the chance to be Amber Tamblyn's bff.

by guest blogger Super Hot Irish Girlfriend

As mentioned in the bf's post, due to his l33t 5killz we were awarded two VIP tix to Litquake and the reception afterwards. He ran down the actual event pretty accurately, so on to the party!! Being an unabashed semi-celebrity whore, I was tres excited for the chance to mingle with the literati, and especially Amber Tamblyn, as she seems like the kind of girl who could get me in touch with John Cusack, thereby kicking off our love story for the ages.

Now, I don't know whether it was a long week at work, the torturous trip home that night (including Muni breakdowns and me getting on a BART train to Oakland instead of 24th Street for some reason), the rain, the dissatisfaction with my outfit, or a combination of all of the above, but by the time we reached the Herbst theatre I was in no mood to be sociable.

As a result, I very dispassionately observed everything from a corner of the balcony thinking the following random stream-of-consciousness thoughts:

"Oh, look! There's Adam Savage and his lovely wife Julia; fellow 30 Rock fans."

"Wow! Amber Tamblyn is surprisingly normal-person sized. I mean, maybe we really could share some traveling pants. That jacket looks great on her. Her arms look good and toned. I should work out more."

"Is that ranch dressing in a little cup on the food table? Ew. Oh, no, what's that, server- lady? It's apparently a milkshake?"

"My milkshake brings all the bo.....DAMN"

"Why does that photographer keep snapping everyone but us? There's only about 12 people out here so far and she has 75 shots of those girls already."

"Oh, thanks photog. I don't need your pity pics because you overheard us discussing*BIG GRIN**CLICK*you snub us."

"I'm not even feeling drunk. I should have some more free wine. Nope! Still nothing"

"Boy, Jonathan Ames appears very wasted. He should sit down somewhere"

"Oh, there's Cintra Wilson standing right next to me. I should tell her good job. Ooh, a cheese plate! Let's just do this instead"

"Who's Amber Tamblyn on the phone to? Hmm. I thought she'd have an iPhone. Curious. Perhaps it's her bf David Cross? Tell him I said hey, girl!"

"Why is Amber Tamblyn staring at my bf? Oh no, wait. She's actually staring at my purse. I know! It's cute, right?!"

"That trip to Ireland where I got my purse was fun"

"Why are we talking to Cintra Wilson's man-friend about cheese?"

"You know, Cintra Wilson's man-friend really looks like Leonard Maltin"

"Beth Lisick's super nice. I should go to Porchlight some time. Maybe I can tell a story about how I blew my chance to charm Amber Tamblyn"

"Yikes, Jonathan Ames is looking really green right now. We should leave before he barfs"

And so we did.

But Amber, if you're out there, I share your dislike of the Vagina Monologues and Sarah Palin and if that's not the basis for a lasting friendship, what is? Call me!

Litquake opening night - tell me something

Thanks to my l33t writing 5k1llz, I won tickets to the Litquake opening night event in this contest on SFist. So Super Hot Irish Girlfriend and I headed down to the Herbst Theater on Friday night to check it out.

The event was part of the Porchlight storytelling series and was called "Suckered: Writers Confess a Profound Lack of Judgment." The idea is that these (mostly pretty well-known) writers would get 10 minutes to tell a story on that theme.

Neal Pollack was first, and talked about his experience with a Spanish language school in Guatemala. He didn't time it out so well and so didn't really get to the good part - at least I think - before his time ran out.

Cintra Wilson told a story about how when she was young she wrote porn scripts for 976 numbers and got kicked out of her apartment when one of her roommates' boyfriends ran up a huge bill calling her number. Very funny.

April Sinclair was next. I think she was prettty much the hit of the whole thing with her hilarious story about seeing Whoopi Goldberg at a small place in SF when she was first starting out and declining Whoopi's offer to go out for drinks after the show because her roommate - "a snippy gay guy, I don't mean anything by that, I'm just keepin' it real" - had to get back to Oakland. "Nobody has to get back to Oakland." She killed.

Robert Mailer Anderson closed out the first half. I realize that he's a major contributor to Litquake and he can take as much time as he wants, but his story about taking some juvenile delinquents from the group home his dad managed to the movies really did seem to drag on a bit.

After a break, political comedian Will Durst opened the second half with a short story about seeing some of Clinton's impeachment trial in the Senate chamber and getting in trouble for making noise.

Adam Savage, the co-host of Mythbusters, talked about going, at a then-girlfriend's behest, to some est-type self-improvement courses.

Actress and writer Amber Tamblyn was next. She recounted going to the Vagina Monologues national convention thing in New Orleans and being sorta horrified by the whole thing. She was very engaging and funny.

The last storyteller was Jonathan Ames, who I gather is sort of legendary in storytelling circles and appears on Letterman a lot and whatever. By his own admission, he was pretty drunk. He told a kind of excruciatingly awkward story about his sexual development that included a near-molestation by a camp counselor and the extraordinarily late onset of puberty. The crowd seemed to love him, and if he had kept it to about 10 minutes I would have been right there.

So then we go to the afterparty upstairs at the theater since we have VIP tickets and it's an open bar and all the authors are there and everything. We talked to Adam Savage, who's actually a friend of a friend, for a while, then sort of mingled and circulated. I tried mostly to stay within Amber Tamblyn's field of vision. Kidding. Although we were about 10 feet apart, she somehow failed to notice me, though.

Amber Tamblyn - apparently not in the market for me

Beth Lisick, who is one of the organizers of Porchlight and a really great writer in her own right, was super nice and friendly.

So the whole thing was pretty much a fucking blast. Make sure and check out some of the other Litquake events this week. Next Saturday is the semi-legendary Litquake pub crawl in the Mission. Should be fun.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind

Sorry about that last post. I don't know what got into me.

American writers aren't good enough to win the Nobel prize for literature? Fuck you.

Dodgers go up 2-0 on Cubbies? Fuck you, Dodgers.

Rabid bats on the loose in SF? Fuck you, bats.

There. That feels better.

Happy Friday, everyone! What we got this weekend? Well, of course, aside from the most important sporting event in the history of the world or maybe the known universe, there's also the kickoff of Litquake and we may try to make it to Debaser at the Knockout Saturday night. Whew. I'm tired already.

Dolores Park, last night, 6:40 pm

The Mission was buzzing last night when I went out for a walk. It was oddly muggy out but still nice. The wind was just starting to pick up. For a variety of reasons, I was feeling a little out of sorts yesterday and thought a walk might help. Here are the things I saw.

The usual crowd outside Delfina, waiting for a table.

Kids skateboarding on Valencia. They passed me right as I passed Dosa. They had the windows open there and it smelled heavenly.

Thought about stopping at Aquarius but it's too frustrating to stop there when you don't have any money on you.

Girl sitting on a fire hydrant smoking, 24th and Valencia, waiting for the 48, it looked like.

Usual crowd of old guys in front of Muddy's.

Came home, opened an Asahi, felt better.