Bad advertising, Parts 1 and 2

Part 1:

I was just looking up Mission Hill Saloon, because it's the new place that took over the late great Sadie's Flying Elephant and I was curious. So on the Yelp page for the new place, here's the first picture you see:

So inviting! Can't wait to go there!

Part 2:

I can't find a picture of this anywhere online, so this might be blog post FAIL, but Cache Creek casino has these bus shelter ads with the caption "Play with the best" and the picture is this white guy and Asian guy at a poker table and the white guy is staring malevolently at the Asian guy. It's really weird. So the only two things that occur to me about this are (1) I guess the Asian guy is "the best" and the white guy is all "I'm gonna beat you, Asian guy," or (2) the white guy is shooting mental death rays into the Asian guy's skull. Either way, it's weird.

Your name is Wild

Today has been an emotional rollercoaster, and it's not even 10:00 a.m. yet.

So I get on BART at 24th and get off at Civic Center and I'm walking towards the fare gate and reaching for my shirt pocket where I usually stick my ticket and OHFUCKINGNO it's not there. So I stand there with that bewildered look while all the commuters flow around me and I search every pocket and come up empty. I just lost my Fast Pass.

I explain my situation to the BART girl (who looks like she's about 14, BTW - did BART start hiring middle-schoolers?) and she tells me that usually it's $4.90 for a lost ticket but I must look extra-forlorn because she lets me out for free.

I get to to the office and am thinking about how I'm going to handle commuting for the rest of the month (srsly, I use my Fast Pass every day, bar none) and I'm taking off my coat and IT FLUTTERS TO THE GROUND LIKE A BLUE SNOWFLAKE. I had somehow wedged it between my coat and my shirt. THANK YOU JESUS FOR THE SAFE RETURN OF MY FAST PASS.



Happy Friday, everybody!

Super Hot Irish Girlfriend is detoxing. No, not rehab, but maybe worse: no dairy, gluten, caffeine, alcohol, or crack cocaine. You can read all about it (in short daily bursts) here.

I'm sure everyone's heard about the Girl Scout who tried selling cookies online and mean old Girl Scouts Inc. made her stop and blah blah blah it's a funny human interest story and everything but did you see that the girl's name is WILD FREEBORN? Who the fuck names their daughter "Wild"? That's the kind of name that you'd only hear preceded by "Now on the main stage in the Champagne Room, it's...."

P.S. I just realized that Fast Pass story may not be interesting to anybody but me. I guess that's why this is a blog and not CNN. Oh well.

P.P.S. Bonus points if you know where the title of this post comes from.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong

I can certainly understand people getting outraged about the bonuses paid out to AIG employees. I mean, after all, that's our tax dollars, right? And AIG lost a ton of money, right? So why are people getting all this cash?

Believe me, the last thing I am is an apologist for a bunch of rich assholes who basically came up with new ways to fuck up our economy, but the bottom line here, at least as I understand it, is that these "retention bonuses," for good or ill, were promised to these employees early last year, before any of this shit blew up.

Now, I'm not happy about it, but fair is fair. If you were promised a million bucks to stay in your job until 12/31/08, and you held up your end of the deal, aren't you kind of owed that money?

Here's a good article explaining the whole thing.

The counter-argument, of course, is that without the taxpayer money, the company would have folded, and nobody would be getting any bonuses at all. That's just as valid a point. But the company's still around, for good or ill. I can't tell you how weird it feels to be arguing this side, but I'm just thinking out loud here.

2 more things. This whole business about taxing the bonuses at 90% just seems creepy and sort of Third World-y. Maybe it's constitutional and everything, but it just seems wrong.

And the other amusing thing is listening to the outrage of the right-wing radio hosts about anyone who dares to suggest that corporate executives make too much or that any millionaire should have any money taken away. And then these callers - who, I'm guessing, aren't millionaires at all but probably make about $40K a year - call in to agree with them!!!

To put it another way: Rush et al. have their (solidly middle-class, I'm thinking) listeners ANGRY about taking their tax dollars away from people who make more in a year than they'll make in a lifetime. What a country.

Thanks for the great advice, Pope!

I know, I know, going to the Pope for sex advice is like asking a turtle to drive you home, but this time El Popo has really gone too far. We all know how much he hates condoms because, I guess, they keep people from getting pregnant or whatever. Hey, that's fine. You want to subscribe to an outdated belief system that was more or less designed to keep women subjugated by keeping them either pregnant or continuously raising small children, I guess that's your problem. But don't give me this bullshit about AIDS:

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Really? You're going to spread this shit around? Because I can't think of any possible way using a condom can increase the spread of AIDS. Why don't you tell that to women who are forced into sexual slavery? I'm sure they'd love to hear that, well, they're just going to have to live with getting AIDS because some German guy in a dress who's never had sex thinks that's the best thing for them.

Here's all I ask: Believe in God or aliens or space monkeys or anything you want, but when you've got a global audience, at least refrain from spreading misinformation that can kill people.

Happy Dangerously Volatile Alcoholic Day!

A lot of people assume, reasonably enough I guess, that since my girlfriend is from Ireland that St. Patrick's Day is a Big Thing in our house. Not really. As it turns out, when she was growing up in Ireland it wasn't the big deal kind of thing that it is here and so it's never been like a Thing for her. It's never been a Thing for me, either, because it's one of two nights a year (NYE being the other, obviously) when bars are packed with people who don't know what they fuck they're doing and get in the way of Serious Drinkers like myself. So blagh, you can have it.

A couple of years ago I did go to the big block party that O'Reilly's has every year in North Beach where they block off the streets and have bands and outdoor kegs and everything else. It was just as nightmarish as you might imagine. Later that night, we were sitting at an outdoor table down the street at Rogue and some drunk guy came down the street SCREAMING and then knocked over a newspaper box in some kind of alcoholic rage. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

P.S. I know I said not that long ago that I would never get a Twitter account. FAIL.

** UPDATE: This email from SHIG is illustrative of my point above. Note that when she says "here," she's talking about her office, which has a booze-soaked SPD party every year. The drinking habits of her office are a whole other post. ANYWAY:

I don't know why, but I'm extra on-edge today because we're having such a big SPD thing here. They were discussing the booze for the afternoon (keg, Irish car bombs and Irish coffee), so I just kinda blurted out in the lunchroom "Irish Car Bombs are bullshit and no Irish person would ever drink that. No bartender would ever make one. It's very offensive and I'd never walk into a bar here and order a 9/11". Stoney silence. So, yeah, I'm in buzzkill mood already.

Restless Dog Syndrome

I would describe our condition this morning as "tired." Let's review and see if we can determine how this came about.

Daytime Drinking Season traditionally begins April 1, but we kicked it off yesterday this year. We began with brunch at Foreign Cinema with Super Hot Irish Girlfriend, The Sister and The Sister's bf. It was crazy fucking busy, so even though we had 1 p.m. reservations, we got seated at 1:15 and didn't get our food until about 2:00. No matter, though, as any incipient feelings of hangry were staved off by a succession of Fellinis (the drink, not the director - some combination of champagne, Aperol, and juice (maybe grapefruit?)). The food was pretty good, nothing to write home about.

We then relocated, minus The Sister's bf, to Valley Tavern and sat outside in the back, where we were soon joined by Laur and Linds, Stoney, and Olu and EReed. Now, I'm not one to cast aspersions on anyone for being - oh, how to put this - loud as a fucking jet engine - but The Sister is not renowned for her soft-spokenness, and get her together with Laur and EReed and things quickly escalate from "conversational" to "front row of NKOTB concert." Add some cold pops into the mix and you see where I'm going with this. We were shushed by the bartender.

Before we could get thrown out of VT, we left voluntarily and relocated to our place for more beers and pizza and downloading MIA songs and that kind of thing. Things broke up relatively early, like 8:30 or so, so that was good.

So, you're asking yourself, why tired then? I'll tell you right now. We kind of screwed the dog this weekend and never got around to taking him for some long walks like we usually do on weekends and this is how dogs let you know they didn't get enough exercise this weekend: starting at around 4 a.m., the dog would jump on the bed, lie briefly between our heads, get under the covers, shimmy down to the end of the bed, pop out, wander around the house for a minute, and then repeat the process. Until SHIG got up and walked him at 6:45. Oh, and this was also punctuated by the cat jumping on the bed, lying down on my chest, realizing the dog was also on the bed, and quickly departing from the bed whilst unleashing a stream of hisses. Fuck. So I'm kind of tired, and this time it's not from drinking.

P.S. Saturday night Stoney and I stopped in at Contigo for a bite around 10 pm. That place was fucking packed at 10 pm, but that's not the point. Can't two guys go out for a couple of tapas and a nice bottle of Albariño without everyone thinking they're gay? Not according to everyone yesterday, no sir, not at all.

Live music once a month: March

This month's entry in my commitment to live music once a month was Rafter and We Is Shore Dedicated, last night at Rickshaw Stop.

Let me begin with a prototypical old guy, you-kids-get-off-my-lawn complaint: the show is listed as "8 pm." The first band started at 9. Come on. I know there were only about 20 people there at 8:30, but tough shit. Starting an hour late sucks.

Oh, and who put out the call to Tall Guys United? Seriously, I'm used to being the only, or one of the few, tall guys in any social setting, but there were a bunch of us out last night. What's up with that? One of them was with a Very Short Girl, which you always like to see. It looks like a giraffe and its baby.

OK, on to the show. The badly-named We Is Shore Dedicated was up first. Not so much. They're obviously skilled musicians, and there were some good musical ideas up there, but it never gelled for me. The songs just didn't go anywhere, I guess. But I'm not really the post-modern art-rock type.

Better news ahead, though, because I thought Rafter totally fucking rocked. 2 guys, tons and tons of prerecorded backing tracks and loops, and shitloads of some kind of funk/rock/noise hybrid I'm not qualified to name. I think I described it as Helio Sequence times Bing Ji Ling. I'll stick with that. Although the first song sorta sounded like The The.

Viva Voce was headlining, but it was already almost 11 because, duh, the show started at 9, so I had to go home because I had to be here at my workstation bright and early. Seriously, I never get to see the headliner at Rickshaw Stop shows because I'm old and have to leave early. Maybe I should be euthanized like in Logan's Run.

Speaking of getting old, I totally related to this post on Generic's blog.

Speaking of Generic, he (I think it's a he) is someone who comments on all the same blogs I read and comment on, and when you start to get familiar with someone from seeing them around the Interwebs, you start to think of them as someone you know. So I kind of feel like I sort of know Generic, in a way, even though in a much more real and actual way I don't know him at all. This is the kind of New Social Paradigm we'll have to figure out in the Shiny New Millennium.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Oh, and SXSW is starting. I mention this only so I can use the "SXSW" tag, which I only get to use about once a year.