Walt, Jesse, Gus, and Us.

Rather than risk being left behind as the Cultural Zeitgeist chugged on without us, The Wife and I recently made the very important decision to watch Breaking Bad from the beginning up to now.  For those of you not in the mix, where we are now is that the finale season, season 5, was broken into two parts of 8 episodes each and the second 8 episodes are premiering Sunday.  Anticipating that there was no way you jackasses would be able to get through this without dropping hella spoilers, we've been valiantly trying to catch up.

CONCLUSION: Breaking Bad is a very good TV show.  It's nowhere near as artsy and self-conscious and Big Idea-y as Mad Men, and probably not as Film-y as The Sopranos, but you know what it does really well?  PLOT.  It is so expertly plotted and constructed that it does the single most important thing a TV show can do: makes you want to watch the next episode as soon as the one you're watching ends.

(Also, the acting - especially Bryan Cranston in the lead role - is generally superb, which helps.)

WARNING: VERY MILD SPOILERS AHEAD.

So we are now in Season 4.  Last night we had 4 episodes left.  And when we finished the next-to-last episode of the season last night at 10:40 p.m., we had a decision to make.  Push on?  Or call it a night.

WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENED.

Duh, we decided to watch the season 4 series finale.  Breaking Bad is a show, ostensibly, about making methamphetamine and it really gets you in the spirit by being the CLOSEST THING TV OFFERS TO ACTUALLY BEING ADDICTED TO METHAMPHETAMINE.  You will do anything for another hit.

So we get up to the final minutes of season 4.  If you've seen it - AND THIS ISN'T GIVING TOO MUCH AWAY - we're at the point where Jesse and Walt shake hands on top of the parking structure.  There's about 5 minutes left.

Then, suddenly, POOF.  The power goes out.

OH FUCK ME ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING.  Nope, not kidding.  Can you imagine?  Finishing up one of the most crucial moments in the most riveting season (so far, for us, anyway) of one of the best shows ever and the fucking power goes out?  OUR GOD IS A CRUEL GOD.

(Anticipating you questions, The Wife's iPad was basically out of batteries.  My laptop doesn't get 3G and our home wifi was without power, natch.  So we had no backup.)

Anyway, we watched the last 5 minutes this morning. I KNEW IT.  If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.

When we started this project about a month ago, I thought there was no fucking way in hell we'd be caught up by August 11.  Just no way.  I had crunched the numbers and concluded we'd be caught up by the end of August, in time to watch the last 5 episodes in real time.  Now, we'll EASILY be caught up.  We only have to watch 8 episodes between now and Sunday!  Fuck, that's nothing.  We watched 6 last Sunday in ONE DAY.

The Bachelorette: Second place is the first place of losers. I mean, I love you, let's get married.

You know when you want a Snickers and you go to the vending machine by Sales and they're out of Snickers and so you have to get a Clark bar instead and you're like "Ugh, I didn't even know they still made Clark bars, what, has this been in that machine since 1978?"  Well that's pretty much what happened to Des at the end of Our Journey.  We begin, as we must, with the Bachelor/ette gazing out onto a body of water, followed by the oblig Chris Harrison interview where he asks her if she could see herself with one of the two losers she has left and she cries and cries.  Maybe not so much, but we have 2 hours to kill so you better just get yourself in the mood, sweetie.  YOU ARE FUCKING GETTING ENGAGED SO GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR.

Here come Drew and Chris for, what, a Rose Ceremony or something?  What the fuck?  Isn't that supposed to be at the end? Fine by me, kick them all off and let's go home.  Oh wait, here's D to catch them up.  "You may have noticed Brooks isn't here."  Well, yes, D, we did.  "He has devastated my life.  I have lost the capacity to love.  My days stretch out before me in an endless chain now, each one a hurdle standing between me and the sweet relief of death.  But you guys are totally still in this thing!"

Back to the studio audience, let's find out what America thinks!  Or at least white women between 25 and 45!  One chick thinks Brooks is totes coming back.  Another heavy-browed young lady in some sort of tablecloth dress thinks otherwise.  Someone's mom thinks Brooks "got scared" and shouldn't have taken advice from two women.  GENDER TRAITOR.

OK, back in Antigua, D is gonna give this thing a shot.  WTF is she wearing, some kind of Egyptian breastplate belly shirt.  She's doing the slutty Hatshepsut.  Here comes Drew for some horseback riding.  Confusingly, his horse is named Judy which is a great name for a bridge-playing Mom from the 70's but not so much a horse.  Sadly, this date is about as romantic as endoscopy.  Drew wants to toast to "being madly in love which is followed by D saying she "needs to talk" and that's usually not such a good sign.  She's been reflecting and you should reflect on this, Abercromobie: you are burnt fucking toast.  D blubbers a lot and Drew rides Judy into an uncertain sunset.  "Now I have to think about a life without her."  You've got until about lunchtime, sport.  Chin up.

Next up is Fucking Poetry Guy, who makes it past the first 5 minutes so he's already ahead of the game.  They get on a boat blah blah blah.  Hey, did you know making out is called "shifting" in Ireland?  No idea why.  Shifting.

Then we're at the Night Portion which is terminally boring and he gives her a journal that - wait for it - is ALREADY FILLED WITH HIS AWFUL AWFUL POETRY like, dude, (1) the person you GIVE the journal to is supposed to write in it, not you, you doofus, and (2) this is like the worst vanity press project ever.  Anyway she wants him to meet her family and he's sweating like a pig and now we're back in the studio and Chris Harrison hauls out the same former contestants we've been seeing all season like don't you have jobs or literally anything better to do than to keep coming on this show? Lesley from DC looks like she's on the tail end of a 6-month bender and has been hitting up Courtney Love's Goodwill donation box for clothes.

Thankfully we are soon out of the studio and back to Antigua where D is gazing into middle distance and now it's time for Chris to meet the fam!  Helpfully, D's bro comes pre-loaded with Jail Clothes so he doesn't have to change on his way back that night.

Dad jumps right in with "Why should Desiree choose you?"  Because I'm the only fucking one left, homeslice!  It's either me or the Craft Services guy at this point!  They have a little sit-down and Chris is babbling like an Adderall-crazed 5-year-old.  "I know I like her man and could I have her hand in marriage and I'll say do you want to marry me and we'll totally get married and then we'll be married and JESUS CHRIST ISN'T THIS THE MOST EXCITING FUCKING THING EVER."

OK we're stumbling towards our conclusion.  Des is perched on a hillside as the limo approaches and out pops Chris and fuck, you could at least shave for this.  He grimly assures us he couldn't be more happy.  He starts in with her about "all the happiness I see in your eyes when I read you poetry" and that's not happiness, dude, that's gag reflex.  Anyway, she tries to head fake him with some BS about "having to be honest" but we all know what's coming.  Whoa, then he hits her up with a bunch of questions!  "Do you want to share your experiences with me?  Do you want to have kids?"  Can we buy a turtle?  Should we get DishTV or cable? Can we get Fiestaware?  What about a Ford Fusion?  She agrees to marry him and then says either "I made a promise to tell you everything" or "I made a promise to call you every day," which is a little creepy.  Oh, and she says - NOT MADE UP - "It joys me to say this," which is the kind of syntax I guess you get when you homeschool in a park.

That's it.  We're done here.  The next bachelor is Juan Pablo, which guarantees lots of flamenco-sounding music and also Juan Pablo getting a green card the old-fashioned way.  Hasta la vista.

Having ruined rest of city, geeks set sights on Outside Lands

Oh for fucks' sake.

Hackers to descend upon Outside Lands music fest 

Hackers will infiltrate the Outside Lands music festival happening at Golden Gate Park in a few weeks. If you’re attending, keep an eye out for guys or gals typing furiously away on their laptops or holding their phones high above their heads in search of a strong WiFi connection. Don’t be surprised if you’re standing in line and someone taps your shoulder and asks you to test out their app. This is the official first year of “Outside Hacks,” where programmers will code inside festival grounds, working on websites or mobile apps that benefit Outside Lands attendees.

If you tap me on the shoulder in the beer line and ask me to test out your app, "don't be surprised" if I punch you in the throat.  Fucking great, I finally decide to go to Outside Lands after five years or whatever and it gets turned into Camp Annoying.

Outside Hacks is a followup event to Hackeroo — the hackathon that happened inside the Bonnaroo music festival earlier this year. Hackers will go head to head in a 24 hour competition happening August 3-4, the week before Outside Lands. The winning teams will get VIP tickets to the festival, where they’ll hack and hone their websites/apps from within the fest.

Here I thought a music festival was about LISTENING TO LIVE MUSIC. No, it's about "hacking and honing websites/apps from within the fest."  Hopefully one of the apps is Killyouallr.  Or StabMe.

So what does a festival app look like? There’s a lot of possibilities. At Hackeroo, one of the winning teams developed an app called RooRunner, which acted like a TaskRabbit for festival-goers. Attendees could submit task requests into the app from their phones, like “I want a burger and water brought to me at a certain sound stage.” The other app was named RooWall, and it combined all the pictures, video, tweets, and other social interactions that festival goers were posting into one visual wall. 

Oh good. I was worried I would just have to watch the bands I paid $115 to see and I wouldn't have any way to post tweets and video onto a visual wall.  And why should I get my own burger and water when I can pay someone to bring it to me?  Woodstock, the dream is not dead!

Maybe I'm being too harsh.  I guess I could support this if anyone worked on the following apps:

HeadPulverizr - If you lift your smartphone above shoulder level to take a picture, it blows up, sending shards of glass and metal into your skull.

BitchBeQuiet - Automatically releases a gas that causes vocal cord constriction if you speak louder than the music.

BlindMe - Blocks my vision any time someone wanders by wearing an animal-ears hat or sunglasses backward on the head.

DeChiliFier - Destroys the Red Hot Chili Peppers forever.

Our new home with the Weather Underground Thermometer

The first rule of blogging is No One Wants to Hear About Your Cats.  No, I'm shitting you, the first rule of blogging is When in Doubt, Talk About the Weather.  People love to hear about weather.

This July sure has been shitty here in our beloved SF!  Local meteorologist Steve Paulson drops a dime on how crappy July was:

July info for San Francisco: 70 degrees or higher was rare. Last occurence was July 4th at 75. Only 4 days of 70 or higher (July 1-4)
— steve paulson (@spweather) July 31, 2013

Ack, that's terrible, even by July in San Francisco standards.  But hold the phone.  Weather Underground has a better take on it.

What the fuck? Not only does Weather Underground have a balmy FIFTEEN DAYS at 70 or over in July, it even has an equatorial 78 FUCKING DEGREES on Monday the 22nd.

There is only one sensible solution.  We must find the location of Weather Underground's thermometer and ALL MOVE TO THERE.  We'll emerge from the Fog Wall blinking like moles coming out of a hole, looking up at the bright sun.  We'll find the Weather Underground Thermometer sitting at an open-air tiki bar, enjoying a mai tai.  "Come on in, guys!," Weather Underground Thermometer would say.  "This is the real California, not that windswept, fogged-over snowhole you guys live in.  Maybe a dip in the pool later?"  And we'll all get apartments in the Melrose Place building around the Weather Underground Thermometer's pool and we'll only leave when we need to make a run to Costco for more Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc.  If there have been 15 days over 70 at Weather Underground Thermometer's place in July, imagine how nice it's going to be in August!

The Bachelorette: There is an empty can of mousse in my heart now

The Final 3 this year is in Antigua. We will begin with a painfully long recap clip package.  It's eerie foreshadowing, because this whole show is going to be painful and long, but hey, it's 20 minutes to get some drinks/Xanax/uncut heroin into you.

First up is Drew.  Poor Drew has zero chance, but God bless him, he keeps trying.  Our Journey today takes us from "Betty's Hope" to "Shirley Heights" and is everything in Antigua named after a truck stop waitress?  Oh, look, here in Shirley Heights the producers have staged a "party" for them with a couple of locals listlessly dancing to canned steel drum music and drinking whatever cheap booze ABC ponied up for. Not even dollar rum can hide the sadness in their eyes.  D & D wander away from this depressing gathering and Drew hopes to find a "secret garden" which is what a lot of straight guys are interested in because Drew is very straight.  He is a heterosexual man.  "I just want to fall more and more in love with her," he says.  That's what Exodus recommends!  Keep at it, Drew.

Outdoor dinner gets rained out but Des "could have dinner anywhere."  All she needs is a dumpster and a piece of plastic sheeting!  Because she's poor.  That was a poors joke.  Anyway, straight to the Fantasy Suite!  Des settles in for some Girl Talk about how her ex couldn't communicate or tell her he loves her and she needs someone who can communicate.  "I know it, girl," Drew says, turning on Real Housewives.  "Men are THE WORST."

Wait, we're in Idaho?  What happened?  Oh, I guess Brooks has to clear things with the Sister Wives before he makes it official.  Who are these people?  Brooks has some kind of backup family we didn't meet on the hometowns.  I think the gist of the whole thing is that Backup Family doesn't think he should propose if he has doubts.  Hm, sensible enough, but hardly a ticket to Z-list celeb status.  Anyway, there's a lot  more feeling feeling feelings talk but I kind of tuned it out because I'm an emotional husk and it makes me uncomfortable.  Ask your father.

OK, back to Antigua and here's Chris and there's a helicopter ride - Chris is "a little scared of heights," natch - off to the Deserted Island Beach Picnic.  POETRY THREAT LEVEL ORANGE.  Blah blah making out boring whatever.  Outdoor dinner.  Chris has discovered a job opportunity in Seattle and wants to move there and get a "cute little house."  D says she's fine with that and WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT NOISE IN THE BACKGROUND?  Is that some kind of local Antigua Monster Cricket?  It sounds like frog croaking put through a flanger or something.  It's horrible make it stop.  OK so anyway, Fantasy Suite, you know what's coming.  What we can only hope is the penultimate TERRIBLE FUCKING POEM.  This one doesn't even rhyme, honestly, he's kind of phoning it in now, it's not good, even by Terrible Poetry standards.  It's more just like a Relationship Word Salad or the kind of thing a cutter might leave on a LiveJournal.  Ugh, SHUT UP already.

Brooks Time!  Des is excited and dons what appears to be a piece of shredded sheer curtain that a child has tie-dyed, but first it's time for Brooks to have a chat with Chris Harrison, who is visibly bored and only halfway paying attention as Brooks says, in a roundabout way, that maybe D isn't the One for him and no, he's not afraid to commit just NOT WITH HER.  Well, that's good to know.

Here he goes to dump her.  She's wearing her primitive mullet shirt garment and babbling about how she's in love with him.  Then they sit down for The Talk and it's just as boring and uncomfortable as you might imagine watching someone get dumped on TV might be.  He's all "I really WANT to be madly in love with you" and that's usually not followed by "And I am!  Let's get cronuts!"  She starts crying away and he should just be like FINE, I'LL MARRY YOU, JUST PLEASE STOP CRYING.  Watching a chick cry is just the worst.

Brooks (L) learns that his mousse will no longer be available in the 55-gallon drum size, while Desiree (R) cries after being unable to complete the TV Guide crossword.

This goes on for a LONG LONG time with the crying and the "Sorry" and the "This sucks" and half the time you can't understand what the fuck they're saying because Brooks is a huge mumbler to start with and it's windy and so we're in the shitty position of watching a chick get dumped without even being able to ENJOY IT, I mean FUCK, ABC, the NSA can read my stupid emails about trading Pablo Sandoval but you can't even mic a breakup.

I think it ends up with D saying she doesn't love the other 2 guys and it's over.  I DON'T THINK SO BABE THERE'S ONE MORE SHOW.

Let me just put this out there: I am saying right now there is a non-zero chance that Brooks rides back in at some point next week and saves the day.  We'll see, I guess.

I'm all for new housing BUT

From our friends at Curbed comes this list of 40 (!) New Developments underway in SF.  Which is great, I think; God knows this city needs more housing.  I'm with Farhad Manjoo on this one.  Ugh, I linked to PandoDaily.  I feel dirty.

[DIGRESSION: Speaking of San Francisco and the number 40, did you guys see "40 Days and 40 Nights"?  It was set, ostensibly, in San Francisco, but that fake San Francisco where everybody has a huge apartment and the weather is good. Also, what a terrible movie.  It came out in like 2002 and the main characters worked at a dot com, like there were even any dot coms left in 2002.  But it seems to have destroyed Josh Hartnett's career, so we can be thankful for that.  [[DIGRESSION WITHIN A DIGRESSION: In 2001 I lived in North Beach.  There was a restaurant called "Glow" on the corner of Broadway and Kearny that was a sad relic of the Go Go Dot Com Era and hadn't yet realized that it was all over and you couldn't charge $27 for roast chicken any more.  We used to hit the bar there for happy hour because they had some insane specials to try and get people in.  Since it was always dead because the Crash had happened, we would hang out and talk to the staff, including the hostess, a super hot girl in her 20's whose prior job, I AM NOT JOKING, was the Vice President of some dot com.  Hahahahahaha. It closed in July 2001.  END DIGRESSION WITHIN DIGRESSION.]] END DIGRESSION.]

So one of the developments listed is something called AVA 55 Ninth.  Hoo boy.  Putting a bunch of coders onto that block of Ninth Street is going to be a hoot.  Wait til they try to organize Settlers of Catan Night at Club 93.  SOMEBODY GONNA GET CUT.

Look at the front page of their website:

I don't know what "Our world in our apartment only starts" means, but it sounds deep.  Also, why is this guy holding his hands over his laptop like he's getting X-rayed?  Anyway.

Here's the Chill Lounge:

Ugh.  I can already smell the douche in here.  Can't you be annoying in your own apartment?  Why do we have to a have a Chill Lounge to be annoying in?  Why is there an old-timey refrigerator in the Chill Lounge?  Are there going to be little doggie bags from State Bird Provisions with "Jason" written on the side in the Chill Lounge Fridge? 

There's also a "The Loft," where you can "lounge on the comfy seating, spread out on communal tables, tap into the free WiFi, groove to the music."  Oh good, now my apartment building has a space where a bunch of deadbeats who are too cheap to pay for Internet can drape themselves all over the communal tables and listen to Daft Punk remixes while not working.

No prices listed on the site yet.  I bet it's going to be expensive.  Anyway, good on AVA 55 Ninth for building more housing, but can't we just have a normal building?  That might even make it cheaper.  Just brainstorming here. Go have a good weekend.

BarGuessr

By now, we've all played GeoGuessr, the insanely fun game that uses Google Street View to plop you down at some random place on the globe and then challenges you to figure out where you are.  Hey, look, the billboards are in Portuguese, but it looks like crushing poverty, so must be Brazil!  That hotel sign looks like German so it must be.....Germany.  That kind of thing.

Well, that's fun and all, but it lacked one component that I find essential: ALCOHOL.  And thus BarGuessr was born.  The idea is simple: below you will find Google Street View shots of 6 bars in the world (OK, in the US or Europe).  You simply figure out where they are.  You can't go in and click around like in GeoGuessr, so it's harder, but the highly well-traveled and well-lubricated readership of this blog should have no problem.  Plus I'll give you clues.  One other thing: I have been to every single bar pictured below.

[1] First up we have bar that's actually in a hotel, so here's the front of the hotel. I saw Uma Thurman here once.

[2] The mural here apparently changes,because it was a whale when we were there. I like how the Google Street View face-obscuring algorithm nailed the chick painted in the mural.

[3] This place has a nice beer selection and also the gimmick that they let you send a free postcard anywhere in the country. Or at least they used to.

[4] This depressing little dive sometimes features live music and always features lonely alcoholics.

[5] This one is basically impossible.  It's not in the US, and yes, that is a real castle in the background.

[6] WHEW, back to our country.  This is the easiest one; the goddam name is on the awning.  The more game among you will try to figure it out without immediately resorting to Google.

[7] Finally, this is an iconic rock club.  Note the tour bus outside.

That's it!  Good luck.  Leave answers in the comments.  Winner gets something, I don't know what.  I'll title a blog post after you and write about the topic of your choice.  If you were inside any of these bars with me, you are not eligible to win.  Take it up with God; life is unfair.