Pasta used to be just dump a sauce over some noodles and call it a day. Well, fuck that. Here's how you do pasta: some kind of pasta + some kind of meat + some kind of green + something red. I like gemelli and Italian sausage and spinach and chopped tomatoes. This recipe is another version of that. It's super easy to make but looks hella fancy like from a restaurant.
I know what you're saying. "Is gnocchi pasta?" I don't know, ask Quora. Who gives a fuck. This tastes good.
I think I originally got this recipe from Food Network or something. I definitely stole this picture from Food Network.
Ingredients
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/4-inch pieces.
1/2 onion, chopped
1 small head escarole, roughly chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 17 .5-ounce package potato gnocchi
1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (about 1 ounce)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Heat the olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven or something over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and crisp, about 7 minutes. Add the onion and continue cooking until softened, about 2 minutes. Stir in the escarole, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of pepper. Cook until the escarole is completely wilted, about 3 minutes. Then stir in the tomatoes.
WHILE ALL THAT IS GOING ON, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the gnocchi and cook as the label directs. It usually takes like 2 minutes and gnocchi comes with its own built-in timer that works like this: when it pops up to the surface of the water, it's ready! How cool is that? Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water, then drain the gnocchi and add to the pot with the escarole mixture. Add the reserved cooking water and stir to coat, about 1 minute. (Or you can skip the reserved cooking water thing; I usually do, and nothing bad happens. I guess it's good if the gnocchi starts to stick together but whatever.) Sprinkle some parsley on top. Bask in the warm glow of a job well done.
Just like last week, we've got a new crop of greedheads anxious to cash register out of their homes and siphon money from Google into their voracious mouths. Unlike last week, it mostly doesn't work this time.
Justin meets up with old high school pal "Kevin" at Milennium Towers and I for one am curious about where the fuck this high school is. (Oh, it's Gateway; here's a 2002 SF Gate piece on a much younger Justin interning at City Hall. Sounds like he wanted to go into politics instead of getting loathsome people houses in SF, but there you go.) I hope Kevin is a long-form performance art piece with his dog named Kevyn Jr. and his stupid polar bear sweater and his apartment and his desire to become a jam enterpeneur because if this is all real AND it's coupled with his insane request to get almost $4 million for his little apartment (later talked down to 3 mil) then he's just a gluttonous snake like the rest of them who happens to think he's so quirky and charming and that's much worse somehow.
For some reason Justin thinks the way to blood-draw 3 million dollars from some sucker for this place is to have a fashion show? So he gets some guy to put a bunch of mannequins fucking inside? And that will make people swoon and hand over their Dropbox fortune?
I don't know anything about fashion or real estate but the only thing this makes me want to buy is a flamethrower. Eventually some mental deficient offers $2.8 for this place and of course Kevin won't take it. We'll taste jam in hell together Kevin.
Andrew is not in San Francisco at all, which is a positive development for everyone else in San Francisco but unfortunately it looks like he's only temporarily detained in Livermore, where a little guy with a beard spends his days rolling around a 7000 square foot mansion that keeps getting described as Tuscan although it's in fucking Livermore and not Tuscany and also having red tiles and a pergola does not make any McMansion "Tuscan." It's surrounded by a chardonnay vineyard because of course.
Returning to SOMA, as we often do, Roh is at the Metropolitan, where Ching would like him to sell a room at the W furnished by Ikea with an assist from the Free Stuff section of Craigslist. Oh, there's a tenant they can't get rid of, and this little cockroach has committed the grave sin of leaving its shoddy belongings all over the unit. The apartment is owned by MR. WONG, an "investor in China."
Mr. Wong's lair I mean office
Mr. Wong initially demands ONE POINT FOUR MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS for this place but that is ridiculous even by San Francisco standards and Roh convinces Mr. Wong to go at the more reasonable 1.25. Next a parade of assholes stomp through the place and pronounce it "ugly" and "horrible," just like their souls. Eventually "Heidi," who has cultivated an aesthetic somewhere between truck stop waitress and Divine, comes forth with an offer: one million dollars. Roh gets her to come up to 1.25 but I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere offers of under asking are loosed upon the world. Jam Magnate/Complicated Hairstyle Kevin will not sell Mannequin Fuck Palace for under 3 mil, so our work here is done. Tiny Wine Tycoon suddenly remembers that he has a daughter who wants to get married 'midst the rolling hills and lifted trucks of Livermore and so he cannot bear to sell Tuscan Towne for 3.8 or any other price. Roh meets with Heidi fresh off her shift at the Flying J but she is about to grind out a Benson & Hedges in his eye when she finds out that Mr. Wong is no longer selling. Instead, he is transforming the tenant into a postapocalyptic cyborg warrior who will do his dark bidding. One day Mr. Wong will be the landlord of all of us.
I'm going to assume that Time magazine has gone to some kind of vanity press model where you can publish anything you want on Time.com as long as you pay them enough because that's the only rational explanation I can come up with for this sub-Debra-J-Saunders pile of drivel. Or maybe it's just a naked, trolling pageview gambit because if any editor at Time thought this piece had any more journalistic worth than Weekly World News filler, journalism really is dead and US Weekly is our new New York Times.
No doubt people are dancing a jig with Netflix’s announcement Tuesday that the tech company will allow its employees to take unlimited maternity or paternity leave during the first year after their child’s birth or adoption—while earning their normal pay.
I'm dancing a jig! No, I'm not, because I don't work at Netflix. Also, who has used the term "dancing a jig" since FDR's fireside chats? "Twenty-three skidoo, Ethel, I'm dancing a jig over the new warshing mechanism! What's a Netflix?"
Suzanne Venker darkly sees many problems with Netflix's fantastic and generous policy that is a great benefit to employees and which I desperately wish my wife's company had:
First, offering an unlimited leave policy in the first year to new moms and dads means the remaining employees who don’t fit the bill will be left to pick up the slack. This will likely, in turn, strain relations among co-workers and make the workplace environment less effective.
[citation needed] It will likely strain relations among co-workers! This sounds serious! I'm sure this is a well-documented problem that Suzanne Venker can support with studies and research. Oh, when it's "likely" you don't need evidence. This is the equivalent of Ancient Aliens' common use of the term "Isn't it possible that.....," as in "Isn't it possible that the stones used to build the Great Wall were quarried by ruby lasers attached to the foreheads of barely-sentient orgone slaves imported from Io?" You can get away with anything like that! Sure, Suzanne, it's likely!
Second, it isn’t fair to babies. By encouraging mothers, who are the still the primary parent at home, to bond with their baby for a long period of time with the expectation they’ll return to work at the end of the year means the baby will become even more attached to his mother, and separation may become intolerable.
Suzanne Venker is on much firmer ground here, because a vast amount of research supports the notion that separation may become intolerable when a mother returns to work after a year. Oh no, wait, it's exactly the opposite! I suppose it "may" become intolerable, sure. If even one baby has trouble adjusting, we shouldn't do it at all! Good thinking, Suzanne!
Offering new parents full pay for up to one year is akin to putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The needs of children are huge, and they do not end at one year. On the contrary, they just begin. Taking a year off of work to meet those needs merely scratches the surface.
Get the message, Mom? NEVER LEAVE YOUR CHILD'S SIGHT, NOT EVEN FOR A SECOND. Any absence creates a "gaping wound." Hope your college fund is for 2, because you're going with him/her!
It goes on and on in this vein, trying to shame women into staying at home instead of going to work. Which, if you can do it and that's your choice, fine, but a lot of women either can't or don't want to and that's fine too and the last thing we need is Suzanne Venker trying to make someone feel bad with completely fabricated arguments supported by zero evidence.
We will later learn, although it is not disclosed anywhere in the article or the author's note, that Suzanne Venker is the kind of person who tweets things like "The war on men is real. And it has only just begun" or "Feminism is evil in disguise" so I'm starting to get the sense that Suzanne Venker isn't a 100% neutral source on this topic.
To understand this Journalism Thing, you need to know a few background facts:
1. The San Francisco Chronicle is San Francisco's only big-time, still-printed-on-paper-every-day newspaper. I get it delivered to my door! I'm old school like that. Also, just old. Anyway, being the single most important newspaper in SF comes with a Civic Responsibility, I think. It is my belief that a city's newspaper should serve as the citizenry's watchdog, unafraid to keep a careful eye on what government is doing for and to its people.
2. There have been some questions about whether the Chron is living up to this solemn responsibility.
3. Former mayor Willie Brown writes a weekly column for the Chronicle, which appears on Sundays. It is a strange, although not-unpleasant melange of lightweight political observations, very, very lightweight movie reviews, and almost certainly fabricated anecdotes in which normal folks encounter Willie and inevitably share quoteworthy bon mots. (Example: A guy came up to me at Town Hall on Thursday night and asked me, “You know what is both the shortest and the longest sentence in the English language?” “I do.” Complete strangers apparently approach Willie Brown at dinner with sub-Borscht-Belt level jokes.)
4. The defense in the Raymond Chow case has suggested, in court filings, that Mayor Ed Lee accepted bribes, a parctice he inherited from former Mayor Willie Brown.
Now, that sounds like a juicy story for a newspaper to investigate! Not one but TWO former mayors taking bribes! But wait! Is the San Francisco Chronicle going to investigate San Francisco Chronicle columnist Willie Brown?
They don't need to! Willie Brown has told us, on the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, that he didn't take any bribes at all!
I could feign surprise or even indignation at seeing my name dropped in FBI wiretap transcripts as having taught the folks at City Hall the art of “pay to play” politics. But in all honesty, after 40 years of innuendo and countless investigations, I’m used to it.
So when federal court filings quoted former Human Rights Commission compliance officer Zula Jones as telling an FBI undercover agent in the Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow case that I taught her everything there is to know about laundering campaign contributions, I could only chuckle.
I have never talked about campaign contributions with Jones in my life. And I would not know her cohort who shows up in the Chow case, former Human Rights Commissioner Nazly Mohajer, if she bumped into me on the street.
I do know, however, that for years the FBI has targeted sting operations at black officials and other minority politicians all across the nation. That is why, in all my years in office, I treated every phone call as if it were being taped and everyone I spoke to as if they were wearing a wire.
So stand down, citizens. All is well!
I tweeted about this apparent - well, you could say apparent or you could say GLOWING LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE SUN OBVIOUS - conflict of interest yesterday:
Maybe I'm cynical, but can you trust the Chronicle to conduct a thorough investigation of their own columnist? pic.twitter.com/KTLMA0HYhM
Through the good replies of my fellow citizens, I found that questions about the relationship between Brown and the Chronicle have been raised before, like in this article by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez in the sadly defunct Bay Guardian. Somebody should pay Joe to look into this more. Surely with the billions of dollars sloshing around this town we can fund some investigative reporting. One less laundry app! Uber for muckraking!
(It feels weird to write about questionable journalism without Debra J. Saunders being involved, but don't worry, Debra, I'm sure you'll be featured again soon. The odds are in my favor.)
Remember Gordon Gekko's famous greed speech speech from the movie "Wall Street"?
What seemed somewhere between disturbing and obscene in 1987 now seems positively quaint. And compared to the viperous house-leeches on last night's episode, Gordon Gekko is basically St. Augustine. These people don't just want obscene gobs of money for their houses; they want huge, dripping bags of money, with gold coins falling out the top and huge dollar signs on the side. Every extra $50K gives them visible full-body orgasms. It's quite a scene.
Justin finds himself in SOMA, as we call it, where some people bought a boring-ass loft a few years ago for $1.2 million and now want $2.1 because symmetry. He decides the way to market this thing is with an Airnstream trailer at Off the Grid Fort Mason because, in his words, "If you want to find dumb rich hipster techies you have to go to a food truck festival." Finally, we agree on something, Justin! He shows the box to a stream of dejected buyers, disappointed in the lack of a gym or rooftop deck or why is this kitchen not bigger and why didn't Mommy look at me every second I'm so special.
Roh is trying to move some huge pile in the Marina - a "very sexy area," he says. If the Marina were a person, you would probably fuck it. Anyway, the owner of this huge 2-unit pile that looks like a hotel in Sarasota bought it for $3.2 mil 10 years ago and now Roh thinks he can get her 4.6. She and her accent seem cool with that.
Andrew, meanwhile, is in what they're calling Nopa now, which, he says, "used to be a shithole," like everywhere else he goes in Our Garbage City. Some dude with some yappy dogs is trying to move his condo for too much and Andrew gets him to set it at $1.098 mil. After everything else on this fucking show, that seems like a huge bargain.
Back in the Marina, Roh is having trouble moving Casa Grande, maybe because everyone knows that it will melt like hot wax and sink into the warm, bubbling mud as soon as there's any earthquake over a 6.5 and you're basically paying almost 5 mil to rent a house until that happens. He actually uses the word "liquefaction" at one point which is a better buyer repellent than saying there was a torture-murder in the solarium or the prior owner was a cat hoarder.
HERE COMES THE GREED. Everyone's getting offers and none of the money-breathers want to take them.
GREED #1: Roh gets a full-price offer for a building that is literally going to vanish into the liquid Earth sometime in the next 30 years and SHE WON'T TAKE IT. She wants more money! MORE MORE MORE MORE MONEY MORE FOR ME MONEY MONEY MONEY
GREED #2: Justin meets up with Stephanie who I guess is the SOMA box's seller agent at Big 4, which must have a kickback arrangement with this show, for a couple of blood orange bellinis and TURNS DOWN his all-cash no contingency offer of $1.7 million. ARRRRGGGHHH FUCK ALL THESE PEOPLE. But they'll take 1.8. This is the kind of dick-swinging that even people named Stephanie do for fun.
GREED #3: Roh gets it up to 4.7 million. Greedhead wants MORE MORE MORE MORE but finally takes 4.8.
GREED #4: Even the nice little man with the 2 dogs and the tastefully furnished place in "Nopa" is getting in on the action now. 1.098 million? NO I WANT MORE MONEY PLUS I WANT TO KEEP LIVING THERE FOR FREE. Surprisingly, tentacles do not burst forth from the ground and drag this man screaming into a dark netherworld but the buyers instead are like "OK sure! Here, take more money and keep living there for a few more months."
Wilco? Mumford & Sons? The Black Keys? More like Outside Dads, amirite? And Elton John, for Chrissake? That's not dad rock, that's great-grandad rock. At least there's not a comedy joke band as a headliner, like they had one year.
Did you hear what Wilco did at the Pitchfork festival a couple of weeks ago? The day before the thing started, they released a new album on iTunes or something and then they started their set at the festival by playing the entire album all the way through. "Hey, we're Wilco, thanks for coming, here's 12 songs you've never heard before, fuck you."
2. Ticket prices
$135 a day, or $325 for 3 days. That's expensive! Mumford doesn't need any more of your money. He'll probably just give it to Carey Mulligan anyway.
The damn festival's only for three days! Why you keeping me out of my park that I pay good tax money to use for 13 days! Or 12 days. I don't remember whether you count the start and end days or how that works. Anyway, they fence off a big section of the park. It sucks!
4. Muni sucks
I mean, generally, but especially on the festival days, anywhere west of Van Ness or near a BART station. Imagine trying to get home and waiting for a 5 Fulton only to see it zoom by without stopping, packed Tokyo-subway-like with horrible stoned teens wearing fringe vests and stupid hats. And forget taking Uber anywhere; usually it's 1700x surge pricing or some shit.
5. Literally get off my lawn
If you need a bottle of Fireball during OL for a practical joke or to clean engione parts, good luck finding one because all the neighborhood liquor stores are sold out because all the execrable teens who were recently jamming up the Muni are now kneewalking drunk and peeing on your stoop. That's right, if you live anywhere near GG Park this weekend, get ready for the Drunk Teen equivalent of the Mariel boatlift, as wave after wave of them crash upon your shore. You can't even turn the hose on them because you might accidentally get some Drunk Teen runoff on your property. Gross.
6. The Noise
Outside Lands features heavily amplified music that, depending on the weather conditions, is often audible well outside the park. I made this map to help you evaluate your personal risk.
Towards the end of another Debra J. Saunders fiasco, this one about renaming stuff that's named for Confederates (like, who knew there were three elementary schools in California named for Robert E. Lee?), there's this little anecdote:
"The bill," BTW, is SB 539, which bans naming state or local property after "an elected leader or senior military officer of the Confederate States of America," but exempts the "renaming of a city, county, or other political jurisdiction" with a Confederate name, so Fort Bragg gets to stay Fort Bragg if it so wishes.
(Fort Bragg, as you may not realize, was named after Braxton Bragg, a guy who was a Confederate general, but was apparently named after him before he became a Confederate so it's OK? I guess?)
Before we move on, let's just pause and admire Deb's phrase "Confederate name jihad," because only Debra J. Saunders would call a move to stop honoring traitors a "jihad." Christ.
Anyway, we've been getting this a lot. "But where do you draw the line? George Washington owned slaves! Maybe we should remove his name from everything too!" GOP Assemblyman James Gallagher makes the same argument above, vis-a-vis Earl Warren. Andrew Jackson was a total shitbird, but Jackson Street in SF is still Jackson Street.
So let me suggest a simple test we could use to determine whether or not to remove someone's name: DID THEY ENGAGE IN WAR AGAINST THE UNITED STATES?
Voila! The scales have fallen from my eyes. Now this shit is easy. Robert E. Lee is out and FDR gets to stay. We don't have Emperor Hirohito High School, so why one named after Nathan Bedford Forrest? (That was thankfully changed in 2014.) So that's the rule. Sorry, Taliban Technical High School. That has a ring to it, but it's a non-starter.
Towns are harder because they're not a discrete entity like a school. Thousands of people don't put their elementary school as their return address every time they mail a letter and the rest of the country doesn't commonly refer to a middle school when trying to find a place to stay that's close to Mendocino but cheaper. So I get the exception for that. (Although changing the name of a town has been done before. Even as we speak, I'm in beautiful downtown Yerba Buena. More recently, Hot Springs, New Mexico changed itself to Truth or Consequences, NM, to win a fucking radio contest. America!)
ONE FINAL NOTE. This is not to say that you have to change the name ONLY if someone waged war against the US. After all, the Richard M. Nixon Freeway quietly became the slightly less interesting "Marina Freeway." There's always going to be exceptions.
TK lives and works in San Francisco. He occasionally travels to places east of the Caldecott Tunnel, but not very often. His interests include bars, reality TV, and irony. Things seem to be going fine.
