A true story of injustice averted. And a pop-punk cover of a Joni Mitchell song.

It's Friday! Thank God. Here's the Parasites' cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now":



How I got here today: Go to bagel store. Order sesame bagel toasted with butter. Lady at counter asks if I want butter "on both sides." (Odd, but whatever.) VOILA. Parasites' cover of "Both Sides Now" pops into my head.

But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Remember that whack-ass chick that's renting the garage next to my house? The one who's stealing the parking spaces? Who wanted to use our wireless network? SHE'S UP TO NO GOOD AGAIN.

First, a little backstory. As part of this bitch's quest to monopolize the parking spaces in front of our house, she parks her fucking beat-up hooptie scooter in one of the spaces to occupy it so then she can pull her car into the other half of the space and half in front of her fucking garage. I'm not explaining this right but you get the idea. Basically, her janky scooter is always always always parked in the same space in front of our house. She only moves it for street cleaning. It's basically a traffic cone with a basket.

So yesterday I'm coming home from my workstation and there's a Lexus SUV (annoying, I know, but that's another story) parked in front of the scooter WITH A NOTE ON THE WINDSHIELD. Oh yay. I love a good bitchy note. So I read it and basically it's Bitchy McBitchface accusing the Lexus of knocking over her piece of shit scooter! And she says "I've already reported this to my insurance company"! So I roll my eyes and go inside.

Where I talk to my sister (who is temporarily staying with us after breaking up w/ her bf, but that's a whole other story) who's just as nosy as I am and constantly watches the Outdoor Activity like I do and SHE SAW THE WHOLE THING GO DOWN. And guess what? LEXUS SUV HAS BEEN FALSELY ACCUSED. Sister says that Lexus parked and like an hour later the scooter topples over TOWARDS THE LEXUS and then McBitchface comes out and huffs around and leaves her Poison Pen Letter.

(I should explain that the windows of our living room are DIRECTLY ABOVE these parking spaces and if you're in the living room you basically see and hear everything that happens out there. It's not like she's sitting in the window spying on the neighborhood. Not that she wouldn't do that, but I don't think she was.)

WAIT IT GETS BETTER. As she is recounting this tale of False Accusation to me, LEXUS SUV OWNER WALKS UP AND READS THE NOTE AND STARTS INSPECTING THE SCENE OUTSIDE. She looks exactly like what you imagine when you hear "Lexus SUV owner." ANYWAY, I shove my sister out the door to right this injustice and volunteer to be a witness because anything that will fuck McBitchface is good with me. And the first thing Lexus says is "I DIDN'T HIT YOUR SCOOTER!!!!!!" and my sister is like "Chill, lady, not my scooter," and tells her the whole story and everything. JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED BITCH.

Wow, this a boring story. I just realized that. Sorry.

More important brunch news

By now you guys know how important brunch is. (Wow, that's just 3 posts - a search for "brunch" on my blog returns like 10 posts.) Part of the importance of brunch is trying new places, so in that spirit we checked out Uva Enoteca in the Lower Haight for brunch on Saturday.

Not too crowded at 1 pm on Saturday. In fact, not crowded at all. It was just us (me, Wife, Sister), a table of like 7 hipsters, and one table with 2 girls. I was told there would be bottomless mimosas, but there were bottomless bellinis instead which I'm not too crazy about but whatever.

The food was pretty good. I got the fried eggs, which were 2 sunny side up eggs that arrived cold. Maybe not cold, maybe room temp. Still, warm would have been good. Came with what was advertised as "bacon" but I'm sure was pancetta. Also a salad and a little "potato cake" thing. The best part is that, pre-tip, the total tab was $60 for 3 people, including 3 bottomless bellinis. We ended up drinking 2 pitchers of them but based on the table of hipsters it looked like you could pretty much hang out all afternoon and keep getting pitchers brought to you.

Anyway, just OK, not great. 3 stars out of five.

Then we had pints on the back porch of Mad Dog and then some more things happened and the upshot is The Wife was super-hungover yesterday. The end.

Brief reviews of things from this weekend

Churchill: The newish bar on Church and 14th. Friday happy hour was like the 3rd or 4th time I've been there and it is always packed. At least during the times I go there. They are going to make SO MUCH MONEY. Anyway, I like the place OK, I guess. I'd like to go sometime when it's not crazy busy to get a better idea. I had a Pimm's Cup (give me a break - it was like 75 degrees out, that's like Crazy Surface of the Sun Hot in SF) that tasted a little weird, not sure why. The Sister's Moscow Mule was pretty badass, though. 7.5/10

Uber car service: We go outside, The Sister pushes a button on her iPhone, and we're getting into a black town car driven by "Mischa" 3 minutes later. I did not pay for this service, so it was a fucking awesome way to get across town. How can you not like riding in the back of a town car driven by a guy who may or may not be in the Russian mob and never takes off his sunglasses? 10/10

The Royal Cuckoo: Newish bar on Mission and Valencia. I don't know, it's probably better when it's dark out. We got there at 7:30 and it was still bright out and it didn't seem exactly right. I like the feel of the place, and there are the usual artisanal cocktails and hand-muddled herbs and whatever and also a guy showed up and started playing a Wurlitzer organ and we all got a little Twin Peaks-ed out and went across the street to Knockout for beers. I'll try it again, though. 6.8/10

Nickie's: I always forget how much I like Nickie's. Everyone there is super nice and it's got a great convivial vibe, which you want from a pub-feeling kind of place, and I always manage to get into a conversation with a stranger here, usually someone interesting. I gotta start going there more often. 8/10 [Oh look, I wrote about Nickie's in 2008 and said about the same things. Well, good to know it's still good.] [Also, Nickie's, your website auto-plays music! BAD!!! BAD!!!!]

The brunch I made at home on Sunday: Scrambled eggs with andouille sausage, green onion, and cheddar. Hash browns. Fresh fruit. Mimosas. Fucking heavenly. 10/10

Le Colonial: Sunday was like the perfect night to sit on the veranda (and I do not use that term lightly) and have what turned out to be some really, really good Vietnamese/French food. Again with the weird cocktails, though! I got a mojito and it had orange juice in it. Yuck. But the food was outstanding and it's a great atmosphere out there on a warm night. Fucking expensive as hell, but sometimes you just gotta go for it. 8.2/10

Guy Getting Shot by BART Police at Civic Center Station on Sunday Night: They got a report of a guy with an open container of alcohol acting drunk at Civic Center Station? Dude, that is EVERY DAY AT CIVIC CENTER STATION. Fuck, I'VE been that guy at Civic Center Station. Good thing I didn't get shot. Anyway, I'm sure that it will be determined that the cops acted reasonably and whatever. That's how these things always turn out. 3.5/10

Cedar Rapids: I guess I would describe it as "cute." It's a cute movie. There are a few laughs, and John C. Reilly should get nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role as the Huge Douchebag. He was really fucking phenomenal. Worth Netflixing, I guess.

Illegal Fireworks in the Mission Last Night: Jesus Christ, people, WHAT THE FUCK. It sounded like a fucking war out there. I chugged a bottle of wine around 10 to take the edge off so I could go to bed without having flashbacks triggered and then I realized I didn't have any flashbacks to trigger but it was still pretty intense and the wine helped anyway. 1/10

Dispatches from an increasingly desperate situation

As I have noted on Twitter, The Sister is currently visiting Moms in Arizona. I, thankfully, am not. Here is a series of text messages I have received so far today from what appears to be a rapidly declining situation:

9:56 am Good morning! For breakfast I was presented with moldy raspberries and a broken spatula w/ no handle to make frittatas.

10:03 am Can't make this shit up.

10:04 am Why do you keep a broken fucking spatula? It's splintered and has NO HANDLE. Fuck.

10:27 am Today we are also featuring a Facebook tutorial.

1:12 pm Tutorial did NOT go well.

1:13 pm She is on FB but doesn't want to use it ever.

1:15 pm She doesn't understand it and doesn't want to figure it out.

1:26 pm Now trying to explain youtube. Sigh.

1:46 pm Every item of food in this house is revolting. I'm not having a good time.

1:56 pm She got mad and was like "You always say everything I have is rotten!" BECAUSE IT IS.

2:02 pm Then she opened her cookie tin where she stores cookies and kale chips together bc she only has one tin.

2:02 pm I said, these kale chips taste like oatmeal cookies. That was why.


2:05 pm Also as you may have guessed the cookies are stale.

The Bachelorette: Hell in a Phuket

Christ, I'm sorry about that title. That is just terrible.

Tonight the Douchecabal is off to Thailand where they will hopefully die in a powerboat drug-smuggling incident but probably not. We will also not be able to count the number of times Ashley Chipmunk says the name "Bentley" in voiceover. She loves that psychopath SO SO SO MUCH.

Solo date with Constantine, who has a head like a soccer ball and a lazy eye. They were gonna take a boat out to a private beach but the weather's no good so you know what Constantine's backup plan is? LET'S GO SHOPPING! The romance is strong in this one. They head into town in Phuket or whatever and Chipmunk sees a holy Thai shrine and squeals "That's so cute!!!" like it's a Chuck E. Cheese or something. She is really a dipshit, no joke. Constantine wants to interact with some locals so they stop to ask a kindly old shopkeeper for his advice on marriage and they rope in some hapless kid to interpret and he says "YOU BUY EVERYTHING IN STORE YOU HAPPY FOREVER" no actually he says something about "Don't try to win" which is fine if you're a BIG PUSSY. Anyway, they don't buy anything and then they have awkward beers at some kind of cafe and SHE STARTS BITCHING ABOUT BENTLEY IN VOICEOVER.


The dinner portion of the date is at our usual outdoor seaside cabana thing. Guess who's on Chipmunk's mind? One guess.


They fucking blather on about nothing and Soccer Ball Head gets a rose.

OK, next day. Group date. How do you think it starts? If you guessed "TALKING ABOUT FUCKING BENTLEY," go ahead and cut yourself as a reward. You've been very good holding out this long and we'll tell your therapist it was an accident.

Chipmunk takes about 10 douches out to this orphanage thing. "Maybe some of you guys know," she says, "but in 2004 there was a huge tsunami here and it left a lot of people really devastated." The guys all furrow their brows and try to figure out what the hell she's talking about. As it happens, they're going to do some cleaning and painting and whatnot at the orphanage and this is actually very very nice and it's hard for me to make fun of this except to say that the lime-aqua combo they're using to paint one of the rooms is TRAGIC.

Oh look, Ben F. has gone the extra step and painted a mural on one wall!


It's called "Miniature Pink Elephant with Vacuum Attachment Prepares to Hoover Up Flower Garden." Lovely!

Time for some Post-Charity Cocktails. Chipmunk tells Ben F. she "went through a hard time last week" and you know who she's talking about and this is now veering into the very very strange. Anyway, he manages to get a little makeout sesh with her which he then botches by actually saying "Ruh Roh" in the middle of it. WHAT THE FUCK DUDE.

She goes off to talk to JP her BFF from last episode. You know who she mentions in the V.O. at this point right?


Anyway, she and JP start making out and whatever.

Next day, solo date with "Ames," the "Portfolio Manager" from "New York." As it happens, this nerdy little Achievebot has been to Phuket before! Alone! To go to cooking school!

What's this? A text from my sister, who says what we're all thinking at this point:

"Total gay. He is hoarding his roses to make potpourri."

What, a straight man can't go to Thailand alone to go to cooking school? No, as a matter of fact, he can't. Wait, here's Ames' account of his Best First Date: "I met SOMEBODY in a shoe store and they said 'What are you doing tonight' and I said 'Going out with you.'" They ended up dating a long time. Make of that what you will. Also, he tells Chipmunk he's looking for somebody "open-minded." OH I BET YOU ARE.

Another outdoor dinner! Another mention of You Know Who!


Ames looks at the rose on the table and says he prefers to think of it as a "floral piece." Girlfriend is redecorating the cabana in his mind already! He gets the floral piece and Chipmunk gets a new Gay Best Friend.

The Pre-Rose Cocktail Party is back on this week after a terrible hiatus last week. Chipmunk has a little chat with West, who definitely did not kill his first wife. He's ready to "move on" and presumably NOT KILL AGAIN. Chipmunk says she has "some pretty big shoes to fill." Pretty big bathtub full of water after you have a seizure too! That was terrible. I'm sorry about that.

Chipmunk sits down with Our Host Chris Harrison. Guess who she wants to talk about? Milton Friedman. No, silly! Anyway, she's only sending one guy home this week. Fuck, at this rate this show is going to take fucking FOREVER to finish. Cut to Rose Ceremony. West gets cut. SO TO SPEAK. If you decide to date West, take showers instead of baths. Just a little friendly advice.

Happy AFD. A Story.

On the occasion of this April Fools' Day, allow me to recount my favorite - and maybe the only - AFD joke I ever did.

Back in Ye Olde Mid 90's, The Sister was graduating from All-Girl Preppy Prep School and looking at colleges. She had expressed an interest in New York University, which alarmed Dad to no end, as the thought of his daughter wandering around New York basically scared the shit out of him. Little did he know, but that's another story and I also promised The Sister I wouldn't say too much about her on this blog. The Sister applied to NYU but Dad basically let it be known that the whole thing was a nonstarter and she would not be going to NYU.

SO ANYWAY on April 1, 19__, I got my friend David, who sounds like a New York Jew because he is a New York Jew, to call my Dad up.

"Good morning, Sir!" David said. "I'm with the Admissions Office at New York University. I'm calling to tell you that we have decided to award your daughter a full scholarship here at NYU, including room and board."

There was no pause at all, "SHE'LL TAKE IT!!!" Dad said.

After about an hour we finally stopped laughing. Dad still cracks up about it to this day.

The Sister did not go to NYU.

Have a good weekend.

IFYCA: The LOL-stitute

Lady 88 says:

She's right. LOL is a problem. It probably never meant that the writer was literally "laughing out loud," but now people just sprinkle it around for no good reason. Or just to make something really objectionable seem less so. Like "Yah well I used to kill rats with firecrackers lol." THAT'S NOT FUNNY. Or "I luv Justin Beiber lol." U R STUPID.

Realizing the problem years and years and years ago, but still needing some kind of way to signal that something's funny, we developed IFYCA and now you may use it too. IFYCA means "I Find Your Comment Amusing," and is the grownup version of LOL. Thusly:

The Sister: "I ate some chocolate cheesecake yesterday and now I am spiralling into a black hole of depression and self-loathing."

TK: "IFYCA."

So feel free to adopt IFYCA and use it in your peer group too. You'll be happy you did! END THE TYRANNY OF LOL!!!

I have recieved an email from my sister.

took the mensa test on their website. 22 out of 30. does that mean i'm a mensa? i couldn't find that info on the website. so maybe im not mensa.

It's January! That's Deadpool time.

Along with celebrating the New Year and getting blackout drunk and making poor choices and whatever, another New Year's Eve tradition at Casa TK is the Annual Selecting Your Deadpool Picks for the New Year. We let it slack last year for some reason. I'm not sure why. ANYWAY, back on track this year! Let's see who we've got.

TK picked:

Zsa Zsa Gabor! Now, I should tell you that the way we score is 100 minus the person's age, so you get a lot more points for younger decedents, and if you pick someone OVER 100 years old, you actually lose points, which is as it should be. NEVERTHELESS, sometimes only one person in a given pool in a given year actually dies, so I'm feeling pretty comfortable picking one nonagenarian once in a while. BONUS: She appears to be in poor health!

Elizabeth Taylor. I tend to pick her regularly, but that old warhorse keeps coming back for more.

Tony Bennett. Hopefully he leaves the GRAND PRIZE in San Francisco.

Willie Mays. Sorry, Say Hey. Nothing personal, only business. I love you, man.

Jerry Stiller. I know, right?

The Wife picked:

Roger Ebert. That seems cold but I can see it.

Hal Holbrook. Solid choice, I think.

Queen Elizabeth. Charles in Charge!

Tara Reid. It's often good to pick an Obviously Troubled Younger Person. Some joker picks Lilo every year, but that bitch never dies. The problem is, you can never see it coming. Like Brittany Murphy? You can't sit here and tell me you'd pick Brittany Murphy. Heath Ledger? C'mon. Anyway, Tara's as good as any, I guess.

Liza Minelli. Bad pick. Liza Minelli actually died in 2002 and has been played by an animatronic robot ever since. Little known fact.

Guest #1, whom we shall refer to as Sigmund, picked as follows:

Michael Douglas. Canny! Doesn't he have some kind of cancer?

Dick Clark. Believe it or not, Dick Clark is still alive, even though he now vaguely resembles a male version of Madame.

Betty White. Struck down at the prime of her career. Tragic.

Margaret Thatcher. Again, I had to refer to Dead or Alive, but it appears the Iron Lady is going strong at 85.

Tracy Morgan. The oddball pick. Love it. Tracy Morgan is so intensely weird that he is just as likely to die in some kind of hot air ballooning/barbequing mishap as a drug overdose.

Guest #2, whom we shall refer to as Natasha, chose:

Hugh Hefner. This was everyone's first pick. Natasha just happened to win the draw and go first. It just seems like his year.

Muammar Qaddafi. Or Ghadafi or however we're spelling it these days. Interesting. Only 68 years old, but I guess you never know with tyrannical despots.

Kim Jong-Il. Wait a minute, Natasha. I sense a trend here.

Amy Winehouse. OK, so you're off of evil old men now. Good.

Dick Cheney. Whoops, never mind.

Finally, The Sister could only round up 3 picks, but they're pretty good:

Lindsay Lohan. Every year. Without fail.

John Cougar Mellencamp. 4 pack a day smoker? Really? I guess, oh yeah, life doesn't go on. OH SNAP.

Fidel Castro. Natasha, you missed one!

Who'd we miss? Any good ones?

It approaches.

Guess who's decided to come back for Christmas this year? MOM.



Now I don't want to say that she's a complete Control Freak or anything, but The Sister is picking her up at the airport at 1 pm on Xmas Eve and she has already informed us that she has quite a few things on the old agenda, viz:

I'm thinking since my flight arrives at 1:20, and my hotel is at Union Square I would enjoy first stopping at nearby Grace Cathedral to see the Bronze Door casts of Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise." I saw the beautiful originals in Florence at the Basilica. They are depictions in bronze casts of 12 Old Testament bible stories (Adam & Even in the garden, Noah's Ark, Moses and the 10 Commandments, etc.)

Then, just a hop away is the Mark Hopkins. I would enjoy stopping there for a drink at "The Top of the Mark" to have a bit of time with you before joining others.

Jesus Christ, lady, that's a whole vacation you want to fit into an hour and a half. Also, if you saw the originals on your trip to Florence, why do you wanna see some cheap knockoff "Gates of Paradise"? What, the real "Gates of Paradise" didn't do it for you? "Hey, I just saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, but I understand this truck stop in Gilroy has a poster of it on the wall in the Ladies Room so I definitely want to see that!!!"

Well, it should be interesting. I'm sure she'll want to know why we didn't hang up that Electronic Dartboard she got us for Christmas 2 years ago and I'll just have to explain that we decided against going with a Dave & Buster's interior decor theme and that's why there's no Pop-A-Shot in the living room either. And then we'll have to hear about all our inheritance money taking fabulous trips to Tuscany and London and the fucking Great Wall of China for all I know.

Live! Nude! Girls! At your local airport.

Text from The Sister:

HOLY FUCK. You should get to sfo like hours before your flight. The security line is so long there is a holding area to wait in to even get in the line.

Ever since the post-9/11 TSA security theater dance began, I've been wondering what it would take for the American people to finally say "Enough." I figured it would take a lot, because, on the whole, we're pretty much willing to accept anything if you affix an American flag to it and say it's for "national security." I'm pretty convinced that if a couple of guys in military uniform showed up to most people's houses and said they had to search the whole house because they were looking for terrorists, people would go "OK, go ahead!"

But maybe we've finally found the outer limits of what people will put up with. The new full-body scanners (or, if you prefer, "porno-scanners") that show, erm, pretty much everything, have finally got people upset. (Or, if you prefer, you can get a full-body patdown - now including free labial touching!!)

I guess this was occasioned by the "Underwear Bomber," the guy who, as the name implies, tried to blow up a Northwest flight over Detroit with a bomb in his underwear.

(SIDE NOTE - Wouldn't it suck to be the Underwear Bomber in prison? Like, you'd be out in the exercise yard, and Ted Kaczynski comes over and he's all "Hey, I'm the Unabomber" and Terry Nichols is all "What up, I'm one of the Oklahoma City bombers," and you go "Oh, hey guys, I'm the Underwear Bomber" and they look at each other and start snickering and go "Underwear Bomber, huh? What did you do, eat the enchilada platter after drinking all night? That'll bomb some motherfucking underwear, for sure!" And you go "No, for reals! I could have blown up a plane!" But they're already laughing and now even the Shoe Bomber is pointing and laughing at you.)

Remember after the Shoe Bomber, when we had to start taking our shoes off every time we wanted to get on a plane? Now we basically have to make a sex tape or get felt up by a guy with a GED and a French blue shirt just to get to O'Hare. If the next bomber packs 20 grams of C-4 into his rectum, I AM DONE WITH FLYING FOREVER.

ANYWAY. I don't know how this is gonna shake out, but it's nice to know there's one thing that World Net Daily and Salon.com can agree on. THIS FUCKING SUCKS. I get to fly next week, yay.

Zooey Deschanel singing "God Bless America" has caused me to have a number of feelings, not all of them positive

Zooey Deschanel singing "God Bless America" at yesterday's Giants-Phillies NLCS game:



I have a lot of feelings about this. But first, let's hear from The Sister, via her actual text messages sent to me just minutes after this happened:

Ugh she is horrible

That bitch cant sing. But she pretty.

Here are my thoughts:

1. She's not that bad. Her voice has that wobbly reedy quality that you associate with country singers from the 50's. It's just that, because of (a) Mariah Carey and (b) American Idol, we are now acculturated to expect explosive, trilly diva-wailing instead of just, y'know, singing.

2. The Mehserle boat. In case you're not up on this, some supporter of Johannes Mehserle, the cop who killed a BART passenger on New Year's Eve a couple of years ago, has been sailing a boat in McCovey Cove behind the ballpark with a big "Free Johannes Mehserle" banner. Thanks, I guess, to the American flag on top, they got some good airtime on Fox. A complete discussion of the Mehserle case is beyond the scope of this post.

3. Is Zooey giving up some hipster cred here? I mean, you can't get much more unhip than singing "God Bless America" at an organized sporting event.

4. You hear the announcer say "Please rise and remove your caps blahdeddy blah" before she sings? This is my big peeve with GBA: It's not the National Anthem. Now, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, and before every game, I dutifully rise and put my hand over my heart and then listen to the Willow Glen Eighth Grade Boys Chorus warble their way through the Star-Spangled Banner or whatever and I think it's great. But we only have one National Anthem, and that's it. I don't even like GBA as a song, and I like even less the forced patriotism of being told to treat it like some secret national anthem. I guess this took off after 9/11 and then just stuck, like permanent war and the TSA. Go ahead and call me un-American if you must, but I'm happy with the one national anthem we already have.

5. Do you think Zooey Deschanel has ever been to a professional sporting event before?

Happy Mother's Day!

For MD, I sent my Mom a framed picture of The Wife and me that was taken at our wedding (which Moms did not attend, for various reasons primarily centered on the fact that it was at my Dad's place, and she HATES HATES HATES him). ANYWAY, this is the email I got today:

Thank you for the wedding photo. It's a happy picture. Very nice. I did take it out of the frame thinking I would cut a bit off the bottom so your head wouldn't be cut off but that didn't work. Do you have one w/ your whole head? It's a lovely picture and [The Wife] looks beautiful. I'll put it up in the den and take down the pictures you and your sister never liked and made fun of.

If anyone ever asks why I turned out this way, I will just show them this email.

I'm going to be vegetarian this week for no particular reason

So I'm running a little experiment and going vegetarian for one week.

"Why are you doing this?" said The Sister. We were out at Dolores Park yesterday in the OPPRESSIVE, ALMOST UNBEARABLE 68 degree heat. She's a nutritionist and has advised me that I need like mad protein just to get by. "Is this some kind of weight loss thing?"

(Incidentally, when you get a group of about 10 people and 6 dogs together in Dolores Park, the main activity is yelling names of dogs and trying to keep them from going to some other group and sweating them for their sandwiches. Eventually Shaia, Leland, Django, Billie, Todd, and Lucy settled down a little, but it took a while.)

(Also incidentally, for some reason Shaia's leash ended up tied to Lucy's leash, Shaia's a labradoodle and is about 65 pounds. Lucy is some kind of pug mix and is about 10 pounds. I didn't realize they were tied together and tossed Shaia's ball and YOINK poor Lucy got dragged along as Shaia went for the ball. SORRY, LUCY.)

"Nah," I said. "I don't know why. Just for fun, I guess. Just to see if I can do it."

She made a frowny face and told me it wasn't a good idea for my metabolism. Hey, it's just a week, I can't die, right?

As it happens, we went to Greens on Friday night with Stephen and Jessica, who are both vegetarians. We all agreed that it wasn't very good. Sadly, I think the cheese plate was the best thing we got. The wine was good, though.

SO, so far so good, but it's only been a couple of days. I don't think it's going to be hard at all, though.

In honor of SXSW. And then a lengthy digression.

In honor of SXSW, I present to you my very first blog post, 2 years ago, entitled "I'm so sick of SXSW." Enjoy.

Hey, that's an easy way to get out of creating new content! No matter. Sentiment remains the same.

(And please, for the love of God, I beg you, please do not send me notes congratulating me on my "blogaversary" or the like. I remain fundamentally opposed to any cobbled-together words beginning with "blog." Generic called them portmanteau and that word didn't turn out to mean what I thought it meant but after I looked it up our conversation made a lot more sense since it means a cobbled-together word and not a French butler.)

(Speaking of not knowing what words mean, The Sister is kind of famous for this. She thought "teetotaler" meant a troublemaker, so to her, the sentence "Looks like the teetotalers are comng!" was fraught with danger.)

(She also used to use the word "touche" just as a general sort of conversational punctuation, until she found out its proper use. Like someone would say "That's it, I'm out of here" and she would say "Touche.")

(I love The Sister to death and I don't mean to make fun of her. Her little quirks are more endearing than embarrassing.)

So, yeah. I don't want to hear about SXSW. Have a nice weekend. Unless you're at SXSW. Then I hope you miss the Datarock show and have to walk back to your hotel in the rain.

(Also, I'm not changing the Random Flickr Image of the Day today because (1) nobody ever notices it or cares about it anyway, I surmise, and (2) I like the current image a lot.)

Also, repeated listenings of "Fairtytale of New York" were involved

OK, so the tree is up and decorated. It all went down last night. It involved 4 people, 2 dogs, 8 bottles of wine, a bottle of prosecco, most of a 6-pack, some Jameson, some bruschetta, chorizo and goat cheese in phyllo, ground lamb toastettes, the "Glee" soundtrack, "Don't Stop Believin'" at top volume, several trips to the store, some heart-to-heart conversations, that kind of thing.

I found a piece of paper this morning with this written on it:

"Everybody's getting sick right now."

"That's what happens when you fuck a girl from Brazil."

Honestly? I have no idea.

Believe it or not, not everything is aided by the addition of barbeque sauce

Thanks to the tender mercies of Continental Airlines (recommended, BTW, as they are my new go-to airline and you can just suck it, American, I break with thee) The Wife and I were flung across This Great Nation and alighted last night in the ancestral homeland in order to engage in some Thanksgiving. Bad economy? You wouldn't know it from the incredible volume of people squeezed behind a tray table or thronging the halls at La Aeropeurta.

ANYWAY, The Sister and her bf picked us up and off we went to what turned out to be a very odd dinner at a suburban non-chain restaurant Who Shall Not Be Named. Now, this restaurant clearly aspires to a higher level than your TJ McGillicuddy's or your Rudy's A Place for Steaks or whatever. And it's actually not that bad. But there are a few things that just throw you off a little. EXAMPLE I got the fresh (allegedly) dayboat scallops. They were actually expertly seared and seasoned perfectly. Delicious. The accompanying risotto was good, not great, but perfectly acceptable. But ringing the scallops and risotto was a band of barbeque sauce circling the plate. What what? GUY FIERI, ARE YOU BACK THERE? Srsly, WTF with the BBQ sauce, people? Very odd. Once I realized what it was, I was able to avoid, but that was quite an uncomfortable first bite, let me tells you. I'm not even going to get into the wine service, but just for future reference, it's not conventional to open the bottle and then fill everyone's glasses up to the rim.

Then we went back to the house and polished off 4 bottles of wine. HELLO, MONDAY!

The good kind of mystery meat

In San Francisco we're all interested in food and wine and we're always going on and on about farmer's markets and pinot noir and heirloom tomatoes and sustainably raised beef and so an event like the Mystery Dinner at Maverick is the perfect way to let us all show off and put us in our place at the same time.

The idea behind the Mystery Dinner (held on Halloween night, natch) is that you get 3 courses with wine pairings and you have to guess as many elements of each course as you can, along with the kind of wine. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.

(Before I go on, let me just throw in a little plug here for Maverick, a place we've been many times and which is truly one of the great, maybe a little underrated, restaurants in SF).

So you wanna know how badly I did? Bad. Let's review.

First course: Some kind of salad with a poached egg on top and some kind of greens and some other stuff.

What I guessed: Poached egg (duh), raddichio (total guess - I'm not even sure what raddichio is), rye croutons, and plantain.

What it actually was: Poached egg (yay!), rye croutons (yay!), red stem spinach, Maverick pancetta, roasted apples, apple cider vinagrette. There was pancetta in there? I didn't see any pancetta. And how do you mistake apple for plantain? I'm an idiot.

Wine guess: Sauvignon blanc.
Actual wine: Sauvignon blanc. I know my sauvignon blanc.

Second course: It was grilled fish.

What I guessed: My first thought was something like swordfish or tuna, but it wasn't tuna and didn't seem firm enough to be swordfish. So I guess grilled halibut, on risotto, with sprouts, and chili sauce.

What it actually was: Grilled swordfish. Damn! With shaved brussels sprouts (half-credit), crispy chanterelles (?), and sweet and sour sauce. It was delicious. They gave me credit for the sauce, which was nice.

Wine guess: Unoaked chardonnay.
Actual wine: Grenache blanc. Oh, sure, like I had a chance of getting that. I didn't even know there was such a thing as grenache blanc until last night. It was good, though!

Dessert course: Some kind of custardy thing.

What I guessed: Mint panna cotta, with candied walnuts and red currants.

What it actually was: Meyer lemon panna cotta, with candied walnuts and huckleberry compote. I SWEAR TO GOD it tasted minty.

Wine guess: Gewurtztraminer. It was really sweet, what do I know.
Actual wine: Pinot blanc. Again, I had an approximately zero percent chance of getting this.

In the end, The Sister and her bf tied and there was tiebreaker and I think he won. The winner at every table got a bottle of wine! That's nice. Anyway, tons o' fun.

Then we went home and watched TV and went to bed. I don't feel the Halloween thing so much any more, plus I was up til about 4:30 a.m. on Friday night about which less said the better.

ANYWAY, I'm off to beautiful exciting downtown Long Beach tomorrow for work. So we'll see what they're up to down there. Later.

Actual text messages I have exchanged with The Sister

June 14:

TK: So how did that work out for you then?

The Sister: It worked out to be a late nite + self loathing. In an odd turn of events I happen to be sitting in washington sq park eating dim sum.

TK: Daytime drinking?

The Sister: No. Ive been drunk since noon friday.

June 20:

The Sister: The book 'smashed: story of a drunken girlhood' sits next to 'dry' in the bookcase. Is someone trying to tell me something?

July 3:

The Sister: I have become accidentally buzzed.

TK: I haven't had any alcohol so far today, which is kind of amazing.

The Sister: Wow. Well, I wasn't planning on it, if that counts for something.

July 5:

The Sister: I think its a bad sign if you have to break into your earthquake kit for a snack.

July 18:

The Sister: Watching hipsters gut fish is as funny as it sounds.

September 12:

The Sister: This is the largest limo I have ever seen. It screams hookers and blow.

TK: If you get either one, txt me RIGHT AWAY.

Some things are just as bad as you were told. Like professional wrestling, or the Bubble Lounge

Difficult as this must be to believe, I actually found myself in the famous-for-its-douchebag-quotient Bubble Lounge on Saturday night, for a friend's girlfriend's birthday thing. It's maybe not as bad as I thought it would be, crowdwise, but I wasn't there that long.

2 or 3 significant problems, though:

1. It's fucking expensive. The Sister wanted a glass of champagne and I asked the very affable bartender about it and he made a suggestion and then gave me a sample! Nice, right? So I asked him how much it is per glass and he said "$18" and I said "Show me something more in the $10 range" and he said "We have an entry-level prosecco for $11" and I said The Sister would like entry level just fine.

2. There was nowhere to sit. All the seats at the bar were taken and you can't sit at any of the tables unless you guarantee $30 a head for everyone in your party. Oh, fuck you.

3. I don't know what they have going on downstairs but it looked like a prom. Obvs it wasn't a prom, but it was a bunch of very young-looking overdressed chicks. Wait, that sounds pretty good. I'm not describing it right or something.

So we vacated that place and walked down the street to The Kells, another place I would normally never go (Yelp sample: This is a great place if you want to drink Budlights out of insulated aluminum bottles, meet some 19 year olds from Sacramento and dance to Montell Jordan) but we saw a few open tables in the front and more than anything we just wanted to sit down. Boy oh boy is that place full of assholes (General rule: If you're wearing a visor backwards and upside down, you're probably an asshole. Fuck, if you're wearing a visor, period, you're probably an asshole) but we had a place to sit and it was fine becuse we pretty much stayed out of the fray, as it were.

I don't know what's going on down on the lower end of Columbus these days, but it looked like prom at The Kells too. Where are all these 19-year-old girls coming from? And how did they all get fake ID's?

Now I know why I never went to either of those places even when I lived in North Beach. The End.

Oh, P.S. Signs You're Getting Old: Our plans for this Friday night include renting a Rug Doctor. SLOW YOUR ROLL, COMMANDER PARTY!!!! WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!