This Week in San Francisco in Verse

Haight and Fillmore, burning bright!
The whole damn building's done for
Haighters, no condoms for you tonight
Walgreens is no more

Lee and Yee and Avalos
Herrera and some scrubs
We got more mayoral candidates
Than fully licensed pot clubs

Anonymous done given up
BART protests served no use
Now they can go on back
To hassling Tom Cruise

Giants took an early fall
The playoffs are no more
You could give them a tub of rohypnol
And they still couldn't score



Obama came to the peninsula
To get some cash from plutocrats
I don't care who the Repubs nominate
I just wish there was a Democrat

OMG! Heat wave! Everybody freak!
90 degrees and clear!
I know it seems unique as fuck
But it happens every year

Trouble

Apropos of nothing, I was thinking about bar fights the other day.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've managed to mostly avoid bar fights (or fights in general) during my many dissolute years of bar-going. Honestly, that shit is stupid and I fail to understand why someone looking at your girl would provoke a violent outrage, but I guess some assholes just want to get into fights and need an excuse.

I can only think of a handful of times when I've even been close to getting in a fight, like:

- A couple of weeks after I made the catastrophically bad decision to move to Santa Cruz, one of the Worst Places on Earth, I was playing pool in this dive called the 1007 Club. I hadn't noticed that more people had come in and someone had written his name on the chalkboard to play next game. I started to put quarters in and the guy totally got in my face and was screaming about how he was next and I was like "Fine, whatever, you're next." Looking back now, I realize that he was probably tweaked out of his fucking gourd on meth, like 90% of everyone between the ages of 19 and 29 in that Godforsaken shithole.

- One weekend afternoon I was hanging out at the Columbus Cafe with my ex-wife and drinking and playing the jukebox and shit and this little angry Scotsman started hitting on her right in front of me. He offered to buy her a drink and I said "It's cool, I've got her drinks" and he FUCKING FLIPPED OUT and told me to come outside to settle this and I was like "No, I think I'll pass" and then the bartender kicked him out. The bartender told us the guy works on a ship and comes in whenever they dock in SF and gets into fights.

(Knowing what I know now, I should have let him buy her the drink, then jumped up and pointed and said "A-HA!!! NOW SHE'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM!!!" and run out.)

Other times I've been on the periphery of big fights that have started and spilled out into the street. Whatever, that shit is boring.

UPDATE: Humorously, between the time when I first wrote this and now, when I'm about to post it, I have learned that Famous Teen Mom Bristol Palin almost got herself into a bar fight recently:

Bristol Palin was riding the mechanical bull at a Hollywood bar in front of a throng of paparazzi and reality TV cameras, when a rude drunk yelled, "Your mother's a whore!" Bristol marched up to the man, jutted out her new chin, and got into a heated confrontation:

Man: She [your mother] is evil.
Bristol: You want her dead?
Man: You know what, if there is a hell, and I don't think there is one, she will be there.
Bristol: OK, why is that?
Man: She's evil. She's evil.
Bristol: Is it because you're a homosexual?
Man: Pretty much!
Bristol: And that's why you hate her?
Man: And why do you say I'm a homosexual?
Bristol: Because I can tell you are.

On the way out she gets into a fight with another pair of angry drunks, including one who yells, "White trash Wasilla!" and "You fucking bitch!" as Bristol and friends storm out of the bar.

"Is it because you're a homosexual"? Who the fuck talks like that? Although, I gotta say, it's probably a drag when you're out for your usual night on the town being followed by a camera crew and wearing an ugly sweatshirt that says "Empowered" on the front with a Lightning Bolt Cross and some stranger says "Your mother's evil." I guess that would suck.

(This all happened at Saddle Ranch, right? That place blows.)

Finally, a relationship column we can actually relate to.

Man, do I ever love the Chronicle's Union Squared feature. If you're not familiar, they're little stories about couples who are getting married or just got married or whatever. It has, like, how they met - which is usually some way PRETTY FUCKING CUTE - and what their wedding was like and all that stuff. Like, here's an excerpt from this week's example, Megan and Tyler (quick context: both are Stanford grads):

Although Stanford is a backdrop throughout Heinen and Mobley's love story, they did not start dating there. In fact, they met the night of a formal dance on campus, and Heinen had another date. It wasn't until two years later, when both had graduated and moved to San Francisco, that they ran into each other repeatedly while bar-hopping one night in the Marina.

"At the last bar, he left," Heinen said. "And then he came back in to get my number."

See? Cute! They met (or re-met) bar-hopping in the Marina! I'm not even going to say anything mean. You're already thinking it for me. Why do I have to do all the work?

SO that's all great and stuff but what I really want to see is a weekly column about Relationships That Didn't Work Out, you know, like the Normal Relationships Everyone Has. We'll call it either Dolores Parked or Mission Failed. It'll be like this:

Daniel and Juliana met at happy hour at Casanova. "I was totally just there to get free drinks from the bartender, who I used to bang, and make fun of the crowd, but Daniel was actually kinda cool," Juliana remembers. "So we did some key bumps in the bathroom and then later went to this super lame house party, but it was cool because we had some pints of J&B and the music didn't completely suck."

After some fumbling, unprotected sex, the newly-minted couple stopped at Walgreens the next morning for Plan B before enjoying a leisurely brunch and bottomless mimosas. The next few weeks, Daniel happily recounts, passed in a dreamy blur of taquerias, Netflix, and artisanal cocktails. And more sex, but with more condoms and less blackouts.

Oh, but fate, it seemed, would intervene: Juliana got a job writing copy for an agency in LA. "I mean, duh, I had been making like ten bucks an hour temping, so it was a total no-brainer," she recounts. Daniel, after asking who was getting her apartment, bid her a bittersweet farewell. "She was a cool enough chick, I guess," he muses now.

Juliana is happy in LA and, after being shown a picture of Daniel and reminded who he is, offers that she has nothing but warm thoughts about him. For his part, Daniel is now seeing his coworker's roommate. "I still kinda wish I had gotten her apartment," he reflects on Juliana. Love can hurt, it is true.

Not really a film review, but more of a meditation on why this film might have happened

Slightly hungover and just wanting to get out of the house, a few of us went to see the new Paul Rudd vehicle "Our Idiot Brother" yesterday. The film, which is as bland and inoffensive as mayonnaise, is interesting in that I can't figure out why it was made. I mean, someone had to champion this film, right? They had to walk the script around LA and have pitch meetings and go home and think "Man!!! I think I'm really close!" And then you get this wallpaper paste of a movie that isn't angry-making like an Adam Sandler movie but isn't interesting or even funny. There are episodes - maybe almost every episode - of "Parks and Recreation" that are funnier than this movie.

I mean, one of the major jokes - SPOILER ALERT, I guess, if you're hell-bent on wasting $10.75 to see this - is that Paul Rudd's dog is named "Willie Nelson." Hilarious, right? The dog is a major part of the movie, and no one passes up and opportunity to say the dog's name. A dog named after a real person! I'm gasping for breath! THAT IS SO FUNNY!!!!

(Plus, this gave the producers a reason to put a bunch of Willie Nelson - the musician (or "musician," I could say), not the dog - on the soundtrack. I fucking hate Willie Nelson. Like nails on a chalkboard. That voice. So I would say the repeated Willie Nelson songs did nothing to enhance my enjoyment.)

The basic plot is that Paul Rudd's character gets out of prison and then ruins the lives of his sisters in one way or another. I got the impression that he's supposed to be one of those Magical Innocent character types who's the only one who can tell people the truth, but whatever, I didn't really care enough to think about it. I just kept going back to Why did this movie get made?

Here's what I hope happened: It was originally a much, much darker comedy called "Our Sociopathic Brother" in which Paul Rudd gets out of jail and then decides to WREAK HAVOC on all those who have wronged him. He returns to his sisters' homes and kills them and their families and burns their houses down before dying in a hail of gunfire. Then this script was progressively watered down by one studio exec after another until we have what's left. Anyway, with all these fine actors and all this money, it's curious that no one thought to make a better movie.

One of the people who went with us took a klonopin and seemed to like it better than me, so if you have to see it, I recommend taking a klonopin first.

I'm still on jury duty. That is all.

Trip Report: Fresno!!!

A couple of weeks ago The Wife and I were watching the Giants lose again and they mentioned calling up someone from the Fresno Grizzlies and she said "We should go to a Fresno Grizzlies game sometime" and because we are People of Action and not just Big Talkers, on Saturday we found ourselves in a car driving to Fresno.



One of The Wife's work friends is from Fresno and I guess knows people associated with the team so we got tickets in what I assume is like Club Level here at AT&T Park and got some concessions vouchers and stuff like that. That's all nice, but the greatest gift we got was the hotel he recommended: The Picadilly Inn Shaw. I shall explain in just a moment.



Fresno is flat as a pool table and searingly hot, which felt great after the Non-Summer of High 50's in SF. When we got there it was 104. As far as I can tell, Fresno is comprised mainly of strip malls, chain restaurants, and chain everything else. So I guess it's like most of the rest of the country.



ANYWAY though. The Picadilly Inn! I don't know where to start. It was obviously built circa 1972 and NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE THEN. It is like visiting the set of a movie that's set in a hotel in 1972. I mean, look at our room!







That picture actually makes it look creepier than it was, which is sort of unbelievable. But it really did have that trapped-in-70s-amber vibe.



Anyway, our room was on the second floor and overlooked this garden where they were setting up for a wedding. We were kind of absently watching through the window when The Wife started to notice something. "I think there's 2 brides," she said.



GET. THE. FUCK. OUT.



So they're setting up and we decide to hit the bar up for a drink and guess what? THERE'S SOME KIND OF RODEO CONVENTION at the SAME FUCKING HOTEL and the bar looks like a slightly spiffier Deadwood. I mean, all they needed was a player piano and a bartender with a handlebar mustache and those arm garter things.







On the way there, we pass one of those little signs that tell you where things are in the hotel and it said something like "Congratulations Roxanna and Noemi"!!!! AWESOME!!! I mean, here we are being all Too Cool For School from San Francisco and we walk right into a Lesbian Wedding in Fresno. Fresno! I misjudged you and feel bad now!



We got the drinks to go and hustled back to the room to watch the wedding. I can report that both brides wore white. They looked amazing and happy. CONGRATULATIONS, ROXANNA AND NOEMI!!!



Then we went to the baseball game. The stadium is in Downtown Fresno which has obviously seen better days. Apart from the people going to the game, downtown was populated exclusively by homeless people. We walked through this pedestrian mall thing from the parking garage to the ballpark. It had obviously been an effort to get people hanging around downtown but didn't work. As we passed one older homeless lady, she greeted us by saying "Suck it, bitch." AND A FINE GOOD EVENING TO YOU, MA'AM! Anyway, nothing you can't get anywhere in SF.



The park was really nice and obviously recently built. It was a delight to sit outside at night and watch a baseball game in shorts and a t-shirt. It was 90 degrees at 8:30 p.m.





I don't have much to say about the game. Barry Zito - remember him? - started for the Grizzlies and was doing OK until he sprained something and limped off the field. The other Grizzlies pitchers weren't very good. They lost.



The next day we drove home. This was uneventful except for a stop at the Carl's Jr. in Atwater, California. HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS I have never seen a bigger collection of weirdos and freaks than at the Carl's Jr. in Atwater, California.



The Atwater Carl's Jr. has 3 Yelp reviews! If I were a jackass enough to post Yelp reviews, here's what mine would say:



"I'm not sure who was more impressive, the Charles Manson clone with a neckbeard and prison tattoos who stared malevolently at my wife the whole time we were there or the Tweaker Family featuring the kid was unusual facial hair and a topknot ponytail and Morbidly Obese Uncle with a definite Lou Albano vibe, but the crowd at this Carl's Jr. made the backwoods family from 'Deliverance' look like the Algonquin Round Table.



"Also, I'm not 100% sure if anyone here has ever assembled a hamburger correctly, but it usually involves something more than randomly shoving a meat patty and a bun and some wilted lettuce into a paper sleeve.



"It did have a bathroom, though, and also a parking space in front of the door which facilitated our very rapid exit."



So, yeah. Fresno. There you go.

Did you misplace your Insanity Machine and accidentally leave it turned on?

I first heard it last night around maybe 7:30. It was a sound like a truck backing up, but just three beeps in a row.

BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP.

Of course, the first thing you think is, "That's a truck backing up" and resume to your normal activities.* As I did. Which was drinking a beer and watching "Locked Up Abroad" on DVR.

(Just in case you don't watch "Locked Up Abroad," let me give you some advice. When someone offers you $6,000 to smuggle cocaine on a plane from Lima to - well, it was Cape Town, South Africa in this one, but really, it applied to anywhere - DON'T DO IT. Also, great show. Also, the actors they use in the reenactments are always way better looking than the actual person. I mean, I almost want to fly a few kilos from Bogota to LA just to see what kind of hot dude they get to be me on the show.)

But then it goes off again. It seems louder! Like it's COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!

BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEEEP

So there I am like a crazy tweaker on a five-day run tearing the house apart looking for the hidden CIA camera except in this case it's not a hidden CIA camera it's a fucking beeping noise making thing. I pulled the smoke detector down and examined it like I could visually see where the noise was coming from or something. BUT IT WASN'T IN THE HOUSE because the next time I was outside taking the recycling out I heard it again EVEN LOUDER.

BEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEP

ANYWAY, I know this story is way boring but I also SWEAR TO GOD it was a real noise because The Wife heard it too when she got home.

We didn't hear it again for a long time until 6:22 this morning when it went off like an Exterior Alarm Clock

BEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP BEEEEEP

and we were lying in bed trying to sleep and then the dog decided that would be a good time to start licking himself so it was like BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEP SLURP SLURP SLURP

and the cat, never one to be left out of any fun, started doing her "Hurt Cat" cry OWWWWW OWWWW OWWWWW that she does when she thinks she's not getting enough attention and at that point I just said fuck it and got up.

If that thing is still going off when I get home I'm going to freak out.

So the moral of the story is, if you left your Insanity Machine on in the vague area of my house, please come pick it up.


[*] True story, there's an alarm system/loudpseaker thing where I work and occasionally the security people come on and say shit like "There is an emergency situation on the fourth floor. Please listen for further information" and it''s usually some false alarm - well, since I've worked there, it's always been a false alarm, not usually - and then after a while the Security Person hops back on the intercom and says "The emergency situation on the fourth floor has been cleared. The emergency situation on the fourth floor has been cleared. Please resume to your normal activities." That's right, not "resume your normal activities," but "resume to." I've often wondered if that jacked syntax appears in the Operating Manual because it was badly translated from Chinese like alarm clock instructions, or if it was passed virally from the Ur-Security Person on down the line. Anyway.

The Bachelorette: Thank God this trainwreck is over. I mean, Exciting Conclusion!

Well, it appears that we have staggered across the Finish Line alive and now we can have our Monday nights back and I have to sign up for this beer making class at SF Brewcraft because I am not sitting through the Apocalypse without beer and they only have the class on Monday nights and now I can finally go. Wow that was Super Off Topic.

Let us meet Ashley Chipmunk's family who ABC has imported to Fiji. Mom and Dad are pretty much off the shelf, but sister "Chrystie" (Yes, ugh, that's how it's spelled, like chrysalis or Chrysler Town & Country) is a fully tatted Suicide Girl and brother Something I Didn't Catch His Name just wandered in from the set of "Intervention" and is wearing like 10 lbs of shell necklaces and has furious Meth Sweats which require constant toweling off.


Sis is way hotter than Ashley Chipmunk and is clearly gunning for her own show and more on that in a sec.

Here comes JP! Mom seems to like him BUT WAIT after a little wine & maybe a pupu platter Sis and Chipmunk sit down inside and she's all "I don't think he's the one" like WHOA BITCH CHILL THE FUCK OUT. Mom's "OK with him," so what's the prob, Sailor Jerry? Oh, she thinks Chipmunk is "too much for him" like NO SHIT THANKS FOR THAT she's too much for anyone that's not on 150 mg of Ritalin a day and then Sis is all "I'm much more rational," which you don't expect from someone from the Nikki Sixx School of Beauty.

Chipmunk seeks input from Meth Sweats. He says "Whoa." I get the impression he's not the Star of the Family Show and is also maybe slightly retarded. Then Suicide Girl and JP sit down and man is she a fucking bitch. I'm sorry but there is no other way to put it. She's all "You're much older" and he should say "Bitch, I'm like 3 years older than her, it's not like Hugh Hefner and some preteen or something, FUCK" but he's actually pretty cool. Then Chip tries to reassure him on the beach but does a pretty crappy job and then I guess he swims away or something.

Let's throw Ben into the mix and see if the Painted Lady rips him a new one. The initial meeting seems OK, if a little fucking weird b/c Chipmunk forces him to do his Dog Voice and then she does her Dog Voice and you can fast forward 40 years and they're going to be the Creepy Grandparents You Don't Like to Visit. Sis and Ben sit down and she's much nicer to him! Oh, Sis lets it slip that she's been divorced. NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED. I'd hate to see what she did to that poor bastard.

Next day, Ben & Chip take the inevitable Helicopter Ride and she squeals and points and says "Island!!!!" which is correct! That is an island! Then it's off to the Healing Mud Bath and Ash is all "I feel like a kid again!" and then does her weird imitation of someone being Sexy and the whole thing is way uncomfortable.

Then there's another date with JP. I'm not gonna lie, it's kinda boring. Blah blah blah love talk and then he gives her a photo album and nothing happens. Whatever.

Let's just get to Proposal Day. As with every season, Proposal Day is punctuated by Journaling and Long Walks Staring Meaningfully at The Water.

Dear Diary, today is a very special OMG READING RAINBOW IS ON!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!

OK, time to do this thing. Wow, Ben looks like a Mormon missionary in that suit. At least JP looks like he's maybe put on a suit before. OK, here comes Ben popping out of the seaplane. They might as well have funeral music playing because it's obvious what's gonna happen here. So he gets down on one knee and she's all "Sorry!" and it's really hard and Ben says "Have a nice life together," when what he means is "Have a nice life together IN THE BURN UNIT." He gets put in an Open Boat that putters sadly towards a bleak horizon.

Here comes JP. Blah blah blah I love you so much and yes they're getting married and I kinda wish Bentley would parachute in right now with an Uzi and then he's like "PROPOSE THIS, MOTHERFUCKER" and blasts JP away and then scoops up Ashley and whoa, I don't know where that came from. Anyway, REO Speedwagon makes a couple of bucks for the first time this decade because they're playing "I Can't Fight This Feeling" over the Gauzy Montage and that's about it.

Please meet these former Miss California contestants

For complicated and boring reasons, I recently had the occasion to come across the Miss California website which features all of last year's contestants and all I have to say is wow. I think my favorite thing about it is that it appears that the contestants have made a concerted effort to look like the area they're representing. You know how like on Miss Universe they're always wearing their colorful native garb? Same thing.

They're also from very very specific geographic areas! Like, this is Charlotte Giustiniani, from "North Brentwood." Not Brentwood, mind you, but NORTH Brentwood:

WHOA, BRITTANY HIGH FROM LARCHMONT VILLAGE,I just got arrested for looking at your picture. Did someone offer you candy or something to come down to their basement for your photo shoot?



I gotta be careful because you know these chicks are all Googling themselves 24/7 and I don't want them to find my blog and then go "Oh, what a fucking asshole," even though I'm totally used to that.

Just a couple more, though, cause this is totally fun.

Erika Robertson is from "Honey Bee Haven," which sounds like a syndicated children's TV show. She's got a real Black Swan thing going on:



OK, now you guess one. Where's Holly Doll from, you think?



Got your guess? Ready? She's Miss East Sacramento! I know, right?

I got one more, and she's my fave. Please meet Jael Lloyd, Miss Glendale:



The headband! The peace sign tattoo! We will get high and listen to Ariel Pink on vinyl and drink homemade sangria and just have a blast. Miss Glendale doesn't care. She's down for anything.

Have a nice weekend.

Crime Report

Whoa, there is a lot of weirdness in the past 24 to 36 hours. Let's start off with Alex Trebek:

Alex Trebek, host of the television game show "Jeopardy," was injured early Tuesday as he chased a burglar in his San Francisco hotel.

The longtime game show host appeared on crutches Wednesday to host the National Geographic World Championship at Google Inc.'s Mountain View headquarters.

"It happened at 2:30 a.m., chasing a burglar down the hallway of my San Francisco hotel, when my Achilles tendon ruptured and I then fell on carpet, bruising the other leg in process. Surgery on Friday," Trebek said, according to Patch.com. A spokeswoman at the Marriott Marquis confirmed the incident took place at that hotel.

San Francisco police officials confirmed a burglary at a San Francisco hotel early Tuesday, but would not identify Trebek, 71, as the victim. Lt. Troy Dangerfield said two people were asleep in a hotel room when "around 3 a.m., one of the victims awoke to notice someone in the room and then noticed the suspect leaving the hotel room."

Hmmmm. Does anything about this sound perhaps maybe somewhat suspicious to you? I mean, how does some rando chick get into a hotel room in the middle of the night? I dfon't know about you, but I always use every goddam locking mechanism they have on the doors, and there's always one that keeps the door from being opened from the outside, like a chain or that weird U-lock thing that flips over the knob thing fuck I don't know what it's called but you know what I'm talking about.

Now, I don't want to engage in rank speculation, but I just want to say that it's possible - possible - that Alex and his +1 met the suspect, "Lucinda Moyers," at the View Lounge and closed that place and then maybe suggested they blow a couple of rails back in Alex's room and everyone was having a good time when Alex went to the bathroom and the +1 was otherwise engaged and Lucinda thought she'd make a break for it and grabbed his wallet and took off and Alex came out and was all "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BITCH DOING" and took off down the hall and ruptured his Achilles. PROBABLY NOT, but I'm just saying it's possible.

I also love the pic that SFGate went with:

No flash photography! I'm doing key bumps over here! Aaaahhhhh! Bright light!

Let us now turn to the world of Aviation. Regular readers of this space are well-aware of my sometime troubles with Air Travel. I tried communicating with the airline, but by then the troubles have long passed and I'm not that mad anymore. Brothers "Jonathan and Luis Baez, both of Las Piedras, Puerto Rico," have a way of more directly and immediately communicating their dissatisfaction with their carrier: punch out the fucking pilot!!!!

A man punched an American Airlines pilot who kicked him off a flight from Miami, and he and his brother then attacked the pilot again before bystanders tackled the brothers in the terminal, officials said Thursday.

Jonathan and Luis Baez, both of Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, were arrested at Miami International Airport. They had been aboard American Airlines Flight 1755 bound for San Francisco on Wednesday night, according to an arrest affidavit.

While the plane taxied away from the gate, a flight attendant noticed 27-year-old Jonathan Baez was sleeping and had not buckled his seat belt, police said. She tried to wake him, but she told police that Baez was unresponsive and appeared to be intoxicated or on drugs.

The pilot turned the plane around and returned to gate D51.

Luis Baez, 29, decided to join his brother as he was being escorted off the plane. As the brothers walked toward the aircraft's exit door, they became belligerent, and Luis Baez told the pilot, "When you fly to San Juan I will have you killed," according to the arrest report.

The brothers walked off the plane, but then Jonathan Baez returned and punched the pilot in the face and hit the flight attendant in the shoulder when she tried to intervene, police said.

Both brothers attacked the pilot again in the jet bridge and chased him in the terminal, according to the arrest report.

Other flight crew members and passengers held down the brothers until police arrived.

The only appropriate sentence in a case like this: middle seats between two fat guys with colds for life.

Finally, let us turn to a crime that is shocking in the extreme because it occurred at a place where so many of us feel safe: the Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma. Some Guy from Tiburon and his girlfriend were taking the tour and whatnot when they ran into some Stranger Danger:

Officers arrested a man who was taking a tour of a brewery in Petaluma Tuesday evening after he allegedly robbed another tour member at knifepoint, police said.

Ben Davis, 26, of Windsor allegedly befriended the victim, a 24-year-old Tiburon man, and his girlfriend while taking a tour of the Lagunitas Brewing Company brewery.

Police said Davis confronted the victim with a knife in a restroom during the tour and demanded his wallet.

Davis allegedly took the wallet, left the brewery and drove away. Officers responded to the brewery around 5:20 p.m. and learned that the victim's girlfriend had taken a picture of Davis before the alleged robbery.

Now, I'm no Criminal Mastermind or anything, but I feel like once my victim photographs me, I'm either (a) calling off the Planned Bathroom Knife Robbery, or (b) taking the fucking camera too.

Anyway, Ben Davis of Windsor, way to harsh Tiburon Man's mellow.

Be careful out there, folks.

TK's Better Tour of San Francisco

Got some of the Wife's relatives in town! It's her brother, who grew up in Ireland and now lives in New Zealand, and his New Zealander kids. They're all super-nice and awesome and everything. I volunteered to show 'em around SF this afternoon. Now, anyone could go see the sea lions at Pier 39 and whatnot, but where's the fun in that? I have my own tour of SF that beats the shit out of that:

Portsmouth Square

Kearny and Clay Streets

"The Sydney Ducks were this Australian gang, duh, that pretty much owned the waterfront around Broadway and Pacific. On May 3, 1851, one of the Ducks was seen running out of a shop on the southern side of Portsmouth Square just before the building started burning. The fire destroyed something like 2000 buildings, and was so bright you could see it in Monterey. They apparently set the fire so they could loot shit when people fled. A few Aussies were lynched a couple of months later and that seemed to have the desired effect."

Erno Tattoo

252 Fillmore

"That's where I got my first tattoo. I was drinking with my friend Jim at 13% on Haight, which was this bar where the Underground SF is now, and I stood up and said 'I guess I'm gonna go get a tattoo,' and I walked up there and sat down and got one. I was pretty lit. The less said about the tattoo, the better. Erno's is long gone now. So is 13%."

Church of Satan

6114 California Street



Wiki can tell the story better than me:

The Black House is a building that formerly stood at 6114 California St. in San Francisco, California, in the United States. Though the building is sometimes referred to as a mansion, photographs of the building taken just before its destruction show that it was a moderately sized single family home, considerably smaller than the two small apartment buildings on either side of the property. According to public records, it was listed at 2,205 square feet and constructed in the year 1905.

The house was used by Anton LaVey as the headquarters of his Church of Satan from 1966 until his death in 1997. LaVey conducted Satanic seminars and rituals at the house; one of the most notorious such rituals was the Satanic baptism of his daughter Zeena Schreck in 1967, punctuated by LaVey speaking the words "Hail Satan!" over the nude body of a female acting as the 'Satanic Altar'.

Public ceremonies were performed at the house until 1972. LaVey lost ownership of the house in 1991 as the result of a court settlement resulting from his separation from Diane Hegarty, but LaVey was allowed to reside at the Black House until his death.

Following LaVey's death, members of the Church of Satan unsuccessfully attempted to raise funds to repurchase the house, and it was demolished on October 17, 2001. A duplex now stands in its place.

A duplex! Man, Satan, that fucking SUCKS.

Imperial Palace restaurant

816 Washington Street

"Two and a half stars on Yelp. Tammie W. says that 'the selection was rather heavy on pork and shrimp and gone were the forays into vegetarian choices,' whatever the fucks that means. But we don't care about the food. This used to be the Golden Dragon, site of the Golden Dragon Massacre, a shootout between the Joe Boys and Wah Ching on September 4, 1977. 5 people got killed and 11 injured. Even more tragic was James Woods' hair in the 1989 film True Believer, which was loosely based on the incident."



Nightmarish.

The Furniture Mart

1355 Market St.

"This is the future home of Twitter. Twitter may be cool and all, but I bet you anything they will never, ever have a party like Jack Davis had on his 50th birthday at the Furniture Mart penthouse. Here's how Cintra Wilson described it:

In a nutshell, for those of you from points elsewhere, this Jack Davis guy, an openly gay and notoriously "outrageous" political consultant who is generally believed to have gotten the last two S.F. mayors elected and whose current client is the 49ers, who are trying to get the voters to approve a bond initiative to finance their new stadium, had his friends throw him a 50th birthday party that was attended by a slurry of big polyurethane-headed politicos in smart little suits and ties. The party, replete with multi-sexual go-go sluts and a glory hole wall, climaxed with a guy named Steve Leyba getting a pentagram carved on his back and being pissed on and sodomized with a bottle of Jack Daniel's by my old friend, vampire/lesbian/dominatrix/Satanist/junkie/poet/performance-artist Danielle Willis.

Top that, Twitter. Also, more Satanists! Yay!"

Corner of Haight and Stanyan

Haight and Stanyan Streets

"Let's stop here for some weed."

Corner of Golden Gate and Hyde

Golden Gate and Hyde Streets

"That's the Post Office where the homeless guys pick up their SSI checks. Luckily, they have multiple opportunities to spend them directly outside."

Pier 39

Embarcadero and Beach Streets

"I gotta stop at Krazy Kaps and We Be Knives and then OF COURSE we can look at the sea lions. I'm not heartless. Also, Red Jack Saloon is like 4 blocks away and it's probably been long enough that they wouldn't remember last time I was there and I could go in for a pint."

That's it. I'm beat. KMAGYOYO.

Trip Report: Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

I just got back from visiting my Dad in Tennessee for his birthday (Happy Birthday, Dad! Please stop working harder than me, you're making me look bad!) and I went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum for the first time in my life and you know what? Old-time country music stars were gangsta as fuck.

Oh, before we get to that, here's the sign on the front door:

No, those aren't my sandals reflected in the front door. I don't wear fucking sandals. Those are my adidas Samoas, though. Anyway, NO WEAPONS. First museum I've ever been to where you had to be told not to bring weapons in. It sure as fuck doesn't say NO WEAPONS on the front door of the Louvre! TAKE THAT YOU PUSSY-ASS FRENCH MUSEUM!!!

Anyway, these country music guys used to booze harder and take more drugs and do more chicks than anyone else. They were basically the Motley Crue of their day.

Check out Gram Parsons' sweet Nudie suit with the marijuana leaf embroidery:



This next thing, though, blew my mind. Hank Williams shot some squirrels and then had them mounted by a taxidermist to look like they were playing in a little squirrel band and then displayed this gross little tableau in his house. My picture of it didn't turn out well, but I found this one online:



Welcome these fellas to your nightmares for the next few weeks. Anyway, Hank Williams took painkillers by the fistful and was a full-time drunk and still was one of the most most influential songwriters for both country and rock of all time.

And how about George Jones? Here, he tells it best:

Once, when I had been drunk for several days, Shirley decided she would make it physically impossible for me to buy liquor. I lived about eight miles from Beaumont and the nearest liquor store. She knew I wouldn't walk that far to get booze, so she hid the keys to every car we owned and left. But she forgot about the lawn mower. I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat. A key glistening in the ignition.

I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did.

I fucking love George Jones. Here's some for you right now:

The Bachelorette: A Very Special All-Crying Episode!

Like many of you, or nobody else in the world, I spent last night flipping back and forth between The Trials of Ashley Chipmunk on DVR and the 13-inning marathon that the Giants eventually won and so forgive me if I accidentally write about Chipmunk's date with Jeremy Affeldt or seem to remember Bentley bunting in the 11th. ANYWAY.

Solo date with Ben C. I have no memory of this anonydude. Chipmunk tells us that she's been working with "Flash Mob America" to coordinate the perfect Flash Mob. Oh Christ. Flash Mob America's website is down today, I assume because there are thousands of mouthbreathing jelly donuts who have never heard the term "Flash Mob" and are furiously looking it up on AOL today but their Tumblr says they are "a nationwide, full service Flash Mob production company with an extensive community of passionate Flash Mob enthusiasts from all over the country!" Oh fuck you.

Anyway, they go to some fancy-ass strip mall with a lawn called "The Americana" in fucking Glendale and sit on the tiny patch of grass while tourists and shopaholics photograph them like they're snow leopards or retarded monkeys. Then Flash Mob America shows up for a carefully packaged and rehearsed spontaneous dance exhibition to "Like a G6" and God if I never hear that song again it'll be too soon. Oh look, Far East Movement is here because I guess donating bone marrow or going to a poetry slam wasn't painful enough.

(At this point, I got a text from an associate that said "Helicopters: Out. Asians: In" but I didn't understand it at all until she clarified that Far East Movement contains Asians but it's cool because she's 1/4 Asian.)

They have dinner at the Hilton Checkers (really, Hilton? Hilton Checkers? The fuck?) and Ben C. is apparently dining on pharmaceutical grade cocaine because he starts babbling wildly about wanting to "live in a bubble with somebody" which is in fact an "unrealistic idealistic bubble where we're convinced we're more in love than any other couple that ever lived" and then sucks in air through his teeth and goes "MAN I FUCKING LOVE THE HILTON CHECKERS AND BEING ON THIS SHOW. FUCKING LOVE IT." Chipmunk seems to like this mania.

Back at Douche Ranch, Mask Guy takes Ash aside and is ready to take off the mask and he does it and OMG IT'S COREY HAIM HE IS STILL ALIVE oh wait no, it's just another jerkoff with a Failed Dating Strategy. Whatever.

For our Group Date, a bunch of us will go to the Comedy Store in LA and do a Hi-Fucking-Larious roast of Ashley. I'm running long here, so I'll condense it: Small boob joke; small boob joke; small boob joke; William says he wishes it was Emily or Chantal on the show instead of Chipmunk; small boob joke. WHOOPS! Ashley cries and cries. Bentley goes to comfort her in his menacing way and says her boobs are great and chuckles evilly and SHE EATS THAT SHIT UP. Meanwhile, William keeps hitting himself in the head with his shoe and going "Stupid! Stupid!" Dramatic shots of him wandering the streets of West Hollywood. Ashley is chatting with Demasked Guy, who tries to comfort her by telling her he adopted a three-legged dog. CHRIST MASK GUY CAN'T YOU DO ANYTHING RIGHT? Also, her fake eyelashes are now all wet and look like swim fins attached to her eyelids. Gross.

Next day at the Bachelorette house, Chipmunk is walking around the pool and gazing meaningfully into middle distance. She is in love with Bentley, we learn. Cut to Bentley, who says he's not "feeling it" and he "played everyone" and WTF? If by "played everyone" you mean "convinced America that I'm a psychopathic monster," then yes. He goes over there to tell her he's splitting. He makes up some shit about missing his daughter but tells us secretly it's just because he's not feeling it. Chipmunk cries cries cries cries. How will she go on without this emotionless crapmonster in her life? He's off to go home and tend to the severed heads in his fridge and torture some animals or whatever. Chicks love assholes. It is so true.

But now who will treat me like shit? PLEASE DON'T GO!!!

So she's got to pull herself together for a date with JP Gordon-Levitt. This date is apparently ordering Chinese food and sitting on the floor in PJs while she cries about Bentley. What is he, her fat best friend? Maybe they'll braid each other's hair and make collages! He gets the Sympathetic Friend Rose. Then they make out.

No pre-Rose Ceremony cocktail party b/c Chipmunk is still devastated about Psycho Killer leaving. Let's go straight to the cuts. She is wearing a dress made from crumpled aluminum foil. Maybe she and JP did crafts last night too! I fast-forwarded through most of this but I can report that she cut Mask Guy, who can now form a traveling circus with his three-legged dog, and some guy named Chris who I didn't know was on the show. That's about it.

Four things

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings today.

First, I love this story:

Teen Discovers Promising Cystic Fibrosis Treatment

A 16-year-old from the Toronto area used a supercomputer system to find a new drug combination that shows potential in treating the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis, and won top honors for his work.

Marshall Zhang, an 11th-grade student at Richmond Hill's Bayview Secondary School, received first place Tuesday (May 10) in the 2011 Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge, a contest in which students conduct their own research projects with the help of mentors.

Impressive, no? But the best part of the story is at the end:

Now Zhang and a trio of Montreal students who took second place for their technique for making sorbet without gelatin move on to compete against U.S. and Australian teams at the International BioGENEius Challenge in Washington, D.C., June 27.

That's right. FIRST PLACE: CURING MOTHERFUCKING CYSTIC FIBROSIS. Second place: Making sorbet without gelatin!!! SCIENCE. IT SOLVES THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS.

Second, have you ever wanted to see the inside of the Old Mint? Here's your chance! This weekend there's some kind of art show thing at the Old Mint and you can totally get in there and wander around and do whatever it is you do. Our pals over at Dusty Modern will even get you in for free if you're too cheap to pay the $5 admission. SUPER COOL!!!!!!

Third, there is no fucking way you will believe this, but Debra Saunders said some more stupid shit! SHOCKING, I KNOW. In her latest inanity, "Was Sarah Palin done in by Trig "birther" story?", Debra postulates that it was the (admittedly insane) rumors that Palin pretended to give birth to Trig to cover up her daughter's teen pregnancy that tanked Palin's credibility with the American people.

Oh, yeah, Debra, that is definitely what did it. It couldn't have been the epically disastrous interviews she did with Katie Couric or her repeatedly blaring absurdities on those rare occasions when she was able to form an English sentence or her sneering approach to, well, everything, or maybe quitting her job as the Governor of Alaska for no coherent reason at all, could it? Couldn't have been any of those things. No, it was probably a rumor about her kid's birth that maybe - maybe - 10 percent of the American public has even HEARD. God, the stupid never stops with Debra Saunders.

[Oh, and one more thing - even if, in some alternate universe that Debra Saunders calls home, the Trig thing really did bring down Sarah Palin, she fucking deserved it. Lest we forget, Palin supported Trump's ridiculous Obama birth certificate nonsense. As ye sow, etc.]

Fourth, I can't remember the fourth thing.

Have a good weekend, errbody!

The Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory

In 1977, Jimmy Carter used the Philadelphia Experiment to travel back in time and take two dinosaur eggs from fellow Illuminatus Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home. He put one of the eggs on the Roswell UFO and sent it to England and stored the other one in a janitorial closet in the basement of the Washington Monument. One of the eggs hatched in 1926 and became Queen Elizabeth II.

Years later, Franklin Roosevelt and the Bilderberg Group engineered Pearl Harbor to benefit International Paper, who would make the ration books used during the war. It was around this time that Moses appeared to L. Ron Hubbard and gave him a microfilm that contained all Scientific Knowledge in the Universe. Unfortunately, Hubbard ate part of the microfilm, thinking it was blotter acid, and mistranslated the rest. This would be the basis of Scientology.

After the war, David Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission invented Jell-O as a mind control substance. When Jell-O proved ineffective, they switched tactics and began implanting subliminal messages in episodes of “Gunsmoke” and in Petula Clark albums. John F. Kennedy accidentally learned of the backward making operation and so Dean Martin was sent to kill him. Dean Martin is an alien. Lee Harvey Oswald just happened to be there. Jack Ruby accidentally shot Lee Harvey Oswald when he was supposed to shoot the startled-looking guy next to him, who was also an alien. This has nothing to do with the rest of this stuff; it was just some unrelated alien-on-alien violence.

Whoops.

In 1961, the second dinosaur egg hatched and Obama was born. Ironically, the egg had just been with Rockefeller in Kenya when Rockefeller was there on safari, but the egg actually hatched in the main galley of a TWA flight from Kinshasa to Montreal. When it was later learned that there may have been some alien egg residue left on the plane, it was shot down when it was flying as TWA Flight 800. The Masons decided to have a Hawaiian birth certificate prepared because the original plan was to make Hawaii and independent kingdom and Obama would be the King of Waikiki. This plan was abandoned when that title was used for a 1978 Burt Reynolds comedy that flopped at the box office.

The moon landing actually happened just as NASA reported. However, Neil Armstrong lost the film on the way home and the whole thing had to be recreated. To do this, all the Apollo 11 astronauts actually went right back to the moon and filmed the whole thing over again. There were also some aliens there too.

Most of the main Illuminati and aliens were running AT&T. They wanted AT&T broken up because one of the aliens spilled a full glass of wine on Nikola Tesla at a party in Hoboken in 1981 and there was a whole big thing about it and everyone was pissed. This ruined Tesla’s plan for him and Regis Philbin to control people by using high-intensity microbursts. Later, Tesla and Philbin invented a new people control technology, but it has only a short effective range. They are currently planning to install 726 mind control boxes in San Francisco to test the new technology.

Caution: Mind Control Box. (Photo courtesy of the SF Appeal, which is controlled by the Bohemian Club and Italian Freemasons.)

Flouride is perfectly harmless and is effective at reducing tooth decay. However, the Council on Foreign Relations spread rumors that it is harmful pretty much just for kicks.

In 1982, Obama died in a Coca-Cola and Pop Rocks accident. He was replaced by an identical, but slightly less cool, copy.

Tupac Shakur faked his own death to pursue his real interest in professional football scouting. He actually died under mysterious circumstances in 2007 after advising the San Francisco 49ers to draft Alex Smith with the first overall pick of the 2005 NFL draft.

What the hell is the deal with Rolling Stone magazine? It's for old people, right?

There's this "music" magazine called Rolling Stone. I think it was popular with kids in the 1960's. I picked one up in the airport because I only had 2 magazines on me and a long plane flight and neither Muscle & Fitness nor Penthouse Letters looked good. I also bought a $5 water.

Let's take a look at this very odd publication. This issue is called "Special Issue: Best of Rock 2011."
Adele's on the cover. She's the "Best Soul Superstar" in the "Best of Rock" edition. I guess that's cool. Adele is one of those people that everyone likes, right? Not me, especially, but everyone else in the world, apparently.

"Best Anniversary" is Pearl Jam, because it's the 20th anniversary of "Ten." I think the last time I listened to a Pearl Jam song was in 1994. But hey, an anniversary's an anniversary.

The weird thing about Rolling Stone is that it's full of rock acts that no one under 45 has thought about in 20 years. Check this out:

Page 26: "Buffalo Springfield Book First Tour Since 1968." That pretty much says it all. I don't even need to make a joke about that.

NEXT PAGE! Page 28: "Seger Turns the Page With Spring Tour." That's Bob Seger. Not counting truck commercials, he was last heard from around 1985. But if you judge music by Rolling Stone magazine, he is an incredibly Viable and Important Figure in Music.

Page 36: The "Q&A" column is with Ray Davies, who co-founded The Kinks in 1937. He appears to be about 158 years old and wants his brother to know they can still tour if they patch things up. They've been fighting about whether talkies are good for the film industry.

Page 62: In our "Best Of" package, Stevie Nicks is recognized as the "Best Hippie-Queen Earth Mother," apparently just to feature a picture of Stevie Nicks. They left off "Who Once Had People Blow Cocaine Up Her Rectum Because Her Septum Was Too Destroyed to Snort Anymore." That would get more readers I bet!

Page 66: "Best Reunion." Who do you think? Pavement, right? Guided by Voices? Gotta be Soundgarden, right? Nope. It's Rod Stewart & Jeff Beck. If this tour isn't sponsored by Polident, something has gone terribly wrong.

Page 71: One ONE PAGE, both Buddy Miller ("Best Sideman") and Jackson Browne ("Best New Roots") are featured. If you don't know who those people are, don't worry.

Now, in all fairness, the issue also has pieces on Panda Bear, the Fleet Foxes, and Odd Future, but I guess what cracked me up was that it exists in some kind of fantasy world where Bob Seger is relevant in some way.

The Debra Saunders Leap of Logic Watch

Sometimes I feel like I need to start a different blog just to deal with the inanities Debra Saunders spews forth on a regular basis. I will call it something like "Oh, Debra Saunders" or "You Are Such a Fucking Idiot, Debra Saunders" or "Debra Saunders is Wrong Again" or something like that but I would have to do every single column (with certain exceptions) and I don't have the time.

(The exceptions are that she and I are both opposed to draconian drug sentences, so I guess we can agree on one thing.)

Yesterday's column - "Obama tries to obstruct executions" - promised a bombshell! You mean the President of the United States is trying to keep individual states from enforcing the death penalty within their borders? WOW.

Except there is nothing in the story like that. Here's how it starts:

President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war - this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws - on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers.

Oh, hold on a second. "Well may have begun"? What the fuck does that mean? Did Obama begin a war on states trying to enforce their own death penalty laws? MAYBE! Does Debra Saunders drink childrens' blood from a chalice made from a piece of the True Cross? MAYBE!

Here's the evidence:

On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug given under the three-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country's 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice, which sent an e-mail declining to comment. News reports indicate that the feds had concerns that the drugs were imported improperly.

A-HA!!! That Bad Old Obama must have called up the FDA and told them not to let anyone have sodium thiopental, right? Because he secretly hates the death penalty, right?

Wait, what's this? "FDA helped two states get scarce execution drug"?

The Food and Drug Administration, which has long maintained that it has nothing to do with drugs used in executions, has quietly helped Arizona and California obtain a scarce type of anesthetic so the states could continue putting inmates to death.

The shortage of sodium thiopental has disrupted executions around the country. But newly released documents show the FDA helped import it from Britain.

Huh, so maybe the FDA was just doing its job with the shipment in Georgia, and meanwhile was actively helping other states get the drug. I guess Obama forgot to call the FDA when they were busy helping Arizona and California get the same thing.

The point is, when your worldview is that everything the president does is wrong and evil, you see all kinds of conspiracies where none exist. Never mind that Obama supports the death penalty. Why let facts like that get in the way when you can construct a fictional account of Obama somehow reaching down from the White House to stop executions in Georgia because he's secretly against the death penalty, I suppose, just like he's secretly a Muslim and secretly whatever else you want to ascribe to him.

If you object to the FDA's concerns about the importation of lethal injection drugs, that's fine. State your objections and the factual basis for them and move on. But for God's sake, Debra, no need to invent conspiracies that you can't support with actual facts. You "may well have" to stop listening to your Lizard Creature Overlords if they're feeding you this shit.

Adventures in Dentistry

I'm pretty loyal to my service providers and if I find something that works, or at least is unobjectionable, I stuck with it, which explains why I had been going to the same dentist for like 18 years. Well, really, just the same dentist's office, since the actual dentist has changed maybe 3 times and the entire staff has turned over except for one receptionist who always calls me by name and who, come to think of it, I guess I have one of the longest relationships of my adult life with.

But after 18 years I got restless and decided to take a walk on the wild side and see what else was out there. BIG MISTAKE. I went to this other dentist in the Mission who was actually kind of cute but I felt like she was kinda phoning it in. I mean, if it doesn't hurt, they can't be doing a good job, right? Plus the receptionist didn't habla Ingles all that well and I was never 100% sure when my next appointment would be because I didn't want keep saying "Excuse me?" or "I'm sorry?" with my head cocked to the side like an idiot.

So I went back to Old Dentist after like a year and a half. Old Dentist took me back but decided that I MUST BE PUNISHED FOR MY TRANSGRESSION.

Old Dentist took a look at the X-Rays and did that thing where they stick the probe up under your gums and go "3-2-3, 3-3-3, 3-4-3" and then when they say "4-5-4" the dentist and the hygienist look at each other and cluck disapprovingly. It seems that I needed a DEEP CLEANING. If you're unfamiliar, a deep cleaning is where they peel your gums back and hammer away in there with a diamond bladed chisel and also a stick made out of wolverine teeth and a radioactive gun that shoots gamma rays and pain-water into the roots of your teeth.

A deep cleaning is also a useful way of learning valuable information from a rival!

It takes two sessions because they can't novocaine your whole face at once or you'll wander into the street and die or else starve to death because you can't put food into your mouth without it falling out. So each session's like an hour and a half and the Russian hygienist is going SCRAPE SCRAPE SCRAPE and you can feel it in your skull even if you can't in your mouth because they hit you with 4 novocaine injections - no shit, FOUR - and on the whole it's not a particularly satisfying experience.

SO YESTERDAY I go back for the followup and that Russian is "You are flossing daily, no?" and I was like "YOU BET YOUR ASS I'M FLOSSING DAILY SVETLANA" and then I go "You know, that deep cleaning was like 3 weeks ago and I'm not even sure why I'm here" and she says "After deep cleaning, some patient need to return every 4 month," and I was like "NOT THIS PATIENT, YOU CRAZY RUSSKIE." She strapped on her gear and went to work for another 40 minutes with the saw and the high-pressure radioactive Water Pic and then pronounced me GOOD TO GO for another 6 months.

The moral of the story is: if you like your dentist - and by that, I mean if your dentist isn't psychotic or molesting you while you're unconscious - for God's sake, don't cheat on him/her. It's not worth it.

(Oh, one ironic note: Guess who needs a deep cleaning now? MY DOG. I wish I had gotten to be fully anesthetized like he does! Lucky sonofabitch. LITERALLY. KA-POW!)

Your San Francisco Giants Season Preview

IT IS FINALLY FUCKING HERE. We are done fucking around with Jeff Suppan and talking about cutting Barry Zito and all that other bullshit. Now it is time to return to AT&T park with thousands of fools who never saw a game before last year, at least until they get into a long losing streak in July and go "Hey, this game is boring" and go back to watching WWE or working on their lawns or whatever. Let's take a look at the season.

3/31 @ LAD Motherfucking opening day. Somehow ESPN fucked this up because the Yankees or Red Sox aren't involved in their special Pre Opening Day Extravanaganza. Crack News Team Matier and Ross over at the Chronicle warn us that if you're traveling to LA for the game, don't reach into the bullpen and grab the cap off a Dodger pitcher's head like this fucking douchebag did or you'll get in big trouble. Like, WTF dude? Anyway, I will be at a bar at an undisclosed location watching this with my Trusted Associates.

4/11 LAD Magnet Schedule Day. First game I'm going to this year. I am ALL ABOUT Magnet Schedule Day. I missed it last year because we were out of town and I was kinda heartbroken.

4/28 @ PIT This game starts at 9:35 a.m. our time? Really? Sounds like a good excuse to take a day off work and get bloodies at Clooney's for the game. Oh, you know what might be fun? We should go to Sutter Station instead and laugh at the proletariat as we sip our cocktails on a Thursday morning. GET BENT SUCKERS!!!

5/20-23 OAK The Bay Bridge Series is fun but it's also kind of a pain in the ass because there are a bunch of A's fans running around and you know what A's fans like to do more than anything? Tell you about how they're real fans you're just a bunch of wine-sipping snobs even though every time I go to an A's game there are about 5,000 people there and most of them are talking through the whole game and smoking meth in the seats and yammering about $1 hot dogs so you know what? This thing about A's fans being quote real fans unquote? Is horseshit.

6/6 WAS Here's where we separate the wheat from the chaff. Monday night in June against the fucking NATIONALS. OK, big boy, are you a fan or are you just here to wear a Panda hat? Get your ass out here on a freezing Monday night in June and we'll talk.

7/4 SD July 4 games are fun, and this one starts, oddly, at 2:05, although I kinda like that start time because you can go to brunch late-ish and still make it in plenty of time. So, yes to 2:05 games.

7/15 NYM I'm going to this game too.

Ask me about my Miracle Weight-Loss Secret!

8/23-31 SD, HOU, CHC August has a 10-game homestand (8/1-10) and this 9-game homestand. By now, we'll have an idea of where the Giants are headed this year. The Cubs series (8/29-31) could be huge. Or maybe not! What do I look like, a psychic? OK, there will also be a massive earthquake on August 10. There you go.

9/28 COL There are only 12 home games in September, so get your tickets now. We close with a homestand against Colorado that could either be electrifying or a complete charade. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and call it now. Playoffs at the least, and probably make it to the NLCS. If they repeat, I am naming my first son Cody Buster Panda Freak. Unless somebody else has already taken that.

Why the Barry Bonds perjury trial is a complete waste of your money

As you may have heard, especially if you live in the Bay Area[*], former San Francisco Giant and all-time Major League Baseball home run leader Barry Lamar Bonds is on trial for lying to a federal grand jury about whether or not he used steroids. Contrary to what you might think, he's not on trial for actually using steroids, he's on trial for saying he didn't when he did.

Let's start out by assuming two basic premises are true:

1. Barry Bonds knowingly used steroids while he was a baseball player; and
2. Barry Bonds lied to a federal grand jury when he said otherwise.

Now, if we accept those things are true, what should the federal government do about it? What they've decided to do is to use your money (and mine, and Barry Bonds', presumably) to empanel and inconvenience 12 citizens and conduct a jury trial at some (probably not inconsequential) expense. I am more than willing to agree that people emphatically should not lie to grand juries while under oath, but is this prosecution really the way we want to spend our money?

Yes, Barry Bonds once looked like this.

I mean, I guess it SENDS A MESSAGE that you won't get away with lying under oath, so that's great, but (1) how many people are ever put in the position of needing to lie under oath, and (2) is this trial going to convince them not to, if their ass is on the line? "Well, I really want to lie and deny my part in that multinational cocaine-smuggling conspiracy, but I don't want what happened to Barry to happen to me, so I guess I'll admit it.") We can all agree that it would be best if people told the truth ton grand juries, and that Barry should suffer some consequence for not doing so, BUT BUT BUT prosecutors routinely pick and choose what crimes to prosecute and what crimes to let go.

Whether you like it or not, some other criminal is currently not getting prosecuted in federal court while Barry is. Does it make sense? I mean, the feds could be going after the investment bankers who conspired with bond rating agencies to award AAA ratings to mortgage-backed securities that the I-bankers and ratings agencies both knew were about as valuable as a used Scratcher, but instead we get this.

Here's the Real Story: The vast majority of people in Barry's position would reach some kind of plea deal and this would never go trial, because the government has essentially unlimited resources in the context of a given criminal case and 99.9% of the citizenry does not. Ergo, they can't afford to go to trial, and they make some kind of deal. But Barry DOES HAVE, essentially, unlimited resources, and nothing better to do, so he CAN go to trial. And the government doesn't have to dismiss the case - I mean, they get paid to do this - and before long you have a dick-size contest between the defense attorney and the prosecutor and before you know it we have the spectacle of 12 hapless citizens being forced to listen to testimony about the size of Barry Bonds' testicles as part of the government's effort to get him sentenced to spend a few months in his mansion. YAY JUSTICE!!!

And then the prosecutor can go off and write his book "Busting Barry's Balls: How I Brought Down the Home Run King" and Barry can go back to being a jerk and we will forget the whole thing.

ONE FINAL NOTE: Yes, I am a Giants fan, if not a particularly huge Barry Bonds fan. I happen to STRONGLY DISLIKE Roger Clemens, but I think his upcoming prosecution for lying to Congress about whether he used steroids is just as stupid. He should be prosecuted for naming his kids Koby, Kory, Kacy, and Kody, if anything.

[*] Does it bug you when people use the word "Bay" to refer to the "Bay Area"? Like, when someone says "She's back in the Bay," I always picture the person at the bottom of the Bay, struggling for breath underwater.

Guy smoking crack on the N Judah becomes Important News Story

During my various perambulations around the Internets yesterday, I saw, as I'm sure many of you did, the story, with accompanying video, about the guy smoking crack on the N Judah. As far as I can tell, it appeared first on Uptown Almanac, under the headline "N Judah Drives Man to Smoke Crack, Uptown Reader Forgets How to Hold iPhone." The story was 10% about a guy smoking crack on the N Judah and 90% about how to hold an iPhone while shooting video. Anyway.

I next saw it at the venerable SFist, which seemed more interested in the smoking-crack-on-the-N-Judah angle:

The folks at Uptown Almanac bring our attention to a video of a gentlemen taking candid pulls from his crack (presumably it's crack, since marijuana emits a stench that, by comparison, lingers in the air) pipe. Really, it's an astounding, not to mention ballsy, thing to do while riding a seemingly crowded N Judah train. Addiction will do remarkable things to a person, we guess. Alas.

The film was shot yesterday by YouTube user sizlinseagulsoup. Check it out below.

The story then migrated to the Lamestream Media, where it appeared last night on Channel 2 news. Since the video has since been removed from YouTube because it "depicts harmful activities," the only place you can see the video now is on the KTVU website.

(Sotto voce to YouTube: Yes, crack smoking is bad, but aren't you being a little judgmental? Isn't Russian teenager amateur bungee jumping a potentially harmful activity?)

ANYWAY, I didn't really think too much about it, having seen way worse on many Muni lines, including the N Judah, when Sal Castaneda - who I love, don't get me wrong - pipes up on the Twitter this morning:

I have a couple of thoughts about this.

1. The person who shot the video is apparently YouTube user "sizlinseagulsoup," who is probably a real person and probably contactable via the "Send Message" option on YouTube. On Channel 2, no one is credited for shooting the video. I don't know if KTVU bothered to try and track down this person, but that would have been nice.

2. On that note, the whole Channel 2 story does nothing to discourage you from believing that they came up with the story themselves, when they obviously saw it on SFist or Uptown Almanac or Twitter.

3. Assuming that Sal thinks that "people sitting there very nonchalantly," as opposed to say, getting involved, is what's "incredible," oh, I beg to differ. What are they supposed to do, yell "Stop smoking crack!!!"? Here's what they know: The person is a CRACKHEAD. Crackheads have a reputation for being somewhat volatile. Who knows how this one's going to react? Google "Muni attack" sometime and tell me how brave you're feeling.

4. I don't know, this whole thing is such a What Would You Do situation that I expect John Quinones to pop up any second.