Yo, this is Miller here. I've had enough of this 'my blog's on holiday' crap. I need some shit to read! Unfortunately, I really have nothing in mind to say but still, you're reading this right now & it's better than that 'Gag Me' post that's been festering at the top since, like, Thanksgiving. I've stooped to reading other cities' Craig's List's (Sac's is THE worst) to get some entertainment. There's some argument on the NYC list about a photo of people in Sri Lanka helping with the tsunami cleanup. This one kid in the photo is wearing a Bin-Laden t-shirt - so of course there's a bunch of people saying we shouldn't send any aid now. Is it just me or is a Bin-Laden shirt kinda funny? Especially because it looks like it may be one of those religious style photos that they doctor with that somewhat holy hue so it kinda looks like a painting. I mean, shit, I went to Brazil right after 9/11 & I saw maybe 5 Bin-Laden shirts on people who were either wasted or, like, 10 years old. They just hate Bush & like that someone made him look like a stooge. I'm pretty sure they're not looking to live under some extremist Muslim rule. So yeah, I started thinking "what if I were to buy one of these shirts & try to get it back to the U.S.?". Would customs fuck with me? Or what if I got it home & wore it to Denio's or something. How long would I last? Even better, what if I were to make bootleg Bin-Laden shirts & sell them at Denio's?! Of course, something would have to be spelled wrong on it. "Ben-Ladin Is My Homeboy". Or maybe a bad fake-Simpsons style drawing - "Osama Bart Laden" on a surfboard saying "Get Out Of The Way Man!". Or maybe Bin-Laden pissing on Calvin? No, wait, pissing on a Jesus fish. OBL, drawn Simpsons style, pissing on a Jesus fish is going to make me rich! Now for some reason referring to him as OBL is making me laugh. What up OBL?!
Shit, what else? I'm trying to get a gig as a standup comedian so I was trying to think up some New Years jokes. Man, I can't think of one! I've spent half the morning trying to make some pun on Baby New Year or Happy New Year but I got nothin'. Well, I work with this dude named Ed Noyer & I thought of saying "Happy No-yer" to him - but that's not a joke you can just bust out at Laughs Unlimited open mic. I'd have to be all "OK everyone, I work with this guy....".
Oh wait, here's a good one - when you leave work today, loudly proclaim "See you next year!" Watch their jaws drop & then, suddenly, they get it & they're all "you da man!". Get's 'em every year. Little known fact: I made that joke up years ago & now it's everywhere. I ain't mad though.
Here's some I just thought up:
What did OBL say to Baby New Year?
"Get out of the way Man!"
Who are Baby New Year's parents?
Babymomma & Babydaddy New Year
That's all you get - don't steal them! I was gonna come up with some stupid Adam & Eve joke like: Why didn't Adam go out on New Years? Cuz he was chillin' with New Years Eve - but I deemed it too stupid. Ask any comedian - you GOT to have standards.
See you next year!!!!
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Friday, December 17, 2004
Gag me!
Check out the link Erik posted about the proposed CADA building richy lofts: http://www.capitollofts.com/docs/info.html
I quote:
For loft-owners, home is a creative urban sanctuary—a personal realm of peace with easy access to the urban energy just outside their door. It's a space that offers the ultimate in design freedom while still providing all the comforts of home. Lofts are exciting and inviting, and are as individualistic as the people who own them.
Barf!! These same statements would not be true if we were talking about apartments. Only "lofts". I haven't noticed a lot of "urban energy" in my neighborhood, unless by that you mean "old people obsessively raking and re-raking leaves". I often wonder where they are getting the energy to creat these giant leaf piles that completely block all parking spaces in the street. I guess they must be tapping into the urban loft energy of the R street corridor! These people are giving lofting a bad name!
I quote:
For loft-owners, home is a creative urban sanctuary—a personal realm of peace with easy access to the urban energy just outside their door. It's a space that offers the ultimate in design freedom while still providing all the comforts of home. Lofts are exciting and inviting, and are as individualistic as the people who own them.
Barf!! These same statements would not be true if we were talking about apartments. Only "lofts". I haven't noticed a lot of "urban energy" in my neighborhood, unless by that you mean "old people obsessively raking and re-raking leaves". I often wonder where they are getting the energy to creat these giant leaf piles that completely block all parking spaces in the street. I guess they must be tapping into the urban loft energy of the R street corridor! These people are giving lofting a bad name!
Separated at birth?
woodhouse (2)
Originally uploaded by becklerg.
If anyone doubts the resemblance, here is a comparison shot, courtesy of helpful reader Dr. Keat. Unfortunately, I can't upload them side-by-side cuz I don't have photoshop.
See ya next year!!
Well, I survived the work party and it wasn't too bad. I will probably not be blogging for a while because I get the next two weeks off (yay academia!). See you January 3rd!!
Thursday, December 16, 2004
mandatory fun
My hits have reached an all-time high today. I can tell you-all are slacking at work in advance of the holidays just like me. Dear G-d the mandatory work fun is going on as we speak. I keep sneaking out to go kill time in the bathroom and check my email. They will start with the dirty jokes soon. Pray for me.
p.s.-this sierra nevada celebration pale ale is really good, though
p.s.-this sierra nevada celebration pale ale is really good, though
Now that's a beard!
cassidys
Originally uploaded by becklerg.
I am intrigued by this Cassidys show that is written up in the SN&R: http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-12-16/music.asp
I like country-ish rock and it would be interesting to see a show at Mother India, but I am loathe to give any support to a band named "Ghetto Moments". That is the worst name for a band, hands down, ever in the history of rock. And I do remember that there was a local band called Operation Milksnatch when I make that statement. That article where they explained that everyone has "ghetto moments" such as when they noticed a crack in their minivan window made me nauseous. Anyway, good luck to the Cassidy's and maybe I will see them soon. That reminds me, I heard someone say "I vomited in my mouth a little" again last night and I must reiterate that I wish this phrase would go away.
That's really sad about Gary Webb taking his own life. It seems like his career was on a downward spiral ever since he wrote about the CIA/contra/crack connection. I don't really know a lot about that story, but my impression was that most of his allegations were not discredited but that the San Jose Mercury News found a way to railroad him out of the job. Maybe I should do some research about this. I should buy that book about it that Alexander Cockburn wrote. I saw Cockburn speak at Time Tested quite a few years ago and I remember being impressed when he talked about it, but of course I can't remember the content of his talk (thanks, long-term memory).
Heather clued me into that Bee article about the resoration of the Globe Mill in Alkali Flats. This could be a good thing. That's a very picturesque building and I would hate to see it torn down. I wonder if that factory around S and 11th or so (I can't remember the exact cross streets, thanks spatial memory) is next. You know, the one with the water tanks or whatever that look like muppet eyes on the top. That would make cool apartments.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
boring
Sorry, I don't feel like posting today. I was just gonna post a review of dollar hand roll night at Ricksha but it can be summed up as "just barely worth a dollar, or maybe 75 cents". Nothing too exciting there. Maybe I'll have something better tomorrow.
he wuz robbed
Here's a link for the bored: http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/octopus/octopus1.html
Rob always writes entertaining stories about his Halloween costumes, and this one is great. I can't believe the bottle of tequila and the margarita won the contest!
Rob always writes entertaining stories about his Halloween costumes, and this one is great. I can't believe the bottle of tequila and the margarita won the contest!
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Petrovich=Putz
I overheard a snippet of dialogue at Naked Lounge this morning. This convo was taking place between three fifty-ish possible state workers (nothing wrong with state workers, just a guess)
Woman: Well if someone tells him, then he's been told
Man 1: Then he hasn't been told.
Man 2: I can't imagine Harry telling him, can you?
All: laughter
Maybe everybody else has already read that SN&R article with Commandant Petrovich about how he painted over that mural on Profound Sound, but I just read it yesterday and I was blown away. He is so arrogant. I was never a fan of that mural and I'm not too worked up over the whole issue, but what bugs me is his tone. His first quote when he is informed that some lawyers think the muralist might have a legal grievance is "tell them to bring it". Oooh. So tough. Is this land development or ultimate fighting championship? His second quote is, "I do the right things in this town, not the wrong things.". Really? How about your planned Rite Aid on S and 21st? In my opinion, as a downtown resident, this will be a decidedly Wrong Thing. That is a perfectly nice residential corner with no ugly businesses in sight. If I need to go to a pharmacy, there is the Wallgreens on Broadway, the Rite Aid on Alhambra, the pharmacy inside the new Safeway which is a 4 whole blocks away, the Wallrite or whatever the fuck right by the Beat, and, finally if I choose to patronize a local business rather than a megacorp, there is a cute little pharmacy right around the corner from my house. How many fucking pharmacies can open within a ten-block radius? And then as far as boasting about your wonderful addition to the public art sphere, your stupid post-modern water tower and big shiny horse are nothing to brag about. Do you realize that when you boast about the size and cost of these "artworks" you are being a cliche of a vulgar rich dude? Why don't you just put on a powdered wig and tell the muralist to eat some cake? Man that last sentence is so dumb but you know what I mean.
Mike and I ate at a homey little place last night, you may have heard of it, it's called the Spaghetti Factory. Now I normally prefer to eat at places without the words "factory" or "shack" or "craphole" in the name, but my hunger overrode these qualms. As we entered, we were led to sit inside a train car, which seemed really funny to me just then, probably due to the aforementioned extreme hunger. If you haven't been to this Factory of Fettucine and Fun, let me describe the ambiance to you. It is the epitome of understated elegance. At first, the eye is drawn in many different directions, so I just let myself gaze at will as I soaked in the bordello-like interior. I ordered a glass of cab sauv. I wanted more wine, but I was afraid the carafe of house chianti would taste like battery acid, so I stuck with one glass. All the meals come with an iceberg salad and the creamy basil dressing is pretty good. I got the spinach and cheese ravioli. Mike got the spaghetti with phallic sausage. His sausage was great. And so big! My ravioli was mushy and not so good. The problem with going to places like this to save money is that you somehow always end up spending the same amount of money that you would spend for a good meal. For instance, with tip my share was about 16 or 17 bucks. Now, maybe at somewhere better I may not have been able to afford a glass of wine, but then again, I may have.
Overheard convo between two cops as we left:
Cop 1: You remember, it was that 5150 where we broke the door down.
Cop 2: Yeah
Me to Mike (excitedly):They're talking real cop talk!
Woman: Well if someone tells him, then he's been told
Man 1: Then he hasn't been told.
Man 2: I can't imagine Harry telling him, can you?
All: laughter
Maybe everybody else has already read that SN&R article with Commandant Petrovich about how he painted over that mural on Profound Sound, but I just read it yesterday and I was blown away. He is so arrogant. I was never a fan of that mural and I'm not too worked up over the whole issue, but what bugs me is his tone. His first quote when he is informed that some lawyers think the muralist might have a legal grievance is "tell them to bring it". Oooh. So tough. Is this land development or ultimate fighting championship? His second quote is, "I do the right things in this town, not the wrong things.". Really? How about your planned Rite Aid on S and 21st? In my opinion, as a downtown resident, this will be a decidedly Wrong Thing. That is a perfectly nice residential corner with no ugly businesses in sight. If I need to go to a pharmacy, there is the Wallgreens on Broadway, the Rite Aid on Alhambra, the pharmacy inside the new Safeway which is a 4 whole blocks away, the Wallrite or whatever the fuck right by the Beat, and, finally if I choose to patronize a local business rather than a megacorp, there is a cute little pharmacy right around the corner from my house. How many fucking pharmacies can open within a ten-block radius? And then as far as boasting about your wonderful addition to the public art sphere, your stupid post-modern water tower and big shiny horse are nothing to brag about. Do you realize that when you boast about the size and cost of these "artworks" you are being a cliche of a vulgar rich dude? Why don't you just put on a powdered wig and tell the muralist to eat some cake? Man that last sentence is so dumb but you know what I mean.
Mike and I ate at a homey little place last night, you may have heard of it, it's called the Spaghetti Factory. Now I normally prefer to eat at places without the words "factory" or "shack" or "craphole" in the name, but my hunger overrode these qualms. As we entered, we were led to sit inside a train car, which seemed really funny to me just then, probably due to the aforementioned extreme hunger. If you haven't been to this Factory of Fettucine and Fun, let me describe the ambiance to you. It is the epitome of understated elegance. At first, the eye is drawn in many different directions, so I just let myself gaze at will as I soaked in the bordello-like interior. I ordered a glass of cab sauv. I wanted more wine, but I was afraid the carafe of house chianti would taste like battery acid, so I stuck with one glass. All the meals come with an iceberg salad and the creamy basil dressing is pretty good. I got the spinach and cheese ravioli. Mike got the spaghetti with phallic sausage. His sausage was great. And so big! My ravioli was mushy and not so good. The problem with going to places like this to save money is that you somehow always end up spending the same amount of money that you would spend for a good meal. For instance, with tip my share was about 16 or 17 bucks. Now, maybe at somewhere better I may not have been able to afford a glass of wine, but then again, I may have.
Overheard convo between two cops as we left:
Cop 1: You remember, it was that 5150 where we broke the door down.
Cop 2: Yeah
Me to Mike (excitedly):They're talking real cop talk!
Monday, December 13, 2004
pretty lights
There's a thing in the Bee today about this semi-wingnut who crafted a 48 foot soldier out of xmas lights: http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/11754676p-12639610c.html
I emailed the reporter to ask how to get there and she replied that the directions were in the story along with the name of the neighborhood. I checked again. Uh, kinda. I may try to find it. The story mentions he's done a Jesus in lights in the past. He should have had Jesus and the soldier high fiving. That would have portrayed the true spirit of xmas. I cruised the fab 40's xmas displays last night and all I can say is yawn. Enough with the white icicle lights already! It is the civic duty of rich people to put together good xmas displays for us working folk. So put down your issue of Martha Stewart's Living, you know, the one that convinced you that white lights were "classy" instead of boring, and order the servants out to Target to buy some multicolored strings, preferable with variable racing and twinkling features. Take your cue from that non-mansion at the end of T street by the freeway overpass that has trains, a snow man that tips his hat, etc. This is what I expect from you richies, and you wouldn't want the poor people getting restless, would you? Use your giant tax cuts to hypnotize us with pretty lights, or else.
Not to just link a blog that links me, but this blog seems pretty interesting: http://www.uneasyrhetoric.net/index.php He quotes Erik's summary of the planning meeting, and even critiques it a bit. I haven't had time to check out all the content, but he has lots of local restaurant reviews.
Congrats to Out Hud, who got a really good review for their new single on pitchfork. Too bad it doesn't come out until March! What is taking so long? How long must we wait?
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/wearetheworld/04-12-13.shtml
I emailed the reporter to ask how to get there and she replied that the directions were in the story along with the name of the neighborhood. I checked again. Uh, kinda. I may try to find it. The story mentions he's done a Jesus in lights in the past. He should have had Jesus and the soldier high fiving. That would have portrayed the true spirit of xmas. I cruised the fab 40's xmas displays last night and all I can say is yawn. Enough with the white icicle lights already! It is the civic duty of rich people to put together good xmas displays for us working folk. So put down your issue of Martha Stewart's Living, you know, the one that convinced you that white lights were "classy" instead of boring, and order the servants out to Target to buy some multicolored strings, preferable with variable racing and twinkling features. Take your cue from that non-mansion at the end of T street by the freeway overpass that has trains, a snow man that tips his hat, etc. This is what I expect from you richies, and you wouldn't want the poor people getting restless, would you? Use your giant tax cuts to hypnotize us with pretty lights, or else.
Not to just link a blog that links me, but this blog seems pretty interesting: http://www.uneasyrhetoric.net/index.php He quotes Erik's summary of the planning meeting, and even critiques it a bit. I haven't had time to check out all the content, but he has lots of local restaurant reviews.
Congrats to Out Hud, who got a really good review for their new single on pitchfork. Too bad it doesn't come out until March! What is taking so long? How long must we wait?
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/wearetheworld/04-12-13.shtml
Weekend wrap-up
I'd like to retract my previous statement about my hair looking like my head had been caught in farm equipment. I've gotten nothing but compliments about it so far. I felt guilty about even writing this because my sister cuts my hair and she always does a great job. Sometimes when you have long hair it can be like a security blanket and it's weird when that's gone.
But enough about the hair already! Let's talk about second saturday. Cheesy, yes, but actually kind of cool. Even on a foggy, cold saturday night it still brought people out in droves downtown. Mike DJed at this (I can't think of an adjective besides cool or awesome, my vocabulary is stunted from living in Cali) um...intriguing furniture store at 12th and J called Time Bandits. It specializes in vintage furniture, 60's era mostly. The prices are pretty reasonable for how pristine the stuff is. For instance, you could pick up a stylish coffee table in the 50-75 dollar range. They have some amazing couches, which run a lot pricier, which makes sense because they are spotless and some of them are 40-50 years old. This store is co-owned by a guy I went to Sac State with and he's very nice and the little store dog is adorable. So, check this place out.
I went to the sellout buyout and it was OK. Not as much good stuff as I anticipated. A lot of, "I'll take stained old slips and sew two of them together and charge twenty bucks and now I'm a fashion designer" kind of stuff. I bought a T-shirt from Troy Mighty because I liked the fish design on the front, but the shirt isn't very flattering so I'll probably never rock it. Mike was very taken with a painting of a fat green bud in the back art area, but was unable to locate the artist to inquire about the price of this masterpiece.
Later that night, we drunkenly pedaled over to Red Square to catch the Feeling. That should be their slogan, Catch the Feeling! I thought they sounded really good and I liked their new songs (well, new to me, maybe not new). I bought some coffee at Red Square and proceeded to make myself an Irish coffee and get to the babbling stage of drunkeness (sorry Mario). Or maybe I wasn't so bad, I just feel dumb when I'm drunk and I talk to sober people. Another drunken bike ride in the fog on a bike with no bike light or helmet or reflector thingy (I do shit like this and then spend nights worrying about cancer!), and the night ended up at club Vince, where things degenerated into possibly the dumbest argument of all time "Beach Boys vs. Beatles". I mean really, we can all agree Beach Boys, right? That song about holding your hand is cute and all, and Rocky Raccoon is a cool little story, but those things are no match for Pet Sounds.
For those of you that are plant oriented, I'd like to recommend a trip to the Gifted Gardener on J st. They have some really pretty, cheap pots in the back which I've missed when I've been there before because the front is filled with a lot of tacky shit like harlequin masks and big ceramic frogs. They are sooo nice there, too, and will give you advice on taking care of your plants.
I'd also like to recommend that you don't try to pet the Spuds Mackenzie looking dog on T st. between 16th and 17th cuz the little motherfucker will try to bite your hand causing me to challenge him to come out from behind his fence and try that. You can bet that he didn't take me up on that challenge. Coward!!
But enough about the hair already! Let's talk about second saturday. Cheesy, yes, but actually kind of cool. Even on a foggy, cold saturday night it still brought people out in droves downtown. Mike DJed at this (I can't think of an adjective besides cool or awesome, my vocabulary is stunted from living in Cali) um...intriguing furniture store at 12th and J called Time Bandits. It specializes in vintage furniture, 60's era mostly. The prices are pretty reasonable for how pristine the stuff is. For instance, you could pick up a stylish coffee table in the 50-75 dollar range. They have some amazing couches, which run a lot pricier, which makes sense because they are spotless and some of them are 40-50 years old. This store is co-owned by a guy I went to Sac State with and he's very nice and the little store dog is adorable. So, check this place out.
I went to the sellout buyout and it was OK. Not as much good stuff as I anticipated. A lot of, "I'll take stained old slips and sew two of them together and charge twenty bucks and now I'm a fashion designer" kind of stuff. I bought a T-shirt from Troy Mighty because I liked the fish design on the front, but the shirt isn't very flattering so I'll probably never rock it. Mike was very taken with a painting of a fat green bud in the back art area, but was unable to locate the artist to inquire about the price of this masterpiece.
Later that night, we drunkenly pedaled over to Red Square to catch the Feeling. That should be their slogan, Catch the Feeling! I thought they sounded really good and I liked their new songs (well, new to me, maybe not new). I bought some coffee at Red Square and proceeded to make myself an Irish coffee and get to the babbling stage of drunkeness (sorry Mario). Or maybe I wasn't so bad, I just feel dumb when I'm drunk and I talk to sober people. Another drunken bike ride in the fog on a bike with no bike light or helmet or reflector thingy (I do shit like this and then spend nights worrying about cancer!), and the night ended up at club Vince, where things degenerated into possibly the dumbest argument of all time "Beach Boys vs. Beatles". I mean really, we can all agree Beach Boys, right? That song about holding your hand is cute and all, and Rocky Raccoon is a cool little story, but those things are no match for Pet Sounds.
For those of you that are plant oriented, I'd like to recommend a trip to the Gifted Gardener on J st. They have some really pretty, cheap pots in the back which I've missed when I've been there before because the front is filled with a lot of tacky shit like harlequin masks and big ceramic frogs. They are sooo nice there, too, and will give you advice on taking care of your plants.
I'd also like to recommend that you don't try to pet the Spuds Mackenzie looking dog on T st. between 16th and 17th cuz the little motherfucker will try to bite your hand causing me to challenge him to come out from behind his fence and try that. You can bet that he didn't take me up on that challenge. Coward!!
Friday, December 10, 2004
Hair disaster
The scandal about the rehired pervy deputy continues to brew. Apparently, these issues are voted on by a five-member civilian panel of business-leader types, which is weird. On the day all these deputies were re-hired, two of the panel weren't even there to vote. It turns out that one of the other guys has close associations with the law firm that was representing all five of the deputies. So what if he talked the other two into voting a certain way? This doesn't seem out of the question to me. It's easier to persuade two people than four. Anyway, I hope they do fire the stalker guy. What he did showed insanely poor judgement.
So I'm sporting a new look. If you see me and you think, "my G-d, what happened to Becky? Did she get her hair caught in a threshing machine? I wonder if it ripped off her ears or if they're under there?", relax, these are called "layers" and I now have approximately 4000 of them. In fact, every piece of hair on my head now rests on it's own separate layer. I'm lucky you can't layer eyebrows. But I'm not bitter or anything. I'll have to start a countdown for the three to four months it will take until I don't look like shit. This is day one. My hair is now cute, flippy, and bouncy. In other words, the complete opposite of my personality.
So I'm sporting a new look. If you see me and you think, "my G-d, what happened to Becky? Did she get her hair caught in a threshing machine? I wonder if it ripped off her ears or if they're under there?", relax, these are called "layers" and I now have approximately 4000 of them. In fact, every piece of hair on my head now rests on it's own separate layer. I'm lucky you can't layer eyebrows. But I'm not bitter or anything. I'll have to start a countdown for the three to four months it will take until I don't look like shit. This is day one. My hair is now cute, flippy, and bouncy. In other words, the complete opposite of my personality.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
stalkers with a badge
Is it nice outside or what? This weather can almost make me forget that I am stuck in putrid Davis rather than frolicking about the tree-lined streets of Sac. Here in Davis, the co-eds have been encouraged by the few rays of sun to shed 93% of their clothing and are gamboling around campus practically nude as they are wont to do.
The big sellout/buyout thing is saturday at Lotus salon, and although it's already gotten plenty of press, I think Olivia (she owns Ollipom) is really nice and I hope she makes wads of money off of it so that she can start buying clothes and expand her inventory. Maybe she doesn't even want to do that but I wish she would because it would be fun to buy clothes to try to sell to her. I always see wrong size stuff at thrift stores that might sell at her store. Here are the details: http://homepage.mac.com/oliviacoelho/Personal13.html Hmm...I was checking out her clothing line on the web page and was a little bummed to see that size 8 is her biggest size. I hate when people do that! Of course, I'm not rocking a lot of tube dresses lately so I guess I can't get too mad.
A tip to Sac residents (especially ladies): remember when you call the cops to lock up your valuables and try to put on sweats and not look too cute. Why? Cuz they might steal some of your stuff or break into your house to try to hit in you. Read about it here: http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/sacramento/story/11705501p-12594249c.html
Lame! First the sexxeee firefighters and now the stalking sherriffs. Of course, some of the theft charges could have been trumped-up (the pocketing ammo thing doesn't seem too major to me), but I can't believe they reinstated the stalker guy. How is that trespassing? That sounds more like breaking and entering to me. He seems to be a little bit psycho if he thought that would work. I'm perfectly fine with cops being held to different standards than those for other civil servants, because the people at the DMV can't pull me over, demand to come in my house, or legally carry a gun on the job.
The big sellout/buyout thing is saturday at Lotus salon, and although it's already gotten plenty of press, I think Olivia (she owns Ollipom) is really nice and I hope she makes wads of money off of it so that she can start buying clothes and expand her inventory. Maybe she doesn't even want to do that but I wish she would because it would be fun to buy clothes to try to sell to her. I always see wrong size stuff at thrift stores that might sell at her store. Here are the details: http://homepage.mac.com/oliviacoelho/Personal13.html Hmm...I was checking out her clothing line on the web page and was a little bummed to see that size 8 is her biggest size. I hate when people do that! Of course, I'm not rocking a lot of tube dresses lately so I guess I can't get too mad.
A tip to Sac residents (especially ladies): remember when you call the cops to lock up your valuables and try to put on sweats and not look too cute. Why? Cuz they might steal some of your stuff or break into your house to try to hit in you. Read about it here: http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/sacramento/story/11705501p-12594249c.html
Lame! First the sexxeee firefighters and now the stalking sherriffs. Of course, some of the theft charges could have been trumped-up (the pocketing ammo thing doesn't seem too major to me), but I can't believe they reinstated the stalker guy. How is that trespassing? That sounds more like breaking and entering to me. He seems to be a little bit psycho if he thought that would work. I'm perfectly fine with cops being held to different standards than those for other civil servants, because the people at the DMV can't pull me over, demand to come in my house, or legally carry a gun on the job.
Guest post on city planning
Has anyone seen the new News and Review? It has a big story about local bloggers but they are obviously missed the real story cuz there was ne'ery a mention of Heckasac to be seen. The blogs that got mentioned are like the Low Flying Owls of blogs, and I'm like the Knock Knock of blogs. Underrated!
This is an account of the recent city planning meeting about the J, K, and L street corridor. It was written by Erik DeKok who is a pro planner, so he's not just lofting when he talks about this stuff:
I would say that the turnout was quite good, probably at least 60 or 75 people. The same facilitator who did the October charrette/workshop was there to make the big presentation, but the Mayor of course started things off. She mentioned how she was “not surprised”at the ideas that came out of the October workshop. She also polled the room to see if anyone supportedthe rumored Wal-Mart proposal for Downtown Plaza. Everyone giggled, not a hand was raised, and she said something like “I thought so.”
But anyway, the facilitator did a pretty good job of summing up the results. A slick 14 –page color summary of ideas and graphics from the October workshop was distributed. People want lots more housing downtown,but not necessarily on K Street. For some reason,more of the groups chose J Street for new housing than K. But a lot of people also felt strongly about mixed-use on K Street, which I interpret (although maybe not necessarily the consultants) to mean housing or offices above ground-floor retail in the traditional urban format. A very strong desire was voiced for preservation and adaptive reuse of as many historic buildings as possible, and that also is not a big surprise. On the commercial / “catalyst projects”end of things, there was a strong desire for entertainment and restaurants as well on K Street, but housing was still voiced as the strongest use for the“catalyst” sites that had been predetermined by the City and/or consultant prior to the workshop. These are just some of the “16 clear areas of general consensus” that were enumerated out of the groupthink.
The consultant boiled the “16 clear areas” into “3 general directions” for the City to consider for revitalization of the JKL Corridors:
1.) J Street Housing, focusing on residential catalyst project will focusing retail and other infill on K Street, and no “catalyst projects” on K;
2.) Residential/Mixed-Use Catalyst on K Street,focusing mixed-use (retail & housing) catalysts on K,with other possible housing catalyst projects on J;
3.) Destination Nodes on K Street, which would involve“major destination-oriented catalyst projects” on K,“complemented by housing on J”.
After the presentation, there was about 45 minutes of question & answer time. There was, of course, concern voiced about what to do about affordable housing &displacement of SRO & homeless folks. And as was voiced strongly in the October workshop, a strong insistence about moving the Greyhound depot to the planned Intermodal Transportation Facility at theAmtrak depot, and doing it right away. Many felt that some of the transportation ideas were misinterpreted. Some felt that maybe putting some auto traffic back onK wouldn’t be so bad, and that the general scheme ofc onverting some north-south streets from one-way back to two-way needed to be analyzed in the context of the greater downtown traffic patterns, as was done for the broader Central City Two-Way Conversion project.
A few interesting developers showed up. Moe Mohanna,the guy who owns a ton of property along K between 7th and 9th, was at both the workshop and the follow-upmeeting, although he didn't say anything publicly. A developer who is proposing another high-rise condo type building in the 30-40 story range started a major rant and rave about how the real problem was not vision or what people wanted, but the “red tape” that people needed to “help us” get rid of to get more housing downtown. Anna and I chuckled, it was so blatant, and there was a lot of murmuring in the room at that point. Similarly, another investor/developer type (I believe from Rubicon Partners?) basically stated that land use and visioning were o.k., but that the City really needs to just focus on economic development and let the market do its thing downtown.Finally, a vocal woman spoke up and basically stated that downtown needs to have unique urban development that doesn’t necessarily compete with suburban development by providing the same chain or destination retailers, but allows for organic,appropriately-scaled urban streets. That brought out a round of applause.
It will be interesting to see which of the “3 generaldirections” the Mayor / Economic Development staff chooses. I would expect they choose #3, just because they have a fixation with bigger projects and keeping those investors & developers with deep pockets happy.My gut feeling is that these so-called “catalyst projects” are masquerading “urban renewal” projects that will involve some eminent domain and “land assembly”, but hopefully that can be avoided. I like#2 better. I think the bottom line is they really need to listen to the strongest voice coming out of these meetings, and that is that Downtown needs to be a place that is primarily for the people who want a truly urban, non-homogenized central business district. Big box retail, shopper-tainment, and other suburban-format uses are probably best left to cling to the strip malls and power centers popping up outside the grid. Give us an urban food market at the Greyhound site, a la the Ferry Building in San Francisco, or an urban arts center or culinaryinstitute at 10th & K. But please… leave CineArts,Pottery Barn, and all the over-priced /under-performing chain restaurants out of downtown.
Finally, I didn’t get a sense of exactly what will happen next. I don’t think they really have a “plan of action” that is coherent and integrated with everything else happening Downtown. I’m a little skeptical about this whole thing, because the City’s Planning staff were basically not involved in conceptualizing or shaping these workshops (yes, I’m biased, I do work for that Department!). There is an officially-adopted Central City Community Plan that,along with the City’s General Plan and the Zoning Ordinance, sets the City’s vision and policy framework for land use & development. Changes need to be made to these plans, no one would argue, but the question is how. The Mayor and Economic Development staff would be wise to feed the results of these workshops into the General Plan revision process, which the City’s Long Range Planning team is beginning next year, and they should include a Central City CommunityPlan revision in this process as well. Maybe a separate Downtown Maser Plan is needed (this was one of the “16 general areas of consensus”), but it should be integrated and have a relationship to plans for the rest of the Central City.
This is an account of the recent city planning meeting about the J, K, and L street corridor. It was written by Erik DeKok who is a pro planner, so he's not just lofting when he talks about this stuff:
I would say that the turnout was quite good, probably at least 60 or 75 people. The same facilitator who did the October charrette/workshop was there to make the big presentation, but the Mayor of course started things off. She mentioned how she was “not surprised”at the ideas that came out of the October workshop. She also polled the room to see if anyone supportedthe rumored Wal-Mart proposal for Downtown Plaza. Everyone giggled, not a hand was raised, and she said something like “I thought so.”
But anyway, the facilitator did a pretty good job of summing up the results. A slick 14 –page color summary of ideas and graphics from the October workshop was distributed. People want lots more housing downtown,but not necessarily on K Street. For some reason,more of the groups chose J Street for new housing than K. But a lot of people also felt strongly about mixed-use on K Street, which I interpret (although maybe not necessarily the consultants) to mean housing or offices above ground-floor retail in the traditional urban format. A very strong desire was voiced for preservation and adaptive reuse of as many historic buildings as possible, and that also is not a big surprise. On the commercial / “catalyst projects”end of things, there was a strong desire for entertainment and restaurants as well on K Street, but housing was still voiced as the strongest use for the“catalyst” sites that had been predetermined by the City and/or consultant prior to the workshop. These are just some of the “16 clear areas of general consensus” that were enumerated out of the groupthink.
The consultant boiled the “16 clear areas” into “3 general directions” for the City to consider for revitalization of the JKL Corridors:
1.) J Street Housing, focusing on residential catalyst project will focusing retail and other infill on K Street, and no “catalyst projects” on K;
2.) Residential/Mixed-Use Catalyst on K Street,focusing mixed-use (retail & housing) catalysts on K,with other possible housing catalyst projects on J;
3.) Destination Nodes on K Street, which would involve“major destination-oriented catalyst projects” on K,“complemented by housing on J”.
After the presentation, there was about 45 minutes of question & answer time. There was, of course, concern voiced about what to do about affordable housing &displacement of SRO & homeless folks. And as was voiced strongly in the October workshop, a strong insistence about moving the Greyhound depot to the planned Intermodal Transportation Facility at theAmtrak depot, and doing it right away. Many felt that some of the transportation ideas were misinterpreted. Some felt that maybe putting some auto traffic back onK wouldn’t be so bad, and that the general scheme ofc onverting some north-south streets from one-way back to two-way needed to be analyzed in the context of the greater downtown traffic patterns, as was done for the broader Central City Two-Way Conversion project.
A few interesting developers showed up. Moe Mohanna,the guy who owns a ton of property along K between 7th and 9th, was at both the workshop and the follow-upmeeting, although he didn't say anything publicly. A developer who is proposing another high-rise condo type building in the 30-40 story range started a major rant and rave about how the real problem was not vision or what people wanted, but the “red tape” that people needed to “help us” get rid of to get more housing downtown. Anna and I chuckled, it was so blatant, and there was a lot of murmuring in the room at that point. Similarly, another investor/developer type (I believe from Rubicon Partners?) basically stated that land use and visioning were o.k., but that the City really needs to just focus on economic development and let the market do its thing downtown.Finally, a vocal woman spoke up and basically stated that downtown needs to have unique urban development that doesn’t necessarily compete with suburban development by providing the same chain or destination retailers, but allows for organic,appropriately-scaled urban streets. That brought out a round of applause.
It will be interesting to see which of the “3 generaldirections” the Mayor / Economic Development staff chooses. I would expect they choose #3, just because they have a fixation with bigger projects and keeping those investors & developers with deep pockets happy.My gut feeling is that these so-called “catalyst projects” are masquerading “urban renewal” projects that will involve some eminent domain and “land assembly”, but hopefully that can be avoided. I like#2 better. I think the bottom line is they really need to listen to the strongest voice coming out of these meetings, and that is that Downtown needs to be a place that is primarily for the people who want a truly urban, non-homogenized central business district. Big box retail, shopper-tainment, and other suburban-format uses are probably best left to cling to the strip malls and power centers popping up outside the grid. Give us an urban food market at the Greyhound site, a la the Ferry Building in San Francisco, or an urban arts center or culinaryinstitute at 10th & K. But please… leave CineArts,Pottery Barn, and all the over-priced /under-performing chain restaurants out of downtown.
Finally, I didn’t get a sense of exactly what will happen next. I don’t think they really have a “plan of action” that is coherent and integrated with everything else happening Downtown. I’m a little skeptical about this whole thing, because the City’s Planning staff were basically not involved in conceptualizing or shaping these workshops (yes, I’m biased, I do work for that Department!). There is an officially-adopted Central City Community Plan that,along with the City’s General Plan and the Zoning Ordinance, sets the City’s vision and policy framework for land use & development. Changes need to be made to these plans, no one would argue, but the question is how. The Mayor and Economic Development staff would be wise to feed the results of these workshops into the General Plan revision process, which the City’s Long Range Planning team is beginning next year, and they should include a Central City CommunityPlan revision in this process as well. Maybe a separate Downtown Maser Plan is needed (this was one of the “16 general areas of consensus”), but it should be integrated and have a relationship to plans for the rest of the Central City.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
More blogs for you
Apparently my boss came in this morning, said she was "stressed" and went home to sit by the fire and go christmas shopping. This attitude has not inspired me to work like a busy little beaver this morning, needless to say. So, I have plenty of time to blog, but not much to bl0g about.
First, I'd like to wish a bon voyage to Miller and Leon who are traveling abroad to see a show by the Television Personalities. I hope it's good, and that he doesn't just sing the Eminem song "Stan" with the lyrics rewritten, as he seemed to be obsessed with this on his website.
Second, I'd like to solicit contributions. If anyone has any news, announcements, gossip, etc., they can send it to beckler@buzzle.com Got an axe to grind? Consider me the whetstone against which to grind your axe. Is whetstone the word I'm thinking of? You know, that spinning wheel thing where the sparks shoot out when you press the metal to it. I'm that.
Third, I thought I'd link to a couple of blogs that I read. Not the local ones, but the weird ones I read randomly. First there is a new one with barely any content but I hope she keeps writing. http://grace17.blogspot.com/ I love that she is so obsessed with this co-worker that she hates that she wants to blog about it. I also like the tagline under the title: Just a blog about the shit in my life to make others feel better about theirs. Sounds depressing but it's not really.
Another one is by this awful, awful woman in New York who is trying to get a book deal by blogging about her sex in the city-wannabe life. It's at: http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/ There is tons of content on this one, you can cyber-spy for hours on stuff like her doctor husband cheating on her when she was pregnant, her slutting around, etc. There was a crazy post up yesterday that she has since taken down in which she detailed a nasty hookup that led to the guy emailing her the next day and saying "I enjoyed having my shaft down your throat last night". I just keep thinking, "her parent must read this, how can she write stuff like that?". She also is a self-hating Jew who hates JAPS and insists she is not one, although if she wants to haul out that stereotype, she seems to fit it pretty well. Her comments are particularly funny, because she has all these trolls (that's a blog term for creepy commenters) that comment on her site and obviously have the hots for her. The "un homme" guy is the worst. He is always kissing her ass in a creepy way and being all chummy even though he has never met her.
Also, it's fun to go to blogspot and randomly pick blogs from the recently updated list. Most of them are boring but some of them are insane.
That's all for now. Maybe I'll post later.
First, I'd like to wish a bon voyage to Miller and Leon who are traveling abroad to see a show by the Television Personalities. I hope it's good, and that he doesn't just sing the Eminem song "Stan" with the lyrics rewritten, as he seemed to be obsessed with this on his website.
Second, I'd like to solicit contributions. If anyone has any news, announcements, gossip, etc., they can send it to beckler@buzzle.com Got an axe to grind? Consider me the whetstone against which to grind your axe. Is whetstone the word I'm thinking of? You know, that spinning wheel thing where the sparks shoot out when you press the metal to it. I'm that.
Third, I thought I'd link to a couple of blogs that I read. Not the local ones, but the weird ones I read randomly. First there is a new one with barely any content but I hope she keeps writing. http://grace17.blogspot.com/ I love that she is so obsessed with this co-worker that she hates that she wants to blog about it. I also like the tagline under the title: Just a blog about the shit in my life to make others feel better about theirs. Sounds depressing but it's not really.
Another one is by this awful, awful woman in New York who is trying to get a book deal by blogging about her sex in the city-wannabe life. It's at: http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/ There is tons of content on this one, you can cyber-spy for hours on stuff like her doctor husband cheating on her when she was pregnant, her slutting around, etc. There was a crazy post up yesterday that she has since taken down in which she detailed a nasty hookup that led to the guy emailing her the next day and saying "I enjoyed having my shaft down your throat last night". I just keep thinking, "her parent must read this, how can she write stuff like that?". She also is a self-hating Jew who hates JAPS and insists she is not one, although if she wants to haul out that stereotype, she seems to fit it pretty well. Her comments are particularly funny, because she has all these trolls (that's a blog term for creepy commenters) that comment on her site and obviously have the hots for her. The "un homme" guy is the worst. He is always kissing her ass in a creepy way and being all chummy even though he has never met her.
Also, it's fun to go to blogspot and randomly pick blogs from the recently updated list. Most of them are boring but some of them are insane.
That's all for now. Maybe I'll post later.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Kings analysis
Yes! I get to be lazy today because Dan Barnes has written a post for me! An excellent analysis of the Kings. Have they lost their mojo? Oh, behave!
My short-answer assessment of the Kings performance this season is this: at the beginning of the year, I felt we were among 6-8 teams that could legitimately be called championship contenders but not among the 2 or 3 truly elite squads. After the first month of the season, I don't see any reason to change that assessment. How well you accept that depends on whether you're happy the Kings are better than 95% of the league, or frustrated that we're still worse than 5%.
I think that coming into the season, many fans were afraid that the team would lack chemistry and even be boring to watch. As should be obvious to anyone who's been watching, neither of these fears has been realized. I think there was some awkwardness early in the season due to a bitter offseason, whether it was emotional seething or physical apathy or both. We were so familiar with a Kings team that was friends off the court, and that sense of fun often manifested itself in how they would play. This Kings team may not be as chummy as in years past, but I'll sacrifice cuddliness for a championship any time. And the beautiful thing about the Kings is that they have great scorers who are also great passers, and players love playing with other players who set them up for scores. And if you've been watching the Kings lately, you know that almost every basket scored in recent weeks has been assisted (that is, set up by a pass). At the end of the day, I think the concerns about the Kings have been over-pundicized out of proportion...this is still a 55-60 win team that will win its division and secure one of the top 3 seeds in the playoffs (the team's current 12-5 record puts them right on that pace) What they do beyond that in the playoffs will depend on the usual mixture of talent, determination, and luck. In recent years, the Kings have been unlucky, losing major players to injury during or on the eve of the playoffs. I'd like to think we're due for good luck while some other teams might be in line for some bad. But that's a long ways off.
For the short term, here are some of my main concerns about the team.
1) They still haven't played one solid 48-minute game...even their blowout wins (such as last night in Boston) have been marred by stretches of inexplicably horrible play.
2) Rebounding....there seems to be more effort in recent games, but they still have the tendency to make average rebounders look like Moses Malone. This is where the lack of athleticism among our big men hurts badly.
3) Chris Webber on the 2nd night of back-to-backs....save for spotty shooting, Webber has had a great season, but he always seems to be laboring on the second of consecutive games.
4) The Bench....I actually feel our bench is as good as it's ever been or better. We could use one more skilled player deep in the rotation, but that's about it. Everyone was down on Ostertag from the very beginning, but I feel he may be the proverbial "missing piece" to the championship puzzle. Yes, he's geeky and lumpy and pasty-skinned, but he's also the type of player the Kings have always needed but never had--the dirty-work big man. If you've watched the last few games, you've gotten a hint as to how Ostertag can help the team--with rebounding, shot-blocking, screen-setting, and physical play. He can't score for shit, but isn't that why we have Webber, Miller, Peja, Bibby, Bobby, etc.?
5) This has nothing to do with the team, but I'd like to point out that if you watch the games and pretend that Grant Napear is a midget when they show him sitting behind press row next to Jerry Reynolds, the game becomes a lot funnier.
-DB
You know what makes sports funnier for me? When Dan and D.P. are watching sports (especially football) in his room and yelling and groaning at different plays, I like to pretend that they're having sex.
My short-answer assessment of the Kings performance this season is this: at the beginning of the year, I felt we were among 6-8 teams that could legitimately be called championship contenders but not among the 2 or 3 truly elite squads. After the first month of the season, I don't see any reason to change that assessment. How well you accept that depends on whether you're happy the Kings are better than 95% of the league, or frustrated that we're still worse than 5%.
I think that coming into the season, many fans were afraid that the team would lack chemistry and even be boring to watch. As should be obvious to anyone who's been watching, neither of these fears has been realized. I think there was some awkwardness early in the season due to a bitter offseason, whether it was emotional seething or physical apathy or both. We were so familiar with a Kings team that was friends off the court, and that sense of fun often manifested itself in how they would play. This Kings team may not be as chummy as in years past, but I'll sacrifice cuddliness for a championship any time. And the beautiful thing about the Kings is that they have great scorers who are also great passers, and players love playing with other players who set them up for scores. And if you've been watching the Kings lately, you know that almost every basket scored in recent weeks has been assisted (that is, set up by a pass). At the end of the day, I think the concerns about the Kings have been over-pundicized out of proportion...this is still a 55-60 win team that will win its division and secure one of the top 3 seeds in the playoffs (the team's current 12-5 record puts them right on that pace) What they do beyond that in the playoffs will depend on the usual mixture of talent, determination, and luck. In recent years, the Kings have been unlucky, losing major players to injury during or on the eve of the playoffs. I'd like to think we're due for good luck while some other teams might be in line for some bad. But that's a long ways off.
For the short term, here are some of my main concerns about the team.
1) They still haven't played one solid 48-minute game...even their blowout wins (such as last night in Boston) have been marred by stretches of inexplicably horrible play.
2) Rebounding....there seems to be more effort in recent games, but they still have the tendency to make average rebounders look like Moses Malone. This is where the lack of athleticism among our big men hurts badly.
3) Chris Webber on the 2nd night of back-to-backs....save for spotty shooting, Webber has had a great season, but he always seems to be laboring on the second of consecutive games.
4) The Bench....I actually feel our bench is as good as it's ever been or better. We could use one more skilled player deep in the rotation, but that's about it. Everyone was down on Ostertag from the very beginning, but I feel he may be the proverbial "missing piece" to the championship puzzle. Yes, he's geeky and lumpy and pasty-skinned, but he's also the type of player the Kings have always needed but never had--the dirty-work big man. If you've watched the last few games, you've gotten a hint as to how Ostertag can help the team--with rebounding, shot-blocking, screen-setting, and physical play. He can't score for shit, but isn't that why we have Webber, Miller, Peja, Bibby, Bobby, etc.?
5) This has nothing to do with the team, but I'd like to point out that if you watch the games and pretend that Grant Napear is a midget when they show him sitting behind press row next to Jerry Reynolds, the game becomes a lot funnier.
-DB
You know what makes sports funnier for me? When Dan and D.P. are watching sports (especially football) in his room and yelling and groaning at different plays, I like to pretend that they're having sex.
Monday, December 06, 2004
New slang
So courtesy of Cary Rodda, I am going to introduce some new slang to the Sac lexicon: loft, as a verb. I think it can have a few different meanings. The strictest interpretation would probably be: to talk aimlessly between songs at a show. Here it is used in a sentence: The Bananas didn't finish their set list on Saturday night because they spent so much time lofting.
Here's another possible meaning: to be lazy, to slack off. As in: Sunday I had a bunch of errands to run, but I blew it off and just lofted around the house.
Or: to have no ambition. For instance: I was thinking about going to med school, but I decided to loft instead.
As you can see, this is a very handy word and I expect that it could catch on in certain circles.
Any suggestions for a word that would mean the opposite of loft? It would mean something about being really "pro". I have a few in mind, but they're mean, so I thought I would let someone else make suggestions and catch the heat.
I got goosebumps when I heard about a recent hoax on Dow Chemical regarding the anniversary of the horrible chemical spill in Bhopal. They were talking about it on Democracy Now on KDVS and as they said the BBC had been hoaxed I started to cross my fingers that it had been the work of the Yes Men, and I was right! Read about it here: http://www.theyesmen.org/ Dow still fails to take responsibility for this accident and they have not compensated the victims. If didn't see their movie at the Crest, you missed out and you should rent it on DVD.
Here's another possible meaning: to be lazy, to slack off. As in: Sunday I had a bunch of errands to run, but I blew it off and just lofted around the house.
Or: to have no ambition. For instance: I was thinking about going to med school, but I decided to loft instead.
As you can see, this is a very handy word and I expect that it could catch on in certain circles.
Any suggestions for a word that would mean the opposite of loft? It would mean something about being really "pro". I have a few in mind, but they're mean, so I thought I would let someone else make suggestions and catch the heat.
I got goosebumps when I heard about a recent hoax on Dow Chemical regarding the anniversary of the horrible chemical spill in Bhopal. They were talking about it on Democracy Now on KDVS and as they said the BBC had been hoaxed I started to cross my fingers that it had been the work of the Yes Men, and I was right! Read about it here: http://www.theyesmen.org/ Dow still fails to take responsibility for this accident and they have not compensated the victims. If didn't see their movie at the Crest, you missed out and you should rent it on DVD.
This post contains dirty words.
So I saw Closer last night, in which Julia Roberts, America's sweetheart, reveals that not only does she dig it doggy-style, but she enjoys the occasional pearl necklace, all delivered in an unconvincing monotone that is supposed to indicate that she is "depressed". I probably would have thought this movie was cool when I was nineteen.
The weekends in Sac are heating up as the holidays approach. I missed the Bananas at the Distillery on saturday due to a multitude of pre and after parties (I don't know what to call the actual party, the during party?), but I heard that Mike R. Mike shut down a heckler in grand style. To paraphrase:
Heckler: Why don't you meet me in the alley after the show and suck my dick!
Mike R. Mike: OK, I've been practicing, I've had a toothpick in my mouth all day!
Crowd: Damn!
There was finally a good dance party that night, with DJ Conor and others tearin' it up and some pharmological experimentation courtesy of Sacramento's own Dr. Feelgood. Who said you can't mix uppers and downers? I don't know who said it, but I bet they were a square.
The weekends in Sac are heating up as the holidays approach. I missed the Bananas at the Distillery on saturday due to a multitude of pre and after parties (I don't know what to call the actual party, the during party?), but I heard that Mike R. Mike shut down a heckler in grand style. To paraphrase:
Heckler: Why don't you meet me in the alley after the show and suck my dick!
Mike R. Mike: OK, I've been practicing, I've had a toothpick in my mouth all day!
Crowd: Damn!
There was finally a good dance party that night, with DJ Conor and others tearin' it up and some pharmological experimentation courtesy of Sacramento's own Dr. Feelgood. Who said you can't mix uppers and downers? I don't know who said it, but I bet they were a square.
Friday, December 03, 2004
Celebrity butt
OK, so I don't normally do celebrity gossip, but this isn't really gossip, it's m0re a picture of a nice ass. Here's Natalie Portman's butt from the movie Closer:
http://www.othercrap.com/images/nat3.jpg
http://www.othercrap.com/images/nat3.jpg
Bitch!
From the Sac Bee:
On Wednesday night, Fargo asked an audience of about 200 community members attending a redevelopment workshop at Sacramento City Hall whether they would support a Wal-Mart in Downtown Plaza. Nobody raised a hand
Oh, so now the mayor cares what the people of Sacramento think. What a hypocrite! Did she ever ask for a show of hands at a city council meeting for how many favored a publicly financed downtown arena? If the Maloofs hadn't stormed out yet she could at least count on two hands raised in favor. As much as I hate Wal-Mart it's really funny to see the city council shuddering at the idea of a low-end retailer in the "jewel" (as the Bee repeatedly refers to it) that is downtown plaza.
Here's another golden quote:
"It doesn't fit into our concept of downtown," Mayor Heather Fargo said of the Wal-Mart idea. "You're not going to go out of your way to come downtown for a business that's not unique. We need people to come downtown for the unique things it can offer."
Oh, unique like a Century theater megaplex? Or no, unique like a P.F. Changs. She wants them to put in something upscale, like a Nordstroms, which I guess is the kind of unique she's talking about.
The Bee also has a prominent story today about total Ds that collect shoes. A pretty long and prominent story. Is that necessary? I'm not really interested in people who profess to spend all their disposable income on sneakers. Isn't there a local band they could write about? What's Jackie Greene been up to lately?
On Wednesday night, Fargo asked an audience of about 200 community members attending a redevelopment workshop at Sacramento City Hall whether they would support a Wal-Mart in Downtown Plaza. Nobody raised a hand
Oh, so now the mayor cares what the people of Sacramento think. What a hypocrite! Did she ever ask for a show of hands at a city council meeting for how many favored a publicly financed downtown arena? If the Maloofs hadn't stormed out yet she could at least count on two hands raised in favor. As much as I hate Wal-Mart it's really funny to see the city council shuddering at the idea of a low-end retailer in the "jewel" (as the Bee repeatedly refers to it) that is downtown plaza.
Here's another golden quote:
"It doesn't fit into our concept of downtown," Mayor Heather Fargo said of the Wal-Mart idea. "You're not going to go out of your way to come downtown for a business that's not unique. We need people to come downtown for the unique things it can offer."
Oh, unique like a Century theater megaplex? Or no, unique like a P.F. Changs. She wants them to put in something upscale, like a Nordstroms, which I guess is the kind of unique she's talking about.
The Bee also has a prominent story today about total Ds that collect shoes. A pretty long and prominent story. Is that necessary? I'm not really interested in people who profess to spend all their disposable income on sneakers. Isn't there a local band they could write about? What's Jackie Greene been up to lately?
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Brew it up!
I couldn't post today because (shockingly) I had lots of work to do. Anyway, Brew It Up:
Ambiance-eh. Yuppie style all the way
Smell-Smells crazy like hops and grain. I liked it cuz it had kind of a barn feel. Others in our party hated it and thought it smelled like steamed broccoli. Michael complained afterwards that I smelled like a tavern.
Food-grotty to the max. All the appetizers we got were nasty. Everything is fried and comes with a million fatty dippin' sauces. The artichoke dipped tasted and looked like nacho cheese. The exception was the yummy....
Pretzels: Even if you're just drinking beer they bring out rounds of good soft pretzels and mustard.
Beer: Great! They have tons of different kinds and they won't give you that instant headache that comes from drinking nasty Rubicon beer, not the mention the bitter beer face, which as we all know, chicks hate.
I will be back, but not to eat. Only for the sweet, sweet beer.
I didn't interview any Limeys at the Lair cuz I am chicken. I did order a to-go order of potato pancakes with salmon from Trattoria Bohemia and they brought them over to me in the bar. That was one of the best ideas I've ever had, which isn't saying much.
I'll try to think of something in local politics to rail against tomorrow so that this won't turn into a food review blog.
Goddamn! My boss just walked in and I did the click to Excel spreadsheet thing while she stood there and talked to me! She was so not fooled. Fuck!
Ambiance-eh. Yuppie style all the way
Smell-Smells crazy like hops and grain. I liked it cuz it had kind of a barn feel. Others in our party hated it and thought it smelled like steamed broccoli. Michael complained afterwards that I smelled like a tavern.
Food-grotty to the max. All the appetizers we got were nasty. Everything is fried and comes with a million fatty dippin' sauces. The artichoke dipped tasted and looked like nacho cheese. The exception was the yummy....
Pretzels: Even if you're just drinking beer they bring out rounds of good soft pretzels and mustard.
Beer: Great! They have tons of different kinds and they won't give you that instant headache that comes from drinking nasty Rubicon beer, not the mention the bitter beer face, which as we all know, chicks hate.
I will be back, but not to eat. Only for the sweet, sweet beer.
I didn't interview any Limeys at the Lair cuz I am chicken. I did order a to-go order of potato pancakes with salmon from Trattoria Bohemia and they brought them over to me in the bar. That was one of the best ideas I've ever had, which isn't saying much.
I'll try to think of something in local politics to rail against tomorrow so that this won't turn into a food review blog.
Goddamn! My boss just walked in and I did the click to Excel spreadsheet thing while she stood there and talked to me! She was so not fooled. Fuck!
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
yay! new out hud (finally)
Here's the news from Pitchfork today:http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/04-12/01.shtml
I can't wait till the out hud comes out and it's so rad that !!! is touring Japan yet again.
I can't wait till the out hud comes out and it's so rad that !!! is touring Japan yet again.
Wal-Mart ahoy!
Just a quick post. I'll try to post later. Man that Chimay Ale at the Bonn Lair will kick your ass. Or, I mean to say it has kicked my ass. Alert reader Anna reminded me about the community planning meeting that's going on tonight. Unfortunately I have a work dinner at exactly that time at Brew It Up. It will be interesting to go there for the first time, but I may not feel like sampling the beer, which I've heard raves about. Anyway, here's the info on the meeting:
12/1, 6-8pm at Interim City Hall, 730 I Street, CityCouncil chambers
Maybe Anna will write about what gets discussed. Graswich breaks the story today of a Wal-Mart potentially going in at downtown plaza (well, not breaks, I heard about this at a city council meeting). I don't care what they put in as long as they just occupy the space they have and don't expand. Councilwoman Pannell is in an uproar cuz Wal-Mart isn't "upscale" enough but who cares? Actually, I take that back I do hate Wal-Mart and they'll probably put up some really ugly signage. Maybe I am against it. Aaah! Hangover! I have to go pick up a speaker at her hotel now. It's really embarassing when normal people see my filthy car. If you just saw my car you would think I'm a crusty. Especially with the "this bike is a pipe bomb" sticker. All I need is a pitbull with a rope leash in the back and some empty forty bottles rolling around.
12/1, 6-8pm at Interim City Hall, 730 I Street, CityCouncil chambers
Maybe Anna will write about what gets discussed. Graswich breaks the story today of a Wal-Mart potentially going in at downtown plaza (well, not breaks, I heard about this at a city council meeting). I don't care what they put in as long as they just occupy the space they have and don't expand. Councilwoman Pannell is in an uproar cuz Wal-Mart isn't "upscale" enough but who cares? Actually, I take that back I do hate Wal-Mart and they'll probably put up some really ugly signage. Maybe I am against it. Aaah! Hangover! I have to go pick up a speaker at her hotel now. It's really embarassing when normal people see my filthy car. If you just saw my car you would think I'm a crusty. Especially with the "this bike is a pipe bomb" sticker. All I need is a pitbull with a rope leash in the back and some empty forty bottles rolling around.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
limey sac
I need to do another interview. I'm slacking. Maybe I will interview random people at the Bonn Lair tonight during the Kings game. Maybe we can see why some limeys choose to live in Sac.
Sexxeee Science
I saw Kinsey last night. Finally, a movie that accurately portrays the sexiness of science. It's not all lab coats and test tubes, folks. We arrived early and snuck in to watch a bit of Alexander. What a stinker! Why the fuck do the Macedonians and Greeks have Irish accents? Except for Jolie, who seems to be from Translyvania. I wish I would have seen the Rosario Dawson nudity, though. Grace declared them The Best Breasts She's Ever Seen. Besides mine, of course.
I ate at Maalouf's last night and it was delicious as always. Mike wouldn't let me ask if he knew any Homsi jokes, but I think it would have been appropriate because the owner is Lebanese and it seems that most Homsi jokes originate from Lebanon. They've changed their menu a bit recently and one welcome addition is a kibbee sandwich. The owner said he makes it for himself so he added it to the menu and it's becoming popular.
So, Korea house-This place is tucked away off Bradshaw. You take highway 50 to Bradshaw, go left on Bradshaw, right on Folsom and it's on the left right near the Big O. I have been here numerous times and it's always great. You are asked right away if you want a BBQ table or a regular table. The BBQ table thing is really fun for a birthday party. We got a regular table this time. We got 12 different little bowls of kimchee and little appetizers. They were so good! Pickled daikon, sweet little dried fish, yams, and much more. And this is all free, although they normally give you around 9 little bowls of stuff, but we begged for more. Our party ordered BBQ beef, sea bass clay pot soup and sauteed sea bass. The sauteed sea bass is what I always order, so I got the soup this time. My sister said that the BBQ was excellent and very flavorful. It was just a huge sizzling platter of beef and a bowl of rice. I didn't try it cuz of mad cow (although I ate sirloin kibbee at Maalouf's last night). The sea bass soup was just OK because the soup was boiling in the clay pot and it overcooked the delicate sea bass a little bit. The sauteed sea bass platter is so fucking good, though. It is a heaping platter with perfectly cooked sea bass, soft tofu, potato, fish cake, and other vegetables in a rich red hot pepper sauce. I always trip out on how people just want to eat hamburgers and American food after I eat meals like this. It was so well balanced and healthy and spicy and so much better than some crappy place like, oh, I don't know, Icon or Esquire Grill to name a couple of places.
I ate at Maalouf's last night and it was delicious as always. Mike wouldn't let me ask if he knew any Homsi jokes, but I think it would have been appropriate because the owner is Lebanese and it seems that most Homsi jokes originate from Lebanon. They've changed their menu a bit recently and one welcome addition is a kibbee sandwich. The owner said he makes it for himself so he added it to the menu and it's becoming popular.
So, Korea house-This place is tucked away off Bradshaw. You take highway 50 to Bradshaw, go left on Bradshaw, right on Folsom and it's on the left right near the Big O. I have been here numerous times and it's always great. You are asked right away if you want a BBQ table or a regular table. The BBQ table thing is really fun for a birthday party. We got a regular table this time. We got 12 different little bowls of kimchee and little appetizers. They were so good! Pickled daikon, sweet little dried fish, yams, and much more. And this is all free, although they normally give you around 9 little bowls of stuff, but we begged for more. Our party ordered BBQ beef, sea bass clay pot soup and sauteed sea bass. The sauteed sea bass is what I always order, so I got the soup this time. My sister said that the BBQ was excellent and very flavorful. It was just a huge sizzling platter of beef and a bowl of rice. I didn't try it cuz of mad cow (although I ate sirloin kibbee at Maalouf's last night). The sea bass soup was just OK because the soup was boiling in the clay pot and it overcooked the delicate sea bass a little bit. The sauteed sea bass platter is so fucking good, though. It is a heaping platter with perfectly cooked sea bass, soft tofu, potato, fish cake, and other vegetables in a rich red hot pepper sauce. I always trip out on how people just want to eat hamburgers and American food after I eat meals like this. It was so well balanced and healthy and spicy and so much better than some crappy place like, oh, I don't know, Icon or Esquire Grill to name a couple of places.
Monday, November 29, 2004
The big C
Wow. Thanks for the comments and the tip on Alexander. But was it homoerotic? I'm in it for the homoeroticism. That reminds me of a game that Charles plays where if you utter a funny phrase you claim that that's going to be the title of your solo album or autobiography. Mine could be "I'm in it for the homoeroticism". The other day on the phone to Charles I cracked myself up because I said "I'm trying not to care" and I said that that could be my autobio title. I think it's very appropriate given the current political climate.
Speaking of not caring, I had a really crappy K street experience the other night. I was walking up to the Crest on saturday night around eleven. I had just been thinking how great it is that I usually feel safe walking around alone when sober (not a good idea when drunk). As I walked up, I heard the sounds of an altercation. I looked across the street and saw a man and woman arguing loudly in front of the former Espresso Metro. Then he pushed her down. I spy a group of four large men in front of Pyramid Brewery. Ther were probably all over six feet and 200 pounds. I start to run towards them yelling "hey!". One of them mocked me by saying "calling a cab?". I gesticulate towards the fight and try to find the right words and as I'm doing that I see the man kick the woman in the face (this has all happened within a few seconds). I start to run across the street, but another group (one man and three women) has beat me. The rather small man has broken up the fight and one of the women is calling police on her cell phone. In contrast, the crowd of Yuppie dudes (one was wearing a fur coat, swear to G_d) barely interrupted their conversation and certainly did not rush to the woman's aid. Guess why? Because the two people who were fighting were homeless. I know, I know the homeless are so unpleasant I can see why they didn't want to deal. Better to just let them beat each other to death. Fact is, the woman was tiny and the man was twice her size. He was totally fucked up, she seemed sober, and she didn't even know him except from around K street. This was not some kind of mutual lover's quarrel, this guy could have picked anyone to beat the crap out of, she just happened to be closest. I wish I could tell those four guys how fucking bad they suck. I was livid with anger.
As this is unfolding, and to add to the general confusion, a passerby who must have witnessed the fight from down the street clocks the homeless dude in the head with his elbow and keeps walking. Homeless guy falls down and cuts his hand. I yell at the guy "what the fuck are you doing? Do you think that helped?" but he just keeps walking. One cop arrives and the very nice people who called the cops and helped to calm the woman down have to go so they leave. I could tell they were somewhat unfamiliar with downtown cuz they had called a cab to meet them on K and 11th, not realizing that the cab couldn't drive onto K st. I guess downtown probably didn't seem too revitalized to these people.
In short order, approximately 83 cop cars and a paddy wagon arrive. This is really unnecessary because all you have is one very shitfaced man, a crying woman, and me. The cops are somewhat belligerant right away. They treat the man and the woman brusquely, even though she has not done anything wrong. They seem to want to create the scenario that it was a mutual fight so they don't have to decide what to do and they can take them both in. I tell them I believe that they don't really know each other and that he was the aggressor, give them my name, and leave.
Fuck people who don't help others in need. Someday this will come back to them.
Tomorrow I will post a review of wonderful, wonderful Korea House and tonight I am eating at Maaloufs!
Speaking of not caring, I had a really crappy K street experience the other night. I was walking up to the Crest on saturday night around eleven. I had just been thinking how great it is that I usually feel safe walking around alone when sober (not a good idea when drunk). As I walked up, I heard the sounds of an altercation. I looked across the street and saw a man and woman arguing loudly in front of the former Espresso Metro. Then he pushed her down. I spy a group of four large men in front of Pyramid Brewery. Ther were probably all over six feet and 200 pounds. I start to run towards them yelling "hey!". One of them mocked me by saying "calling a cab?". I gesticulate towards the fight and try to find the right words and as I'm doing that I see the man kick the woman in the face (this has all happened within a few seconds). I start to run across the street, but another group (one man and three women) has beat me. The rather small man has broken up the fight and one of the women is calling police on her cell phone. In contrast, the crowd of Yuppie dudes (one was wearing a fur coat, swear to G_d) barely interrupted their conversation and certainly did not rush to the woman's aid. Guess why? Because the two people who were fighting were homeless. I know, I know the homeless are so unpleasant I can see why they didn't want to deal. Better to just let them beat each other to death. Fact is, the woman was tiny and the man was twice her size. He was totally fucked up, she seemed sober, and she didn't even know him except from around K street. This was not some kind of mutual lover's quarrel, this guy could have picked anyone to beat the crap out of, she just happened to be closest. I wish I could tell those four guys how fucking bad they suck. I was livid with anger.
As this is unfolding, and to add to the general confusion, a passerby who must have witnessed the fight from down the street clocks the homeless dude in the head with his elbow and keeps walking. Homeless guy falls down and cuts his hand. I yell at the guy "what the fuck are you doing? Do you think that helped?" but he just keeps walking. One cop arrives and the very nice people who called the cops and helped to calm the woman down have to go so they leave. I could tell they were somewhat unfamiliar with downtown cuz they had called a cab to meet them on K and 11th, not realizing that the cab couldn't drive onto K st. I guess downtown probably didn't seem too revitalized to these people.
In short order, approximately 83 cop cars and a paddy wagon arrive. This is really unnecessary because all you have is one very shitfaced man, a crying woman, and me. The cops are somewhat belligerant right away. They treat the man and the woman brusquely, even though she has not done anything wrong. They seem to want to create the scenario that it was a mutual fight so they don't have to decide what to do and they can take them both in. I tell them I believe that they don't really know each other and that he was the aggressor, give them my name, and leave.
Fuck people who don't help others in need. Someday this will come back to them.
Tomorrow I will post a review of wonderful, wonderful Korea House and tonight I am eating at Maaloufs!
back to work
boy oh boy is it hard to come to work after four days off. i will try to blog later. not feeling it just now.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
What's your fantasy?
After months of panicky columns about how we better build the arena, like, now, or else, the Bee has finally decided to elicit feedback from its readers. No, not about whether we want a new arena or not, or how it should be paid for (I suspect that they know that most of the responses they would get would be negative), but about what our fantasy arena would be. As if any normal Kings fan or non-King fan is so excited about this arena deal that we sit around fantasizing about how great it's gonna be. Even those fans who are for a new arena know that they're being blackmailed by the Maloofs and the NBA. They're not stupid.
Anyway, fantasy arena...hmmm...How about an underwater fortress defended by genetically engineered, super-smart octopuses that could only be reached by swimming with an escort of superhot mermaids and mermen? And there'd be a special box just for me, with my name on it in big sparkly, no neon, letters. And the Kings would all be my friends (well, not Brad Miller) and we'd just hang out in my box getting stoned and watching episodes of the Chapelle show. And we'd totally bag on Slamson all the time. We'd light flaming bags of poo outside my luxury box and hide and then he'd come and try to stomp it out and get crap all over his fur suit. We'll just laugh and laugh. That would be awesome!
Or here's another one...how about an arena THAT THE PIECE OF SHIT MALOOFS AND THE NBA PAY FOR THEMSELVES WITHOUT DEVELOPING WILD LAND WHERE CREATURES ARE LIVING AND WHERE I COULD ACTUALLY AFFORD A FUCKING TICKET TO A GAME A FEW TIMES A SEASON! Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to fantasize but we all know that both of these arena plans have about an equal chance of coming true.
If you'd like to submit your fantasy arena idea, here's the address: fanfare@sacbee.com
Anyway, fantasy arena...hmmm...How about an underwater fortress defended by genetically engineered, super-smart octopuses that could only be reached by swimming with an escort of superhot mermaids and mermen? And there'd be a special box just for me, with my name on it in big sparkly, no neon, letters. And the Kings would all be my friends (well, not Brad Miller) and we'd just hang out in my box getting stoned and watching episodes of the Chapelle show. And we'd totally bag on Slamson all the time. We'd light flaming bags of poo outside my luxury box and hide and then he'd come and try to stomp it out and get crap all over his fur suit. We'll just laugh and laugh. That would be awesome!
Or here's another one...how about an arena THAT THE PIECE OF SHIT MALOOFS AND THE NBA PAY FOR THEMSELVES WITHOUT DEVELOPING WILD LAND WHERE CREATURES ARE LIVING AND WHERE I COULD ACTUALLY AFFORD A FUCKING TICKET TO A GAME A FEW TIMES A SEASON! Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to fantasize but we all know that both of these arena plans have about an equal chance of coming true.
If you'd like to submit your fantasy arena idea, here's the address: fanfare@sacbee.com
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Last word
The great thing about having a blog is that I get to have the last word. Thanks for the info Darin. That makes more sense if he posted it on his own personal site. I know, it's not like he trashed the show or anything, it's just that his criticisms were annoying. To me. Possibly not to other people. I know it was mean to run it with my little parenthetical mockeries, but that was fun for me and I have to take my fun where I can get it.
a bit more to say...
I really really really hope that this previous post does not lead to a lot of shit-talking commenting if some certain person happens to google their own name frequently. My blog is usually very friendly unless you are Heather Fargo or a Maloof. I do not know Cary Rodda from Adam, I just wanted to counter what he wrote by pointing out that others who were not friends with the bands enjoyed the show, too.
Let it die!
So I was just blogging about this and how I wished that someone would sent it to me so I wouldn't have to paraphrase, but here it is in all it's glory, written by one Mr. Cary Rodda on the sac indie list:
saturday tidbit
Last night I went to see Knock Knock/The Bright Ideas/The Nightmares at Old I. The first thing I noticed when I got there was that the order had been changed. Apparently someone in The Nightmares was going to be arriving late, so they closed and the other bands bumped up a notch. Didn't really seem to matter. (then why are you mentioning it?)
All the bands are friends and were OK with it, plus the crowd pretty much stuck around till the end.The Bright Ideas were a bit more ragged than the last time I saw them but that seems to go over well with the Loft crowd. (what "Loft crowd"? When was the last time the Loft even had a show?)They still gave a good set and were enjoyable. Knock Knock and The Nightmares have some great indie pop songs and played them very well...when they were playing. A characteristic of these Loft-band shows is lots of screwing around between songs. Again, their crowd seems to like that, but for a non-Loft-er like me it just seems pointlessly distracting. Not that I'm asking them to come out all polished and professional, but perhaps playing more music than bantering with your friends during your set might be a good idea.Whatever. (Ooh the dreaded literary device of whatever. That's so 2002. Whatevs is the whatever of 2004.)Those bands are gonna do what they do because their friends eat it up. And since they seem to have little ambition to do anything beyond playing for their friends, I guess they're OK with that. And the bands managed a pretty decent turnout for a Saturday night, so I can't complain from a booker's perspective (so why don't you complain from the perspective of someone who felt snubbed by the loft and won't let it die even though it's like eight years later?). It's not really a huge complaint with me anyway (It seems kind of huge. You've mentioned it multiple times now). Like I said, I liked all three bands' music. I guess I didn't get into all the in-joke banter because I'm not part of that group of people. Whattaya gonna do? (shrug) (shrug?!?) I still enjoy their music and I can tolerate the rest of the stuff that comes with it. (how big of you)
I would just like to mention, that as I blogged yesterday, a coworker that doesn't know anyone in any of the bands went to see this show and specifically mentioned that not only did she like the bands, but that they were being funny. So the jokes couldn't have been too inside or she wouldn't have gotten them. Please, let the idea of the Loft vs. anyone else die. I was the biggest dork in the world, from Lincoln, who didn't know crap about music and worshipped Morrissey, and if they accepted me, they couldn't have been too fucking snobby or elite.
saturday tidbit
Last night I went to see Knock Knock/The Bright Ideas/The Nightmares at Old I. The first thing I noticed when I got there was that the order had been changed. Apparently someone in The Nightmares was going to be arriving late, so they closed and the other bands bumped up a notch. Didn't really seem to matter. (then why are you mentioning it?)
All the bands are friends and were OK with it, plus the crowd pretty much stuck around till the end.The Bright Ideas were a bit more ragged than the last time I saw them but that seems to go over well with the Loft crowd. (what "Loft crowd"? When was the last time the Loft even had a show?)They still gave a good set and were enjoyable. Knock Knock and The Nightmares have some great indie pop songs and played them very well...when they were playing. A characteristic of these Loft-band shows is lots of screwing around between songs. Again, their crowd seems to like that, but for a non-Loft-er like me it just seems pointlessly distracting. Not that I'm asking them to come out all polished and professional, but perhaps playing more music than bantering with your friends during your set might be a good idea.Whatever. (Ooh the dreaded literary device of whatever. That's so 2002. Whatevs is the whatever of 2004.)Those bands are gonna do what they do because their friends eat it up. And since they seem to have little ambition to do anything beyond playing for their friends, I guess they're OK with that. And the bands managed a pretty decent turnout for a Saturday night, so I can't complain from a booker's perspective (so why don't you complain from the perspective of someone who felt snubbed by the loft and won't let it die even though it's like eight years later?). It's not really a huge complaint with me anyway (It seems kind of huge. You've mentioned it multiple times now). Like I said, I liked all three bands' music. I guess I didn't get into all the in-joke banter because I'm not part of that group of people. Whattaya gonna do? (shrug) (shrug?!?) I still enjoy their music and I can tolerate the rest of the stuff that comes with it. (how big of you)
I would just like to mention, that as I blogged yesterday, a coworker that doesn't know anyone in any of the bands went to see this show and specifically mentioned that not only did she like the bands, but that they were being funny. So the jokes couldn't have been too inside or she wouldn't have gotten them. Please, let the idea of the Loft vs. anyone else die. I was the biggest dork in the world, from Lincoln, who didn't know crap about music and worshipped Morrissey, and if they accepted me, they couldn't have been too fucking snobby or elite.
Monday, November 22, 2004
there's more....
Something else, real quick. I'd like to add some slang to the Sacto lexicon. I'm like the E-40 of Sac here, although I didn't coin this, I'm not sure who did, probably Alec. Anyways, the new slang is Ju-On. As a verb. Like when something scary happens to you, you got Ju-On'ed. Also, now other people than me say "dirty thirty" for their thirtieth birthday. I believe Natalie coined this, but it was in reference to a month of dirtiness, not a thirtieth birthday celebration.
Also, I had to delete the comments from earlier. I appreciate them, but a certain Mr. Maxwell wrote something that could get my house bombed. Keep up the comments!
Also, I had to delete the comments from earlier. I appreciate them, but a certain Mr. Maxwell wrote something that could get my house bombed. Keep up the comments!
Knock knock gains a fan
It's too bad I missed that show (knightmares, knock knock, bright ideas) on saturday, but I had fun in SF. A woman I work with that lives downtown mentioned that she had seen a good show this weekend, and it turned out to be this one! And she specifically mentioned knock knock, so that's really cool. She said it was refreshing that none of the bands were styley hipsters.
Animal liberation front fucked shit up at a university in Iowa. An article by "happy rat" that is chock full of bullshit can be read here:
http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/0812206&mode=thread
This was obviously an inside job by some undergrad that knows some tiny bit about research but not that much. It's so dumb how they say that animals are different than humans so that animals can't be used as scientific models. So not true. These dumbasses also released thousands of minks at a mink farm in Iowa this weekend. Last I checked, minks are not native to Iowa, and if any of them actually managed to survive, they would probably wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. Why don't they target the manufactureres of rat poison and mouse traps? Surely more rats and mice are killed by pest-killing companies and these devices than researchers kill every year. I'm all for informed and organized animal rights activism, but this is ridiculous.
Speaking of chock full o'bull, I tried to watch "what the bleep do we know" at the Crest to finally see what all the hype was about. It was such a piece of crap. I walked out after about half an hour. The dead give-away that these people were not reputable scientists was that their name and institutions were not given when they were talking. The lady that spouted mystical bullshit and looked like Zsa Zsa Gabor was JZ Knight, the lady that channels the 20,000 year old warrior from Atlantis. How do I know this? My mom was waaaaay into Ramtha in the late 80's so I got to see tapes of this crock strutting around, doling out platitudes in a fake Atlantis accent. Or maybe it was a real Atlantis accent, the world will never know.
Animal liberation front fucked shit up at a university in Iowa. An article by "happy rat" that is chock full of bullshit can be read here:
http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/0812206&mode=thread
This was obviously an inside job by some undergrad that knows some tiny bit about research but not that much. It's so dumb how they say that animals are different than humans so that animals can't be used as scientific models. So not true. These dumbasses also released thousands of minks at a mink farm in Iowa this weekend. Last I checked, minks are not native to Iowa, and if any of them actually managed to survive, they would probably wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. Why don't they target the manufactureres of rat poison and mouse traps? Surely more rats and mice are killed by pest-killing companies and these devices than researchers kill every year. I'm all for informed and organized animal rights activism, but this is ridiculous.
Speaking of chock full o'bull, I tried to watch "what the bleep do we know" at the Crest to finally see what all the hype was about. It was such a piece of crap. I walked out after about half an hour. The dead give-away that these people were not reputable scientists was that their name and institutions were not given when they were talking. The lady that spouted mystical bullshit and looked like Zsa Zsa Gabor was JZ Knight, the lady that channels the 20,000 year old warrior from Atlantis. How do I know this? My mom was waaaaay into Ramtha in the late 80's so I got to see tapes of this crock strutting around, doling out platitudes in a fake Atlantis accent. Or maybe it was a real Atlantis accent, the world will never know.
not now!
Well, for some reason I'm not feeling very inspired to post this morning. Check back this afternoon.
Friday, November 19, 2004
New restaurant reviews
I just realized on my way into work that Prez. Bush will be in office until I'm in my mid-30's. Lame.
So, I ate at Icon last night. It looks kinda cool inside. It's giant. I don't know how many it can seat in its labyrinth of rooms, but I'd say it was about at one-fifth capacity on a thursday night at 8:00. I don't want to say this place is doomed, but our busboy was wearing a black cape and carrying a scythe. Anyway, we were seated by a young woman in a Ramones T-shirt whose breasts were entirely covered, much to my surprise. The other day when I stopped by just to take a quick look at the menu the two hostesses were showing more breast than a bucket of KFC. Today they both looked much less naked. We scanned the menu. To me, there were not many appealing items. Anna thought it was a good menu. I was not ravenously hungry, so I ordered the grilled ahi salad. It was nine bucks, so I expected it to be a dinner-sized rather than side-type salad. Grace got the blue crab sandwich, Anna ordered the pulled-pork sandwich. Our food took quite awhile, which I was happy about because we were talking the whole time. We didn't get drinks, but the wine list had quite a few wines by the glass, and you can even order glasses of Moet for, I think, 9 bucks. That's cool. My ahi salad was pretty tasty. The ahi was crusted with so many black peppercorns that it was really spicy and they were kind of hurting my teeth, I think they could stand to grind it a little finer. The dressing on the salad tasted good, but the greens were the standard supermarket mesclun (with lots of cilantro), about three slices of yellow pepper, and nothing else. The ahi could have used a little sauce, I wished that I had some wasabi around. Although good, the salad was boring and I was still hungry afterward. Grace and Anna's sandwiches both came with fries and a little bit of cucumber salad, similar to the kind that you get at Japanese restaurants. Grace's sandwich was open faced, which made it awkward to eat. Anna's sandwich was kind of a sloppy mess that she had to eat with a knife and fork. Grace's crab was really fishy (that sounds dirty). She contrasted it to a ginger crab she had recently at New Station and it suffered in comparison. She didn't like her fries and neither did I. They were really dark looking as if the oil was dirty and they were pretty soggy. She didn't finish her crab sandwich and as soon as her hunger faded from eating some of it she declared it "gross". Anna said that her pork sandwich was overly sweet. I tried it and the sauce made it taste exactly like a sloppy joe to me. Not really something I'd order at a restaurant. We all agreed that we would not order our dishes again, but that the space was pleasant and that we'd give it another try sometime. I'll let you know if I eat there again. It's possible there's a few delicious things on the menu and maybe we just ordered wrong, I don't know.
I ate at the Crepeville this weekend and I liked it. I didn't like my crepe, but I don't really like breakfast crepes so I shouldn't have ordered it. The potatoes were really good, though, and they give you the option of a bagel or toast if you get eggs. David Paul's Greek scramble was way better than my crepe. The coffee was not great but not bad. I'm really happy that there's another breakfast option in Sac now.
I found the craziest article on mad cow that I hope to write about sometime next week, so if you have a weak stomach, be warned.
So, I ate at Icon last night. It looks kinda cool inside. It's giant. I don't know how many it can seat in its labyrinth of rooms, but I'd say it was about at one-fifth capacity on a thursday night at 8:00. I don't want to say this place is doomed, but our busboy was wearing a black cape and carrying a scythe. Anyway, we were seated by a young woman in a Ramones T-shirt whose breasts were entirely covered, much to my surprise. The other day when I stopped by just to take a quick look at the menu the two hostesses were showing more breast than a bucket of KFC. Today they both looked much less naked. We scanned the menu. To me, there were not many appealing items. Anna thought it was a good menu. I was not ravenously hungry, so I ordered the grilled ahi salad. It was nine bucks, so I expected it to be a dinner-sized rather than side-type salad. Grace got the blue crab sandwich, Anna ordered the pulled-pork sandwich. Our food took quite awhile, which I was happy about because we were talking the whole time. We didn't get drinks, but the wine list had quite a few wines by the glass, and you can even order glasses of Moet for, I think, 9 bucks. That's cool. My ahi salad was pretty tasty. The ahi was crusted with so many black peppercorns that it was really spicy and they were kind of hurting my teeth, I think they could stand to grind it a little finer. The dressing on the salad tasted good, but the greens were the standard supermarket mesclun (with lots of cilantro), about three slices of yellow pepper, and nothing else. The ahi could have used a little sauce, I wished that I had some wasabi around. Although good, the salad was boring and I was still hungry afterward. Grace and Anna's sandwiches both came with fries and a little bit of cucumber salad, similar to the kind that you get at Japanese restaurants. Grace's sandwich was open faced, which made it awkward to eat. Anna's sandwich was kind of a sloppy mess that she had to eat with a knife and fork. Grace's crab was really fishy (that sounds dirty). She contrasted it to a ginger crab she had recently at New Station and it suffered in comparison. She didn't like her fries and neither did I. They were really dark looking as if the oil was dirty and they were pretty soggy. She didn't finish her crab sandwich and as soon as her hunger faded from eating some of it she declared it "gross". Anna said that her pork sandwich was overly sweet. I tried it and the sauce made it taste exactly like a sloppy joe to me. Not really something I'd order at a restaurant. We all agreed that we would not order our dishes again, but that the space was pleasant and that we'd give it another try sometime. I'll let you know if I eat there again. It's possible there's a few delicious things on the menu and maybe we just ordered wrong, I don't know.
I ate at the Crepeville this weekend and I liked it. I didn't like my crepe, but I don't really like breakfast crepes so I shouldn't have ordered it. The potatoes were really good, though, and they give you the option of a bagel or toast if you get eggs. David Paul's Greek scramble was way better than my crepe. The coffee was not great but not bad. I'm really happy that there's another breakfast option in Sac now.
I found the craziest article on mad cow that I hope to write about sometime next week, so if you have a weak stomach, be warned.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Warning: this post contains dumb jokes
This morning in the break room I was reading last week's Bee with the story of the two Marines from Fresno that were best friends and were both killed at the same time in Iraq. Margaux had already told me about the part in the article where the mom of one of them relates how she was trying to call her son to tell him Bush won and that he would be so happy to hear this, but she could not get through to him and the next morning she found out he was dead. She related this without making any connection between Bush being president and her son being dead.
Speaking of Fresno, NPR reported today that many Californians are moving away from the coast and into inland cities because of skyrocketing housing prices, I already kind of knew that but I was stoked to hear that over half of all Californians are thinking of moving to another state because of this issue. This may sound harsh to be happy about this, but I would guess most of these people are probably not native Californians, and as a renter who may never be a homeowner, every person that moves away increases my chances just a little bit. Or maybe not, I never took Economics.
Speaking of the California heartland, a big shout out to Heather, who may be there right now. I just found out yesterday that Janet Leigh was from Merced. One of the google searches that led someone to my blog was "nolia clap song where Merced at?". Is there some local rapper who has inserted Merced into his take on "nolia clap"?
I wrote about this yesterday, but blogger ate it. I knew we were in trouble when doofy Maloof came out to back the Sheriff's land scam in Natomas to get the new arena built. This half-time interview was particularly irritating cuz it was mostly Grant Napear (or "G" as doofy Maloof called him) blowing Maloof on camera for being so rich. Not only was it front-page news in the Bee the next day, but Voison wrote an over-the-top endorsement and reminded us for the zillionth time that Arco is "creaking and cracked". Today it's front-page news again. The sheriff seems to have toned down his high profile on this scam. Maybe it would be unseemly for him to be spending time getting the arena built when he should be investigating why two of his officers killed an unarmed mentally ill man while his parent watched. The Bee's reporting on this issue is a bit confusing. Here is a sentence from yesterday's article, headlined "Doofy Maloof sez-new arena will be awesome!" "Landowners would reap the benefits of speedy development, and agree to contribute 20 percent of the proceeds - perhaps as much as $600 million - to pay for an arena." Here's a sentence from today's article, headlined "Sheriff sez-we better build this arena or my deputies will come to your house and kill you" "In return for quick county review, landowners would pledge 20 percent of the profits from the sale of their land to finance an arena - an amount expected to total at least $300 million." I guess the 600 million figure comes from whether or not we decide to gold-plate the arena and have the Kings wear actual jewel-encrusted crowns and purple velvet robes. I say go for it! It'll be awesome!
Speaking of Fresno, NPR reported today that many Californians are moving away from the coast and into inland cities because of skyrocketing housing prices, I already kind of knew that but I was stoked to hear that over half of all Californians are thinking of moving to another state because of this issue. This may sound harsh to be happy about this, but I would guess most of these people are probably not native Californians, and as a renter who may never be a homeowner, every person that moves away increases my chances just a little bit. Or maybe not, I never took Economics.
Speaking of the California heartland, a big shout out to Heather, who may be there right now. I just found out yesterday that Janet Leigh was from Merced. One of the google searches that led someone to my blog was "nolia clap song where Merced at?". Is there some local rapper who has inserted Merced into his take on "nolia clap"?
I wrote about this yesterday, but blogger ate it. I knew we were in trouble when doofy Maloof came out to back the Sheriff's land scam in Natomas to get the new arena built. This half-time interview was particularly irritating cuz it was mostly Grant Napear (or "G" as doofy Maloof called him) blowing Maloof on camera for being so rich. Not only was it front-page news in the Bee the next day, but Voison wrote an over-the-top endorsement and reminded us for the zillionth time that Arco is "creaking and cracked". Today it's front-page news again. The sheriff seems to have toned down his high profile on this scam. Maybe it would be unseemly for him to be spending time getting the arena built when he should be investigating why two of his officers killed an unarmed mentally ill man while his parent watched. The Bee's reporting on this issue is a bit confusing. Here is a sentence from yesterday's article, headlined "Doofy Maloof sez-new arena will be awesome!" "Landowners would reap the benefits of speedy development, and agree to contribute 20 percent of the proceeds - perhaps as much as $600 million - to pay for an arena." Here's a sentence from today's article, headlined "Sheriff sez-we better build this arena or my deputies will come to your house and kill you" "In return for quick county review, landowners would pledge 20 percent of the profits from the sale of their land to finance an arena - an amount expected to total at least $300 million." I guess the 600 million figure comes from whether or not we decide to gold-plate the arena and have the Kings wear actual jewel-encrusted crowns and purple velvet robes. I say go for it! It'll be awesome!
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Mad cow!
I ate at Vince's last night. No, not Club Vince, although sometimes that does serve food (and by the way, Vince made the BEST STUFFED SHELLS EVER at the Heritage party), but Vince's in West Sac. We stepped in, and right away I heard a redneck looking dude say the N word. That was quite a shock. He seemed to be intoxicated and as we were walking past he was relating a story that involved him calling someone "pissboy". The place has some charm, it's dark inside which makes it seem a bit dingy. There is a bar in the restaurant and TVs showing sports. I think it would be a fun place to sit at the bar and watch a Kings game. Our waiter had giant biceps, there were cops behind us talking about the Steve Miller Band, the lady bartender was wearing an American flag sweatshirt-this is a very American place. Not too Italian. Anyway, the pasta dinners are ten bucks and they come with soup or salad, bread, and ice cream. I got a salad, which was really tasty for an iceburg salad. Michael got the soup, which I thought was bland. The little loaf of bread was warm and tasty. I tried to order the ravioli, but after inquiring if it had meat in it, I changed my order to spinach gnocchi. You would think that this question would have clued our waiter in to the fact that I didn't really want meat in my pasta. Nope. Apparently, the spinach gnocchi comes with meat sauce. Michael got the plain gnocchi. They both came with some tasteless white cheese baked in a thick layer on top. It didn't seem to be mozzarella. The gnocchi was overwhelmingly mushy and starchy. There was no way I could eat any of it without eating some small bits of ground beef. All I could think was mad cow. So if my brain turns to mush in about 10 years, I'll know where to trace it back to. This was probably not the fault of Vince's but about halfway through dinner my stomach started roiling. Perhaps the prions I had just ingested were fighting the helpful microbes in my stomach. I don't know. Mike liked the spumoni. All in all, I probably will never eat there again, although as I said, I would sit at the bar and watch a Kings game.
Then, I saw the Jay-Z movie "Fade to Black". I highly recommend this movie. Some of the concert stuff gets just a little boring, but the footage from the studio when Jay-Z was recording the Black Album is amazing. It's so cool to watch him meeting with all the different producers (Neptunes, Timbaland, Kanye West, Rick Rubin) and see the crazy creative process. When Hov hears a track he likes he totally spazzes out into this thing he calls the Rain Man as he starts imagining what he's going to say over the track. It made me sad to see a part where Slick Rick is backstage at Madison Square Garden but he's just helping Ghostface Killa put on his gold chains and he's not invited out on stage or anything. He's all dressed down in just a gray hoodie. Mike D has a cameo and dude looks so bad I thought he was Perry Farrell. Mike said that he heard he had hepatitus. Anyway, see this movie.
Ok, here's some stuff on the Sac Arts Co-op. I am going to donate some stuff for the yard sale. You can just bring stuff to sell if you want to do the same:
Mission Statement:
The Sacramento Arts Cooperative is a community based, volunteer run, non-profit organization. Our objectives are to provide a nonviolent, nondiscriminatory, drug and alcohol free resource center for music and the arts. We have weekly meetings and membership is open to everyone.One of our main goals is the creation of an all ages music venue that places respect and support of the performers as our highest priority. We plan to raise funds thru donation and grant writting with the purpose of buying a building in the downtown Sacramento area. Once our tax exempt status is established with the IRS this spring we plan to start writting grants and we are currently researching good building locations. We have many events planned to raise money and awareness for our cause this spring. So please, stay tuned.
News and Events- Saturday, November 20th, Rock and Roll Yardsale! At the corner of Freeport Blvd. and 2nd Ave. We'll have records, tapes, cds, musical equipment, rock band t-shirts, clothes, and much more! Again, all proceedes go to S.A.C.-
Saturday, November 27th, Thanks-for-giving fundaraiser show at the Distillery. Featuring such hot local acts as The Riff Randals, The Hostages, The Devastates, and a fourth band to be named later. Starts at 10pm, is 5 dollars, and (despite the irony/hypocracey) is a 21 and over show. Again, all proceedes go to S.A.C.
Membership and meetingsWe meet every sunday at 7pm in the downtown Sacramento area. Since we don't have an established location for our organization yet, our meeting place moves around quit a bit. If you'd like to attend a meeting feel free to contact us and we can fill you on the location.
ContactIf you'd like to contact us to share your ideas or become invloved with our organization try e-mailing us at sacramentoartscoop@gmail.com.website: www.sacarts.org
Then, I saw the Jay-Z movie "Fade to Black". I highly recommend this movie. Some of the concert stuff gets just a little boring, but the footage from the studio when Jay-Z was recording the Black Album is amazing. It's so cool to watch him meeting with all the different producers (Neptunes, Timbaland, Kanye West, Rick Rubin) and see the crazy creative process. When Hov hears a track he likes he totally spazzes out into this thing he calls the Rain Man as he starts imagining what he's going to say over the track. It made me sad to see a part where Slick Rick is backstage at Madison Square Garden but he's just helping Ghostface Killa put on his gold chains and he's not invited out on stage or anything. He's all dressed down in just a gray hoodie. Mike D has a cameo and dude looks so bad I thought he was Perry Farrell. Mike said that he heard he had hepatitus. Anyway, see this movie.
Ok, here's some stuff on the Sac Arts Co-op. I am going to donate some stuff for the yard sale. You can just bring stuff to sell if you want to do the same:
Mission Statement:
The Sacramento Arts Cooperative is a community based, volunteer run, non-profit organization. Our objectives are to provide a nonviolent, nondiscriminatory, drug and alcohol free resource center for music and the arts. We have weekly meetings and membership is open to everyone.One of our main goals is the creation of an all ages music venue that places respect and support of the performers as our highest priority. We plan to raise funds thru donation and grant writting with the purpose of buying a building in the downtown Sacramento area. Once our tax exempt status is established with the IRS this spring we plan to start writting grants and we are currently researching good building locations. We have many events planned to raise money and awareness for our cause this spring. So please, stay tuned.
News and Events- Saturday, November 20th, Rock and Roll Yardsale! At the corner of Freeport Blvd. and 2nd Ave. We'll have records, tapes, cds, musical equipment, rock band t-shirts, clothes, and much more! Again, all proceedes go to S.A.C.-
Saturday, November 27th, Thanks-for-giving fundaraiser show at the Distillery. Featuring such hot local acts as The Riff Randals, The Hostages, The Devastates, and a fourth band to be named later. Starts at 10pm, is 5 dollars, and (despite the irony/hypocracey) is a 21 and over show. Again, all proceedes go to S.A.C.
Membership and meetingsWe meet every sunday at 7pm in the downtown Sacramento area. Since we don't have an established location for our organization yet, our meeting place moves around quit a bit. If you'd like to attend a meeting feel free to contact us and we can fill you on the location.
ContactIf you'd like to contact us to share your ideas or become invloved with our organization try e-mailing us at sacramentoartscoop@gmail.com.website: www.sacarts.org
Monday, November 15, 2004
Icon doomed?
Here's a link for the bored: http://grouphug.us/ These anonymous confessions are strangely addictive.
Scott reminded me that La Fiesta (owned by the La Favorita people) is opening in the place of the Alhambra Grill. The excitement is building about this among some of my friends. If this place is like Favorita, it'll be the bomb. I like that there are fewer reasons lately for me to travel far from my neighborhood, now I have a close market and bank and Peet's, and with the Favorita here I won't have to travel to the Florin Mall area. The traffic in that area is horrible, but it is a good excuse to go to the secret thrift store. I wish there was a Vietnamese sandwich place downtown, too.
Strolled by Icon at 7:00 on a saturday night and it wasn't exactly packed to the gills. Perhaps this location is doomed.
I would like to post some info about Charles' arts co-op thing, so Charles, if you're reading, send it to me via email and I can post tomorrow.
Scott reminded me that La Fiesta (owned by the La Favorita people) is opening in the place of the Alhambra Grill. The excitement is building about this among some of my friends. If this place is like Favorita, it'll be the bomb. I like that there are fewer reasons lately for me to travel far from my neighborhood, now I have a close market and bank and Peet's, and with the Favorita here I won't have to travel to the Florin Mall area. The traffic in that area is horrible, but it is a good excuse to go to the secret thrift store. I wish there was a Vietnamese sandwich place downtown, too.
Strolled by Icon at 7:00 on a saturday night and it wasn't exactly packed to the gills. Perhaps this location is doomed.
I would like to post some info about Charles' arts co-op thing, so Charles, if you're reading, send it to me via email and I can post tomorrow.
monday party report
Yay! Luis' is coming back! I am so happy about this. According to Graswich, Kyotos is closing down (I've never eaten there before) and Luis Jr.s is opening in its place. So it will also be closer to my house! I can't wait to taste that chicken soup again. I hope this location will work for them.
R.I.P O.D.B. He would have turned 36 today. I still thought he might make a comeback. I guess posthumous comebacks are not unknown in hip-hop so maybe he still will. Rumors of his death circulated like wildfire at the Heritage party.
Speaking of the heritage party. Oy. Many will probably say party of the year. Due to that fact that I had party-hopping obligations that involved driving, I did not get as plastered as most and this hampered my revelry. Then again, Russian Jewish peasant women aren't really known as big partiers. I partied in my own way by sitting on the couch and worrying that someone was going to get sick or hurt. It was rather odd to see which heritages lived up or didn't live up to their partying reputations. The Germans imbibed very little, which is not characteristic. Sorry to the German in the kitchen who I accused of wanting to shove me in the oven. The homsi was one of the drunkest. Guess he is not an observant muslim. The non-Jewish Russian acquitted herself admirably. China held up her end and was heard later in the night to declare her country the next great superpower and that the rest of us are "all going down". The scot was as wasted as you'd expect. Mike R. Mike was voted best costume and his reponse was "what costume?". There was a weightlifting competition later in the evening, which the northwest logger won, of course. She just tapped her vast well of anger against the spotted owl and benched her way to victory. The prize for drunkest of all is split between the Finnish drunk punk (of course) and surprisingly, Brigham Young, who was heard earlier in the evening to claim that every woman at the party was a potential wife.
R.I.P O.D.B. He would have turned 36 today. I still thought he might make a comeback. I guess posthumous comebacks are not unknown in hip-hop so maybe he still will. Rumors of his death circulated like wildfire at the Heritage party.
Speaking of the heritage party. Oy. Many will probably say party of the year. Due to that fact that I had party-hopping obligations that involved driving, I did not get as plastered as most and this hampered my revelry. Then again, Russian Jewish peasant women aren't really known as big partiers. I partied in my own way by sitting on the couch and worrying that someone was going to get sick or hurt. It was rather odd to see which heritages lived up or didn't live up to their partying reputations. The Germans imbibed very little, which is not characteristic. Sorry to the German in the kitchen who I accused of wanting to shove me in the oven. The homsi was one of the drunkest. Guess he is not an observant muslim. The non-Jewish Russian acquitted herself admirably. China held up her end and was heard later in the night to declare her country the next great superpower and that the rest of us are "all going down". The scot was as wasted as you'd expect. Mike R. Mike was voted best costume and his reponse was "what costume?". There was a weightlifting competition later in the evening, which the northwest logger won, of course. She just tapped her vast well of anger against the spotted owl and benched her way to victory. The prize for drunkest of all is split between the Finnish drunk punk (of course) and surprisingly, Brigham Young, who was heard earlier in the evening to claim that every woman at the party was a potential wife.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Glass Candy? More like Ass Candy
woah. Pitchfork just reported that the two new Bright Eyes singles debuted on the Billboard singles chart at #1 and #2, a feat not accomplished by anyone since 1997, when P. Diddy did it. That's crazy. I've never heard Bright Eyes, but I guess it wouldn't be hard for those singles to be better than that tired-ass sing-song phoned-in duet "my boo".
Speaking of Pitchfork, I have got to stop believing their hype and buying albums accordingly. I bought the DFA comp cuz they gave it such a high rating and it's OK but I wish I would have bought the new Trick Daddy album instead.
Yesterday I had the day off, so I thrifted and visited the towns of Marysville, Yuba City, Wheatland, Sheridan, and (my hometown) Lincoln. Marysville and Yuba don't seem to have changed that much over the years (at least compared to Lincoln). Marysville has made the standard stab at downtown revitalization by putting up a sign telling you about their historic downtown and installing some metal, I don't know what to call them, sculptural thingies across the streets of downtown. Sadly this revitalization has mostly resulted in the closing of thriftstores and the opening of overpriced antique boutiques. But maybe it has been good for the town, I don't know. There is a giant Salvation Army in Yuba city that is pretty good.
If you ever find yourself traveling on Highway 65 through Wheatland, I would recommend stopping at the Elkin's frostie. True, it's a dump and I just wanted to go there to relive high school memories, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only have they added veggie burgers to their menus, they're actually Boca burgers and not the standard gross Gardenburger patty that I was expecting. In fact, I thought it was meat and I was trying to take it back. The teenager behind the counter thought that I was a big idiot.
I'm weary today because I hit both Amateurs and Lala Land last night. Both places were lackluster, bordering on pathetic. I really, really wanted to like Amateurs. I want some night where I can actually dance, and I'm more likely to go out on a Thursday night than any other weeknight, but it was lame. I can't dance to that pseudo-gothic electroclash shit. I wish I could, but I just can't. It was six bucks to get in, and the well drinks are 4.75! That is too much. Glass Candy played and they were amusing for precisely 5 minutes. I hate being negative about this new night so let me reiterate that I was really hoping I would like it. Lala land was quite deserted and Larry seemed to be on DJ autopilot and played "Flashlight" for what seemed like 45 minutes. It's too bad that night is not catching on because I think the Blue Lamp is a pleasant place to kick it. As we were sitting at the new Cap G I was thinking that maybe if the influx of people and money into Sac cannot be stopped then maybe a good result would be more clubs and bars and maybe if enough of them open, at least one will be cool. Maybe?
This weekend is shaping up to be fun. Tonight there is a Feeling show at the Fox and Goose, and tomorrow is the Greek food festival and the Heritage party.
Speaking of Pitchfork, I have got to stop believing their hype and buying albums accordingly. I bought the DFA comp cuz they gave it such a high rating and it's OK but I wish I would have bought the new Trick Daddy album instead.
Yesterday I had the day off, so I thrifted and visited the towns of Marysville, Yuba City, Wheatland, Sheridan, and (my hometown) Lincoln. Marysville and Yuba don't seem to have changed that much over the years (at least compared to Lincoln). Marysville has made the standard stab at downtown revitalization by putting up a sign telling you about their historic downtown and installing some metal, I don't know what to call them, sculptural thingies across the streets of downtown. Sadly this revitalization has mostly resulted in the closing of thriftstores and the opening of overpriced antique boutiques. But maybe it has been good for the town, I don't know. There is a giant Salvation Army in Yuba city that is pretty good.
If you ever find yourself traveling on Highway 65 through Wheatland, I would recommend stopping at the Elkin's frostie. True, it's a dump and I just wanted to go there to relive high school memories, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only have they added veggie burgers to their menus, they're actually Boca burgers and not the standard gross Gardenburger patty that I was expecting. In fact, I thought it was meat and I was trying to take it back. The teenager behind the counter thought that I was a big idiot.
I'm weary today because I hit both Amateurs and Lala Land last night. Both places were lackluster, bordering on pathetic. I really, really wanted to like Amateurs. I want some night where I can actually dance, and I'm more likely to go out on a Thursday night than any other weeknight, but it was lame. I can't dance to that pseudo-gothic electroclash shit. I wish I could, but I just can't. It was six bucks to get in, and the well drinks are 4.75! That is too much. Glass Candy played and they were amusing for precisely 5 minutes. I hate being negative about this new night so let me reiterate that I was really hoping I would like it. Lala land was quite deserted and Larry seemed to be on DJ autopilot and played "Flashlight" for what seemed like 45 minutes. It's too bad that night is not catching on because I think the Blue Lamp is a pleasant place to kick it. As we were sitting at the new Cap G I was thinking that maybe if the influx of people and money into Sac cannot be stopped then maybe a good result would be more clubs and bars and maybe if enough of them open, at least one will be cool. Maybe?
This weekend is shaping up to be fun. Tonight there is a Feeling show at the Fox and Goose, and tomorrow is the Greek food festival and the Heritage party.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Goddamnit!
My boss just walked in while I was surfing the net and I flinched and jumped a fucking foot while making a small startled grunting noise (most closely sounding like Unyh). Why can't I just play it cool and switch over to my open Excel spreadsheet calmly so that I don't look like I just got busted. Do you think bosses see through the blatant transparency of the Excel spreadsheet window? It's not like she cares. She often plays solitaire in her office with the door open.
Anyway, apparently my picture is on page 30 of sorryeverybody. com if you have the patience to wait for it to load, you can skip right to 30 and see me in all my glory. Well, some of my glory.
Anyway, apparently my picture is on page 30 of sorryeverybody. com if you have the patience to wait for it to load, you can skip right to 30 and see me in all my glory. Well, some of my glory.
Californication
Woah, I accidentally did some weird command and published this entry after I had just entered the heading "californication". Maybe I should just leave that as a cryptic entry. I wrote it because I'm listening to the Virgin radio online station and Californication is on. This song is so funny, but I like that Kiedis wrote a song about Cali. Has anyone seen his new pageboy with bangs haircut? I want to read his book when it comes out in paperback. And of course when the "Teaches of Kiedis" calendar finally comes out I will be first in line to buy it.
I went to that show last night and it was really fun. I hope Jeff has more shows there and that I find out about them. It was probably on the indie list but ever since I got burned there I never went back. That was the best when Dennis Yudt wrote "welcome to the indie list. Now shut the fuck up". He's so tough. And because I'm a girl and I'm not really interested in getting in a how big is your dick contest I did indeed shut the fuck up. He totally won! It's like he's an indie list gladiator or something, keeping off the riff-raff who aren't tough enough to make it on....this internet chat room thing where people talk about indie rock. Wow! Where did that come from? I guess I'm more bitter than I thought about that whole experience. And to think it all started because someone kept picking on my boyfriend and I wanted to defend him.
Right now the online station is playing "Laura" by the Scissor Sisters. This is a great song. Anyway, the kids playing the show were adorable and entertaining. I experienced one of my first "that guy is too young for me to think he's cute" moments. Scott sez "get used to it".
I went to that show last night and it was really fun. I hope Jeff has more shows there and that I find out about them. It was probably on the indie list but ever since I got burned there I never went back. That was the best when Dennis Yudt wrote "welcome to the indie list. Now shut the fuck up". He's so tough. And because I'm a girl and I'm not really interested in getting in a how big is your dick contest I did indeed shut the fuck up. He totally won! It's like he's an indie list gladiator or something, keeping off the riff-raff who aren't tough enough to make it on....this internet chat room thing where people talk about indie rock. Wow! Where did that come from? I guess I'm more bitter than I thought about that whole experience. And to think it all started because someone kept picking on my boyfriend and I wanted to defend him.
Right now the online station is playing "Laura" by the Scissor Sisters. This is a great song. Anyway, the kids playing the show were adorable and entertaining. I experienced one of my first "that guy is too young for me to think he's cute" moments. Scott sez "get used to it".
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
this just in....
So the other day my coworker took a picture of me for that sorryeverybody.com website that I linked to. I put on lab gear and made a sign that said scientists are sad (about Bush being elected). Apparently Heather saw it on CNN Headline news. That's cool! Unfortunately, I can't see it on the website cuz it's always crashed.
There's a show tonight that is recommended by Scott Miller, a man of discriminating tastes. It's Miko Mika. It's 812 in the alley between T and U (on 8th st. I guess?) It starts at 8:00.
Also, the list of Sac celebrity sightings grows with Natalie spotting Ving Rhames at the Sheraton Grand. Weird.
There's a show tonight that is recommended by Scott Miller, a man of discriminating tastes. It's Miko Mika. It's 812 in the alley between T and U (on 8th st. I guess?) It starts at 8:00.
Also, the list of Sac celebrity sightings grows with Natalie spotting Ving Rhames at the Sheraton Grand. Weird.
Pone be gone
I was musing this morning that all the dude neuroscience grad students have been cutting off their pones lately (that's short for pony tails for those of you not up on the slang these days). Perhaps the late 90's have finally arrived in the world of neuroscience fashion. To the ladies of neuroscience velvet is still the luxurious fabric of choice.
I was reading an interview with Sofia Coppola and she was talking about being influenced by Bill Owens suburbia photography while making the Virgin Suicides. He has an extensive website and the pictures are cool. It's here: http://www.billowens.com/index.htm
The new T street was inaugurated last night and it was a smashing success. The boys drank scotch, the girls drank sake bombs and the crowd was amazed by the virtuoso sandwich-making of one Joel Goulet. He did things with crackers that I never thought were possible.
There is a heartbreaking story in the Bee today: http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/11365575p-12280146c.html It sounds like these officers went out of control. This guy was barely bigger than me. He was tearing some boards off a fence, for God's sake, it's not like he had a knife. I feel so bad for his family. It was probably hard for them to call the police on him, and look what they did. As Graswich has been talking about lately, this only further illustrates the need for cops to coordinate with mental health workers in cases like this. I'm glad that ballot measure passed. I just hope it's implemented quickly and correctly.
I ate at Zelda's last night and it was delicious! I know people either love Zelda's or hate Zelda's, but I'm not a big pizza person and it's absolutely my favorite pizza. Roma's is a distant second. And the waitress was really nice this time, contrary to Zelda's rep.
There are so many parties this weekend! The party that's a must attend, of course, is the heritage party at U st. I just might be a Jewish American Princess, so I'll probably be offending myself all night, because I hate that stereotype, but it's more fun than dressing like a Russian peasant.
I was reading an interview with Sofia Coppola and she was talking about being influenced by Bill Owens suburbia photography while making the Virgin Suicides. He has an extensive website and the pictures are cool. It's here: http://www.billowens.com/index.htm
The new T street was inaugurated last night and it was a smashing success. The boys drank scotch, the girls drank sake bombs and the crowd was amazed by the virtuoso sandwich-making of one Joel Goulet. He did things with crackers that I never thought were possible.
There is a heartbreaking story in the Bee today: http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/11365575p-12280146c.html It sounds like these officers went out of control. This guy was barely bigger than me. He was tearing some boards off a fence, for God's sake, it's not like he had a knife. I feel so bad for his family. It was probably hard for them to call the police on him, and look what they did. As Graswich has been talking about lately, this only further illustrates the need for cops to coordinate with mental health workers in cases like this. I'm glad that ballot measure passed. I just hope it's implemented quickly and correctly.
I ate at Zelda's last night and it was delicious! I know people either love Zelda's or hate Zelda's, but I'm not a big pizza person and it's absolutely my favorite pizza. Roma's is a distant second. And the waitress was really nice this time, contrary to Zelda's rep.
There are so many parties this weekend! The party that's a must attend, of course, is the heritage party at U st. I just might be a Jewish American Princess, so I'll probably be offending myself all night, because I hate that stereotype, but it's more fun than dressing like a Russian peasant.
Monday, November 08, 2004
monday bits
Well, I didn't go to the Sikh parade because getting up early wasn't in my weekend agenda. I get up early five days a week, goddamnit!
To continue the ever-so-boring Celestin's chicken skin saga (I know, you've all been wondering if I did anything about it) I called Celestin's and told a manager about ye olde pile of skin. She was sympathetic, but said they do leave the skin on. I said, "I don't know that there is anyone who would want to eat that soggy skin". She said "I hear ya' there" but I doubt if there is any policy change in the future.
Me and Mike went to Laszlo's this weekend and it was fucking great. For those of you who don't know, Laszlo's is a smoked fish place in Old Sac. It's in those little food booths near the river (the ones that I guess were modeled on Pike's place market). Joe Laszlo smokes all the fish himself. We used to go there and get gigantic bagels piled with vegetables (tomato, onion, etc.) and your choice of smoked fish, and it came with chips and a pickle for like 6 bucks. Laszlo was dissapointed in us when we asked where his bagels were this time because he said he hasn't had them since January. We totally got busted as bad customers. No harm, though, we went across the street to that really weird coffee shop Steamers, got bagels there, and brought them over to Joe to pile up with fish. We got the peppered salmon. It was so juicy and flavorful I almost plotzed. Not cheap, though. Me and Mike got quite a bit of fish and it cost eleven bucks. It was worth every penny. We also got to witness some kind of old-timey sketchiness where it appeared that a guy dressed as a cowboy may have been selling antique pistols out of a wooden case. Add the constant cruising of custom cars with crazy sound systems, and you have the weirdness of Old Sac.
Gossip gossip gossip! Went to the Vicious prom on Saturday night and witnessed a triad of people frenching like mad. Two were boys (one of whom has acquired an unfortunate nickname that is derived from a Simpsons character and one is the type of gentleman you wouldn't expect to see doing such a thing) and the one girl was a less than enthusiastic participant. The former boy had moments before queried if he could perhaps persuade me to show him my breasts. When I politely declined his offer, he countered a moment later with the question "how about now?". Ah, demon gin speaks.
There is a minor Naked Lounge boycott going on right now. Seems one of the owners, who has been known to be a pretty rude dude, hired someone most of us know and fired him within a day or two of training. He also fired the other three people who were being trained at the same time. Seems he had to go with his gut instinct. Well, my gut instinct is that that guy sucks. From charging for water to busting regular customers for using too much half and half (for shame!), he is screwing up left and right. However, hanging out at Peet's sucks, so I will probably go to Naked from time to time.
To continue the ever-so-boring Celestin's chicken skin saga (I know, you've all been wondering if I did anything about it) I called Celestin's and told a manager about ye olde pile of skin. She was sympathetic, but said they do leave the skin on. I said, "I don't know that there is anyone who would want to eat that soggy skin". She said "I hear ya' there" but I doubt if there is any policy change in the future.
Me and Mike went to Laszlo's this weekend and it was fucking great. For those of you who don't know, Laszlo's is a smoked fish place in Old Sac. It's in those little food booths near the river (the ones that I guess were modeled on Pike's place market). Joe Laszlo smokes all the fish himself. We used to go there and get gigantic bagels piled with vegetables (tomato, onion, etc.) and your choice of smoked fish, and it came with chips and a pickle for like 6 bucks. Laszlo was dissapointed in us when we asked where his bagels were this time because he said he hasn't had them since January. We totally got busted as bad customers. No harm, though, we went across the street to that really weird coffee shop Steamers, got bagels there, and brought them over to Joe to pile up with fish. We got the peppered salmon. It was so juicy and flavorful I almost plotzed. Not cheap, though. Me and Mike got quite a bit of fish and it cost eleven bucks. It was worth every penny. We also got to witness some kind of old-timey sketchiness where it appeared that a guy dressed as a cowboy may have been selling antique pistols out of a wooden case. Add the constant cruising of custom cars with crazy sound systems, and you have the weirdness of Old Sac.
Gossip gossip gossip! Went to the Vicious prom on Saturday night and witnessed a triad of people frenching like mad. Two were boys (one of whom has acquired an unfortunate nickname that is derived from a Simpsons character and one is the type of gentleman you wouldn't expect to see doing such a thing) and the one girl was a less than enthusiastic participant. The former boy had moments before queried if he could perhaps persuade me to show him my breasts. When I politely declined his offer, he countered a moment later with the question "how about now?". Ah, demon gin speaks.
There is a minor Naked Lounge boycott going on right now. Seems one of the owners, who has been known to be a pretty rude dude, hired someone most of us know and fired him within a day or two of training. He also fired the other three people who were being trained at the same time. Seems he had to go with his gut instinct. Well, my gut instinct is that that guy sucks. From charging for water to busting regular customers for using too much half and half (for shame!), he is screwing up left and right. However, hanging out at Peet's sucks, so I will probably go to Naked from time to time.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Gumbo update
Jesus Christ! I just went to eat the leftovers of my gumbo and I picked out more skin than you see at an Xtina concert! I had enough skin to donate to a chicken burn ward! And what part of the chicken did these come from? Pho Bac would have rejected these parts, and that's saying something. God! I am so repulsed, yet I forced myself to eat it because it cost 13 bucks. Why am I so cheap? Now I feel nauseous.
Girly-man losers!
Old Governor Shwartzie was just quoted calling the Democrats "a bunch of losers". Wow, he's really elevating the rhetoric down at the capitol. I can't wait till he calls us pussies and faggots. If he was quoted as calling me lardass it would be just like high school. Or if he said, "Becky the secretary of state totally wants to ask you out" and the secretary of state said, "ewww, gross I do not".
Speaking of losers, how bout those Kings?
In the last couple of days I have seen the movies Birth and Saw and I can recommend both as good, silly fun. Especially Saw which is hilariously ridiculous (but disturbingly gross). Birth, while suffering from a preposterous premise, was shot really well. I'll look for other movies from this guy in the future. I guess he has just directed videos before this. By the way, WTF happened to Nicole Kidman's face? Did she have some kind of face/off face transplant? Or did her face get injected with fetal tissue of a baby bat, turning her into a hybrid of fruit-bat/starlet? She looks real weird.
Last night I ate at Celestins for the first time since it changed locations. We ordered appetizers of sweet potato fries and fried calimari (these were not my choices, I would never order fried calimari). The sweet potato fries were limp and yucky. I know that this dish can be much better because I've had the sweet potato fries at Junior's in Brooklyn (famous for cheesecake) and they were much better than these. The calimari was gross. It was also limp and some of the squids had these disgustingly long tentacles. They seemed to be deformed squids in which just one or two of their tentacles would be twice as long as the others. Maybe this handicap was the reason the squiddlies got caught in the nets. Anyway, I ordered gumbo, which I remember as being the only good thing at Celestins. They have an array of gumbo choices, but the weird thing is that the Celestins house gumbo isn't the traditional style gumbo that contains (I think) chicken, shrimp, andouille sausage and maybe some fish or something. The Celestins one had a nasty combination that escapes me now. So I ordered a custom gumbo with chicken and Kielbasa (cuz adding andouille sausage would have made this combo 15 bucks!). The base flavor of the gumbo was delicious. Really flavorful and spicy. The quality of the meat was another matter. The Kielbasa was your standard Pepperidge farms stuff. I should have sprung for the other kind of sausage. The chicken bits were all half skin and fat. Gross! Who wants a bunch of skin in their soup? My sister got a seafood kind of gumbo and she said the shrimp was the best part but that the scallop tasted like big bits of fat. I tried a bite of hers and it had salmon, which tastes weird in gumbo. Her boyfriend got a hamburger, which is actually a plate with two fair-sized hamburgers. They looked good and would be perfect to split, so I may try that sometime. That also came with sweet potato fries. All in all, pretty good, would have been better if I ordered better (next time I want to try the gumbo with just scrimp and andouille sausage), but pricey.
During the course of this meal I talked to my sister and her b.f. about why they didn't vote and it turns out my sister has voted once (I thought she never had, so I was glad to hear this) but that she just didn't get around to it this time. Her boyfriend, Joe, had an interesting perspective in which he thinks that everything is ruled by a vast billionaire conspiracy and is already decided so why bother. I pointed out that he could be right but it wouldn't hurt to vote just in case, and also that he could make a difference in local elections. He agreed and next election day I am going to bug both of them to vote. On that subject, here's a good website: http://www.sorryeverybody.com/ I hope more people post.
Speaking of losers, how bout those Kings?
In the last couple of days I have seen the movies Birth and Saw and I can recommend both as good, silly fun. Especially Saw which is hilariously ridiculous (but disturbingly gross). Birth, while suffering from a preposterous premise, was shot really well. I'll look for other movies from this guy in the future. I guess he has just directed videos before this. By the way, WTF happened to Nicole Kidman's face? Did she have some kind of face/off face transplant? Or did her face get injected with fetal tissue of a baby bat, turning her into a hybrid of fruit-bat/starlet? She looks real weird.
Last night I ate at Celestins for the first time since it changed locations. We ordered appetizers of sweet potato fries and fried calimari (these were not my choices, I would never order fried calimari). The sweet potato fries were limp and yucky. I know that this dish can be much better because I've had the sweet potato fries at Junior's in Brooklyn (famous for cheesecake) and they were much better than these. The calimari was gross. It was also limp and some of the squids had these disgustingly long tentacles. They seemed to be deformed squids in which just one or two of their tentacles would be twice as long as the others. Maybe this handicap was the reason the squiddlies got caught in the nets. Anyway, I ordered gumbo, which I remember as being the only good thing at Celestins. They have an array of gumbo choices, but the weird thing is that the Celestins house gumbo isn't the traditional style gumbo that contains (I think) chicken, shrimp, andouille sausage and maybe some fish or something. The Celestins one had a nasty combination that escapes me now. So I ordered a custom gumbo with chicken and Kielbasa (cuz adding andouille sausage would have made this combo 15 bucks!). The base flavor of the gumbo was delicious. Really flavorful and spicy. The quality of the meat was another matter. The Kielbasa was your standard Pepperidge farms stuff. I should have sprung for the other kind of sausage. The chicken bits were all half skin and fat. Gross! Who wants a bunch of skin in their soup? My sister got a seafood kind of gumbo and she said the shrimp was the best part but that the scallop tasted like big bits of fat. I tried a bite of hers and it had salmon, which tastes weird in gumbo. Her boyfriend got a hamburger, which is actually a plate with two fair-sized hamburgers. They looked good and would be perfect to split, so I may try that sometime. That also came with sweet potato fries. All in all, pretty good, would have been better if I ordered better (next time I want to try the gumbo with just scrimp and andouille sausage), but pricey.
During the course of this meal I talked to my sister and her b.f. about why they didn't vote and it turns out my sister has voted once (I thought she never had, so I was glad to hear this) but that she just didn't get around to it this time. Her boyfriend, Joe, had an interesting perspective in which he thinks that everything is ruled by a vast billionaire conspiracy and is already decided so why bother. I pointed out that he could be right but it wouldn't hurt to vote just in case, and also that he could make a difference in local elections. He agreed and next election day I am going to bug both of them to vote. On that subject, here's a good website: http://www.sorryeverybody.com/ I hope more people post.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
search engine madness!
One feature I like on my sitemeter is that I can peek at the search terms people use that direct them to my site. Here's a list:
chowder poodle riverside
sammy chu’s closing
maloof girlfriend
vashti bunyan
reading 2004 chkchkchk pictures
not being worried about osama bin laden I’ve found the quote
paris Hilton benji hooter
what is middleschmertz?
mac dre slain
chris webber macking
mad dre halloween
darrell corti
Numerous people have been searching for Sammy Chu's and I'm glad they get directed to me. There were a couple of Maloof girlfriend searches. I assume they are from potential candidates checking out the competition. I come up first if you search for darrell corti, which is weird. The paris hilton benji hooter on is inexplicable.
Here's a funny rave from craigslist:
http://sacramento.craigslist.org/rnr/47802457.html
It almost seems like a joke, but not. There is also a Los Jarritos missed connection, which is nice.
chowder poodle riverside
sammy chu’s closing
maloof girlfriend
vashti bunyan
reading 2004 chkchkchk pictures
not being worried about osama bin laden I’ve found the quote
paris Hilton benji hooter
what is middleschmertz?
mac dre slain
chris webber macking
mad dre halloween
darrell corti
Numerous people have been searching for Sammy Chu's and I'm glad they get directed to me. There were a couple of Maloof girlfriend searches. I assume they are from potential candidates checking out the competition. I come up first if you search for darrell corti, which is weird. The paris hilton benji hooter on is inexplicable.
Here's a funny rave from craigslist:
http://sacramento.craigslist.org/rnr/47802457.html
It almost seems like a joke, but not. There is also a Los Jarritos missed connection, which is nice.
Sikh parade!
sikh
Originally uploaded by becklerg.
This Sunday is the annual Sikh parade in Yuba city. Yuba City has about 10,000 Sikhs, and 40-50,000 people are expected for the parade, many of them Sikhs traveling from other parts of the country. It starts at 10:00. There will be 100,000 free meals served. I am going to try to go if a family obligation doesn't prevent it. I think that such a display of diversity will cheer me up after tripping on our new evangelical monoculture. Also, Yuba City has good thriftstores. When I was a kid growing up in Lincoln we would always go to Yuba City and Marysville to see bargain matinees because they had the closest movie theaters. Now, Roseville and Lincoln are practically connected because of sprawl, so Lincolnites can just go there.
Which brings me to my next topic. Tuesday, during the elections, when they would flash the local election results I saw the name Short for Lincoln City Council. I guessed that it was Spencer Short, a guy I went to high school with who was the best, and I was right. When I googled him I found out he has already served as mayor of Lincoln (I think in Lincoln the mayorship just rotates between city council members). He's only 29! It's weird, because he has been mayor and on the council during the time when Lincoln has been turning into a strip-mally piece of shit. He had a statement about his family living there for 60 years and how he wants to preserve his hometown, but I wonder if it's just lipservice. Perhaps I will email him.
Speaking of sprawl, the Sacbee is reporting that local voters approved all three growth measures on the local ballots, which will lead to tons of new development and environmental damage. Good job, confused voters. And way to strike down the three strikes initiative and approve the DNA database. Don't the people of California know anyone who deals weed? Do they realize that their friendly neighborhood weed dealer could be at risk because of these initiatives? Great, let's collect sperm from every person who has ever been caught with a little bit of meth (speaking of Yuba City) but god forbid someone should tax your cell phone. I give up.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Old ass chimp
sam
Originally uploaded by becklerg.
Damn, Sam the chimp at the Sac zoo is 56 years old! This story broke my heart. He's been in captivity since he was three! In addition to noting that he rises at dawn from his bed of burlap sacks, the Bee stands on some shaky scientific ground and states that, "Like people, they have large brains, which means they can be very intelligent. They have thumbs, can see color and live within complex social structures. Scientists have shown chimps to be capable of thought, abstraction and even emotions, including happiness, fear and despair." Well, kinda. A big brain doesn't necessarily equal intelligence, and happiness, fear, and despair are words that humans created to describe human emotional states, but anyway, that's one old-ass chimp.
R.I.P. Mac Dre. V-town rapper Mac Dre was slain in a drive-by in Kansas City. I know Michael got to meet him once for some reason, I'll have to find out what the story is. In other rap-related news, the Biz told me that R. Kelly is now out of the "Unfinished Business" tour, so I'm pretty sure I won't be going unless Jay-Z drops the prices.
Well, I believed the hype (just like when I bought all those beanie babies) and I went to vote at 7:00 am fearing long lines. There was absolutely no line. There were some adorable old people, though. The best part was when the septugenarian called over the octegenarian to help her try to use the electronic vote-counting machine. Guess what? It was already broken. I was assured that someone would be by to fix it later. I have purchased a bottle of cava (Spanish sparkling wine) to open tonight when it is announced that Kerry has won. I have also implanted a small cyanide capsule in one of my molars so if Bush wins, I can simply bite down and end it all. Just kiddin'!
So the Kings cut Bluthenthal. I'm bummed. I was gonna get a Bluthenthal jersey. Now the Maloofs will have to scrape by without my 75 bucks. In other Kings news, I guess the Kings took out a weird full-page ad in the Bee today (I couldn't view it online) assuring everyone that they really love each other alot and stuff. Methinks they doth....you know the rest of the cliche.
Graswich said in his column yesterday that people are complaining about the silver horse in front of the new Safeway. To those people I say: sure it's kinda tacky, but imagine how cool it will look to teens frying on acid. I stared at it for like thirty seconds while I was sober and I could have sworn the creepy glass eye was moving. Viva la silver horse! Viva Sam the chimp!
Monday, November 01, 2004
Monday malaise
Hey check it out-this total D is trying to visit every Starbucks in the world. Here's the section on the Sacramento area: http://www.starbuckseverywhere.net/Sacramento.htm Horrifying. This person likes Starbucks and is not making any kind of political statement with this website. And she wants you to send her money to continue her quest!
The Sacbee continues to beat the arena drum. Last week they had some major help from the NBA commissioner when he mentioned the need for a new arena in Sac in a conference call to sportswriters. Thanks for the reminder commissioner, we done plumb forgot bout that whole thing in the solid week since it was occupying the front page daily. Then, today the Bee waxes nostalgic about the glorious time when we first got the Kings and Sacramento started to come out from under our shameful inferiority complex. It was soooo embarassing just being a pleasant small town with nice trees and affordable houses. Where was our P.F. Changs? Well, that restaurant chain wasn't in business yet, but if it had been, it never would have come to our backwater burg. The Bee tells the real story of the Kings franchise if you read between the lines in this article, although it's not the main point. Here it is, as I see it: Lukenbill buys Kings for 10.5 million in 1983, sells for 140 fucking million dollars in 1992. Not bad. Owner Jim Thomas then sells to the Maloofs in 1999 for 247 million dollars. A profit of 100 million dollars in 7 years. These are the owners that have been crying poorhouse this whole time and claiming the Kings don't make money. These are the people that have been holding our city hostage to their interests. How much do you think the Maloofs could sell the Kings for right now if they wanted? Why do you think they want a new arena? It will just exponentially increase the value of their team. They should pay the majority of the cost if a new arena is built. They will make the majority of the profit off of the deal if they sell the team.
My Halloween suffered from the New Year's Eve syndrome. Trying to force the fun led to not much fun. I continued my streak of embodying the women in rock on Halloween (last year=Ronnie Spector) by being both Courtney Love (friday) and Meg White (saturday). Margaux made an excellent Jack White in a grotty black wig that had been on the floor of my car since last Halloween. I missed all the bands at the Halloween cover show and the next night went to this horrendous party at 24th and P where we stayed exactly as much time as it took to walk upstairs and right back down. I could smell fighting and aggression in the air. I heard there was a really fun warehouse party right near my house but I missed it and finished out the night at club Vince debating the existence of God (?) with people.
The Sacbee continues to beat the arena drum. Last week they had some major help from the NBA commissioner when he mentioned the need for a new arena in Sac in a conference call to sportswriters. Thanks for the reminder commissioner, we done plumb forgot bout that whole thing in the solid week since it was occupying the front page daily. Then, today the Bee waxes nostalgic about the glorious time when we first got the Kings and Sacramento started to come out from under our shameful inferiority complex. It was soooo embarassing just being a pleasant small town with nice trees and affordable houses. Where was our P.F. Changs? Well, that restaurant chain wasn't in business yet, but if it had been, it never would have come to our backwater burg. The Bee tells the real story of the Kings franchise if you read between the lines in this article, although it's not the main point. Here it is, as I see it: Lukenbill buys Kings for 10.5 million in 1983, sells for 140 fucking million dollars in 1992. Not bad. Owner Jim Thomas then sells to the Maloofs in 1999 for 247 million dollars. A profit of 100 million dollars in 7 years. These are the owners that have been crying poorhouse this whole time and claiming the Kings don't make money. These are the people that have been holding our city hostage to their interests. How much do you think the Maloofs could sell the Kings for right now if they wanted? Why do you think they want a new arena? It will just exponentially increase the value of their team. They should pay the majority of the cost if a new arena is built. They will make the majority of the profit off of the deal if they sell the team.
My Halloween suffered from the New Year's Eve syndrome. Trying to force the fun led to not much fun. I continued my streak of embodying the women in rock on Halloween (last year=Ronnie Spector) by being both Courtney Love (friday) and Meg White (saturday). Margaux made an excellent Jack White in a grotty black wig that had been on the floor of my car since last Halloween. I missed all the bands at the Halloween cover show and the next night went to this horrendous party at 24th and P where we stayed exactly as much time as it took to walk upstairs and right back down. I could smell fighting and aggression in the air. I heard there was a really fun warehouse party right near my house but I missed it and finished out the night at club Vince debating the existence of God (?) with people.