The joy of being an 'out-of-town' fan...

Most of my 'sports-lovin' life has been spent living outside the city of my birth and upbringing (Seattle, Washington). I have, however, spent the last 17 years as a die hard fan of the Mariners, Seahawks and especially, Sonics. And while I will always feel a certain affinity towards these teams, I can't help but wonder whether being far away from 'local' fans of these teams hasn't increased my interest.

I've returned to Seattle several times in the last decade, and for some reason, it's far more comfortable to cheer on the Sonics or the Mariners in a hostile environment rather than one filled with forklift drivers from Enumclaw, or worse yet, I.T. guys from Bellevue who regard the Mariners as the only decent thing in their life now that 'Cumdumpsters.com' has been made a pay-per-view website. There's just something much more satisfying about being the 'outsider'.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person who enjoys getting in fights or having beer bottles chucked at my head while chanting 'Yankees suck' in a Puerto Rican bar in the Bronx, but I guess I just respect an out of town fan a lot more than some guy who never bothered to leave the zip code of his birth.

Does this make me a 'sports snob'? Probably. Oh well, fuck you.

A toast to the geeks...

The other day I realized that David Cross, funny fucker and complete genius, had been on Air America radio co-hosting Janeane Garofalo's radio show 'Majority Report'. 10 years ago I would have had to resign myself to the fact that I had missed it and would have to go on living my life. But now, in this day and age, thanks to complete dorks who have a lot more free time than I do, (which doesn't seem possible as I have been underemployed for the last 5 months and the hard part of relocating, moving and getting a new place has been accomplished) I can listen to an archived version with the commercials cut out 24 hours later. AIR AMERICA PLACE

Sometimes I think this is ruining the upcoming generation of children, as some of my fonder memories of growing up are year-long pursuits of things that you could now find after a 3-second google search. Part of the experience of being a dateless dork is a permanent sense of longing, whether it be for the new season of Dr. Who, the next issue of Watchmen or for a woman that will let you feel her breasts.

And now, Dorks run the world...

Funny thing about weekends...

One of the best things that Les Claypool of Primus ever said, "Funny thing about weekends when you're unemployed, they don't mean as much. Except you get to hang out with all your working friends...". So true.


Les freakin Claypool

Layo & Bushwacka!

Saw british DJs Layo and Bushwacka! last night at a club called the Mezzanine in San Francisco. They each spun seperately but were both equally amazing. Incredible beat matching skills and just a great feel for the room.

Mezzanine's a really nice club, too. Located downtown at around 5th and Mission, it's not too big to be fun, but not too small either.

England got jobbed!

If you think Americans can be bad conspiracy theorists, you should have seen the group at the Englander pub in San Leandro after England was run out of the Euro championships on penalty kicks by Portugal.

To be fair, they did get completely robbed, as a goal which would have won it in regulation was disallowed for a phantom handball. According to all the brits standing around me, however, it was clear that the referee, who happened to be Swiss, was still angry that England had beat Switzerland 3 days before and fixed the game. Even though the game was completely meaningless, the referee's been working internationl matches for 10 years without incident, and the fact that he's Freaking Swiss, that didn't stop the accusations-a-flyin'.

In my opinion, England deserved to lose anyway. Apart from one lucky goal 3 minutes in, Portugal had them pinned in their own half the entire match. And once Wayne Rooney left the game, they couldn't put together a run down field to save their lives.

yeah yeah, blah blah blah....

Freedom of Choice

Check out this list of political options for the coming elections:

Link To Sixteen things I would be willing to vote for instead of George W. Bush:

Who likes Jizz in the face?

The japanese, that's who! Why else would they have created not only a word for it, but spawned this:

Link to the Japanese Bukake song

This just in...comedy

Dimitri Martin and Eugene Mirman are the two funniest comics that hardly anyone's heard of. That's most likely because they spend all their time in NYC and never tour to great places like the 'Giggleshack' in Columbus, Ohio. While I'm at it, I might as well make a list of the top 30 standup comics of all time. In my pompous and rude opinion:

Dave Attell, David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Louis CK, Mitch Hedburg, Wanda Sykes, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, Drew Carey, Ray Romano, Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Martin, Jonathan Katz, Jim Gaffigan, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Belzer, Norm MacDonald, Colin Quinn, Marc Maron, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Martin, Eugene Mirman, Demitri Martin, Lenny Bruce, Todd Barry, Sarah Silverman, and from Hollywood, Andy Kaufman

Up and comer, barely missed the list:
GREG GIRALDO

San Francisco Restaurant Review #1

LINK TO NAAN N'CURRY

Naan n' Curry in the Tenderloin is some of the best Indian food I have had this side of Madhur Jaffrey's Dawat restaurants in New York City and White Plains. I had the Lamb Curry, some Chicken Tikka Masala, Panak Paneer (spinach and cheese), and the garlic naan. All were freaking amazing and the whole bill for two people including a mango lassi was $20 freaking dollars!

Highly goddamn recommended.

Why Kobe Bryant is the worst player in the NBA

Of course he is. There has never been a more selfish, arrogant player in the history of the league. Now that Jerry West is gone, it is so great to watch the Lakers completely implode under the collective weights of Dr. Buss and Kobe Bryant's egos. Much like Jerry Krause in Chicago, Buss and his lapdog, Mitch Kupchack, have no idea how to build a team and it will give me nothing but giggle fits to see the Lakers go 9-71 in a couple of years. Here is the predicted starting lineup of that team:

PG- Gary Payton (Way past his prime and slower than Shawn Bradley at this point)
SG- Kobe (it's his team!)
SF- Marquis Daniels (aquired from the Mavericks as part of the Shaquille O'Neal trade)
PF- Juwan Howard (part of the 3-way deal that sent Tracy McGrady to the Mavericks)
C- Greg Ostertag (claimed off of waivers)

Rudy Tomjanovich will have abruptly quit after 3 months of dealing with Kobe's shit and will then be replaced by Magic Johnson, Kurt Rambis, Randy Pfund, Norm Nixon, and then finally by the Doc's good buddy Kareem Abdul-Jabaar.

Here's to every draft lottery for the next ten years being 'Magic Hour'

Travel 20 miles and you might as well be in Topeka Kansas

Today me and the lovely wife took off south to....SAN JOSE. There we found the Container Store and Crate & Barrell.

Just the drive down there from Oakland is horrifying. Every 4 miles the scenery repeats itself. Levitz, In-n-out burger, Home Depot, WalMart, Target, etc. etc. etc. You'd have a hard time convincing me that there's any difference at all between Hayward, Milpitas, Fremont or San Jose. It's all the same godawful mall.

The sick thing is that after 4 years of living in Connecticut, the weekend process of going to the mall and eating at whatever T.G.I.-Applebees or Ruby Callenders is along the way is a hard habit to break. This last saturday we found ourselves at Marie Callenders, waiting in line for a table with a bunch of mouth-breathers picking up pies to take home to their more 'housebound' relatives.

I had the 'baja caesar' salad, and despite the fact of being a combination of words I don't have a problem with, when combined in food form was pretty disgusting. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it turned out to be a Caesar salad with taco seasoning poured on it.

Ick....

Paul Simon, racist

Kodachrome, you give me the nice bright colors...I got a Nikon camera....

There's a lot of reasons to hate Paul Simon's song 'Kodachrome', from it's product placement-before-product placement-was cool lyrics, to the overall pointlessness of it. This song doesn't begin to really annoy me, however, until he starts in with the Al Jolsen-ish "Mama don't take my Kodachrome, Mama don't take my Kodachrome awaaaayy" section.

If you've written a song that anyone could compare to a 1920s Minstrel show, you've written a real piece of shit.

My father, who is not ashamed of anything, is very reluctant to talk about a picture in one of his old college yearbooks of him in full blackface as part of the 'University of Oklahoma Minstrel' performers. To me, of course, it remains one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.