That's fucking entrepreneurship!

WOW!

In case you can't quite read the ad, this is for the 'Flick-a-high' combination Cane, pot-pipe, and poolcue. If Thomas Edison ever dreamed of inventing something this cool, he better crawl out of his grave and apologize.

The thing I love the most about this is that it makes some pretty lofty assumptions about it's customers, namely;
- You've probably spilled off your hog recently and need a cane to get around.
- You smoke a ton of weed or like to hang out with 12 year old butch girls who do.
- You're not going to let your recent injury or the fact that you're now too stoned to function stop you from playing 9-ball until you get into a fight down at Gilly's.

And finally, you're the type of 'go-go-go' person that needs the convenience of all these items combined together. And the world just gets better...

Special thanks to Sharpeworld

Ultimate Film Fanatic?

Ok, I know it's an almost impossible task to try and devise a game show that's going to find the country's biggest movie geek. Good for IFC and Chris Gore for trying, but this show annoys me on several levels.

First of all, 2 out of the 3 rounds are completely subjective. Traci Lords, Shaft and that heroin addict Jason Mewes are left to decide who won debates and who's got the nerdier set of movie tchotchkes. I think they should just call the show 'What does a girl who had more sex on-screen before she was 14 than you'll have in your whole life think of your action figure collection?'

The show also seems kind of sexist in a 'afraid of girls at the sci-fi con' kind of way. I was pleased to see several women represented on a recent episode, but for some reason, that's when Chris decided to trot out categories like 'Schwarzenegger movies', 'fellatio in film' and 'action, action, action'. All 3 women were unceremoniously dumped missing questions that if they'd gotten right, would've made me think they were lesbians.

And finally, there's just something off-putting about Chris Gore. He's just like that one guy at every comic book store in the country. You know the guy. He hangs out next to the register all day but doesn't work there, and you better believe he's got an opinion on whatever you're about to buy. If he doesn't snicker to himself in disapproval, he'll tell you why you 'should' like what you're getting.

Also available at JoAnn Fabrics for 50 cents...

I suppose if you blindly follow the spiritual 'wisdom' of folks like Madonna, Demi Moore and Britney Spears, you'll think this is quite a bargain;

Click HERE for protection from evil spirits

Here's what the sales pitch to Target must've been like:

That's right, it's string!

String you tie around your wrist!

No, it doesn't need batteries, it's string!

What do you mean no one will pay $25 for string? Haven't you ever been to a Berkeley street fair? Some of those sad old women would buy a dreamcatcher made from Aids if you told them the Dhali Lama once wiped his ass with it! Just put it in the catalog and we'll use the first million dollars of profit to have a truckload of expired potato chips imbued with the 'essence of protection'.

Patton Oswalt on NPR

Wacky midget and currently one of the top 5 funniest living people, Patton Oswalt was on NPR on monday being interviewed. Most of the chat was standard promotional stuff for his new CD but he also addressed a subject that I had just brought up last weekend in conversation about the current state of standup comedy.

He was talking about when he first started out and, thanks mostly to Johnny Carson, 99% of comics did standup in the hope that they wouldn't have to do standup much longer. Every comic had 5 minutes of clean material that they could perform on Carson in hopes they would get invited over to the desk and then the sitcoms and movies would just roll in from there. Then they could finally be rid of the 'burden' of having to please people face to face.

With the success of comics like Ray Romano and Kevin James, and the creation of shows like Last Comic Standing , this attitude seems to have returned in a big way. None of the comics on 'LCS' want to continue doing standup, that's the whole point of the show. Everyone on it is a 'successful' standup comedian who is now demanding a lucrative tv deal so they can finally quit this job they obviously hate so much. The only trouble is, as a result of them hating their job, they're usually not very funny and won't get a tv deal. It's a vicious cycle.

Thankfully, there's still a few comics that love what they do; Dave Attell, Louis CK and Patton to name a few. Despite relative success on tv, all three of these guys continue to perform all the time. It's people like them that stop comedy from eroding back into the awful 'Night at the Improv' days of the mid-80s. We're dangerously close to returning to the heady days of ventriloquists and impressionists cracking us up with yet another 'dead on' Jack Nicholson...

The Dancing of Politics

Watched Bubba speak at the Dem Convention last night and, even if you're a big enough brainwashed douchebag to think that Clinton was a bad president, you have to admit that the man's got more charisma in his earwax than that snickering dope GW's got in his whole body.

I've never been hardline left or right wing, but I honestly can't figure out what kind of weird, 'never admit your mistakes', 'plug your ears and sing hymns' kind of personality you have to have in order to continue unwaveringly supporting Bush's administration.

Having lived and worked in hellish suburbs for most of the last 4 years, I honestly think a lot of it is jealousy mixed with insecurity. Allow me to explain; The only reason anyone would care so much about a dude getting a blowjob and then (horror of horrors) trying to keep it from his wife, is if you secretly want to live that kind of life yourself but are consistently shot down by anyone who's not a bowling alley prostitute. It's the old childish morality based on the notion that 'If I'm not gonna get it, no one is'. These are the people still fighting for sodomy laws and anti-rave legislation.

Now the insecurity is something I've witnessed first hand. Anyone that's not very smart, has a shitty personality, and generally doesn't deserve the things they have (such as management positions at publishing companies in Newtown, Connecticut), lives in constant fear of losing the nice things they have. Therefore, the only way to guarantee that they'll hold onto their shit is to support as many exclusionary policies as possible. Couple that with being sexist and racist and you're all set. Opportunities won't exist for 1/2 the population and the other 1/2 will be too scared by the bad economy to ever question you. So for people like this, voting republican is about survival, cause if they should ever slip on the ladder, everyone else will happily throw them off of it.

Did you ever notice?

At the risk of sounding like that senile old windbag Andy Rooney, does anyone else have a problem with opening cereal boxes these days? I understand that it needs to be sealed to protect the freshness and alert me if some shit-heel poured anthrax in it, but it seems more and more that some cereals (I'm looking at you Quaker) are sewn up tighter than Donny Osmond's asshole. I have to claw and scratch so much at that space age bag inside that by the time I get it open, the box looks like the inside of the well that Buffalo Bill kept his victims in in Silence of the Lambs.

Ferry Building

Went to lunch at the SF Ferry building yesterday. They did a pretty good job overhauling the place. Lots of little knick-knackery and food shops. We ate at Tsar Nicoulai and Teri had the best smoked salmon sandwich I'd ever tasted. I had the caviar sampler which included a really nice ginger infused caviar and a wasabi version that was also very good. MOST PRETENTIOUS POST....EVER!

Skywalker Ranch

Got to go to Skywalker Ranch yesterday and fulfill every bedwetter's dream by walking around George Lucas' 'world that Jar-Jar built'. Unfortunately I'm sworn to secrecy, but I did manage to sneak this picture of a couple of door-stops;


It's a strange little Utopian society that they've got going up there. Once you walk in, you have to adorn half-assed Storm Trooper costumes made of paper (you'd think authentic ones would be easy to get...). Then comes a strange ceremony wherein a man dressed as Han Solo (again, not a good costume, he was just wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm Han Solo" on it) takes you into a private room and asks you what your LEAST favorite George Lucas movie is. I said 'Howard the Duck' and he punched me right in the business and asked me again. After quite a while, I figured out the answer he was looking for. Now pay attention, If you're ever invited to Lucas Ranch and asked this question, the answer is, "Mr. Lucas doesn't make bad movies, you're thinking of Rainer Fassbinder".

Probably the strangest part of 'Camp Droopy McCool' (I thought it was a strange nickname too) is the monetary system. When you buy things at the gift shop or cafeteria, instead of money, you use large amounts of money. Luckily, there's tons of it lying around. A Cheese sandwich at the 'Temple of Lunch' deli will run you about 138 million dollars, but once again, it's not hard to find that much money plugging up the intake vents.

Anyway, I won't mention who let us in, cause truth is he could be fired for not wiping our memories afterwards, but thanks to him/her for an interesting look behind the man who brought us Captain EO...

Ashton Kutcher must be stopped!

As evidenced by the following site, the whole 'emo' trucker hat retro rich
kids wearing old t-shirts thing is way beyond out of hand.

Check out the prices on this shit!

Little Rich Assholes with more money than common sense click HERE

No babies on the ceiling yet...

I've heard some people say that quitting smoking is harder than quitting Heroin. Having seen trainspotting and known people who have lost battles with heroin, I think those people are completely full of shit. That being said, without sweet sweet nicotine, the brain does do some funny things in the first couple of weeks after quitting.
I think if you asked people who know me, they would say that one of my most prominent personality traits is a complete inability to become highly emotional about most things. Call it my 'gen-x' disorder. Well take away my smokes, and after a few days me and the wife will be shouting at each other, nearly coming to blows and calling the attorneys over just about any tedious and boring subject you can name. From experience, this only lasts a couple of days, however, so fear not, no one will find me in a urine soaked alley off of Mission dead and bloated with 50 cigarettes in my mouth any time soon.

SBC Park

Caught a game at the ballpark in San Francisco last night. First time I'd been there. Nice damn park. A little snobby, and $7.75 is ree-diculous for a beer. I'm sure that's on purpose so that no one 'gets drunk' and 'spoils everyone else's fun'. I'm sure It never occurred to any of the stupid hippies planning it out that there are people that can handle their booze, and that if you go to a baseball game and don't at least get a buzz on, that you're too big of a dork to be there in the first place. I'm sorry, but trying to take booze out of baseball is like taking taste out of food. Sure, you get your nutrients and can continue living, but it becomes another tedious task to get out of the way before getting back to playing Magic the Gathering or ElfQuest or whatever.

Single greatest painting ever

Mark Ryden's work can only be described as 'unsettling'. The above still is from the larger work 'birth of venus' in which Colonel Sanders is removing the umbilical cord of a baby from Abraham Lincoln's face. The complete painting, as well as other horrifying works can be seen here.

Mark Ryden

Quitters never win

Me and the mrs. are quitting smoking again. This one should be easier than the last time just because no one in California smokes anymore. We both quit for a solid year recently and only started up again due to the stress of selling the house and moving cross country.

The only things I'll miss about it are the smooth smooth flavor and the temporary self-delusion that I look like Steve McQueen in his prime!

Current Worst Franchise in Pro Sports...

The Seattle Sonics have achieved nothing, and done nothing in the last couple of years to improve. It used to be that you could dog it for a few years, get a good draft pick and rebound, but in this age where the average draft pick is about 14 years old, that's no longer a viable option.

Which leads one to an obvious conclusion, the Sonics don't give a rat's ass about winning. I'm sure the franchise does Ok, sells some tickets and makes a profit, but eventually they're going to run it right back into the ground it had to crawl itself out of in the early 90s.

The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan

Last night on the Sci-Fi channel, they showed a 3(!) hour long 'documentary' about America's favorite mystical Shaman who occasionally visits our plane of existence to make a mildly crummy movie with Bruce Willis or Joaquin Phoenix in it. A better title for this 'mockumentary' would have been 'The Blair Ego Project'.

I went to school with Manoj, and could confidently say that we were 'small b' buddies. And while being somewhat talented and overall a pretty nice guy, one thing was true then (1989-90) and still remains true today; Manoj is a much better self-marketer than a filmmaker. There was never much 'mysticism' surrounding him. He was just one of the many rich kids at NYU with an over-inflated sense of self-esteem caused by gifted-child hippy-schools that routinely drill into your head that you've got a vision that you need to share with the rest of the world right now!

But back to the documentary. Overall, it was mildly entertaining, but 3 hours? For the love of Ganesh, most people who try to talk that long about how great they are can't stay drunk enough! Even self-absorbed body builders get tired of gazing at their own biceps after about two hours.

And finally, if Manoj is reading this, gimme a job old buddy!

Point Reyes and Mendocino

Went driving up the coast of Northern California yesterday just for
shits. Went to Point Reyes, which was completely fogged out, then went
up to Dillon Beach, stopped at the Dillon Beach Cafe for what turned
out to be the best Clam Chowder in a sourdough bread bowl I've ever
had, and then made our way inland towards Santa Rosa.

While driving through Guerneville, we both noticed what appeared to be
an entire small town in the middle of the Russian river valley full of
husky gay men. Much to our surprise, we drove through during the 'Lazy
Bear Weekend', a yearly festival of everything butch and hairy.
Surreal...

Pacific Coast Brewing Company, Suruki's Sushi

Went out for beer and grub last night. Here's the places;

Pacific Coast Brewing Company, 906 Washington Street, Oakland.

Had a nice beer (Triple Whale Ale), but the Appetizer was really disappointing. Jalapeno poppers with Raspberry dipping sauce was what the menu said, but what we got was basically frozen-caliber stuffed peppers with Ranch dressing. All for the low low price of 8 or 9 bucks.

Suruki's, 911 Washington Street, Oakland.

Originally in the mood for a sandwich, and finding nothing but pretentious pub-grub at the Pac Coast, we popped across the street for sushi. Actually, I had ramen which was quite good and came with a side of 'fried rice potstickers' that were very good. My wife had sushi which seemed good and it was all very inexpensive. Recommended if you're on a budget.

2 1/2 Hours of Biblical Ass-Rape

I was watching Comedy Central's fairly funny new show CrossBalls, featuring a bunch of people from Upright Citizen's Brigade in NY. One of the 'panelists' was saying that they were going to take Mel Gibson one step further and start making even more violent and pornographic movies based on the bible. The main idea was The Sodom and Gomorra story, which is basically 2 1/2 hours of Biblical Ass-Rape... Excellent.

Bush Lovin' douche on Big Brother

I was watchin' that there Big Brother show last night and some guy
named Mike is on, wearing a truly moronic t-shirt. It says 'Bush's
America' on it and has every COUNTY in the U.S. that voted for Bush in
Red. So even states that overwhelmingly went for Gore look more red
than not because it counts rural shit-kicking areas that are 10,000
square miles, but have 3 people living in them.

Wouldn't you rethink your political beliefs just a little bit if the map of who voted for your candidate EXACTLY MATCHES a map of lowest literacy rates in the country?

Not only that, but upon hearing that one of his housemates is gay, his
response is that "I guess it's ok, because I'm a little too old to be
his type". Oh, I see, so this asshole doesn't have a problem with
homosexuals per say, he's just tired of constantly having to defend
against unwanted advances. It must be tough living in whatever
shit-hole town in Michigan he's from, what with all the horny gay men
roaming the streets propositioning every pudgy redneck as they walk out
of church...

Name checkin' part 2

Australia/New Zealand 1998, Greg Hutchings, Trish Rhode, Kate Ross, Leonardo Rinaldi. Portland 1998-2000, Jennifer Stacy, Bruce Joseph, James Spencer, Jon Pablo, Mike Morris, Randy Fitzhugh, Willie Nelson, Jason Marriott, Ken Pierce, Reid Leake, William Russell, Brig Otis. New York/Connecticut 2000-04, Joe Orlando, Conrado Ramos, Brian Farrelly, Barrington Lynch, Errol Izurieta, Phil Kriebel, Walter Pogue, Vince Yozenas, Hazzard Ali, Xeonia Solis, Wilson LaTure, Kathy McNulty, Mike Maurer, Stanley Kakowski, Yiannis Kakouris, Peter Stokes Jr., Vincent Repaci, Tony Macri, Janea Powell, Vinnie Nicolosi, Danny O'Connell, Kevin O'Brien, Vinnie Hernandez, Ray Passaro, Sergio Colon, Deb Greene, Fred Monnes. Phew! My apologies to anyone who I know that doesn't find their name here. It probably just means that I can't remember your last name.

Name checkin'

For posterity's sake, and because I fear my own senility at some point, I'm going to list some people I went to college with or generally hung out with over the years. This will serve two purposes; 1) In case I forget and 2) If they ever Google search their own name, they'll find me. Here goes: Seattle 1970-1989, Greg Wells, Ronald Hippe, Jeremy Spurgin, Bart Pfingst, Brad Fritzler, Ryan K. Johnson, Darrell Bratz, John Otakie, Tori McNeil, James Ritzman, Alan Halfhill, Lisa Hennes, Bruce Kather, Howard Carson. NYU 1989-90, John Vitale, Louis Puleo, Kazuo Nakamura, Marie Pollio, Jason Smith, Michael Ross, Ben Hayeem, Scott Wohl, Robert Schacht, Manoj Shyamalan, Jeff Cleary, Sterling Jones, Ken Sackheim, Jim Mol, Kimson Albert, Tomamichi, Daniel Irwin, Victor Brody, Phil Todd, Scott Boggins, Mike Jann, Tim Bogart, Sunjay Guleria, Sean Farrelly, Elisa Piszel, Barbara Vosmikova, Jim Polaczynski. Reseda/Thousand Oaks 1990-92, Don Brown, Randy Ralston, Michelle Fiala, Charles Edwards, Jeffrey Dressell, Bob Morelock, Matt Schilling, West Hills College 1992-93, Batul Isaac, Richard Gaeta, Robert Gaeta, Jack Decker, Dave Bolt. Long Beach State University 1993-95, David Lee, Jon Hirozawa, Matt Vinopal, Travis Long, James McCaffrey, Chad Eric Ostboe, Nadine Takvorian, Ahren Sims, Joe Osio, Natalie Dyroff, Kamala Mantha. San Francisco 1995-98, Marcia Crain, Sue Crain, Jim Gallagher, Rich Prasch, Mike Billington, Ceppie Mayes, Artie Barnes, Constance Botelho, John Frietas, Thom Canova, Teri Hart, Mike Lozinski, Mitch Fujita, Dennis Luftbaum, Steve Henry, Mitch Fine, Amy Andresco.

R.I.P. Wheezy

I just heard that Isabelle Sanford, AKA Wheezy Jefferson just died at the age of 87. Perhaps more than the recent deaths of Ray Charles or Marlon Brando, this one will effect me the most. She was like the cranky but common sense black mother I never had. Now who are elderly black women to aspire to, Maya Angelou? Screw that!

Nothin' like a bar crawl

Before every last brain cell is swimming in sweet, sweet liquor, I'd better list off the various establishments responsible for this last Friday night;
First was the HEMLOCK Tavern on Polk Street, nice little 'indie rock' place, but too early to have more than a few inhabitants.
Then came EDINBURGH CASTLE down the street, one of my favorite UK style bars in the SF area. Great taps, good environment and excellent fish n' chips.
After a brief break, we hit ZEITGEIST on Valencia, still a cool place, but today was jam-packed to the walls and beyond with douchebag biker trash. Runaway!
Made a hasty escape from there and it was on to MARTUNI'S for some much needed stiff drinks and snobby homosexuals.
Next was CAFE ORBIT(?) on Market. The bartender was way too busy for no good reason and made the worst looking Cosmopolitan I've ever seen (on ice?).
Then and finally was The EXPANSION near Market and Church. One of the truly great remaining dive bars in San Francisco. Nothing is fancy or clean and it's usually fairly empty save for a few crusty old alcoholics. So we stayed, already pretty shitfaced, and killed the rest of the night there.

Bar Review #1

Last night went to Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon at Jack London Square in Oakland. Cool place, kind of reminded me of Specs or Vesuvio in North Beach, San Francisco. It has that ancient old-wood feel about it. The entire place kind of sits on a slant as well and is tiny enough that it will never turn into a big sports bar hang-out kind of place. Highly recommended.