RIP Mitch Hedberg

One of my favorite standup comedians, Mitch Hedberg died yesterday. Mitch was incredibly funny and if you haven't heard either of his CDs, "Strategic Grill Locations" and "Mitch Alltogether", get them and listen to one of this generation's comic geniuses at his best.

Mitch appeared on Letterman 10 times and I would have easily put him in my top five list of current comics. Doug Stanhope, one of his best friends had this touching eulogy on his site;

Mitch Hedberg died on Wednesday.

I don't know how. It doesn't matter.

Andy Andrist does a bit about how people will always try to blame you for your death. Andy says he wants to be mauled to death by a bear so no one will say it's his own fault.

Mitch wasn't mauled by a bear. But it doesn't matter.

Nobody has asked me how Mitch lived. And Mitch lived like a motherfucker. More than most any of us will live. That isn't sad or tragic.

Mitch was the kind of comic that was funny even when nobody was looking. It wasn't just for the stage, the ego or the random congratulations. He was funny when he was alone.

And now the deluge of people who will try to fault him for his demise, as though if he'd spent his days on a treadmill, logging his mileage for tax purposes and avoiding red meat he would have been the same comic that you all loved. Everything Mitch did made Mitch who he was. I loved Mitch for all of it.

I don't know how Mitch died. I know how Mitch lived and he lived brilliantly and by his own rules. The number of years next to his name is trivia. The contents of those years is inspiration.

Go out today and make someone very, very happy.

Mitch was shit your pants funny, and according to his fans, one of the most generous comics in the world to the people who came out to see him. He will be missed.

P.S. It's nice to see that Hedberg's internet hosting company pulled the plug on his site, much like when Homer faked his own death and the power company cut off their electricity that night. "The juice stays off until you get a job or a generator. Oh, and my deepest sympathies.".

Thursday Nabors Blogging

Top 5 Johnnie Cochrane Death Announcement Headlines!!

Yes, J to the Cock shuffled off his mortal coil and is down there in black heaven (horrible racist comment courtesy WonderShowzen). While most people are taking this time to reflect on what an opportunistic douchebag of the highest order he was, I would defend him by saying that he HAD to exist. Not only are there a million other slimey defense attorneys tripping over their gold watches to get at OJ's money, but the alternative would've been what exactly? An upstanding, nice lawyer who came out day one and said, "It looks like my client is guilty, so I'm not going to bother putting up much of a defense, ok?". Even if it only wakes people up to the fact that rich people get off and poor people don't, it was valuable work. So RIP scumbag... Now on with the Top 10:

5) If you've got a tumor, try to keep your sense of humor
4) If you defend O.J., then in hell in you'll pay
3) Defending Sean 'Puffy' Combs? Nice work Holmes
2) If the reaper says Hello, Away you must go

And finally, my personal favorite, courtesy of TVGasm,

1)If the heart doesn't beat, the worms will eat

Peace out.

Gimme A 'C'... A Bouncy 'C'!!!!

It's time for a column that I would call "Stuff that you should be listening to". That is, I would if I didn't, like most Gen-X losers, have a sneaking suspicion that my taste in music sucks as much as anyone else's.

So here goes. There's lots of new stuff out there, so stay with your tour guide.

Adam Green - Gemstones. Ain't no getting around it, if you listen to Adam Green you're either going to hate it or love it. Think of him as the bastard love child of Beck and MC Paul Barman, in other words, a foul-mouthed jerk who plays folk music just to piss you off.

Kasabian - Kasabian. Think of Stereo MCs mixed with Lo-Fidelity Allstars and a pinch of Achtung Baby era U2 and you're several pretentious references away from defining this band. Me likey.

Beck - Guero. What can I say? Even the albums that everyone seems to hate (Mutations) I still like or at least respect. If he'd released nothing but Odelay-style records for the last 10 years, everyone would be sicker of him than we'll be of the Scissor Sisters in 10 years. This new album should placate his party-people fans for a while.

Moby - Hotel. Tough call. At times I really like this new double album and at other times, it just seems like pop drivel. Pass for now.

Mando Diao - Hurricane Bar. You can thank The Hives for using their white dress shoes to kick open the door for bands like this to gain worldwide popularity. Say what you will, though, it's catchy as heck. If you've always loved the Clash, but you're not sure why you hated Radio 4, check this out.

Leave new bands I should be ashamed to have left out in the comments.

P.S. Blogger.com sux ass as usual and I'd like you geeks to give me the last hour of my life back please.

Your Next, Gary Larson!!

"According to this magazine I just read, the old vaudevillian terrorists used to use these 'seltzer bottles' to humiliate those who didn't believe in the politics of personal destruction."

The fun-loving goofballs down at American Spectator Magazine are eager to show that their right-wing hate-rag has a dynamite sense of humor and enjoys a good joke as much as the next person (well, maybe not their wives... or that guy down the street... or the man at the coffee place.. or..), OK, come to think of it, most people enjoy a good joke more than they do. In this month's issue, they name the WORST BOOK OF THE YEAR. Being a politically minded serious publication, I would imagine they would pick some dangerously leftist work that soberly picks apart conservative ideals and presents its arguments in chilling detail trying to bring down the party of Lincoln.

Nope, they chose a JOKE BOOK, written by COMEDY writers, which has the word 'parody' written into the text about a hundred times. Yup, there's nothing that tells people how well thought out your position is than being intellectually threatened by comedians.

I love how the right is constantly talking about how tired they are of 'politcal correctness', but the moment someone cracks wise about their boy (or in the case of 'America The Book', the whole political system), suddenly it's time to censor the shit out of them.

So look out Jim Davis, keep Garfield to Lasagne and Monday jokes or next year's TAS will put you on their bookburning list.

My apologies to blog The American Street, for having the same initials as the awful right wing magazine in question.

SFist Reprint

Staggering Through Fog

Your weekly breath mint and fresh pair of pants to help you out of your 'bar rut'. Reviewed as always by barrespondent, Drew.

'Tis most certainly the season for sports bars. With the NCAA Tournament continuing on and basketball season starting to get interesting (especially when a certain Bay Area team has a [gasp] winning streak going), it's as good a time as any to find the bar with the most televisions in it to test your ability to pay attention to 10 things at once.

Now, San Francisco may not be nationally known for its sports bars the same way Boston or Chicago is, but those who live here know that we've got plenty of places to suck back a few and catch a game or two or twenty. But these places, like any other kind of bars, vary wildly throughout the city, and just because a place puts 'sports' in their name doesn't mean they can dial up that South African rugby game you wanted to catch. So how do you find the best place for you? First, you must become aware of the subtle differences that exist in the sports bar scene. There are, in our opinion, three types of bars to be found in the city and we'll cite an example of each after the jump.

The first, Jillian's at the Metreon, is the collossal, mega-corporate sports bar. Its huge-screened pomposity is only matched by its marked up drink prices. Don't expect any local fans, as the entire crowd is only in town for a convention at the Moscone and is just looking for a place to kill time before they can go to the Hustler Club.

Next is Steff's Sports Bar on 2nd Street. This is a good example of a half-assed attempt to drag people in off the street with the promise of 3 or 4 TVs of basic cable sports on them. Usually the result of a buy-out of a dive bar, owners of places like Steff's usually think they can buy an extra TV or two, jack up the beer prices a little, slap the word 'sports' outside and people will just file in. This is by far the most common and unfortunate example of sports bar throughout the city, and indeed, the country.

Finally, we've saved the best for last. Greens in Russian Hill on Polk is a neighborhood sports bar with cross-country appeal. It seems like no matter who is playing on any one of their 20 or so TVs, you'll find several diehards parked in front displaying passion for their home squad. It does get incredibly packed during big events, but it's a lot more fulfilling to watch a sporting event with a crowd that's too big than it is in an empty place that keeps trying to switch your game over to Wheel of Fortune.

So in these glory days where steroids have been completely cleaned out of baseball and the Warriors are battling for that elusive 10th place finish, find a decent local sports bar. As an added tip, try and find the drunkest guy there and pretend to root for whoever he's rooting for. Free drinks are almost guaranteed if they do well. But also have an escape route planned if you're found out or if they lose.

Liver... Out!!

The Best of PTE

Devoted Coach, Beloved Aunt, Paul Silas.

There's been a lot of talk since Paul Silas got fired about how black coaches seem to get the 'high-hat' pretty damn quickly these days. Examples include Byron Scott, Mo Cheeks, Johnny Davis etc. And while these are probably good examples of coaches let go when a VanGundy or a Dunleavy would've been given a few more years, there's one thing we have to remember in Silas' case:

He called Carlos Boozer a c*nt!!! Now I'm as foul-mouthed as anyone, but right when I heard that I said to myself, "You can't do that!". Everyone would love to find a reporter and start rattling off the c-word about people you're not too fond of, but every once in awhile, you've got to reel it in a bit. The shame is there's so many other words you could've used that have nearly the impact of 'C to the T' without getting you canned. How about 'Dick'? It's nice and curt and you could always claim that you thought his real name was Richard. Or 'a-hole', it's TV-friendly and has the added benefit of being classifiable, like 'Utah-lovin' A-hole' or 'Alaskan A-hole'.

Just a reminder that, when it comes to insulting your former players, originality is the key. Otherwise, you might lose your job to some twat.

Arts AND Entertainment, why some liberals are wrong about music

First in what I hope to be a series of 'liberal on liberal' hate crimes, because picking on the 'Credit Jesus first' crowd has gotten way too easy.

I recently saw a repeat of a show on PBS called 'Speaking Freely'. The interviewee this particular episode was Janeane Garafolo, and while I have a great deal of respect for Janeane and think she's genuinely smart and funny, I thought she was dead wrong on the issue of music.

One of the things she discussed at great length was how awful the music industry is, and how pre-packaged pop stars who don't write or perform their own material are jammed down the country's throat by awful radio stations creating an awful class of people who only know crap like Creed and Britney. Janeane admitted that her particular taste was for 'indie-rock' but acknowledged that there are other equally good forms of music out there that aren't pop, like classical and jazz etc. At one point, she matter-of-factly stated that "people want good music and will listen to it, but record companies do everything they can to hide it from them and cram their pre-packaged stuff down their throats instead".

The problem I have with this diatribe is that the solution for the problem stated would be to seize all pop radio stations and force them to play indie-rock or jazz or whatever, and the assumption then is that all those poor plebians shackled to their cubicles would hear the first few guitar chords of the new 'Wilco' album and their chains would magically fall off and the world would run out and destroy all things poisoned by commerce. For some reason, I think that's bullshit.

Not only would a world with only indie-rock, jazz and classical music be intensely boring, but the idea that you can eliminate class when it comes to arts and entertainment is hogwash. Let's assume Janeane's master plan works, and millions of kids dressed in flannel toss every KISS-FM and Z-100 into the ocean. What then? Well, first off, you'd have to rename 'Indie-rock' because it would have 100 million listeners. Then people like me and people like Janeane Garafolo would desperately search out the most 'non-indie-rock' music possible, so as not to be associated with the Olive Garden-eating rabble that now listens to indie music. Then, when the cool people are all listening to 'hardcore shoegaze Peruvian pan-flute' or whatever, we'll call the masses 'idiots' for letting record companies jam mainstream crap like Yo La Tengo down their throats. And the cycle continues.

Arguments like these annoy me because they play right into conservative right-wing stereotypes of liberals as snobby intelligencia that wants to dictate how you entertain yourself. Art is good, art is great, but you have to acknowledge that entertainment exists 'outside' of art for most people. If some guy in Scottsdale, Arizona wants to listen to Staind or P.O.D., it's possible he's heard the new Postal Service and doesn't feel like thinking that much at the moment.

Thursday Buzzi and Nabors Blogging

Hey Douche!

Do you have any idea how many pictures of GW Bush you have to sort through on Google Images to find actual douche?

Apparently, Maxim magazine (which I would never actually read because I respect women and think that kind of entertainm....zzzz.....) is attempting to nail down a list of the top 10 movie douchebags of all time.

Here's what they've got:
10. Cal Hockley, Titanic (Billy Zane), 9. Mark, Old School (Craig Kilborn), 8. Pig Vomit, Private Parts (Paul Giammati), 7. Chet Donnelly, Weird Science (Bill Paxson), 6. Biff Tannen, Back to the Future (Thomas F. Wilson), 5. Fred O'Bannion, Dazed and Confused (Ben Affleck), 4. Dr. Frederick Chilton, The Silence of the Lambs (Anthony Heald), 3. Tinkerbell, Peter Pan (They choose Ludvine Sangier for the picture), 2. Harry Ellis, Die Hard (Hart Bochner), 1. Douglas C. Niedermeyer, Animal House (Mark Metcalf)

Gunslinger adds Rand McPherson in PCU and Bill Lumbergh from Office Space, Norbizness adds Kent from Real Genius, William Atherton from Die Hard, and Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.

I myself would add Spaulding (Ratfarts!) Smails from Caddyshack, Travis (I think his hand is up that dog's ass) Cole from Dirty Work, Hedley Lamarr from Blazing Saddles, and my personal favorite, Tony (I'm excited, why aren't you?) Moss from Showgirls.

Anyone we missed?

Thanks to Gunslinger for the idea, and a kickass site that drops a lot of soccer science.

Mmmm... That's Good Whack-Job...

Is there a Guiness Book category for 'worst alibi that worked'?

During Robert Blake's 'exit-interview' from court last week, when he wasn't talking about how broke he is and how David Lynch should hurry up and make more movies 'cause he needs work, he was talking about getting behind the wheel of a motor home in order to 'feel the wind through his hair' and find a bar in Arizona.

If you own a bar in Arizona, you may want to think twice about serving drinks to someone who chopped the top off of a motor home to feel the wind in his hair. Oh yeah, that and he's clearly insane and killed his wife.

The jury in the Blake case, in another 'OJ-esque' round of judicial retardedness, threw out all testimony from the stuntman that Blake tried to hire to kill his wife because evidence was presented that he did drugs at one point. HE'S A STUNTMAN THAT ROBERT BLAKE WAS TRYING TO GET TO KILL HIS WIFE. Were you expecting him to ask around the local seminary? My guess is that Robert Blake hung around a lot of people that did drugs. I base this on the rather obvious fact that he's a fucking drugged-up lunatic himself. His life was a lot more 'Big Tuna, Texas' than Bel Air, California but somehow he's supposed to find the nice, straight-shootin' murder for hire guy in town. Oh well...

But let's not lose track of what's important here. If you own a bar in Arizona, and you see someone come barrelling down the road in half of a motorhome that looks like this:


Close up early for the night.

Stop The Non-Existent Internet Presses!!

If only there was a drug that could make his head bigger...

I just completely reversed my opinion on an issue. From black to white, from striped to solid. I've had an epiphany that I can't hold two concurrent beliefs because they essentially contradict each other. In other words, I done changed my mind.

The issue at hand is the most important one we currently face as a nation. Yes, of course I'm talking about steroids. They've had a lot more congressional hearings on steroids than they have about either Abu-Ghareb or the leaking of Valerie Plame's name, so obviously this is the issue that our grandkids will judge us on.

So back to my flip-flop. If you'd asked me a couple of days ago about Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and the boys, I would've said that they deserve all this scrutiny and being taken to task for lying under oath and so on because they broke the law. Steroids are illegal, they did 'em, rake them over the coals. I still think McGwire's a chicken shit horse's ass for his bullshit testimony last Thursday. "I'm not here to talk about the past"? What kind of crap is that? You're not at an autograph convention laying down the ground rules for what you'll sign, you'll fucking talk about whatever the fucking Congress of the United States is asking you, you egotistical jerk.

Anyway, I think that doing steroids is wrong, that it endangers the lives of those who take them and creates an unfair playing field for those who don't take them. This describes just about every 'recreational' drug as well, and I'm FOR the legalization of every recreational drug on the planet. If people are willing to accept responsibility for the terrible damage they may be doing to their mind and body in return for some short term gain, then great, go for it.

Do I think baseball should regulate performance enhancing drugs? Of course, just like they currently do with Cocaine and amphetamines. Test them for it and suspend them if they're using. Otherwise, it's a matter of the players and their union taking personal responsibility for it. If they're unable or unwilling to police themselves, then the players will wind up like Lyle Alzado and Ken Caminiti and die prematurely. If that's the price they're willing to pay to entertain me with a few extra home runs, it's not my business to do anything but say, "Hey idiot, you probably shouldn't do that.".

What it comes down to for me is that drugs are drugs. You can no sooner subtract from someone's stats for enhancing drugs (steroids, coke, speed) than you could add to the stats of people who played under the influence of performance inhibiting drugs (alcohol, weed, acid) so getting the guv-ment involved makes no sense.

SFist Reprint

Staggering Through Fog

An ongoing journey through the City's dusty, aged underbelly of Taverns, Bars, Speakeasys and Jukejoints. Actually, just the first two. No one's seen a Jukejoint around here since monocles and spats went out of style. By your Barrespondent, Drew.

Most of the bars we've reviewed so far could be categorized as 'dives', which is basically to say that they're not very clean, don't make a lot of fuss about their appearance and generally exist to give people a place to get drunk that's not quite as depressing as their apartment/ hotel/ methodone clinic. Every once in awhile, however, you just gotta go somewhere nice. Somewhere swanky, upscale and hip. A place where pretty people order pretty drinks for pretty near what they pay for indoor tanning every month. This week's bar fits that bill, and somehow did it without annoying us to death.

Lime on Market near Castro is cool. In fact, if it were any cooler it would immediately become less cool because it wouldn't let degenerates like us into it, sweater and pressed pants not withstanding. From the color-changing bar with imbedded tv screens showing 'exotic' movie clips to the super mod Saarinnen furniture throughout, Lime is a sumptuously comfortable place to see and be seen.

Don't misunderstand us, however, Lime is not a meet-market crowd at all. While there are certainly plenty of good looking people about, we never once felt pressured to get out lest we ugly up the place. Lime walks a wonderful tightrope of being comfortable and a spectacle all at once. The bartenders are nice enough, but should maybe crack a smile more often if they're going to charge $10 a drink. However, the drinks are well made and the atmosphere more than compensates the extra grip you'll have to lie down.

So if you're tired of watching that dog with the bandana lick the ashtrays clean at your local dive, throw on a nice sweater and give the Lime a try.

Liver... Out!!!

Best of The PTE

Time once again to bait & switch y'all into reading something from me and Jeff's sports blog! Ok? Ok!! We get letters over at Pardon The Eruption. Sackfuls and sackfuls of made-up letters, like these chestnuts:






At PTE, we get so many emails, our staff can hardly handle all the traffic. Instead of disregarding them like Congressional Subpoenas, we've decided to share some with you.

Letter #1...

"Guys, your website has the momentum of a runaway freight train, why are you so popular? -L. Simpson

Jeff: Tough question. Some people respond to our bold "tell it like it is" statements, others to the ease and style with which we deconstruct the complex world of the sports spectator, but if I had to choose one thing, it would have to be, animal magnetism. People just seem to pick up on our cyber-pheromones and can't control themselves.

Letter #2...

"Why are you guys so hell bent on destroying all Earthly evidence of Jay Bilas?" -Kundun

Jeff: I'll handle this one. Jay Bilas deserves any and all the abuse he gets. Why? Because he showed me the time of my life one night and I assumed he would call back! I still have emotional scars with his name all over them. You don't just "get over" something like that easily.

Letter #3...

"What makes the PTE guys tick, and can I get me some of that sweetness?" -Dasha Zhukova

Jeff: I thought I'd never get tired of answering this question, but I guess I was wrong. Here's the news ladies: Andrew is married, and not one of those "Green Card" marriages either, a real one. And while I'm not married, like most bloggers, I only date supermodels and naïve actresses. Still, I've never been one to crush people's fragile dreams, so you keep going to the gym, and we'll talk about it when you turn 18.

Letter #4...

"Can we get a glimpse of your faces? -Purely for crowd identification purposes." -Lee Harvey O.

Jeff: Unfortunately, due to some of Andrew's "religious beliefs" there aren't too many recent photos of the two of us. Still, here's an old photo of us after college graduation (circa 2003), moving cross-country to the West Coast: Andrew and Jeff.

Thanks for Everything, Killian's Red

So there's a Jew, a Mexican and a colored fella... Nevermind.

Ugggh... Seems to me that if anyone ever wanted to take over Ireland and just, you know, own it or whatever, that they could just walk in on March 18th with a slightly annoying bell and leadership would be theirs in minutes. But I digress, digressing helps me keep solid food down at the minute.

There, that's better (thanks, Large glass of water!). Now I can get to the business at hand, telling the waitress at the Kezar Pub last night not to lie to your customers.

Listen lady, I know you were really busy last night and having a whole bar full of once-a-year lightweights is a real pisser, but do you honestly think I believe that someone 'stole' my order of Buffalo Wings? "I'm sorry, I forgot to place the order" or "I gave away your order because I'm easily distracted by fratguys.". Both of these would have been fine responses, but stolen?

You're just lucky those wings were tasty, m'lassy!!!

Git Snockered ya Khoontz!

Sorry 'bout the light posting as of late, but NCAA tourney + bad back = Massive entertainment loss. Here's a story about Irish people that I SWEAR is true:

Drunk Ole Mulvihill (From the Northern Irish Clan) staggers into a Catholic Church, enters a confessional box, sits down but says nothing.

The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention but the Ole just sits
there.

Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall.

The drunk mumbles, "ain't no use knockin, there's no paper on this side
either."

Happy St. Patties ya soused-up losers!

Special Pre-Tournament Wednesday Ruth Buzzi Blogging. You Know, For The Kids...

890 Million Reasons To Ignore Statistics

Simple math: You own this poster = You're a douchebag

Well, here it comes. Every single big giant sports event, whether it's the Super Bowl, World Series or now the NCAA Tournament, they have to trot out the same stupid report.

In All-Caps for added emphasis -

STATISTICS SHOW THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON SPENDS 13 MINUTES CHECKING SCORES PER DAY THROUGHOUT THE NCAA TOURNAMENT RESULTING IN A NET PRODUCTIVITY LOSS TO BUSINESSES OF $890 MILLION DOLLARS!!!!

Eeeaagghh! Our American way of life is doomed. Surely the Germans or Japanese will catch up with us now and force us to do business in their silly language! 890 Million dollars? Think how many Successories posters that could buy!!

The only thing that these utter bullshit, completely unreliable statistics do is convince douchebag managers and CEO assholes (who will probably fly into St. Louis to watch the games in person from a luxury box) that their employees are, as they suspected, a bunch of slackers. "Those lazy bastards are using 13 minutes, why almost a short break period, each day to look up basketball scores when they should be figuring out a way to screw their fellow man out of more money that I can use to put gold rims on my golf cart!".

That and it gives people who hate sports a nice little focal point to suck up to those same managers. "See? Apart from my scrapbooking, which I only do at home, I don't have any hobbies or interests at all outside of work, so just imagine how productive I am.".

So leave me alone 'Boss that doesn't exist because I'm currently unemployed', I'll do whatever I want!

Time To Play "Funny, Not Funny"

Not Funny....................... Funny

I don't know if anyone caught Kelsey Grammer's sketch show last night on Fox, but if you did, I'm very sorry. In spite of having genuinely funny people involved like Paul F. Tompkins and Mary-Lynn Raskjub, it was miserable. I think they were going for a LaughIn type of style, but the joke-writing was on par with For Better or For Worse or Family Circus.

On the other hand, WONDER SHOWZEN on Mtv (who won't even acknowledge that it's on but I didn't dream it, I swear.) is goddamn hilarious. Brian sent me this clip awhile back and they've finally fleshed it out to a full show and got it on the air. Did I mention it's the funniest most subversive thing I've seen on TV EVER? It's better than TV Funhouse for uncomfortable laughs. Done in the style of Sesame Street, Wonder Showzen starts out with kids singing over images of children, animals, JFK Junior saluting and finally the Hindenberg. Here's some more highlights:

The Q&A segment asks a bunch of kids (real kids, mind you) "Where Do Babies Come From?". Here's some of their answers: "Lack of identity", "Desire for welfare", "Carelessness", and my personal favorite, "Ignored prayers".

Wonder Showzen shows on MTV2 quite a bit, but you can also catch it once a week on regular MTV at 11:30 Sunday nights. Set your Tivos dammit!!

SFist Reprint

A weekly reaffirmation that the only thing better than going out boozing is reading about going out boozing. By barrespondent, Drew.

Gentrification is an overused term to be sure. Looking around the whole Bay Area these days, we're stuck drawing the conclusion that every single square foot of the entire city is slowly succumbing to the lumbering beast that is middle to upper-class gentrifying. No matter how dank and dangerous your local watering hole is now, in 20 years it's probably going to look like a Planet Hollywood.

Something that confuses us as we get older, however, is that as neighborhoods and bars are redone to appeal to the young, hip and affluent, that we fit less and less into any of those categories, and places that we liked for being dingy, dirty and out of the way are now loud, overly clean 'clubs' full of kids whose musical tastes we just don't get. And while it would be easy to say, "Well, that's just how it goes.", we have to remember that we are bitter old cranks that hate change (shakes fist).

The Abbey on Geary used to have the imagined look and feel of a pub in suburban Dublin. Never crowded, friendly while at the same time being appropriately suspicious of outsiders and more likely to have a guy show up and play the hurdy-gurdy than spin a crate full of awful '90s R&B records. As a former resident of the Inner Richmond, I was shocked at how crowded the streets were around The Abbey on a Saturday night. Throngs of twenty-somethings loudly made their way from Emo-blasting Ireland 32 to The Bitter End to the retro-pumping Abbey. Arrggh, This is not our scene at all!

Any sense of friendly neighborhoodiness seems to have been surgically removed from The Abbey. Once inside, you could be at any mediocre bar on any college campus in the country. Drinks are neither unique or any kind of bargain, and the crowd is intolerable for more than 15 minutes. An annoying blend of meat-market scenesters and Seth Cohen wanna-bes. It would be so much less of a shame if we didn't remember what this place used to be like.

So unless you are under 25, enjoy shouting over ironic music that no one seems to find ironic (Is that double irony?), and fighting through a sea of backwards baseball hats to overpay for a Coors Light, you might want to take a vow against The Abbey.

Liver... Out!!

New Feature! Act Excited!!

From here on out, each Saturday will be best of PTE DAY! A chance for you to read my favorite post from wacky sports blog Pardon The Eruption!

Here goes!

BILAS EXPOSED !!



While Wilbon was busy making the claim to Jay Bilas that at some point Buck Williams and/or Sam (doin' the butt) Perkins achieved the same 26 point/24 rebound stat that Sean May got yesterday in UNC's amazing comeback against Duke, my thought wasn't that Wilbon was full of shit, but that Jay 'Always full of shit' BILAS was full of shit. At one point, Bilas boasted that it took him THREE games to get TWENTY FOUR rebounds. Yes, terribly disappointing for loudmouth Bilas to only get EIGHT rebounds per game, IF THAT WERE TRUE... (gasp, murmur).

According to the cold, hard statistics, Mr. Bilas in his best season of 84-85 only managed to pull down a Antonio Lang, Alaa Abdelnaby-esque SIX rebounds a game, which, by my math would only get you EIGHTEEN over a three game period.

So Jay? When was this mystical season when you averaged 24 rebounds over a three game period and were 1/3 as good as Sean May? When are you going to admit that you're Greg Koubeck with a smart haircut?

Could You Sign It To Our Dogs, Who Are Also Named Andrew And Teri?

If you see me smiling, it's because I'm seeing this while I talk to you.

A couple of years ago, me and the wife went on a family-visiting trip to Southern California. The City of Orange to be exact, right smack-dab in the heart of the soul-sucking godforesakeness that is The O.C. A day or so into our trip, I noticed that clothing designer Paul Frank was making a public appearance at the mall in Costa Mesa. So of course off we went.

I can't fully describe the crowd that was eagerly awaiting getting something signed by the creator of Julius the monkey. And when I say 'can't', I mean not without putting myself at risk for a long prison term. Let's just say that aside from a few misunderstood college-aged gay artists, the crowd was primarily in primary school.

So there we were, dutifully waiting our turn with a hundred or so pre-teen girls waiting to have their footy pajamas signed by Mr. Frank. I might have entertained thoughts of backing out, but hell no! You don't go this far and turn back just because you look like some massive pedophile who wandered into the Delia's catalog! Even if it had the entire staff of Macy's checking for Amber alerts, I was gonna meet the man behind the monkey!

Eventually, we got to the front of the line, and after a somewhat embarrassed set of hellos, he signed a picture to us, "Hi Andrew and Teri! Stay Cool! Paul Frank.". I think he was genuinely thrilled that we showed up. Imagine what it must be like to be one of the most popular designers of your time, but only be idolocized by little girls. You know, on second thought, he probably thought we were as creepy as I felt.

Thursday Mummenschanz Blogging

Ugh.. Blogger's been on the fritz all day. I wouldn't trust blogger.com to post... uh.. a really 'postable' thing even if they had a posthole digger and a bell on their ass. Take that, free weblog service!

Pat Benatar Was Right!!

Apparently, Hell is for children, at least according to this article by Rev. Mark H Creech. In matter of factly defending state sanctioned murder of people under the age of 18 using his Christian faith, the right honorable man of God says;

For all those who believe juveniles are never culpable enough to deserve capital punishment, consider this: Not everyone in hell is over the age of 18.

I can't remember a more sickening recent example of the church trying to use the bible as a pure instrument for disgusting, reactionary hate. Oh wait, yes I can...


So let me get this straight, Reverend, because you THINK, with no scriptures to back you up, that there are children in hell, then our government should be allowed to execute those children? What the fuck is it that the church is supposed to do if not try and protect the right to life of children? So that entire book that you claim has all the answers in it becomes meaningless if some black kid carjacks your Oldsmobile?

And I'm sure you also believe in the death penalty for an abortion doctor that terminated a pregnancy that resulted from rape or her uncle as well, right?

Or better yet, here's a brain teaser for you Reverend. Let's say that two twins were in the womb and when they were born, it became clear beyond any doubt that one of the twins had strangled the other one to death inside their mother's body. Why couldn't you execute the the one that lived? Clearly the baby is evil. Believing in the Bible the way you do you must believe that some kids are evil at conception, perhaps even spawns of Satan himself. Sound stupid? So does your entire faith, jackass.

Hat tip to S.Z. at World o'Crap.
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Zee Goggles, Zey Do Nothing!!!

In certain cultures, the 'OK' sign means 'asshole'. Just an FYI.

I know it's only been a few days since Fred Durst's 'travel sized chess piece' was netcast for the world to see, but I've already seen something worse.

Click on This if you've got the guts:

Carl Lewis Music Video

Who knew that his butchering of the National Anthem was his best performance?

Martin Denny RIP

If you've ever been into the Tiki scene, or just enjoy getting rocked up on rum drinks, you've have probably heard the music of Martin Denny. A wonderful mix of Xylophone and, bird noises and other island sounds, Denny's music provided the soundtrack for the Hawaiiana movement that started in the 50s and 60s and endures through to today. Denny passed away in Hawaii at age 93 last week.

If you need me, I'll be outside pouring a Flaming Scorpion Bowl on the sidewalk, you know, for my dead homey...

Albert Einstein Endorses Private Accounts!! Way To Go Einstein...

Secretary of the Treasury and Emperor Palpatine impersonator John Snow was on Stephanapolous Sunday and had this to say;

The thing that excites young people about Social Security private accounts is that the interest is 'compounded'. Albert Einstein once said that 'compounding' was the most powerful force he knew of. And I think if there's one person that understood the power of things, it was Mr. Einstein.

Boy, those young people must sure be dumb. After all, you don't have to do anything but throw out a word that EINSTEIN used to impress them.

He also went on to say that what attracts young people to private accounts is the 'chance' that their investments will do better than they would have under old Social Security. You got that right, John! I sure do like the idea of 'chance' when it comes to being able to afford food and medicine, which is why I say, why not do away with accounts altogether and just give retirees $500 in lottery tickets every month? Then there's a chance they could be MILLIONAIRES and never have to worry about food or medicine ever again!

I dunno, it's a hard decision. I'd hate to see an entire generation of senior citizens wiped out and starving in the streets because of a 'correction' in the market, but then again, Einstein did have sex with Marilyn Monroe...

Alright, Mr. Preznit man, you and Einstein got my vote!

SFist Reprint

A weekly testament to how different the city looks though the bottom of a highball glass, by local barrespondent, Drew.

Lots of people throw the word 'legend' around nowadays. Seems like whenever we turn around, something else is being adorned with the term 'legendary', and usually those things that are granted this term have accomplished nothing more than surviving more than 10 years or so. Unfortunately, there's little room above the word 'legend'. We've never seen anything referred to as 'Super Legendary' or someone as an 'extra legend', so after 'legend' you're kind of stuck.

Persian Aub Zam Zam on Haight Street had a 'Super Extra' Legend behind the bar for many, many years. His name was Bruno, and if you ever went in while he was there, you would remember him. Maybe the single most bitter, gruff, cantankerous old coot to ever step behind the taps, Bruno dispensed 'justice' as much as booze and enforced his own law in a place where he was judge, jury and executioner. Amongst the things you would hear Bruno shout were; "Tables are Closed!", "Gin Martini's a martini, Vodka's for children", and "If you're gonna mix your drinks, there's many other bars on this street that'll help you throw up!". Bruno opened Zam Zam's whenever he felt like it, and was a hero to anyone who ever dreamed of creating the world's best martini and treating tourists and yuppies like garbage.

Well, Bruno passed on a couple years back, but Zam Zam's is still around, and despite not having a draw like Bruno at the bottles, it's still a great space. Tiny, moody, with nothing but old standards on the jukebox. And the people that now tend the bar still make one of the best martinis in the city. I legitimately feared that the place would be hipped up to appeal to people waiting for a table at 'Cha Cha Cha' or something, but thankfully, that just hasn't happened.

While you're there, raise a toast to Bruno. Just make sure you don't do it while sitting at the tables, because that section is closed!

Liver... Out!!

Fred Durst Has A Small Unit

Fred Durst, America's best argument against the backwards baseball hat, is suing Gawker.com for showing pictures of his laughably tiny junk after a sex video was stolen off his cell phone.

Did I mention that his business is 'children's menu' material? Did I forget to tell you that if most people have Wal-Mart in their pants then Fred's got a roadside Churro stand next to an abandoned railroad? I could go on and on (unlike Durst's wang). In short, it's in short.

Oh god I love the internets...

The Beer is Much Stronger Down Under

First you should read this, and then this, without which I would be as mute as Harpo Marx after having his vocal chords removed by an angry Frank Sinatra.

Lord of The Rings has now officially become a 'cult'. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but its followers bring existing political opinions to the party, and some of them are quite scary.

Oh the horror! I've got no problem with Lord of The Rings, I liked the movies, "LIKED!". It was nice to see New Zealand get full props for the beautiful place it is, even if I'd of preferred that be kept a secret until after I could move there.

The books? Decent science fiction. Compared to most of the godawful dreck that the non-showering crowd proclaims brilliant, Tolkien's master work is certainly better than the million or so Anne McCaffrey clones out there trying to invent a new renaissance wherein walking around eating turkey legs is the finest virtue humans can achieve.

But now, John Q. Fanboy, you have crossed the line. You have taken a harmless fanboy fervor and twisted it into something evil. Australians fall into two categories, the friendliest blokes on the whole fucking planet and the most racist, troglodite rednecks to ever roam the earth. I fear that this 'What if?' piece throws this person into the latter group. The group that sucks down Four-X beers while swatting away sandflies, talking about how savage and unworthy the aboriginals are for having the nerve to cultivate a culture not based on Jesus.

Like all good fiction, Tolkein left his work open for interpretation, but please don't use it to justify your Mt. Isa-loving, Queensland racism. Try and accept the fact that, growing up in Brisbane or Townsville or whatever backward-ass 'Dundee' district, you may not be quite mentally eqipped enough to deal with the problem of racism around the world.

Way To Go Topper Harley...

Nice that Charlie Sheen, one of Hollywood's more zoom-inducing Tang-chasers, couldn't keep it in his pants long enough for his wife to pop out their second kid. Hasn't this guy ever heard of beating off?

I propose a new game show should be created, "America's Next Top Strung Out Greasy Sex Addict". Charlie could compete week-after-week against competition like Tom 'Dated Heidi Fleiss' Sizemore and Corey 'Oh god, pick anything' Feldman.

After careful consideration, our judges have decided. Leaving a pregnant woman is bad, but we gotta give the edge to Sizemore (Link to best news story...ever).

Thursday Gazzara Blogging

This is a reader's prize for correctly guessing that Tuesday's supposed picture of Lizzie Grubman was in fact a dye-jobbed version of 'Chaka' from Land of The Lost. Kudos!

It's So Simple, Just Don't Be A Dick...

As Guckertgate continues to back republicans into laughable stances wherein they accuse liberals of being homophobic, now that the fluids/dust has dried/settled I thought I would throw in my two cents about JimJeff.

Let's start with something obvious, people lie. People lie all the time. People in Washington D.C. lie almost continually. I don't have a problem with this. When you are are constantly monitored, and not an actor or actress, you must present a certain persona constantly. Being a political figure in today's day and age is like being on The Real World or Survivor, except people don't immediately forget about you after 6 months requiring you to come back and appear on 'The Gauntlet' or 'Real World vs. Jackass challenge' or whatever. It's just an unfortunate side effect of the amount of media coverage these days.

Some people lie a lot more than others, and some lie for more shitty and evil reasons. Discerning who's lying the most and for what gain is what following politics is all about. Once you figure out what everyone's covering up, then you have the truth and can make up your mind.

So my problem with Jimmy Guckert-Gannon isn't that he lied, or that he's gay, or that he seems like a self-hating gay who fights against gay causes because he despises who he is. My problem with Jim Guckert is that he's an asshole. A jerk, a dick, a first class fuckwad of a taint, call him what you will. The day that he said 'Hit me with your best shot liberals, I've got nothing to hide' and then proceeded to try and hide everything, he became someone worthy of picking apart and discarding on the dung-heap of society. If you're guilty of something, either own up to it or don't. Either quietly admit your wrongdoings or quietly deny them. The one thing you can't do is wave your cock around begging everyone to investigate you and then essentially calling them assholes for doing what you just told them to do.

Why is it so hard for so many people like JimJeff to not be douchebags? I can live in a world where people aren't always truthful. I can tolerate a world where salesmen aren't always forthcoming about the downsides of things. But It's more and more difficult to live in a world where the lying salesmen are also cocky pricks about it, lying to your face and then shoving you in the chest and daring you to knock them down. And then if you do, crying and crying about how you're trying to ruin their lives with personal attacks. How many hundred times have you heard the right lately use their new favorite phrase, 'the politics of personal destruction'? I'll give you a hint, probably the same number of times you've heard Savage/Hannity/Limbaugh use the term 'Feminazis' or 'Hitlery Clinton' or 'The blame America first crowd'.

If Jim Guckert was a woman, he'd be the biggest punchline in Washington D.C. history. A prostitute that got to pretend to be a reporter and ask the President of The United States questions because he had sex with the right closeted member of the most anti-gay administration of the 20th century. That's jaw dropping! That's news! That's pretty goddamn fucking remarkable at least! And yet they're sweeping it under the rug, and STILL talking about some chunky girl who gave Clinton a hummer 8 years ago. What the fuck?

And now Guckert wants his fellow republicans, the same people that proudly stand for denying homosexuals equal rights under the law and privately believe it to be a disease for which you can be cured through Christ, he now wants those same people to bail him out and make him a 'reporter' again. How is it that a man so delusional, so misled about the power of his own penis, so completely in love with himself to the point that he's convinced himself that he's a 'pundit' with 'important things to say' and not just a narcissistic dick-sucker who knew just how to tickle some White House employees balls, how is it that he hasn't collapsed under the weight of his own bullshit?

The only remedy I can see is to keep the story alive at all costs. No matter how much the evil, 'liberal-biased' media tries to bury it, keep talking about it and eventually, they've got to turn on this guy and finger (pun intended) who the real crooks are in this story.

UPDATE: Find out what Gucky's been up to here.

Hip-Hop Invented By Long Island Socialite Whore?

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According to this, this, and this, supremely annoying Long Island 'scenester' Lizzie Grubman, whose only purpose in life seems to be to get drunk, run over people and be the 'cool, plugged-in friend' to asshole millionaires who spend their days buying shoes and beating the help, popularized that until-recently unheard of form of music called 'hip-hop'. I'll let her explain. Oh Lizzie?

“No one believed in hip-hop but me. Everyone was like, ‘Lizzie, are you sure you’re going to be able to get this in the mainstream?’… But I would beat those reporters down, and look at it now. There’s nothing bigger. Everyone looks at me now and says, ‘You were so right.’… I can see things that nobody else can see.”

Well I'm glad that's cleared up. Thank god she was alive or else all forms of hip-hop culture would've just dried up and shriveled to nothing much like her overly-botoxed, leathery, 3-day old bacon slab of a face.

Give us a call when you want to take credit for Bob Marley.
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I want a Unicorn and a copy of 'Big Tyme' by Heavy D and the Boyz...

This back and forth exchange made me laugh more than anything has in awhile. The comedy website Something Awful was threatened with a lawsuit by some Connecticut company that makes crummy Dungeons & Dragons-style video games. Hilarity ensued.