cigarette

lessons in adventureneering on wednesday

national hotel, market street, san francisco

turk street pedestrian

wtwta

where the wild things are trailer!

mid-market street art

religulous

also: we watched religulous the night before that. it had some ok-funny stuff where bill maher interviews crazy religious people (like larry charles' other film borat but nowhere near as sharp), but a lot of it was absurdly serious and somber. i think there is a specious but interesting argument for religion being the root of many of the world's ills, and i think christopher hitchens or richard dawkins could make a compelling movie with that argument. but bill maher seems to not know what he's talking about. he grasps at some middle school-level anti-christian arguments (for example, that jesus never physically existed, or that the bible contradicts itself) and finally at the end, he seems to come up with a main point to hammer home - that most religious people believe in the imminent end of the world, and therefore don't give a shit about the environment - which is clearly absurd. the supersimplifying of all of human history into this one good-evil dichotomy reminded me of the worst reasoning in ben stein’s expelled but taken to an even more ludicrous extent (even if i agree with maher more than stein).

even the high points of the film - bill maher patronizingly but amusingly interviewing the deluded/faithful - are largely ruined by constant cuts to maher back in the van talking shit about the people he just interviewed (like "man, wasn't that guy an idiot? here's the point i forgot to make when i was talking to him and now he can’t respond."). it comes across as really petty and low.

also, when he interviews that crazy latin-american guy who says he's jesus returned, they keep cutting to clips of scarface (get it? cause he's latin-american?) and when they talk to ostentatious black preacher jermiah cummings they cut to footage of a black pimp. yuck.

punisher: war zone

we watched punisher: war zone last night. it has mcnulty (from the wire) dressed up as frankenstein, doing a bizarre british-brooklyn accent (one of a multitude of unlikely accents in this film). also a lot of wonderful/absurd violence. and some parkour. the parkour criminals were called "maginty and his urban freestyle gang," which sounds like they'd be on a children's educational video or an exercise tape.

here are some highlights someone put together on youtube:


highly recommended, if you like that sort of thing.

freak albino toeless alligator is back!

claude, san francisco's favorite albino alligator, is back in his tank at the academy of sciences after the other alligator bit his toe.

also, the academy's veterinarian is named freeland dunker.

from the chron

e-minutemen

from the lede:

NPR’s John Burnett reported last month that “more than 43,000 people have logged on” to BlueServo.net to spend some of their free time scanning streaming video of border hot spots and acting as what the Web site calls “Virtual Texas Deputies.”

fire escape

jimmy fallon uses fake onion study as set-up

via gawker: on his tuesday show, jimmy fallon used a fake study from the onion (about the franz kafka airport being voted the world's most alienating airport (funny)) as setup for an unrelated joke about the hudson river plane landing. weird.

market street dj

310 mph rail travel!

"Japan wants its bullet trains to run at 310 miles per hour by 2025 . . . At that speed, commuters could go from L.A. to the Bay Area in just over an hour."

wednesday eefin'

via wfmu:

Eefing (sometimes spelled eeefin' or eephin', among other variations) is a jarringly weird hillbilly vocal tradition that traces its birth back to at least the 19th century. Sometimes described as sounding like a wheezily rhythmic asthma attack, eefin' afforded those without musical talent or instruments the opportunity to hop on stage and be part of the entertainment.

more vids and many many eefin' mp3s at wfmu.

16th street

12 galaxies -> blue macaw

breaking news from tablehoppper via mission mission:

Moving into the 12 Galaxies space in the Mission will be the ~BLUE MACAW~, a restaurant, bar, and club with a focus on international music.

that sounds (probably) pretty awful.

i'm sure it will be perfect for all the condo people moving in across the street, where the mighty giant value/value giant will once have stood.

antipodes map

this antipode map website shows you exactly where the other side of the world is. simple and smart.

via metafilter.

03 24 09

happy birthday frank chu!

across the street

back in 5

adventures at the marina safeway

the guy in front of me at safeway bought 15 bottles of club soda and then gave the checker a dvd about end times bible prophecy. i heard him say 'this is for you" and i was thinking i'd never seen someone tip a grocery checker. but alas, he was tipping not with money but with salvation.

a couple minutes later, i saw him filling up 6 or 7 gallon jugs of water outside. tribulation water i guess?