Hell Hath Frozen Over: Four Reasons

1. Red Sox Win
2. Lunar Eclipse
3. A Politician Does Something Gutsy
4. The Pentagon Not Actually Hit by a Plane?

Lock your doors tonight, people...

HomoHop Hooray!

On Saturday night, I attended the Peace Out HomoHop Festival over in Oakland. I was mostly there to represent Y-Bomb alumnus Scoe AKA Soce, the Elemental Wizard AKA Andy Singer AKA the artist responsible for GayHipHop.com's featured clip for September, who was live and in full effect. Actually, Scoe was really good. I was apprehensive, as he performed numbers off of his album that I don't particularly care for--but the Scoe energy live in concert far exceeds the recorded version. He had people JUMPING. Plus, Scoe unveiled the Bar Mitvah remix that just tore the roof off, and his ode to Dungeons and Dragons had me chanting "7 HP" for the rest of the night. If you haven't seen Scoe live and you live in NYC--go see him!

An entire festival devoted to gay rap. Pretty weird, one would think. But in all honesty, the crowd at the show wasn't much different from your standard crowd walking down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Weird, yes--but what else is new? I also liked this female rapper called Da Lyrical--she reminded me of Lady of Rage off of Doggystyle, if anybody remembers her.

2 interesting side notes:
1. Scoe, a mild-mannered guy from New Hampshire, develops a thick Bronx brogue when he gets on stage.
2. I was waiting in line for the bathroom while a big fat black lady was bent over a sink, scrubbing the hell out of her face. After fifteen seconds she turned to me and said: "Is there any hair on my face?" Indeed there was, lady. Indeed there was.

Free Explosive Diarrhea for All Americans!

This just in from alert reader Colin Stewart: Fast "food" chain Taco Smell will give every person in America a free taco if batters in World Series Game 3 hit a homerun that hits a sign they've put up in the bleachers.

God have mercy on the janitors!

Pressing Issues

Anybody see Castro break his knee? Crazy stuff--it looks like he went heavy on the Havana Club that day. Fortunately he's a tough, Cohiba-fortified bastard, so don't worry commie-haters, you'll still have your posterboy for a while yet.

Also, the new Britney Spears version of "My Prerogative" has been getting heavy rotation at the 24 Hour Fitness on Market Street. For those of you not in the know, my car stereo was stolen six months ago, so the only place I hear new music is at the gym. Had I known I'd be hearing Britney's remake so frequently, however, I would have boycotted the gym this week.

Britney Spears has managed to take one of the top twenty songs of my lifetime and make it absolutely horrendous. The girl has less soul than a decades-old twinkie, and all the energy of this rump-shaker of a song dies in her feeble, robotic delivery. It's disgusting to think that an entire generation of kids will grow up thinking that this classic tune originated from the vacuous Britney Spears--and the same group of kids won't be able to pick Bobby Brown out of a lineup. Which they very well might have to do some day, given his arrest record.

Sneak on Your Friends and Family

I found this cool website where you can find out how much money ANYBODY has donated to the 2004 electoral process. For example, I donated zero, while my mom, Nancy Floreen, donated $350 to Kerry. Not bad, eh?

My dad wins the competiton hands down with a donation of a cool G to Kerry's Koffers. Boo-yah!

Jackass Comedians

So tonight I went to see Will Franken, local comedian. Sadly, he was not as funny as the combined power of Will Farrell and Al Franken, but he wasn't bad. He did go on for waaay too long, which I complained about to my friends, outside the club after the show.

A voice cried out: "That Franken's a real asshole, huh?"

Will Franken was standing behind me, of course.

Doh!

On a related note, there's hot new content from moi available on Jackass College. Look for Prof. Pimpsalot, baby baby!

The Hair Gods Have Spoken

Even so, the curse will get them in the World Series.

SF Can't Stand the Rain

This morning San Francisco hosted the first real rain in six months. We're not talking cats and dogs, or typhoons, or hurricanes here--simply normal showers, albeit during rush hour.

However, it had the effect of a blizzard on these wimpy Californians. Due to this at-times-hard, at-times-basically-nonexistent rain, the following events occured:

-Local underground transportation ground to a halt.
-Cell phone service stopped working.
-Large sections of the city lost power.
-My wimpy dog refused to go on a walk without hovering beneath my umbrella.

What a bunch of wimps! I generally love San Francisco weather, but it's incredibly annoying how the first rain of the season grinds this city to a halt.

Banzai!

Samurai training

Mastersouck

So today was my first day back at the gym in a couple of weeks, and frankly I was more interested in staying awake than remembering which locker I put my stuff in. After my workout, I went for the first $1.99 lock on the bottom row of lockers that I saw. My combination didn't work the first time around. I checked the back of the lock to make sure it was mine--sure enough, there was the thin glaze of a hastily-peeled-off combination sticker. I tried the combination again, and pulled harder.

The lock opened. But the stuff inside the locker wasn't mine.

SOMEBODY ELSE HAD THE SAME LOCK WITH THE SAME COMBINATION!!!

Despite this entry's title, I didn't get a masterlock--I got the Walgreen's $1.99 special. You've been warned....

The Neverending Onsen Saga

It it an onsen, or is it dyed water? According to this article, I may have been gypped.

It's hard to believe that such a nice group of people would do such a thing. On that note, boy do I know I'm back in the US--in three hours out in San Francisco on Friday night, two complete strangers either yelled at or insulted me before I had so much as seen them, apparently for standing on the sidewalk.

Hey, maybe them Canadians are on to something with all the niceness.

Sumo Power

Big Boi!

Best of the Best of

If this doesn't make you laugh, something's wrong.

From America: A Rare Pro-France Comment

I read about this crazy restaurant in Paris where you eat in complete darkness. Total black. To top it off, the menu is a surprise as well, so you just stuff it in with your hands and hope for the best.

Note that the infrared cameras at the restaurant found a number of diners taking advantage of the dark to get it on. Now I know it means admitting that the French are right for once, but we need to get one of these in the US, pronto.

A Note to Orrick Attorneys

I'm watching you watching me...If you've got a question for me, drop me an email why dontcha? All this sneaking around gives me the willies.

Onsenitis

Yesterday I went to an onsen, or a traditional Japanese hot bath. Aided by a team of eager to help high school girls and hotel staff, I found the place after an hour or so of stumbling around in the rain. Took off my shoes, paid my four hundred yen, got nekkid, and got stared at by all the Japanese guys. You sit on this tiny little stool and give yourself a bath out of these faucets on the floor--kind of like a bucket bath for those of you who:ve been to Guyana. When you:re clean you proceed to the hot tub, which has this mineral water piped in from somewhere that is brownish in color and approximately two hundred degrees--Japanese dudes sit in like it is the most relaxing thing in the world. Dry off and on to the coin-operated massage chair from 1910 for ten minutes of shaking and baking, and it was Sapporo time.

Kampaii!

Number One Reason to Love Japan

Last night, at 2 AM, I left my wallet in a taxi. I thought I was dead meat and prepared to cancel credit cards like a fiend.

The cab company called me within seven hours and offered to drop my wallet off at my friend`s house.

rouck!

A Word About Lawsuits

Lawsuits, in my opinion, are generally a good thing. Let's face it: many companies are going to try to screw regular people for as long as possible unless there's a threat of being sued. There's no reason for them NOT to screw you--suing somebody is a big production, and you've got to be pretty pissed off to do it. In other words, companies can get away with a lot before the lawyers attack.

Still, I'm often dismayed by how many people berate lawsuits. True, some of them are stupid and unfair. In my former life working at a trial consulting firm, I learned that most lawsuits, however, have some merit once you get past the headlines to the facts. We often heard references to the McDonald's coffee case, where a woman sued McDonald's because she spilled coffee on herself and was badly burned, as an example of a ridiculous lawsuit. But our respondents usually didn't know the facts, only the headlines. McDonald's was saving a tiny bit of money on every round of coffee by serving it at a temperature far above standard, hundreds of people had already been badly burned by their coffee, and the woman only sued them because they refused to pay her medical bills.

Read the Mcfacts here, and you'll see that McDonald's NEEDED to be sued. Now they serve their coffee at a normal temperature--the lawsuit worked.

Today, I read a headline in the SF Chronicle that said a convicted bank robber settled a lawsuit for $15,000 in a case where he'd being kicked in the groin during his apprehension after a bank robbery. That's the kind of headline that gets the blood flowing--until you read the rest of the article, which explains that the robber, at the time, was lying on the ground, shot and bleeding, and that the cop basically kicked him as hard as he could in the nuts for no good reason. On top of that, the cops, conscious of a camera present, were doing their best to stand in front of it and block the view.

$15,000? The cops got off easy. Read it here.

"One thing about my wife, she gives great headache"

Back to School will always have a special place in my heart. Nothing beats the Triple Lindey.

Tardy Debate Analysis

While I'm thrilled that John Kerry is getting a lot of positive response to his performance last Thursday, I didn't come away with the same impression from the debate. Thanks to low expectations, our president's best friend, I was shocked by George W. Bush's command of statistics and actual information--even if some of it was wrong. He rattled off some details on Homeland Security that, admittedly, Bill Clinton could have rattled off under his breath--except George W. Bush is no Bill Clinton.

Sadly.

Kerry didn't give much in the way of details, although he looked stately and presidential. I like the guy, but I wasn't energized by him. Bush glared and glowered and demanded that his way was right, no matter what. Business as usual, it seemed--but for once that seems to be getting bad reviews. But I thought that Bush's strength is supposedly his resolve, his unbending will in the face of doubt, no matter what the truth of the situation might be. He's been demanding for years that Iraq is a good idea, that tax cuts are needed, that he is always right. And while I've always considered him a pompous jerk for it, his poll numbers have been sky-high.

I didn't see him act any differently on Thursday-I saw him hammer his simple, wrong but easy-to-remember message. Maybe it just took seeing Bush's retardedness directly contrasted with a thoughtful, not-pledged-to-loyalty, articulate human being to draw out these differences and breathe life into the fading Kerry campaign.

I just hope it's not too little too late.

Girlfriend or Former Melrose Place Star?

You make the call...

Abolish the Electoral College!

I've decided: the electoral college needs to go.

Whoever gets more votes wins. Period. If you get fewer votes in your race for senior class president (as I did to Heather Walenga) you lose. If you get fewer votes in your bid for condo association president, a la Cosmo Kramer, you lose. Why should the president of the United States be different?

Top Two Reasons Heard for Keeping the Electoral College:
1. "It's worked for so long, it's got to be the right way." "It's the way we do it, and it's fair." "If it's good enough for centuries of America, it's good enough for me."
2. Without the electoral college, candidates would ignore many small states, and cater to large cities and metropolises. With the electoral college, otherwise-overlooked voters in small states get attention--and that makes for a fairer election.

My Responses:
1. WRONG! We had slavery for a long time, but that was wrong. We didn't let women vote, but that was wrong too. I'd argue that Amendment #2, while not completely wrong, is severely misapplied . Just because an idea has been around a while doesn't make it good. (Which is what I like about California--new ideas start here.) Don't be fooled by this one.

2. Who cares about the small states? It's about the PEOPLE! More people live in metropolises--and they should get more attention. I live in California, the biggest state, which gets zero presidential attention because California would never ever ever ever vote for Bush. However, farmers in the back hills of Iowa get their plates washed by the candidates because they happen to live in a swing state. It's a total crapshoot...by bringing the focus of elections to a nationwide level, not just focusing on the ten states that make a difference, maybe people would get more excited about elections too.

Abolish the Electoral College!