Two things-

1)I have seen the future of TV and it's name is "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." It's kind of Kevin Smith meets Larry David, a slacker "Curb." So far, they've made jokes about old people, terrorists, child molestors, and Nazis. And in tonight's episode, the cast members all pretended to be crippled as a way to party with strippers.

The show gets bonus points to for referencing WaWa and filming a scene at the "Mall," otherwise known as the King of Prussia Shopping Mall

2)So the Republicans are up to their usual tricks and busting out all the "cultural" issues out of desperation. Out comes gay marriage, flag burning, and NY Times bashing. As they have since, God, like forever. And as usual, it always kind of works as the Democrats just kind of cower in a corner, don't put up much a fight and wind up getting their butts kicked. You would figure after awhile that it would stop working with the American Public, but, well nevermind. You would also figure out that after having this happen to them for at least twenty years, the Democrats would figure out a way of not looking bad in all of this. It's pretty much like the Republicans are saying "hey, we're going to pass the ball on this play just like we did the past five plays" and the Democrats still defend against the run. Yeah, for some reason, the Democrats seem to think that if they got up there and spoke logically and about laws and facts and Bill of Rights and all that, it would work, but that never works.

So what to do? Put up a fight, try and debate. Or they could do a little jujuitsu and say "okay, let's amend the Constitution" and freak out all the Republicans who are really doing it for political purposes. But no, that might not work. So in my head, my little fantasy goes like this: the debate starts up on flag burning and one by one, all the Democrats just march out of the Senate and pretty much tell everyone that they're not going to hang out there and play all the Republicans stupid games no more. Then they give some huge press conference where they list all the things they'd rather talk about (health care, the war, pretty much everything).

Yeah, kind of weenie and lame, but what else is there to do?

Driving home tonight from seeing Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift (that's a shout out to my homies), I noticed that I had trouble seeing what was going on around me due to those stupid halogen lights that cars don't have. For instance, I'd look behind me to see if there is a car coming in the lane next to me (I'm such a careful driver) but can't really tell because there's this huge spotlight going right into my eyes. Not only am I blinded, but I can't tell how far they are because the lights are so bright it looks like thery're right in back of me.

And it occured to me, those halogen lights pretty much sum our country up. First off, the main reason people get them isn't necessarily because they're good, but because it's a new fangled car gadget. It's headlights, but up to 11. People love their new fangled car gadgets, even if they aren't necessary. That way Joe Bob can say, "yep, and it came with halogen lamps."

But mainly it's because they're bad for almost every other car out there. But people use them because it allgedly makes it safer for the rider. So, in essence, it's basically a bunch of people who drive them saying this maybe bad for you, but it's good for me so screw you. Et viola, our economic, environmental, and foreign policy.

And continuing on the theme of what a crazy city...

Left my apartment Saturday night to go meet a friend for dinner. As I got onto Valencia Street, Dykes on Bikes rode by. The minute they started honking and whooping and hollering, every lesbian in the area-- which was a lot considering it was Pink Saturday-- dropped what they were doing to check them out. I'm serious, it was a little scary, actually. Wee ha!! Fat, naked, mohawked clad lesbian ta-tas! (And let me just say that was even less attractive than I made it sound. Which I think is kind of the point, but still).

Then went to dinner at a middle eastern place and sat next to a Moslem lady wearing the Moslem head gear.

God love living in a world-class city.

What an amazing day today is, one of those days that makes you love living in a city like San Francisco. In the foreground, I can see a pink triangle on top of Twin Peaks in honor of this being Pride weekend. In the distance, I can heear honking horns and the cries of "Ole!" as Mexico and Argentina play in a nail biter of a World Cup game. The gays are celebrating, the Mexicans are celebrating and the sounds of it are everywhere.

In other words, it's a Republican nightmare, come true.

For various reasons, I came home from work today with an extra salami sandwhich. My boss, who ordered it for me, told me I should have it dinner. I wasn't that hungry. So when I parked my car in the garage across the street from me, I decided to give it to a homeless person. Walking out of the garage, I see some whacked out lady sitting across the alleway from me with an even more whacked out dude lying next to her. I give her the sandwhich.

Yay me.

But then, as I give her the sandwhich, she starts trying to talk to me. To tell me she's not like this and in fact, better than this. Now here's the thing, as much as I want to give her the sandwhich, I also don't want to talk to her. I, in fact, just want to give her the food and walk on my merry way. I do not want to engage the homeless person in conversation. She is engaging me in conversation. The thing is too that I'm not exactly scared of the homeless person or freaked out (well, maybe a little) it's just that I want to get home and not spend my precious time hanging out in a grungy alley way talking to two drugged out bums. And it is also obvious that the person I gave the sandwhich too is coming down off of something. I might be willing, actually, to talk to someone if they were up for interesting and fun conversation, but she is full blown coming down off probably crack or heroin. Her partner is half-asleep and lying down. I do not think this is going to be the kind of conversation that one reads in a New Yorker short story. I want to go home.

I mean, what am I going to say? Talk to her about the Giants? See what she thought of last week's "Deadwood?" To be polite in this situation, one is supposed to ask how one is doing. I know how she's doing, she's on drugs and sleeping on the streets. I do not want to know more. What am I supposed to say if she tells me how she's doing "oh, that's great." Or "oh, that sucks, I'm sorry," which I guess would be more okay to say except for the fact she's the one who put herself into that position in a way and while I'm sorry she's in that situation, my sympathy isn't all that.

But then she proceeds to tell me exactly how she's doing. She grew up in Baton Rouge. She's 39 and used to be a nurse. And she's got five children. Ages 22-13.

Now I really want to get out of there. I do not want to know anymore. I do not like hearing heartbreaking stories about some poor family of children whose mother is excited to be handed a half-day old salami sandwhich from a kind-hearted but a little freaked out high-tech worker in an alley off 16th & Mission.

Oh, and one more thing. How does one exactly get out of a conversation with a drugged out homeless person? "Oh, I gotta go meet a friend? You know, one whose not nodding off next to you?" Or "Geez, I gotta meet my friend and get some nice expensive dinner that you'll never afford because even if you got the money, you'd spend it on smack?"

But I figure a way out and slowly, not without a few curtain call comebacks, make my way out of the alleyway.

Oh, one more thing.,, as I was leaving she asked me for money.

Brought in all my loose spare change that's been collecting for years today. Total amount back to me? $120.

It's like winning in blackjack. All over again.

And here's what I said earlier about the big loss today:

"I hate to say it, but as much as it sucked to see the U.S. lose, you have to be happy at least it was to Ghana. Basically any country that throws national holidays for winning a World Cup match probably deserves it more than we, the country that actually has something called NASCAR Nation, does. And it’s not like they have much of anything else going for them and I don’t mean that in a snotty kind of way, I just mean that it’s not like Bono is running around trying to save our asses."


And yeah, the bummer of it is that a lot of the mainstream, old school sports guys, the one's who only care about the World Cup when America is in it will go back to ignoring it and making snide comments about soccer when they're completely missing the absolute fun that the rest of the Cup has been.

I'm not going to say anything for fear I might jinx tomorrow's big soccer match (which is probably over by the time you've read this) so let's just say this....

Go Ghana.

Note- this is because if I said the opposite, will then the opposite would happen. Unless, of course, I've just overthrought this and double-jinxed myself in such a way what I just asked for will come true, in which case, ooops

So you know the problem with the President hitting 29% approval is that there's no way to get back from that. Right now he's still at around 37% and even though months ago, that would have made me happy, that's now nothing but disappointing. Of course, the reality is he should be around -5% but I don't think that's stastically impossible.

It's especially problematic in that the new storyline is the whole "Bush is having a good week" thing, as if all the things that are going on in the world are all only about Bush's popularity. I'm sure the people in New Orleans and Baghdad are thrilled the President is having a good week. And you still here it despite the fact he's gone from like 36% to 37%.

I think basically that this whole Bush era is like one big, long nightmare, the kind of nightmare where you see things happen and feel completely powerless to stop it. That's where we are, the country is broken and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

I have seen the Rolling Stones do "You Can't Always Get What You Want" live in concert. I have also seen GnR do "Sweet Child o Mine." You can also add to that list U2 doing "Streets" and "One" and you name the classic U2 song. I can also claim to have Radiohead doing "Fake Plastic Trees" and the Dead doing "Truckin'" and motherf----- Rush do "Tom Sawyer."

But on Saturday, I saw the one thing to top them all... Mickey Thomas's Starship do "We Built This Rock."

And you know what? They were strangely rocking at the North Beach Festival. Just sloppy enough to be good, although I have no idea whether they were sloppy on purpose or sloppy because how often does Mickey Thomas and Starship play anymore?

Also, the sad thing was I knew all eight songs that he song, all from those somewhat horrific early 80's Starship albums. Hell, at one point, I even owned one of them. Hell, I even have one of them downloaded onto my computer.

And yes, I have soccer fever. This weekend I've watched about ten hours of it, six hours of it today (all done while mainly in my bed recovering from a hangover). Yesterday, I went to North Beach yesterday morning to watch the Italy/US game and met up with friends at Gino & Carlo's and settled in to watch the game. It was one of the most epic, enjoyable, dramatic games I've been a part of watching (up there, actually with the England/Argentina game in '98), I mean, it had it all- a comeback, a clear-cut villian (the Italians), several dramatic plot twists, and then the killer- Beasley's disallowed goal. When that ball went in, everyone was jumping around and high-fiving and right in the middle of it, I noticed the Beasley was looking totally distraught and I remember turning to my friend and asking him if he scored did he look so upset? And then the 2 that was on the screen turned back to 1, and well, that's how it stayed. I've seen a lot of sports (a lot) but I've never had that sense of a bunch of people putting themselves on the line as much as the Americans did. That's the thing about soccer, it's all pretty much laid out there for everyone to see. No time-outs to break things up, no endless stops in the play-- it's just running and running and chasing and tightly wound faces.

The other thing about the match is that when you think about it, we, as Americans, or at least globally conscious Americans, don't really get that much of an opportunity to actually root for our country in anything. In every other sport, we're pretty much the 100 pound gorilla. It's either our sport (baseball or basketball) or we have million dollar programs backing the players up. Oh, and the best drugs money can buy. And then, of course, on a global level, it's hard to root for anything we do because, well, we kind of suck on a global level right now. But not in soccer. We are plucky underdogs. We are not annoying. We are something it's easy to get behind and root for. Sure, at some point it'll be inevitable that we'll turn into 100 pound soccer gorillas (too much money in the country and too many immigrants coming into the country), and the rest of the world kind of knows it, but right now, it's fun to root for us. It's maybe the only thing we could do that makes you say "America, fuck yeah" and not feel like a moron.

And the fact that most of the country doesn't care...well, we do suck as a country right now, don't we?

PS- so yeah, there was a "great" NBA final game tonight. The dudes across the way, the one's who always keep me up because of their partying, wheeled a TV outside and watched it in the courtyard. And you know what? Bleh. Whatever. Do that game over, except have one team be down a player for half the game. And one of the teams be a bunch of whiny divas who flop everytime somebody breathes to close to them. And do it without time outs or TV timeouts and so they final five minutes don't take half an hour to play.

Quick hits from the weekend

-Because I'm about to turn 38, it totally makes sense that I spent a large part of this night downloading Iron Maiden tunes. And speaking of which what does it say that while in the store shopping, a song came on the radio and I knew instantly that it was Christina Aguilera?

-Being on a hot streak while playing black jack turns out to be a bit more stressful than I thought it would be. Every time I won, while happy, I kept on thinking that this hot streak has to end at some point. The more I won, the more I amazed I was and the more sure I was that the bottom was about to fall out.

-Yes, I do have World Cup fever. I love the World Cup even if for the first time in like twelve years, I am actually working at the time of the World Cup (although it's looking like I'll have take a day off to cover it for Deadspin). In fact, the scary thing about all this is I was actually doing this blog in '02 the last time there was a World Cup and for whatever reason, that BLOWS MY MIND.

Anyways, today's defeat by the Americans blow for all sorts of reasons. It's not like I expected them to win, nobody did, but it would have been nice to put a nice showing together. Among other things, it makes it harder to get into the team if they suck. Plus, wasn't this supposed to be the best American team ever? Aren't we supposed to be plucky and hard working? We most definately were not.

-I have become fascinated with the new Real World/Road Rules Challenge. In this version, "alumni" of the shows, meaning the biggest camera ho's in the RW/RR Challenge world compete against "fresh meat." "Fresh meat" are basically people who so desperately wanted to be on one of these things that they tried out to appear on it. In other words, you know how people watch say baseball games and dream of being in a game and hitting a hugely important home run or doing any other sort of thing baseball players do? Well, these people have the same dream. Except their dream is to be on an MTV reality show. And not just any reality show. After all, one could make a case that there is something understable to being on a dating show or "Made" or, hell, even the "Real World" (well, mainly the early seasons when there was at least a half-hearted attempt to show people having normal existences). But these people want to appear on the Challenge. These are people who are really excited about the idea of seeing Tonya or Theo. Or "hooking up" on camera. Or getting in all of those little nasty fights that often appear on the show. These people want to get tangled up with Coral or exchange crazy-ness with Tonya. And may we even add that for whatever reason, these are people deemed not good enough to appear on "the Real World" so they get shunted off to the challenge show.

It goes without saying these people need to be sent to Iraq.

So how is your Tuesday night going? Having a lot of fun? Doing a lot of interesting things?

You know what I'm doing? I accidently deleted over half of my mp3s over the weekend. That's a little over 500 songs. So I'm basically spending all of my time re-uploading everything.

And it's not as easy as you think. See a bunch of my mp3s I got through the magic of iTunes. Some of them are based off of cds that I have. And a lot of them, my creme de la creme of mp3s I got through, well, let's just say non iTunes methods. And these are some of my favorite songs too. Stuff like Rush's "Working Man" or "Ain't Talking Bout Love" the Quad City DJ's "Come on Ride the Train" (!). All gone.

And while some of it's easy to get back, a lot of what I had were pretty obscure. You know the songs that just randomly pop up every once in awhile, bootleg type stuff. Like, say, Zeppelin from a '69 music festival.

All gone.

d'oh.