SF parking garages

I love how garages in SF feel the need to include headshots of all the SF parking/transit board officials. Who's the guy in bottom right corner?

DP Confessionals: Shirtique

Do y'all remember this place? Shirtique was an '80s mall phenomenon. There was one in the Sunvalley Mall in Pleasant Hill. I believe it was right next to the Orange Julius. The idea was is that you'd pick a T-Shirt--usually of the 3/4 sleeve baseball variety--and then you'd pick an image and/or lettering to appear on the shirt. The folks at Shirtique would make your shirt to order right in front of you! At the time my mom took me I was in the sixth grade. My interests mirrored mainly that of my older brother's. He was into fantasy novels and Dungeons and Dragons. He had every Conan book available at the time. So when it came time for me to put together my shirt this is what I dreamed up:The Cooper typeface you see there is an accurate recreation. That font was immensely popular the time. So anyway, I would proudly wear this shirt everywhere until one time I encountered a group of older high school kids. I could hear them laughing at me and my weird shirt as they walked behind me. I don't mean to be melodramatic when I point to that moment as one of lost innocence. It's when I realized there was such a thing as cool. Cool doesn't exist in grade school. Nobody's cool--everyone just is. You could get away with wearing a ridiculous shirt like that in the sixth grade. This would no longer be the case now that I was entering middle school. Now when I remember this moment the pain has largely vanished. Well, that's not altogether true--now that I have a daughter, I imagine her experiencing something similar and it almost makes me want to cry. You all think I'm too sensitive?

Metaphysical's Christmas Gift to YOU!

It's the 2009 Yellow Teeth Ad Calendar! Believe it or not, this is only a small taste; the remaining seven months will follow.And not to worry, I didn't forget the boys--there's not one but two Miss Decembers to warm you up on those cold winter nights!

10,000 Albinos in HIding After Killings in East Africa

Why

did I have to be looking at this image on my computer when my boss walks up behind me?

Sports Brahs

I noticed recently that there seem to be many brotherly broadcasting tandems in the wide world of sports. You of course have the Gumbles with Greg being the more successful of the two. Bryant seems more comfortable presiding over Real Sports and interviewing celebrities.

Then you have the Alberts: Marv, Al and Steve. Don't know much about Al and Steve (except that Steve called Warriors games in the early-'90s), but Marv is an immensely talented play-by-play guy. When I watch a nationally televised NBA game, that's who I want calling it. Marv also has a son Kenny who calls NFL games. He's aiiight.

Next are the Papas: Bob, Greg and Gary. Greg is my favorite. He used to call Warriors, A's and Raiders games. Now he only does the Raiders. Sad sidenote: Gary died recently I think. RIP, Gary.

Former Raider Rich Gannon is a CBS/NFL analyst and his brah Terry is the Renaissance man of the game, heading telecasts of college basketball, figure skating, golf, college football, and the WNBA. I unfortunately didn't have any space for them in my weird graphic. Sorry!

Email

Have U.S. Americans become too reliant on the exclamation point in electronic office correspondence? A common email I send looks like this:

Hi XXXX --

Yakitate 25 misc text is done! I've left final pdf in your folder for approval.

Thanks!

I don't remember always using the "exclam" in my sign-off and I'm not sure when it became a habit. Anyhow, their response usually looks something like this:

YAKITATE 25 misc text is approved!

Thanks!

Other times it will be like this:

YAKITATE 25 misc text is approved.

Thanks

When I get the last one, it does seem to affect my mood considerably. It makes me feel sullen and unloved. I feel betrayed when they're not sharing in the excitement of this good news. I know it's ridiculous that this one character can make such an impact, but that's where we stand today as a society. Perhaps it's to atone for the lost art of the handwritten letter or the look-you-square-in-the-eye handshake; email can be cold and impersonal--the exclam brings it to life. I feel like I've been to a marvelous party when I get one! Don't you have the same feeling now?

In your inbox
This one ticks me off. Is there any way around saying "I've left the proof in your inbox?" I don't like the two "ins" right next to each other. You can't say "at your inbox."
"At your desk" might work but not if it really is in the inbox. Call me a pervert but you can't say "I've left the proof in your box;" it sounds sexual. You can just leave it on someone's chair, which a lot of people do. But I hate when people do that. It's presumptuous to impose an additional urgency on a project like that. If you put it on my seat, I have to work on it or at least think about it before I even sit down!

Dog show

Went to a dog show at the cow palace ages ago--think it was like '06. Anyhow, been meaning to throw these photos up. This guy was crazy. He loved Star Trek and his dogs so much that he fused his two loves together--what a showman:This fastidious young man was a gentle soul:So was his dog:DP getting silly:These ladies don't look too nice--but they were nice enough to let me photograph them and their dogs:Love this lady:Gotta have the one pic of the guy that resembles his dogs (sorry for blurriness):Getting artsy with the kitsch:I was big on the long-and-short in 06:

New font obsession: Eurostile extended

I spend a lot of time looking though font books while I'm at work. Came across the listing for Eurostile extended and was floored by how dope it was. What's weird is that because it's so ubiquitous, it's never really registered or been on my radar. Two words come to mind when looking at this typeface: futuristic and serious. Take a look at how it's being used today:See what I mean? Serious. Def-Con 4. The Terminator never fucks around. He's totally serious:The venerable granddaddy of newsmagazines, 60 Minutes, is serious: As is the local news and the Guardian:The tone of the Geico ad campaign isn't really serious--but the nature of their business is:Futuristic:Sometimes you can't explain why a font has been chosen:This photo is exposed perfectly (thanks anonymous Flickr person! Don't sue me!):Love this:

New Yorker cartoons

My wife just got us a subscription to the New Yorker. We'd been talking about it for some time. We already take Newsweek thanks to my dad. We also used to get The Economist. That was way too overwhelming and dry. We desperately needed something between Newsweek and The Economist. The NYer fit the bill. Gives you a little bit of this and little bit of that. It can get overly high-brow but it also covers pop music and youth culture; albeit from a 40-year-oldish perspective.

Anyhow, beyond the writing, I always enjoyed the cartoons. Very simple one-panel and one-sentence cartoons. Always very topical and clever. But never really that funny. Wasn't there a Seinfeld that dealt with this? To get to the point, I've been reading a book on
meditation--and the point the author always come back to is that meditation is about blocking all the bullshit out and focusing on one thing--whether it be your breath counting, or your mantra or whatever brand of meditation you're practicing. And there was a quote by a famous Jewish holy man Baal Shem Tov that stuck with me. And I could just see that particular line being used in a New Yorker cartoon. So here you have my lame attempt at a New Yorker cartoon. How many more times can I say New Yorker in this post? New Yorker, New Yorker, New Yorker.

Tim McGraw laughs, cries and makes meatballs

shout to J. Kaplan for photo

Been on a Mr. Show kick

Mounting an Effective Pass Rush

I'm a huge sports radio fanatic. After I drop Vicky at work, I'll flip on Colin Cowherd or Jim Rome for the fifteen minute drive from her office to mine. Or sometimes I'll catch Dan Patrick later in the day. Ex-Warriors-great (wink nudge) Tom Tolbert is entertaining too. I hate it when they interview people though. Super boring. I prefer the long, ranting monologues when they tackle the hot topic of the day. So I flip on Dan Patrick yesterday on the drive home and he's talking about Rush Limbaugh's failed bid to buy the St. Louis Rams. He says he's getting all these angry emails saying stuff like Congratulations--you and the rest of the ignorant liberal media trampled free speech and the constitution and got Limbaugh dropped from the bid--you must be proud! Dan called bullshit; he said it's not about left or right and it's certainly not about free speech. Nobody stopped Rush from saying the things he did. You have the luxury of saying whatever you want but you're still held accountable; there's consequences.

Businesses seek to mitigate risk as much as they can. The NFL is no different. Unless you're Jerry Jones, the NFL prefers a low-profile owner. Mark Cuban breaks it down:

The problem with Rush is that it's his job to take on all of life’s partisan issues and problems. Not only is it his job to take on these issues and problems, its key to his success is that he be very opinionated... Given that we will never know what the "next big issue" Rush will be discussing on his show is, its impossible for the NFL to even try to predict or gauge the impact on the NFL’s business if something controversial, or even worse yet, something nationally polarizing happens. The wrong thing said on the show, about a sensitive national or world issue could turn into a Black Swan event for the NFL.

That's a huge risk that is not commensurate with the value a minority investment in a franchise brings.

This isn't about Free Speech. It's about the NFL protecting their business.

HOUSE 3009 Spaceport

Just realized Zatch Bell's spine logo is the same as So you think you can dance's.

I desperately want to be friends with

Jason Segal. Think I should poke him on Facebook?

Self-cleaning stadiums

Went to the niners game this past Sunday and my buddy and I had to stick around until everyone left due to our shitty parking spot. We were crammed in at the end of this single-file line of cars with no way out until all the cars behind us left. Anyhow once everyone was gone the wind started dancing through the aisles and whipping up all the trash that was left behind. This plastic bag did a super-crazy American Beauty kite impression--going this way and that, slowing down and then abruptly accelerating and smacking this dude right in the face! Scared the shit out of him. My buddy and I were cracking up. A second later another bag knocked me upside the head! It was wet and full of nacho residue and god knows what else. My boy Dave remarked that Candlestick seemed to be a self-cleaning stadium; cuz after the bags hit me and my counterpart, they both shot vertically like 100 mph and then left the stadium! Pretty cool--but also kinda scary and Poltergeisty. Once the bag hit me, we felt like it was time to go. It was a message from the Poltergeist.

sidenote: I gotta say man, people always talk shit about the black hole and raider nation and how those fans are some of the trashiest and most uncouth in all of football, but the niners fan isn't much better. I'm a working man myself so I mean no disrespect, but there are some loud, unrefined troglodytes up in that bitch. How do these folks even afford tickets? I went because I got freebies--shittiest seat in the house and still 85 bucks!

Anyone know what movie this photo is from?

I'll give you a hint: Rick James. You got it now? Probably not. It's from The Exorcist. I was watching it for the first time and noticed during the priest-walking-the streets-and-descending into-madness-scene that there was a subliminal flash of an image that you couldn't make out unless you paused it. Took me like ten minutes of pausing to get this photo of the demon that was infiltrating his soul. Scary eh?

Failing Spectacularly--a NEW feature at the cap!

We're out at my folks's house a lot because they always want to see the baby. Anyhow, I usually wind up in the attic or the garage digging through boxes of all my old crap. Last time I came upon an embarrasingly half-assed paper I wrote for my Black writers class.

The paper was titled Flattery and Humbleness in Slave Narratives. It was a not-too-thorough examination of the narratives of ex-slaves who had escaped to the North. The object of any autobiography is to get at the unvarnished truth; but that wasn't so easy a task given the social climate of the time. Even though their patrons were liberal Northern abolitionists, the ex-slave had to be very careful not to appear overly haughty or argumentative in their tone.In my opening (see above) I say that "some of these authors" had to appear humble and nonthreatening to their audience and overcompensate with flattering gestures to their "superiors" and patrons. I say "some of these authors" because I only read one of the books and didn't want to give away my one source in the intro. Here's Maya's (the graduate student instructor who graded the paper) sidenote:

Good clarity--go for the whole pie though, and state which authors up front--in a short paper it's better not to keep your readers guessing.

Then later I cite my source and say "he goes on to apologize for the "rough" and unrefined" condition (?!?) of his narrative." Note the use of the manga-like question mark and exclamation point in parentheses. She didn't like this:

Your paper has a fairly formal tone which contrasts w/ informal gestures--articulate the problem here.Next major bungle (see above) is the start of this sentence:

"On the first page of Equinao's narrative he says something that I don't entirely understand..."

Maya: What don't you understand? And if you don't understand, why is it forwarding your thesis? Direct confessions are helpful to your reader when they clarify, point out textual tensions, demonstrate reader experience, etc.; but not when they have no apparent or accessible meaning.In my concluding paragraph, I ask the reader a series of questions regarding how these narratives were received when they were written; which, ostensibly, should've been answered in the body of my essay. Do I answer these questions here to end on a strong note? Naw--I decided to leave it up in the air. My answer is "No one will every really know." Here's Maya again:

Are you sure? There are diaries, letters, book reviews from readers of the period.

Final deserved beatdown from Maya (but with a beyond gracious preamble):

Daniel--your writing is very strong; you are very eloquent and have the skills and capacities to do a thorough and sustained literary analysis--unfortunately, it seems like you didn't have the time to concentrate on this assignment. Your thesis has the potential to lead you into interesting considerations but it collapses into (A) points you cannot make adequately without examining other texts of the period and (B) generalizations about Equiano's depiction of Westerners/African women that don't do justice to the texts or your writing and are unclearly linked to your thesis.

Also, this paper comes dangerously close to not fulfilling the course requirement for the paper which stipulate an examination of at least TWO texts. One paragraph on Harriet Wilson does not constitute a sustained engagement with a 2nd text. Good jod--considering these limitations.

Ouch! I guess Alan Alda's character from Crimes and Misdemeanors was right: comedy is tragedy + time.

Linkedout

Check out how much of a joke my Linkedin profile is. Doesn't even list my current job--although my blog is listed (but it's in the wrong field and there's no URL) . No recommendations, only six connections--and for some reason they think I went to college in Egypt!

Chefography: Jon's Street Eats

photo: insidebayarea.com

My brother-in-law, Jon Kosorek, has a distinguished pedigree in the culinary arts. After plying his trade for years as sous chef or executive chef in the brick-and-mortar game, Jon decided to take his mortar and pestle to the streets. He hooked himself up with a kitchen-on-wheels and you can find him all over the East Bay from Emeryville to the Piedmont Ave. area.

If you happen upon this entrepreneurial whirlwind and his shiny silver truck, expect a high-brow hot plate delivered unpretentiously by the humble magnificent, J-Kos. His menu is seasonal and has included hand-pulled mozzarella with heirloom tomatoes; chicken liver mousse; caesar salad with house cured anchovies or sardines; ratatouille with house pasta; mozzarella panini with gazpacho; "scrapple" with grilled greens; white bean bruschetta and duck tacos with a pomegranate cucumber salsa.

I took the family to Oakland during his first week of operation and sampled the fresh mozzarella, the B.L.A.T. (house-smoked bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato sandwich), and homemade mint ice cream. Verdict? A Street-sweeping game-changer. By that I mean the competition better step up or be swept aside. Jon's Street eats is redefining street food--be a part of the movement.

Jon's website and twitter.