San Francisco Bay Guardian

"An unbelievably hermetically sealed spherical inalienable maze of light and sound seeing imagery expand in every direction.”

The Daily Blurgh: Splinters of the cross

04.02.10 - 3:38 pm | Matt Sussman |

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Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

I was reminded of the words of visionary architect and late SF resident Achilles Rizzoli – who spent his life drafting gorgeous symbolic portraits of friends, family, and loved ones as fantastic buildings, the cornerstones of which would never be laid – when I saw this Wired video that Boing Boing posted about Rohnert Park artist Scott Weaver's enormous sculpture of San Francisco done entirely in toothpicks.

ACORN did not commit voter registration violations

04.02.10 - 3:10 pm | Sarah Phelan |

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One of the craziest aspects of the whole ACORN saga has been how rightwing lies about the organization have been repeated so often that they have come to replace the truth in most people's minds.

For instance, according to the Office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown, there are no reports of votes that were cast fraudulently, thanks to anything ACORN did. Read more »

And if you're following the latest Vatican scandal ...

04.02.10 - 2:00 pm | Tim Redmond |

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... and you're reading about the Pope and his ol' chum from San Francisco, and how the Catholic League blames homosexuals for the pedophilia scandal, and how the Vatican now equates bad press to the Holocaust, you might enjoy this nice little video. Read more »

Judge sets hearing on contempt order for SF Weekly's bank

04.02.10 - 12:37 pm | Tim Redmond |

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Superior Court Presiding Judge James McBride April 1 granted a motion by the San Francisco Bay Guardian to set a hearing for the Bank of Montreal, the lead bank for the SF Weekly and its parent chain, to show cause why it should not be held in contempt of court for interfering with a judge's order in the Guardian's attempt to collect on its $2l million plus judgment in a 2008 predatory pricing trial.

McBride set the hearing for April 30 and said that he would not hear the case but would assign another judge to hear it.Read more »

Did Fox dump Yee to spare Palin?

04.02.10 - 12:24 pm | Steven T. Jones |

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Fox News seems to be having a hard time playing the victim card in the controversy over Sarah Palin’s upcoming speech at a cash-strapped California State University campus, for which she’s being paid an undisclosed -- but likely huge -- amount of money. And the network has been jerking around the chief critic of the deal, Sen. Leland Yee (D-SF), as it looks for a way to martyr poor Palin, a new Fox News commentator. Read more »

Sunshine

O'Keefe and Giles may still face charges over ACORN tapes

04.02.10 - 11:44 am | Sarah Phelan |

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It's true that California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave Republican activists James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles immunity from prosecution in exchange for their full, unedited videotapes of ACORN employees.

But that doesn't mean the couple is necessarily off the legal hook entirely.

As Brown's own report notes, because of the immunity deal, his office did not determine if the couple violated California's Invasion of Privacy Act when they recorded ACORN employees.Read more »

Catholic Church equates bad press with the Holocaust

04.02.10 - 11:09 am | Steven T. Jones |

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On the anniversary of the day when Jesus Christ was supposedly crucified, the Catholic Church has ratcheted up its counterattack on the journalists and victims’ advocates who have the gall to be concerned about the church covering up an epidemic of pedophilia by priests, taking its feelings of persecution to a ridiculous extreme.Read more »

Religion

Why is the Potrero Power Plant still going strong?

04.02.10 - 11:07 am | Rebecca Bowe |

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The Potrero Power Plant, a longtime source of pollution and health concerns for residents of San Francisco’s southeastern neighborhoods, is slated for partial closure once the Trans Bay Cable begins transmitting electricity into the city.

The Trans Bay Cable is an undersea cord that will transmit 400 megawatts of power underneath the San Francisco Bay from power plants in the Pittsburg / Antioch area. Last we heard, from a January article in the San Francisco Examiner, the project was running a full month ahead of schedule. Read more »

Appetite: 3 hoppin' Easter meals

04.02.10 - 10:46 am | Virginia Miller |

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Then there was Easter...

Beer (and bunnies?) at Magnolia Pub

No, they're not serving an Easter brunch, but with new chef, Matt Kerley, announced just this week, it's as good a day as any to visit Magnolia Pub ... especially if beer and Scotch duck eggs sound more your speed than a froufrou Easter menu. Kerley keeps the gastropub and farm-to-table approach intact, ever looking for ways to utilize all animal parts in his cooking (from local farms, of course).

noise

No Bra makes topless creepy

04.02.10 - 8:47 am | Amber Schadewald |

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Exposed breasts usually make my heart beat a little faster in a good, sexy sort of way. But when Susanne Oberbeck, front-woman of post- No Wave- techno band, No Bra, takes off her top, letting her frizzy red hair dangle past her puss and slightly cover her chest, my heart beats faster in a nervous sort of way. Read more »

Snap Sounds

noise

Learning to talk dirty from Mickey Avalon

04.02.10 - 8:44 am | Amber Schadewald |

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Dirty rappin' about splooge, needles, dead friends and having sex with big-breasted inbred women-- wow Mickey Avalon is a charmer. The Hollywood glam-rapper-- playing Sat/3 at Roe Nightclub-- is far from classy, in fact he's the epitome of trashy and tragic, and yet kind of hot? Wait, wait, wait-- hot? Well, kinda. Ew. I know. So if this is sexy, ladies and gentleman, maybe we should take a few notes. Read more »

Upcoming

video

Forget "Clash of the Titans" -- it's time for a Space Tranny

04.02.10 - 7:02 am | Marke B. |

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It may be a long way home for local chanteuse Tweaka Turner -- watch that asteroid, lady -- but she's rocketed her "Space Tranny" earworm straight to the heart of the Guardian nebula. Just try to blast this out of your head ...

Extreme museum live blogging!

04.02.10 - 2:25 am | Caitlin Donohue |

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You think you know mammals? You don’t know mammals. Those were the fighting words thrown at me by the Academy of Sciences with their invitation to the media preview of “Extreme Mammals,” a furry, live-birthin’ romp of a good time that opens up to the public Sat/3. The invite also promised a look into the museum’s famed dead thing vault, typically only accessible to swashbuckle biologists and moneybanks VIP tour guests. I saddled up and rode out to Golden Gate Park to investigate the goings-on. Only thing was, the event was structured around “live blogging.” I asked around the Guardian office, but none of us really seemed to know what that was, so I just wrote down what my cell phone clock for each note I took. I find the numbers made everything look more scientific, enjoy.

Caltrain faces deep cuts, perhaps even closure

04.01.10 - 3:04 pm | Steven T. Jones |

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Serious doubt was cast over the future of Caltrain today, with this vital commuter rail link threatened by the same funding cutbacks that are hobbling other regional transit agencies. The joint-powers agency might be forced to cut its service in half this summer – probably by eliminating night and weekend service -- or perhaps even shutting the system down.Read more »

Transportation

Herzog vs. Norris? What the tweet?

04.01.10 - 2:50 pm | Cheryl Eddy |

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Determining what'll make Twitter's trending-topic menu is hardly rocket science. Seems everyone wants to weigh in on current events (Moscow, Justin Bieber) or add their clever two cents to whatever viral sensation is making the rounds (that "Greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes" YouTube video sure has made a lot of people happy lately. Including me.) Sometimes, though, the Twitter tendrils find their way into territory so surreal it could only be spawned by the internet hive-mind.

I'm speaking, of course, of the recent #WernerHerzogvsChuckNorris trend, which may have been inspired by this 2009 Nerve.com article that dared tick off "Five Reasons Why Werner Herzog is More Badass Than Chuck Norris," itself surely inspired by the Chuck Norris facts page, which is still such a phenom that you can go there and create your own "There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist" t-shirt. Or any other phrase that catches your fancy, for that matter ("When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris" is another good one, but really -- they're all winners).