SFBG Blogs

Newspaper editor briefly seized by rationale

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Another of Dean Singleton’s editors has hit the dust. Here’s what Santa Cruz Sentinel editor Tom Honig — who stepped down after more than 35 years — had to say about the matter. For the record, the reporting staff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian couldn’t agree more:

“If I had two wishes, this is what they’d be: that people would stop complaining about hard-working, honest mainstream journalists long enough to appreciate the work they do — and second, that the people could be paid what they’re worth.”

At least an occasional love note from readers would be nice when another day at the office has crept into the wee hours yet again. All newspaper execs — including those at the helm of Singleton’s MediaNews — should be forced to cover a beat or balance several stories at once for at least three months out of each year.

Perhaps then all of the bloodletting would slow. They certainly shouldn’t be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in compensation if the only idea they have for saving the news is to kill the very people who gather it. How unoriginal for an industry that should always be one step ahead.

Sonic Reducer Overage: yuletide sensory overload starts now…

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A cuppa Cafe Tacuba.

It’s the most insane time of the year – but why not stop and, er, smell the big sweaty rock bands coming through town. I kid because I love the way the next week looks: so busy and full of intriguing sounds.

CAFE TACUBA
Whoa, if there was a more shockingly inventive, stylistically agile, and altogether impressive LP this year, I can’t think of it. Sino (Universal) may translate as “But Instead,” but there was no stopping the range of pop styles coursing through this musically multilingual recording en esponol as the Mexican rock vets decided to start dreaming in epic U2-y radio rock textures, Beach Boys-style Cali-choir harmonies, and grand Nascimento-esque overtures.
With Bengala. Wed/28, 8 p.m., $36.50-$49.50. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 775-7722.

FAUN FABLES
The SF medieval proggists join Gong/Soft Machine vet Daevid Allen for a certain unquantifiable magik.
With Daevid Allen and Wymond and his Spirit Children. Wed/28, 9 p.m., $10. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.

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YOUSSOU N’DOUR
The Senegalese master surges beyond the traditional music of his homeland with his hybrid, Rokku Mi Rokka (Nonesuch).
Fri/30, 8 p.m., $25-$75. Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF. (866) 920-JAZZ.

Today’s Ammianoliner

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What did we learn from 2006? Show me a room full of Republican politicians and I’ll show you a gay bar.

(From the answering machine of Sup.Tom Ammiano on the day before Thanksgiving, Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2007.)

Rocka rolla 4-eva

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The man needs no introduction, really.

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He’s Rob Halford, and he’s coming to town tomorrow for an in-store at Rasputin Music downtown and a screening of a new film about his first post-Judas Priest band, Fight. I have a few rules to live by, and one of them is: if you get the chance to interview a god – much less the Metal God – you absolutely take it. Our phone conversation follows.

Flop it out, Oaktown

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Mr. Floppy’s Flophouse is a cluster of buildings in East Oakland that has been used throughout the years as a saloon, a venue for underground raves, a brothel, and most recently as a movie set. It also used to be Jack London’s favorite place to get drunk. I wanted to interview George, the crazy guy who owns the place, but he repeatedly denied my request, stating with obvious disgust that he has no desire to “get his name out there.”

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Welcome to Mr. Floppy’s!

Luckily, one his tenants, Sarah Doppler, had no qualms.

Sarah is one of those free-spirited traveler types who pops into a city for a few months, makes a bunch of friends, and then disappears before she gets sucked into their drama. Very smart. The following interview took place in front of a bonfire in Sarah’s backyard.

SFBG: So where are you from, and how did you find yourself living in this weird floppy-house complex thing?

Sarah Doppler: I’m from Seattle, Washington and I moved to the Bay Area about 4 months ago. I needed to find a room so I just answered an ad on Craigslist. It said “Female Artists Wanted: $400.” So I came and checked it out one night. It was really creepy because there are all these pianos and statues and about 50 dark rooms throughout the place. It’s like a maze with weird art and raccoons and this huge backyard by the freeway where I can chill with all my homies.

SFBG: Yeah, dude, I just spent twenty minutes looking for the bathroom and finally had to leave when I accidentally barged in on a film crew and a bunch of vampires eating fried chicken. What’s up with that?

Doppler: Oh man, this place is amazing! There’s that saloon right behind my room; that’s where you were. It’s fully decked out with mahogany and stained glass and it’s been there since the 1880’s. There are pictures of Jack London all over the place and my landlord rents it out to movie studios. They do a lot of horror flicks back there. The vampires have been chillin’ for weeks. I got drunk with them last night.

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Sarah Doppler, flopper.

Prop. 83 will never work

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The LA Times reports that “Jessica’s Law,” which mandates electronic tracking of all sex offenders, is never actually going to work.

The law — which was nothing but a Republican bid to embarass Democrats in a key election year — is too expensive, impractical and unenforceable, the Times reports:

“I don’t know of any agency that has the resources to track and monitor . . . in real time,” said Vacaville Police Chief Richard Word, president of the California Police Chiefs Assn. “You’ll need an air traffic controller to track these folks.”

That’s what happens when Republicans push a dumb law and most Democrats are too chicken to fight it.

(Thanks to David Dayen at Calitics for catching this.)

Barbie hits the skids!

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By Amber Peckham

Do you think that microchips are snacks enjoyed with cheese dip while watching the local monster truck rally?

Do you think that the word Iraq refers to a woman with large breasts?

These are only some of the questions asked at www.trailertrashdoll.com, the Web site of Gibby Novelties LLC. They sell, you guessed it, dolls. Barbie and Ken the way we always knew they should be; crass, uneducated, and parents of a whole mess of kids, spouting nonsense around the cigarette clamped between black and empty gums.

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There are three trailer trash dolls currently being manufactured by the company. The first is simply “Trailer Trash Doll”, a blonde, pigtailed girl reminiscent of Daisy Duke on a bad makeup day. Then there’s “Trash Talkin’ Turleen”, a mother of seven (and one more perpetually on the way) with an attitude hotter than those rollers in her hair. Last, but certainly not least, is the newest addition to the trailer park, “Jer Wayne Junior”. This heartthrob of the Heartland sports a gin-u-ine mullet, and even has a tattoo immortalizing his first and only true love, NASCAR. Turleen and Jer Wayne are the dolls that speak, pearls of wisdom like “T’aint nothin’ sadder than a double-wide with no beer!” and “Pour me a double, I’m drinkin’ fer two.”

Company owner Daniel Gibby says “We recognize the need to have a little laugh and be light hearted during these trying times and we hope our dolls fit the bill!”

For the hillbilly in your home, no gift could be more ideal; a piece of talking plastic to stick on the mantelpiece. It’s almost like y’all went to Graceland.

www.trailertrashdoll.com

Lick it legal

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By Justin Juul

Being an American sucks in a lot of different ways — it’s basically impossible to live here and not be fat, you can’t drink in the streets, etc — but perhaps worst of all is the fact that absinthe is illegal. It doesn’t sound so bad on its own, but think about the repercussions of such a pointless ban: we have to drink waaaaay more than most Europeans in order to get drunk, we have to do mushrooms or acid if we want to hallucinate, and to top it all off our art is suffering. Look around you. Where are our Picassos and Van Goghs? Where are our Oscar Wildes and modern-day Hemingways? The answer is as sad as it is obvious. Our creative geniuses are either too strung out to work or rotting in rehab centers because they had to turn to heroin instead of absinthe.

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Picasso’s “Absinthe Drinker”

Thank god for loopholes. The people over at Lit have discovered that, although straight-up absinthe may be illegal, there’s nothing in the books that says you can’t make candy out of the stuff.

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Suck and spin

Save an artist this Christmas. Order some Absinthe Lollies now.

Absinthe Lollies are available at Miette Confiserie and through Lit’s Web site.

Miette Confiserie
449 Octavia Boulevard, SF
(415) 626-6221
www.miettecackes.com

Remembering Harvey Milk Tonight

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One of the good things about email is that items often pop up that jog my memory. The latest example was the news flash just now from the Harvey Milk Club about its annual Harvey Milk Memorial Concert and Candelight March tonight, starting at 5:30 p.m. at Harvey Milk Plaza and marching to the site of his camera store down the street.

The news reminded me of the last words I heard Harvey say, a snapshot of his humor and his politics. Harvey came into the Guardian office on the Friday before Dan White assassinated him and Mayor Moscone in their City Hall offices on Monday, Nov. 27, 1978.

This was one of our regular City Hall update chats. The Guardian had been a critical early endorser and supporter of Harvey, and we supported his progressive and gay rights agenda as the strong innovative supervisor of his era. And so Harvey would come around and fill us in and tell us how he was faring.

On this Friday, he was a bit disconsolate. He was losing some friends and supporters on key votes. He was hoping Moscone would appoint a strong liberal supervisor to replace White as supervisor, who had resigned. He said there was so much to do and he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to do enough to fulfill the agenda that he had been elected to do. So he said, in wonderful Harvey Milkese, that he would keep on truckin’ but that he would also pay more attention to the Guardian in terms of keeping us informed and on top of his progressive agenda.

“I want to be your Deep Throat in City Hall,” he said.

I said we needed one, we shook hands, and Harvey headed off to City Hall. B3

PRESS Release: Harvey Milk Memorial March: TONIGHT Nov 27 5 PM

Harvey Milk Memorial Concert & Candlelight March on November 27 Remembering Harvey Milk and Celebrating His Life

The Harvey Milk Club invites you to join us for the annual Harvey Milk
Memorial March. This year, in addition to the candlelight march from Harvey Milk
Plaza to the site of Milk’s former camera shop down the street, there will
also be performances to celebrate his life. This occasion kicks off a year-long
series of events leading up to the 30th anniversary of Milk’s assassination
on November 27, 1978. The Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club was founded by
Harvey Milk, and renamed in his honor.

WHEN: Tuesday November 27th 5:30 PM
WHERE: Harvey Milk Plaza (corner of Castro & Market)

FEATURING:
Holly Near
SF Gay Men’s Chorus
Dance Brigade
Shawna Virago
Keith Hennessy
Melania DeMore

SPEAKERS:

Hon. Carole Migden
Hon. Mark Leno
Hon. Tom Ammiano
Cecilia Chung,Transgender Law Center
John Newsome, And Castro For All

– Presented by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club –
Krissy Keefer, Event Producer

www.milkclub.org

Nevius now attacks supes

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So C.W. Nevius, who doesn’t live in San Francisco and loves to whine about homeless people, has shifted his attack to the San Francisco supervisors. In a rambling and typically vitriolic column, he insists that the supes have wrecked Mayor Gavin Newsom’s efforts to clean up Golden Gate Park.

Here’s what really happened: Newsom, through Sup. Bevan Dufty, introduced a bill that would have further criminalized homelessness. Sup. Tom Ammiano asked the obvious questions: Is it fair to make camping in the park a crime if there’s noplace else for people to go? Shouldn’t there be some sort of link between available shelter and criminal penalties? Shouldn’t the city demonstrate that there are alternatives before arresting homeless people? And most important, will this sort of legislation actually work?

For doing his job, and not simply rubber-stamping the mayor’s bogus proposal, Ammiano gets slapped. That’s incisive journalism, Chuck. Go team.

Play “The Mist” for me

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By Maria Komodore

Warning: this post may contain spoilers — if you haven’t seen The Mist yet, read on with caution.

The Mist, director Frank Darabontʼs third collaboration with writer Stephen King (the other two being 1994ʼs The Shawshank Redemption and 1999ʼs The Green Mile), is a blend of horror cult films such as Them! (1954) and The Fly (1958, 1986) — among many, many others — and John Carpenterʼs The Fog. And thatʼs exactly why itʼs sooo good.

But in the case of The Mist, keeping with the cult extravaganzasʼ marvelously ridiculous plots, the dangerous mystery that the fog holds doesnʼt involve peopleʼs past sins returning to mercilessly haunt them down. That would be way too simple. Rather, the threat engulfed in the thick white cloud is a number of apocalyptic and pre-historic looking creatures that found their way into our world when scientific experiments to open up windows to different dimensions got out of control. In other words, fears about science and the ways it has put us in serious trouble, a subject perhaps more urgent today than ever, make their triumphant return.

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Just a guess, but whatever they’re looking at probably ain’t too friendly.

Viral felines: now that they have a platform, they won’t shut up!

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Sorry, but I am being pushed by my own resident fleabag to share: you have to love how a cute, innocuous little clip of mouthy kitties can turn into a Lebowski-like mini-YouTube phenom.


Classic Coke.


Mach II.


The F-word spinoff.

A fool for Foals

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Cute, cute, cute UK indie dance — they call it “Oxford step” — band Foals has captured my heart and ears the last few weeks with their giddy, insectoid, high-fret guitar hooks, their way-too-catchy angst, and their Frisco Disco-ready looks. Too bad they haven’t captured my iPod — their tunes are UK-only at the moment (though you can download several here), but latest single “Balloons” is being released early next month, and once they score the Mercury Prize next year an American tour and album surely must be in the works for these Transgressive Records-stabled hotties. Plus they blew away the CMJ this year, so there. Foals on the floor!

Hummer

Mathletics

Balloons

Still Life for your hotness

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By Justin Juul

Kelly Malone, the brains behind the popular Mission Indie Mart events (which we pumped here), will be opening her very first vintage store, called Still Life, at 835 Divisadero, so if you’ve missed her beer soaked backyard/dive bar one-offs you might want to swing by the Panhandle for the grand opening on December 1st. There won’t be any free beer, but music, cupcakes, sweet hipster eye-candy, and other treats will be available from 1am until Malone gets tired.

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Ms. Malone brings it!

Still Life is being designed with a “mad scientist” theme by Malone and her kooky DIY entourage and will feature an even distribution of men’s and women’s apparel along with weird knick-knacks and cool accessories like feather earrings and owl clocks. Don’t let all the corporate bourge-tiques swindle you out of your wages this holiday season. Support SF’s up and coming local designers, store owners, and drunkards by making a trip to Still Life. Oh, about the beer thing: don’t tell her I told you, but she’s always holding a case of Tecate for volunteers and friends and she’s a sucker for compliments. Drop a few ooohs and ahhh’s and you just might get a sample.

Still Life Grand Opening
Dec 1, 11am — ??
835 Divisadero, SF

Fall for the Soulsavers

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By Todd Lavoie

It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Way You Land – a dead-on appropriate proclamation, indeed, for Britain’s pre-eminent emissaries of unsettled downtempo electro-soul and whiskey-and-gin street corner spirituality, Soulsavers, whose breakthrough Red Ink/Columbia release glows like divine inspiration wafting out of the darkest gutter. Consider the title a riff on the whole “it’s not the journey, it’s the destination” mantra – only in this case, the daily affirmation comes from a rough-and-ragged 12-step program that says failure is inevitable but redemption is possible. Redemption with style – ah, even better.

And what style it is. Producers-electronic wizards-consummate tastemakers Rich Machin and Ian Glover cook up languid rhythms, rawboned organ arrangements, and ominous string samples – along with bringing in some evocative lap-steel guitar and weepy six-string twang from session musicians – to create brooding, occasionally post-apocalyptic soundscapes that could speak plenty of lurid truths all by themselves, as evidenced on their mostly instrumental debut, 2003’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance (San Quentin). The recipe’s been improved on their latest, thanks to the lead-vocal contributions of Will Oldham, Jimi Goodwin (Doves), and – the greatest coup of all – the gravel-wrapped-in-velvet baritone Mark Lanegan, whose eight contributions inform the album’s duality of forbidding menace and soothing sanctity.

Even better, they’ve upped the ante with the addition of gospel heroics from backing vocalists Wendy Rose and Lena Palmer – perhaps best known for setting fires behind Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds on their last album and tour. The result is a potent futuristic-gospel – witness opener “Revival,” a thundering transmission from the River of Jordan, Lanegan leading Rose and Palmer in a tearful baptism while the flames rise around them. Cover-lovers, begin your rejoicing: Lanegan’s and Oldham’s duet on Neil Young’s “Through My Sails” is pure lip-biting heartbreak. Soulsavers, you’ve made a believer out of me.

Soulsavers, with Mark Lanegan, appear Saturday, Dec. 1, 9 p.m., at the Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. Great Northern opens. $18. (415) 771-1422.

IAPA in Venezuela: The international press advocacy group stresses deep concern over the climate of press freedom in Venezuela

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

CARACAS, Venezuela (Nov. 20, 2007) It was an amusing and telling moment in the history of freedom of the press.

On the morning of Monday, Nov. 19th, as the press mission of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) started its 10th mission to Venezuela to check on President Hugo Chavez’s accelerating crackdown on the press, Chavez sent a message to the delegation:

It was a half page advertisement from the Venezuelan National Assembly, in the big morning Caracas daily paper El Universal, reprinting a copy of a congresswoman’s resolution urging the Executive Branch to declare IAPA “not welcome” in Venezuela. Click here to view the ad. This set the tone for our mission: The congresswoman refused IAPA’s invitation to meet with our delegation and no member of the three branches of the Venezuelan government and of the National Electoral Council agreed to meet with IAPA despite many contacts made in recent weeks from IAPA headquarters in Miami.

Nobody in the governement would meet with IAPA but Chavez, who was all over television and the newspapers for his trip to Iran and France, did send a Chavista group who called themselves Journalists for the Truth.
The president of the group told the IAPA mission that there was complete freedom of the press in Venezuela and then promptly told the press outside the meeting room that IAPA had been “duped in good faith by the reports prepared by the “opposition” Venezuela press. Gonzalo Marroquin, chairman of IAPA’s Commmittee on Freedom of the Press and Information, immediately retorted to the press that “it would seem that the journalists were at another meeting.” Gonzalo, director of Diario Prensa Libre in Guatemala, and a former television newsman, was widely interviewed on IAPA’s findings on radio and television.

The mission met with members of the Venezuelan Press Bloc, a constitutional attorney, representatives of a human rights group, polling experts, the mayor of Chicao, the head of the National Press Workers Union., and other civilian experts. The mission and its final press conference was widely covered in the Venezuelan press. There were no violent incidents nor any attempt to scare or demonstrate against the IAPA mission. B3

Click on the continue reading link to read the IAPA press release. Scroll down for the Spanish version.

Loving Blanche

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By Todd Lavoie

Yeehaw for more twang-age! At last! Detroit’s delightfully skewed goth-country crackerjacks Blanche have finally seen album number two receive an American release, nearly a year after its European release, nearly a year after their former label V2 shut its doors suddenly and left its roster in the lurch. Happy endings have never been synonymous with these folks – murder ballads, yes, and odes to wronged love, certainly, but good news? Hardly!

But here we are, endless months after they got screwed over by Mister Record Company Man, and Little Amber Bottles (Original Signal) is finally available in the States. The wait’s been worth it: no “sophomore slump” for this nattily attired mob of medicine-show revivalists and Flannery O’ Connor torch-bearers. Dare I say it? Aw, shucks, why not? Little Amber Bottles is a quantum leap forward for the band – hell, it had quite firmly settled into my Top Ten of 2007 within its first half-dozen spins, even. Christ knows how many times I’ve listened since, but I remained just as intoxicated by it as I was the day I’d skinned it of its shrinkwrap and handed myself over to its many gauzy, dusty charms. Truth is, I could probably get drunk just from looking at it. Won’t you join me, then, in some good old-fashioned inebriation?

I’ll pour the first drink: Blanche is a quintet of old-school country-devotees who think like punks, write like O’Connor or William Faulkner, and sing like snake-oil salesmen, saloon floozies, and end-of-the-road auctioneers. Frequently performing in early 20th century vintage-wear, they very much look and sound like a mob of country-folk who high-tailed it to Birmingham or Chattanooga or Lynchburg and got themselves “citified,” so to speak. And it’s all entirely convincing, I should add. No mere dress-up here, Blanche manage to inhabit the world of 78 records, magic elixirs, and old black-and-white Sears & Roebuck catalogs straight from the printing press. It’s as if they just hiked down from Walton’s Mountain and hit the studio – only these folks are less John Walton/Olivia Walton and more Ike/Corabeth Godsey, the fancy-schmancy owners of the general store who left the mountain more than once every couple of months.

Turkeys against Thanksgiving

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Turkeys united against Thanksgiving protest lethal injections. Forget it.

(From the answering machine of Sup.Tom Ammiano on the day before Thanksgiving, Wednesday, Nov. 2l, 2007.)

Personal note to Tom: Okay, that’s a good one but what happened to your turkey? B3

Punk Rock Karaoke

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By Justin Juul

If the horrible song-selections and corny atmospheres found at most karaoke bars have always stopped you from jumping on stage, you might want to check out Punk Rock Karaoke. It sounds like a simple twist on a tired activity, but Punk Rock Karaoke isn’t an event; it’s the name of a band. PRK’s all-star line-up includes members of NOFX, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and Agent Orange, which would be a decent lineup if any of these particular dudes could sing. This is where you come in.

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Rather than post a singer-wanted ad on Craigslist, the members of PRK have decided to say fuck it and ask their fans for help instead. It works like this: you drink until you feel comfortable in front of the crowd and then pick a song from their list of fifty classics. Drink a little more as you wait around for your name to come up, and then when it does, you can either run out the back door or bust a move on the M-I-C. Actually, that does sound a lot like regular karaoke doesn’t it? Whatever…it’s still punk, right? Right?!

Punk Rock Karaoke
December 5th @ The Uptown
1928 Telegraph, Oakland
(510) 451-8100
$13 / Doors at 9pm

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Sonic Reducer Overage: Less turkey, more digestible sounds

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D’yer Rademacher?

Yes, we never have enough black-and-white-and-read-all-over print matter to fill with all the music we wanna catch. So welcome to Sonic Reducer Overage – the stuff deemed extremely fit to print, but alas, I failed to cram in the allotted space. Why not check these worthies out, when you’re not stuffing your turkey hole with holiday grindage?

Old Grandad
These days the fearsome SF metal daddies are bringing the magik on a monthly basis. With Dickdusters and Walker Brothers. Wed/21, 9 p.m., $8. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market St., SF. (415) 861-5016.

Phenomenauts
The costumed Oakland super-punk fire-starters are always a rowdy good time. And who can forget their guerrilla take-over at Vans Warped Tour so many kicks ago? With Sore Thumbs and Helper Monkeys. Wed/21, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $8. (415) 621-4455.

Milking it

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Here are a few things I learned at Saturday’s debate among the three Senate candidates, which was sponsored by the Harvey Milk LGLT Democratic Club:
– Mark Leno is desperately seeking Milk’s endorsement and thinks he can get it by pointedly attacking and trying to discredit incumbent Carole Migden (a strategy that may backfire).
– When shoved, Migden shoves back hard (also a strategy that may backfire).
– Joe Alioto-Veronese doesn’t belong on the same stage as Leno or Migden — and, frankly, doesn’t seem ready for a Senate race (being named “Alioto” just ain’t enough) — but he clearly thinks he can run to the right of the main event and have a shot.
– I came up with far too many questions for my role on the media panel at the event, and maybe I should have worn something a bit more stylish.
– There’s still a very long way to go in this race…and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Do we need the peakers?

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Joshua Arce has an interesting opinion piece in the Examiner in which he argues that San Francisco doens’t need the new Peaker plants at all.

The argument, in essence, is that Mirant could keep running its least-polluting turbine for a few more years, and by then the city will have renewable alternatives.

I like the idea — except for one key point. If there’s a choice between a city-owned plant that pollutes a little bit and a privately owned plant that pollutes a little bit, and the levels of pollution are roughly equal, I’ll take the city-owned plant any time. If we own it, we can control it; we can shut it down whenever we want. If it’s privately owned, any effort to mandate a shutdown on any particular date will be a legal and political hassle.

So sure, let’s add as little fossil-fuel generation to the southeast as possible — but if we’re going to have one turbine running, let’s have it be the one the city owns.

Great Anti-nukes news!

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Assemblymember Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) has withdrawn a ballot initiative that, if passed by voters, would have allowed more nuclear power plants in California. In a statement on his website, DeVore says:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. While I am disappointed we will not be moving forward on a nuclear power ballot initiative for 2008, I am heartened by the fact that over the next two years we should see applications to build 32 new reactors in America. Eventually, California will catch up to reality.”

Yeah. Will do.

A Reuters article published today reports that the initiative was pulled for lack of support and DeVore plans to introduce a bill in January. Try, try again.

The initiative, if passed, would have overturned a 1976 state law banning the construction of new nuclear plants until a safe, reliable solution for the waste is established.

The Misfits: The Musical!!

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Scoff if you must. Call the new Misfits a cover band, or aging has-beens. And feel free to call me a poseur for even wanting to see them live. But I went to the Misfits show at DNA a couple weeks ago and I liked it.

So what if Danzig wasn’t there? So what if the sound was so bad that you wouldn’t have been able to tell if he were? There were huge skulls on the stage, and fancy lights, and dudes with devil locks (presumably at least one was an original member of the Misfits, though too-young-to-have-seen-them-in-their-heydey me wouldn’t know which), and really fucking loud music, and the best mosh pit I’ve been pushed into since I lost my favorite flannel at an illegal show in a windowless venue in high school.

And most importantly, I made my favorite new discovery: The Nutley Brass, a band whose album “Fiend Club Lounge” the DJ spun between sets. Think Disneyland’s Electric Light Parade meets the Manhattan Transfer, and you have some idea of the way this band covers Misfits tunes. In fact, if The Misfits opened a hotel, this is the Muzak that would be playing in its elevators.

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