SFBG Blogs

Mama Jonez is in the house

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Our new Assistant Culture Editor, Molly Freedenberg, may have just gotten to town, but she hasn’t wasted any time finding other media professionals — or free booze. Here’s her account of Tuesday’s Mother Jones shindig.
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Bay Area old-timer Mother Jones is making an effort to be known as something other than, well, your mother’s leftie magazine (or, even less accurately, as a magazine about mothering.)

And last night’s celebration at Minna Street Gallery was a good start -stylistically, at least. There were almost as many fresh-faced, hipster, intern types as there were “grown-ups” (as referenced by the fresh-faced bouncer). The tattooed coat check girl, hoodie-wearing bartender, and grommet-eared busser were a good contrast to Mother Jones’ hemp-and-henna image. And though neither the DJ nor the tables of MoJo memorabilia were enough to override the shortage of both hors d’ouevres and personal space, (I’ve never been jostled so much at such a mellow party. I guess being socially aware doesn’t necessarily mean you’re spatially aware.), I do feel inspired to see what the mag’s been up to since my parents shed their Birks for Crocs. So I suppose you could say MoJo’s new mojo (ha ha ha) is working …

More fallout?

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By Steven T. Jones
Now comes word that Alex Tourk has resigned as the campaign manager for Newsom’s reelection. For “personal reasons.” Yeah right. Does this have something to do with Newsom standing by Ragone, again, just as he did when he let his old chief of staff Steve Kawa resign after a power struggle with Ragone? Or was it something that happened while Newsom was in the Swiss Alps? Or maybe it was actually “personal reasons” associated with some nasty and persistent rumors that have floated through City Hall? Who knows? Whatever it was, we’ll all probably have to find out for ourselves rather than count on Newsom’s people for the straight scoop.

Ragone comes clean? Not yet.

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By Steven T. Jones
According to KCBS radio, mayoral flack Peter Ragone has finally admitted to both posting on SFist and other blogs under a false name and lying to reporters about the existence of his imaginary friend, John Nelson. Newsom, who just returned from 10 days in Switzerland, reportedly expressed his displeasure with Ragone, but downplayed the incident.
Apparently, both men think that’s the end of this, but it isn’t. I had an appointment with Ragone scheduled for 4 p.m. today, but he has pushed that back to tomorrow. I’ll be curious what he has to say, and what “lessons” he’s learned, as he obliquely told the Chron. He directly lied to me and other journalists, a lie that KGO-TV broadcast the other night. Ragone needs to issue a public apology, he needs to directly apologize to me and others, then he needs to explain how the incident and other recent offenses have changed him and what he intends to do to restore his damaged credibility. Until he does that, none of us should believe anything that we hear from the Mayor’s Office.

NOISE: Booyah, Broken West

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Ever find yourself sitting round, twiddling your 10 thumbs, then you toss a CD with so-so cover art on the ole player, and then you stop, do a double take on the name and the art and realize: I like this. Who are these people and where have they been all my life?

Due to the constant influx of mail at the office, that happens to me all the time – I’m glad to say. And the latest band that made me feel those special feelings, once again, is LA’s Broken West, who have a new Merge album, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On out right now.

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Originally called the Brokedown (another band in Chicago inadvertently put the kibosh on that handle), the Broken West make indie pop that wouldn’t be out of line in the small but growing pile of January listenables that includes the latest by the Shins, Lewis Taylor, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. See if they pass your own high standards for tuneful indie when the band plays on Monday, Feb. 5, at Cafe du Nord, SF.

Skateparks revisited; someone tell the mayor it’s not a ‘backslide’ 180

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By G.W. Schulz

Got a call this morning from Rich Hillis, a deputy in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. He was responding to a blog entry we posted last night pointing out that the city has made lots of promises in recent years about constructing new skateparks within the city, an inexpensive gesture any city can make for providing kids with something to do. (Our original post contains plenty of links explaining where skatepark construction is in San Francisco right now.)

SockPuppetGate redux

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By Steven T. Jones
SFist has a nice wrap-up on the fallout from its outing of Newsom flack Peter Ragone as a liar, but the Chron’s Matier & Ross not only buried the story halfway through today’s column, they also missed the point. Ragone didn’t just get his “hand caught in the cookie jar” by pretending to be someone he’s not online — he appeared to have told journalists and the public direct and bald-faced lies to cover up what he did, a sin for which he still hasn’t come clean.
That was the focus of the resolution Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin proposed during yesterday’s meeting, which calls for all public information officers on the city’s payroll to abide by ethical standards accepted by the public relations industry, including honesty. After all, these people work for us. We pay their salaries, not Gavin Newsom, and we don’t pay them to subvert the public interest in honest, open government. Kudos to Peskin for trying to take the high road on this sordid incident.

So clean you can eat off ’em

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by Amanda Witherell

Hey Mission residents: there’s a public hearing tomorrow morning at 9 am, Room 400 in City Hall about street cleaning. The city is planning on having a lot more of it in the neighborhood, which means more sweeping up of newspapers and broken glass, but also more moving of your car and more getting of parking tickets. It affects everyone from Cesar Chavez to 19th Street and everything east of South Van Ness. If you have a Department of Public Works poster saran-wrapped to the street pole or tree in front of your house, they’re talking to you. You can double-check here, and roll down to City Hall tomorrow morning to give your two cents.

So clean you can eat off ’em

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by Amanda Witherell

Hey Mission residents: there’s a public hearing tomorrow morning at 9 am, Room 400 in City Hall about street cleaning. The city is planning on having a lot more of it in the neighborhood, which means more sweeping up of newspapers and broken glass, but also more moving of your car and more getting of parking tickets. It affects everyone from Cesar Chavez to 19th Street and everything east of South Van Ness. If you have a Department of Public Works poster saran-wrapped to the street pole or tree in front of your house, they’re talking to you. You can double-check here, and roll down to City Hall tomorrow morning to give your two cents.

Who’s the poseur at City Hall?

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By G.W. Schulz

San Francisco has always been notoriously behind statewide on skatepark construction, despite the relatively small monetary investment they require and the high civic value they produce. One spot already exists at Crocker Amazon Park, but it’s largely regarded as mediocre. Conservative states years ago were funding the construction of skateparks through their public works departments and allowing young skaters to participate in the designs. Shit, rural Kansas was doing it a long time ago.

NOISE: My how Time Flys…

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Is raucous, reeling rock with a sense of punk history your poison? Cradle your Nuggets comps close to your cold, cold heart? High on those bad boys in the Cuts? Then the Time Flys‘s latest, Rebels of Babylon (Birdman), is for you, you, you. The Oakland combo’s second album is a quantum leap into a gritty, grimy future of hand-claps, cocky vocalizing, and filthy-sounding guitar riffs.

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This is where late ’70s NYC punk meets early ’70s Detroit rock, drawing blood in some extremely unsterile back alley and vowing to be friends forever more. Yeah, you can toss around references to DMZ, Lyres, Real Kids, the Voidoids, the Dead Boys, and all those other pluralized pussies — if you wanna annoy me! Better, you can practically taste the snot pouring off these archetypal rock ‘n’ rollers. Nice.

The Time Flys – spelling be damned! – toast their new record with a party, natch. Apache and the Pets open on Friday, Feb. 2, 10 p.m., at the Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. They’re going down on history, as they’d put it, so get in on some of this action.

Peter’s principles (or lack thereof)

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By Steven T. Jones

Before hitting the latest news of ethics problems in the mayor’s office, and the brilliant segment that KGO-TV’s dogged investigative reporter Dan Noyes has done to highlight them, it’s important to offer some context and perspective.
Mayor Gavin Newsom imported veteran Democrat Party flack Peter Ragone to be his press secretary upon taking office three years ago. Ragone didn’t really know San Francisco that well, but he seemed to understand the national political landscape and therefore became a trusted adviser to our ambitious mayor. The gay marriage move was brilliant, shoring up Newsom’s support in the city’s queer community and positioning him as a civil rights leader for future campaigns.

Yet along the way, Ragone seemed to forget that Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco at a time when progressives controlled the Board of Supervisors and couldn’t simply be dismissed. Over and over, Ragone spun stories to reporters about the incompetence and/or malevolence of progressives or other critics of the mayor — often attacking or belittling the journalists when they expressed skepticism — until he had very little credibility left with any of us (something I say as someone who regularly talks with journalists from all the other major news outlets in town).

So when the SFist discovered that some posters to their site were actually coming from Ragone’s computer, and Ragone avoided answering questions about it and opted to instead claim on the site that allegedly pseudonymous John Nelson was a real person, his best friend actually, who often stayed at Ragone’s house during the early morning and late night hours when he posted — most people simply assumed Ragone was lying.

I wanted to give Ragone the benefit of the doubt and asked whether I could meet John or otherwise get some verification for his existence. Ragone said no, and said, “I don’t think I’d like to see my friends and family put through the wringer of San Francisco politics.”

Why people get mad at the media (part 9). the Chronicle and Associated Press blow the big media story and refuse to make corrections

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

The Bay Guardian, the Media Alliance, and the First Amendment Project won a major victory in federal court last week and succeeded in unsealing about 90 per cent of the previously secret records in the Clint Reilly media consolidation case. It was a clear and decisive win.

Yet the monopoly papers in the case mangled the story, tried to make it appear that the Guardian lost, and the monopolizers won. And then, when we requested they make corrections, they refused and tried to blow us all off.

The Associated Press story was the worst. It was inaccurate, incomplete, and made it look as if the judge had given the Hearst/Singleton forces a major victory, as the two heads on the Examiner website made clear: “Judge: MediaNews, Hearst lawsuit documents remain sealed” and “Judge denies request to unseal MediaNews, Hearst lawsuit documents.” (B3: both inaccurate and incomplete statements, see our online coverage and our link to the judge’s order).

The lead makes the inaccuracy more pronounced: “A media advocacy group and alternative weekly newspaper on Wednesday failed to convince (B3: no) a judge to open key documents in a deal between the San Francisco and the owner of about a dozen Bay Area daily newspapers.” Then the second inaccurate paragraph: “U.S. District Judge Susan Illston denied requests (B3: no, no, no) from the Oakland-based Media Alliance and the San Francisco BayGuardian…” And then a selective quote from Illston that makes it look (wrongly) as if “the bulk of the records contained detailed financial information, including past and present revenue…” and that those were still under seal.
(B3: no again).

Our attorney James Wheaton from FAP emailed the AP and the Chronicle a full and detailed account of what we won: (a) about 90 per cent of the sealed documents; (b) a lot of key documents; (c) the right to stay in the case as an intervenor so that we are in a legal position to challenge any further sealing of documents for the duration of the case; (d) a major precedent that the big guys, especially the monopolizing publishers, cannot seal records in their moves to regional monopoly without public challenge, and (e) a major victory for sunshine, open government, and the free and open press.

More: the AP story was done without the normal calls for comment to our attorney or to the plaintiffs (Media Alliance or us). We had to initiate the calls and emails in an attempt to find out how AP so badly screwed up a simple straightforward ruling by a federal judge. And we are still mystified. The AP story ran in the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times, both owned by Singleton. Singleton, let us note, is also the incoming chairman of the AP board of directors.

When Wheaton asked for a correction by email, the assistant bureau chief Mark Rochester replied in an email:
“While I understand the subtleties (B3: subtleties?) involved, and have discussed this further with staffers here, I’ve decided not to do anything further. I just don’t believe we could issue a clarification or write-thru of the story that would be useful to member news organizations in terms of trying to explain what was and wasn’t covered in the judge’s order.” (B3: why not? Is AP above correcting demonstrable errors or giving the other independent side a chance to comment? What side is AP on? Darkness? Monopoly? Fair and balanced reporting? And most important:what about the interests of non-members or targets of your stories or people like us doing the public’s business in filing and winning a major sunshine in the courts suit? Do we not count?)

I put the above comments in an email letter to Rochester and AP bureau chief John Raess. I requested an explanation of why AP’s news consideration applies only to AP members (such as Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, McClatchy, Stephens, purported “competitors” who are now partners in the monopolizing
California partnership under attack by Reilly.) I also asked for a copy of the AP’s retraction and correction policy. No answer as yet.

This is the face of the emerging daily newspaper monopoly in 2007 in the Bay Area. And this is yet another reason why people get mad at the media.

P.S. Ah, yes, the Chronicle story by Bob Egelko. His story wasn’t much better and he missed the key point: when we filed the motion in court to unseal the records, the newspaper monopolists, obviously embarrassed, immediately agreed to make the bulk of the material public. There are boxes and boxes, and thousands and thousands of pages of legal material filed in the case so far, and the publishers didn’t even contest our contention that most of it should never have been sealed in the first place. Ah yes, neither the Guardian nor the Media Alliance for the First Amendment Coalition was mentioned by name in the rummy little page 3 story in the business section. We asked Egelko why. He emailed back: the cuts were made for space consideration. B3

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AP Letter

Unkinking the Armory

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by Amanda Witherell

Looks like you can’t just set up a porno film studio in San Francisco anymore. Neighborhood groups are looking to have more say in how kinky the Armory building at 14th and Mission is going to be now that it’s been purchased by kink.com for filming fetish flicks. So the Mayor’s office and the city’s planning department are scheduling some meetings to hash it all over in fine San Francisco style. It sounds like they sort of wish it became pricey penthouses after all and the mayor’s disgraced flak, Peter Ragone has turned on the spin, lamenting the loss of an opportunity to fill the building with affordable housing. No word yet on when those meetings will be, but we’ll be sure to let you know.

Wired magazine wins

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By G.W. Schulz

As we’ve reported online, federal Judge Susan Illston has largely ruled in favor of the Guardian and Media Alliance and has opened several documents originally filed under seal in Clint Reilly’s civil suit alleging that the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group are conspiring to monopolize the Bay Area’s newspaper market. A Santa Clara County judge ruled against one of Silicone Valley’s biggest public companies last week and opened up court records to the press and public in a shareholder suit alleging problems with backdated stock options to top executives.

But coincidentally, Illston ruled in yet another open-records case recently that the feds have to pay Stanford’s Cyberlaw Clinic $67,000 to cover legal fees regarding its court-based effort to obtain records of the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT system.

CoCo Times editor moves on

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By G.W. Schulz

Looks like former Contra Costa Times editor Chris Lopez has at least found some part-time work blogging for NewAssignment.net. His most recent entries highlight technological innovations at some of the nation’s big dailies, including a video obituary of Art Buchwald that appeared on the New York Times Web site.

An early January post notes that the McClatchy chain of newspapers, which owns the Sacramento Bee, has purchased the “Famous” blogs, including FresnoFamous.com and ModestoFamous.com.

The tough CoCo Times editor was unexpectedly let go from the paper in October after Denver-based MediaNews and William Dean Singleton bought the scrappy daily along with a group of other Bay Area papers. Lopez helped Singleton win a Pulitzer while working at Singleton’s flagship Denver Post.

Putting the Sixties to rest

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By Tim Redmond

I’m been meaning to write something for a while now about the recent Black Liberation Army arrests, but it’s tricky: I don’t believe in shooting anyone, and killing a cop is a heinous crime, and there is no statute of limitations on murder, nor should there be.

But somehow, I feel the same way about this case as I did about the Sara Jane Olsen case and all these other efforts to get criminal indictments for things that happened in the heat of the 1960s, when there was, in some ways, a low-scale civil war on in this country — and both sides were doing some nasty stuff.

If you want to indict the alleged members of the BLF for shotgunning a cop, fine. Then how about indicting Henry Kissinger for war crimes? How about tracking down and indicting all the living FBI agents who illegally wiretapped radicals? How about indicting some federal agents and Chicago cops for the killing of Fred Hampton? The list goes on.

I’m thinking that if we really want to go down this road, we should create a 1960s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It the South Africans could deal with their bloody history that way, so can we.

Otherwise, the balance of indictments hardly seems fair.

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (1/29/07): 2 U.S. soldiers killed, 36 Iraqi civilians killed and 2 Iraqi policemen killed.

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Compiled by Paula Connelly

U.S. military:

2: U.S. soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down during a clash between Iraqi militants and U.S. backed Iraqi troops, according to BBC news.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6308821.stm

3,301: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.01.html

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

36: Iraqi civilians were killed today in multiple instances of civil war related violence, according to BBC news.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6308821.stm

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

55,073 – 60,754: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 28 January 2007: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/28/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Iraq Military:

2: Iraqi policemen were killed during a clash between Iraqi militants and U.S. backed Iraqi troops, according to the New York Times.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html?ref=todayspaper

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

151: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6293807.stm

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

47,657: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

Fiber: A big fat pipe all the way into the home

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By Sarah Phelan

If you’ve read the 196-page study of fiber-to-the-premise that landed in the City the same week that Mayor Gavin Newsom was whooping it up in Davos, Switzerland, you’ll know that the report concludes that municipal fiber-to-the-premises is the most visionary way for San Francisco to go, and that the city should build a pilot network in the San Francisco Enterprise Zone, which is a 12-square mile economic development area that includes Bay View, Hunter’s Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, South of Market, Tenderloin and the Western Addition.

“FTTP is the holy grail of broadband, a fat pipe all the way into the home or business,” states the executive summary, “but in the near future is only available for a privileged few located in the limited areas of private-sector deployment.”

Noting that private sector networks aren’t meeting this growing demand for bandwidth and speed in an affordable manner, the report states that “in this context of private sector disinterest, municipal FTTP would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities—by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives.”

According to the report, fiber allows “numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the San Francisco market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access,” facilitates “democratic and free market values,” “affordable access” “economic development” and enhances, “the City’s reputation for visionary and pioneering projects; promoting major development initiatives such as revitalization zones.”

The report also notes that fiber “provides a highly reliable, resilient backbone for existing and future wireless initiatives,” supports current and future public safety and government communications systems, saving the City enormous unending cost of leasing circuits from telephone companies, and provides a higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, more secure transport for key city users such as law enforcement, fire, emergency management and public health.”

In other words, it’s the kind of system that would be a life saver following a major earthquake.

None of which means that we shouldn’t be doing wireless, just not the
flawed Google Earthlink deal that Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing.

Fiber: A big fat pipe all the way into your home

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By Sarah Phelan
If you’ve read the 196-page study of fiber-to-the-premise that was posted online by he City’s Department of Telecommunications and InformationServices the same week that Mayor Gavin Newsom was whooping it up in Davos, Switzerland, you’ll know that the report concludes that municipal fiber-to-the-premises is the most visionary way for San Francisco to go. Oh, and that to really bridge the digital divide, he city should build a pilot fiber network in the San Francisco Enterprise Zone–a 12-square mile economic development area that includes Bay View, Hunter’s Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, South of Market, Tenderloin and the Western Addition.

“FTTP is the holy grail of broadband, a fat pipe all the way into the home or business,” states the executive summary, “but in the near future is only available for a privileged few located in the limited areas of private-sector deployment.”

Noting that private sector networks aren’t meeting this growing demand for bandwidth and speed in an affordable manner, the report states that “in this context of private sector disinterest, municipal FTTP would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities—by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives.”

According to the report, fiber allows “numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the San Francisco market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access,” facilitates “democratic and free market values,” “affordable access” “economic development” and enhances, “the City’s reputation for visionary and pioneering projects; promoting major development initiatives such as revitalization zones.”

The report also notes that fiber “provides a highly reliable, resilient backbone for existing and future wireless initiatives,” supports current and future public safety and government communications systems, saving the City enormous unending cost of leasing circuits from telephone companies, and provides a higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, more secure transport for key city users such as law enforcement, fire, emergency management and public health.”

In other words, it’s the kind of system that would be a life saver following a major earthquake.

None of which means that we shouldn’t be doing wireless, just not the
flawed Google Earthlink deal that Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing.

Jealous!

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by Amanda Witherell

I was in seventh grade when the Gulf War started and I remember watching news coverage of the bombs over Baghdad from the back row of my history class and having no clue what it meant. Welcome to the vast and sometimes disturbing plateau that is American public education.

Which is why I’m jealous of all the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders at San Francisco’s public schools who will have Addicted to War as a supplemental text in their history classes.

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (1/29/07): $362 billion for the U.S., $45 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

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Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.



Cost of the War in Iraq
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To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $45 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,095 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 10,960 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,011 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

NOISE: Wilding with Wild Life

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The latest hard-psych tie-dye advocates have gotta be Wild Life. The SF band managed an impressive amount of hair-tossing and head-banging at a recent Hemlock Tavern show, playing betwixt Mammatus and New Thrill Parade.

wildlife1.jpg
Dig that dragon headdress in the background. All photos by Snap! Chun

Drone, psych, and facial hair combined with the convulsive skronk of Jesus Lizard and other Midwestern troublemakers. The loud combo’s next show is at Edinburgh Castle on Feb. 24.

wildlife2.jpg

Bye, bye Barbaro

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Oh laminitis-infected, fracture-healed, Kentucky-Derby winning obsession of a nation — euthanized this weekend.

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Not a giraffe

Barbaro, we waited with baited breath for your recovery — it could be argued that the footage of your leg snapping like a matchstick at last year’s Preakness was the first official “YouTube moment” that captured the attention of the non-Colbert Nation and that your recovery was a brief placebo for out angst over Iraq. But mostly you were just cute. We’ll miss you.

Who’s your sugar daddy?

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Guardian A&E intern Elaine Santore discovered MillionaireMarch.com, and nothing has quite been the same since; here’s her take on the online dating site:

Not long ago, a good friend alerted me that we were behind on our MRS degrees. In a panic, I grabbed my BlackBerry and clicked on the “Tasks” icon. Sure enough: below reminders to “Wash my face” and “Do NOT text/IM/call/MySpace that guy” was “Get MRS degree.”

At 24, I feared I’d missed the trophy wife boat forever. Thankfully, the good folks at Jane magazine spotlight online dating in its Feb. issue, and mentioned MillionaireMatch.com. Millionaire Match’s homepage poses the all-important questions:

mm.bmp

“Does your economic success make it difficult for you to meet that special someone?” Um, duh. Non-intern men in SF are very intimidated by my success. So much so that I had to move back into my parents’ house just to feel at their level.

“Why try other dating websites that can only claim to get results, when you can meet tens of thousands of successful and quality singles and friends right here!” Awesome! I need friends.

Millionaire Match defines a millionaire as anybody who makes over $150,000 a year. Non-millionaires and celebrities (no income bracket provided) are also invited. The site allows you to create a free profile, but offers a gold membership for $19.95 a month. (That’s half the membership fee for Parisexposed.com. Hot.)

After a couple hours of perusing the site, I found that some members appeared to be actual millionaires. A fair share of men my age, however, looked like they were in search of a sugar mama. No shame in the game, boys. Holla for the dollar!

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