Tag Archives: sanfrancisco

Cloverfield Was Actually Pretty Good, Despite the Hype….

Posted on January 19, 2008 by | Leave a comment

I had to take a break from all things current event related (what with the death and mayhem on MUNI and the ongoing mess that is local politics), so I went to the movies on Friday to see Cloverfield on opening day. And, I’m happy to say that for what it was, and for the purposes I selected it, the film did the job quite well.
J.J. Abrams and his talented team of directors and writers managed to pull of what hadn’t really been done before – do a “monster attacks a city” movie solely from the perspective of people caught in the middle of it who don’t know the hows or whys of what is going on – just that Bad Things Are Happening, and there’s no way to tell from moment to moment what one “should” do.
Although the hand-held camera perspective did get some people a little carsick-ish at times, the level of intensity once the sh*t went down was pretty realistic. More than once you wanted the guy holding the camera to turn around and get a better look at The Big Monster or whatever, but of course, that just made it more realistic and a lot scarier, since you had to imagine just what the heck was going on. And, as we all know, people imagining what is going on can come up with things way scarier than any Hollywood producer.
More importantly, the film did a really good job of portraying the sheer panic, chaos, and attempt at response by the government to a disaster than any I’ve seen in a while. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being in a big natural or man-made disaster, there’s always that moment when you have that feeling like the ground just fell out from under you, and suddenly just about everything that seemed so important a moment ago means squat, and now, Sh*t Is Bad. If anything, it has made me wonder if I should be developing a Post Apocalyptic Workout as the Slackmistress has done, to prepare for the next big (quake, monster, zombies, terrorist attack, whatever). After Katrina, does anyone really think the federal government has even a small clue as to what to do in case of (quake, monster, zombies, terroist attack, whatever)?
One thing that I thought of as the credits rolled and the heroic music that would normally have played during a “typical” monster film was that it might have been kind of cool for the producers to put out a fake trailer after Cloverfield came out of what the film would have looked like had they done the 10000th Remake of Godzilla route. You can almost hear the dialogue: “Mr. President….Manhattan is under attack…by a…a… Space Bug!” “You can’t kill that thing with rockets and bullets….you need to use the nukes!” “Time to spray for bugs in Manhattan….American style!”
And so on.
Anyway, it was a great way to get away from the ongoing, bit-by-bit decay that seems to be enveloping Our Fair City, and our country in general, and aside from annoying ads for Mucinex at the theater, was worth the 9.50 I paid.
PS: For another film that provides that hand-held camera, “you are there” approach, go rent 84 Charlie Mopic. I saw this movie years ago, and the experience has stuck with me even though I only saw it once. Definitely worth seeing. And if you want to really get scared, go search for the hand-held real video our soldiers are shooting in Iraq. I’ve seen a few of these and all I can say is that if we don’t give these guys like, super nice treatment when they come back from that hell-hole, well then we suck.

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Posted in Pop Culture & Society

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Obama Speaks At The Women’s Building in SF – Quick Quick Quick Hit

Posted on January 17, 2008 by | Leave a comment

Since I don’t have my trusty Mac with me, and am using the infamous San Francisco Public Library’s free computers, I can only do a quick post, sans photos. It was an interesting press event, with Sen. Obama talking to women about the challenges of making a living in the Bay Area, and some proposals he’s come out with to try and mitigate the cost of living for people who work.
This was probably the only time I’ve ever heard a politician call BS on “tax breaks” as a primary means of providing relief to those who work, since many times they can’t use the deductions on their taxes due to their income, while high income people can take the break. Sen. Obama suggested a break on payroll taxes for those who work (but don’t make a zillion dollars) as a start. Not bad.
It was kind of interesting to see the media swarm (pics to be posted) which packed the crowded room at the Women’s Building in the Mission. It was crowded, hot and yet there we all were, waiting for the Senator and taking pictures and notes at a furious pace. With only 19 days until the Mega Super Duper Big Primary to End All Primaries in A Whopping 20 states, it’s difficult for any campaign, big or small, to reach all voters in all places, so it was kinda nice to see at Presidential candidate speaking in San Francisco, in the Mission, no less.
Luke Thomas took some excellent photos (as always because he’s so talented) and they’re so much better than mine, you should just go to his site and check ’em out.
More later…the clock is ticking on my time here at the SFPL, and I have to update my other blog, as we have Yet Another Tragedy on the N-Judah line.
This, the day after we read that more MUNI money is being siphoned off to pay more salaries in the Mayor’s office, and a month after we heard that they gave the boss at MUNI a big pay raise. And all of this after we voted for a measure that was supposed to start MUNI reform – and immediately after the vote we get a string of accidents and deaths.
All I can say is…WTF?
PS: I had no idea that the “blogger lounge” at Macworld sponsored by Microsoft had free actual computers one could use (when I was here the other day I gave the lounge a quick scan and it looked like you had to bring a computer). Needless to say I wish I’d discovered this a few hours ago, and avoided the glares of the angry pervs who had to wait for their porn whilst I blogged about Sen. Obama…..

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Posted in Debunking Politicos Pundits + Spin, Democratic Party Chatter, San Francisco Politics

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When “Progressive” Political Analysis Becomes “Junkie Logic” AKA Disinfo Rehab Time!

Posted on November 28, 2007 by | Leave a comment

The election is barely past us, and already everyone’s trying to spin the results to suit Their Side. It’s been particularly amusing to watch the “progressives” try and spin this latest election as anything but a disaster. It’s a form of “junkie logic,” the same kind a drug addict uses to try and con you into loaning money, only this time the con is on the voter and anyone with common sense.

The usual people are spinning their best (instead of reporting, oddly enough) and predictably, some elected officials are upset too and are trying to contort what happened in November into some sort of a victory.

Heck you can hear it straight from the professional blog-commenters and Greens (yes, sigh, a few of them are still around..) at some event, but frankly, why bother? Junkie Logic is never much fun to listen to, neither is parroting or rubber-stamping the latest from the Politburo.

Ok, enough picking on the “progressive” kids. Let’s just look at some facts, and since I’m not in the business of defending one side or another, try and see if we can cut the nonsense one by one :

“Ranked Choice Voting will increase turnout, and be more inclusive than runoffs. It will save money and more people will participate.”

Oh really. Now let’s take a look at the numbers from our last big runoff, in 2003, supposedly evil because “less people” vote in runoffs (and yet in a twist of Junkie Logic, are the numbers now used by those who promoted RCV/IRV/WTF to say that Mayor Newsom “didn’t win”):

PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 562). . . . . 562 (100%)
REGISTERED VOTERS – TOTAL . . . . . 466,127
BALLOTS CAST – TOTAL. . . . . . . 253,872
VOTER TURNOUT – TOTAL . . . . . . 54.46

Wow, 54%! Now lets look at how we did under the Magical Perfect RCV/IRV/WTF system the “progressives” prommised us would increase voter turnout (and cut costs!)

PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 580). . . . . 580 (100%)
REGISTERED VOTERS – TOTAL . . . . . 419,598
BALLOTS CAST – TOTAL. . . . . . . . . 149,424
BALLOTS CAST – TOTAL CARD 1 . . . . 149,424
BALLOTS CAST – TOTAL CARD 2 . . . . 150,098
VOTER TURNOUT – TOTAL . . . . . . 35.61
VOTER TURNOUT – TOTAL CARD 1 . . . . 35.61
VOTER TURNOUT – TOTAL CARD 2 . . . . 35.77

That sound you here is the Junkie Intervention phone ringing, but no one is answering because they don’t want to hear the news – under the Magical RCV/IRV/WTF system, turnout was dismal, a mere 35% of voters turning out (100,000 fewer than in evil 2003!). But we were promised by radical advocates for the system that if we adopted it, more people would vote and the final vote would be a “true reflection of the people’s will.” (And whatever you do, do not note that there are actually about 40-50,000 fewer registered voters in San Francisco than there were in 2003! That’ll throw the junkie logic off even more!)

Suddnely, now that the vote result is not what some people wanted, that’s not the case, at least according to the Bay Guardian and assorted so-called “progressives.” Junkie Logic to the extreme.

Oh and that claim that this system would “save money” has been pretty much put to rest since we had to hand count, hand rewrite and handle ballots by hand because the voting machines weren’t, um, legal. The spectacle of radical so-called “elections reform” folks like Steven Hill actaully advocating for illegal machines just beacuse it made their phony RCV/IRV/WTF “reform” look bad was, well, crazy, to say the least.

Now, if that Junkie Logic were not enough, let’s take a look at the second big “Progressive” talking point, that of Mayor Newsom’s vote total:

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Posted in Instant Runoff Voting FAIL, Politics of Political Reform, San Francisco Politics

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