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Evil teenager-ish Eric Hunt is pleading insanity. He's been in the nutcase wing of the big house since February when he allegedly stalked, then dragged Nobel Prize winning Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel off an elevator at the Argent Hotel. At the ripe old age of 23 Hunt has copped a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' plea -- for the second time -- after first dropping the insanity schtick in favor of the simpler, and infinitely stupider, 'not guilty' plea. Judging by his taste in stalking targets -- an elderly Jewish writer over, say, a movie star or a politician -- Hunt does seem insane, or at the very least, really really dumb. I mean, who does that?

-- Brian Bernbaum

This town is so jacked. Say you're a local cop and you make a stupid short film depicting:

"a black officer eating from a dog bowl, a white officer in a patrol car running over a black homeless woman and an Asian-American officer having trouble riding his bicycle" (Examiner)

Funny? Not funny, because the Mayor and the Police Chief get word of it, and run your ass up the flagpole as a racist, sexist, homophobe. What do you do?

Naturally, you and your cop co-stars turn around and SUE THE CITY'S ASS for discrimination, and then, this week, sue their ass again for fucking with your GoDaddy.com account that hosted the video, since that could be a 1st Amendment violation too.

From the Ex today:

Andrew Cohen ... alleges that [Fong and Newsom] conspired to deny him access to the personal Web site where he posted the video. ... The lawsuit ... also names the company that hosted Cohen's site, Go Daddy Group Inc., as a defendant for allegedly agreeing to lock him out. ... Cohen is one of 18 officers who have a separate, $20 million civil suit pending against the city, accusing Fong of discrimination ... The new lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

So, Cohen, since you work for the City you're suing, can we just settle with you and pay you from your own pension? That would be sweet, given the upcoming 5 percent budget deficit and all. —David Downs

Face it, kiddies. Unions are dead. We needed them when society put you to work at age 4, but in 2007, unions just coddle incompetent bureaucrats, drive up prices, and make Chinese-made goods look a lot more profitable. That is why we are sorta non-plussed about this latest grocer's strike. From the Ex:

"The union representing employees at Northern California’s largest supermarket chain, Safeway, is threatening to strike as early as next week ... employees would still be working at checkout lines but shelves and deli counters may go bare."

Sooo, big deal. Basically our diets will shift to consist of even less factory-farmed Safewaste, and even more El Farolito, El Metate, Hamano Sushi, Eric's Chinese, and Trader Joe's red wine. No biggie, right?

Dude, you were too old to be riding that thing, and now God punished you. Yes, we're insensitive. But you would be fine if someone like us had shamed you off that thing prior to today's mishap. Remember, hated readers: If your balls have hair on them, you are too old to ride a Razor Scooter:
From the Examiner today:

"A man riding a Razor scooter this morning was hit by a car as he crossed the street at Folsom and Main streets in San Francisco ... The 45-year-old man was transported to San Francisco General Hospital. ... The extent of the man’s injuries was unknown."

—David Downs

From the AP's 'Calls in Sudan for Execution of Briton':

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."

Fozzy Bear from Sesame Street just called us with a comment on the evolving situation in Sudan:

"Cultural relativism, my hairy ass. These zealots deserve every last smart bomb that finds them. Ditto for Catholic pederasts, Christian fag draggers, Jewish neocons, and all the other intolerant religious fucks that make this world the latrine it is. I'm tired of this shit. What is this, the dark ages? Muhammad was an asshole. Jesus was a prick. And Buddha was a big fat pussy. When can we move on?!"

Free the pizza! This week we posted on how the jerks at the Planning Commission want to kill fun in SF by banning late-night pizza. Sure it's only in North Beach, and only after 2 a.m., but we stand with our man-blouse wearing North Beach brothers. A strike against North Beach pizza is a strike against pizza everywhere.

Now, a little message control people. The reason the Planning Commission should fuck off does not involve the need for drunks to use pizza as a booze sponge in their bodies. It is one word: FUN. Fun is getting bored with this town and thinking about moving to Oakland. We must not let fun move away. Repeat after me, sheep people.

Save SF Fun! Save SF Fun! Save SF Fun! Save SF Fun!

(Photo courtesy of the Ex)

The fat (mannish) lady has sung!

San Francisco's big, old classic Drag Queen show hosted by Heklina, Trannyshack, is throwing in the wig, according to SFist:

On Heklina's MySpace page, she tells us that she plans on shutting down Trannyshack -- San Francisco's longest-running (alternative-y) drag show, etcetera -- soon. Very soon. Heklina says, "I need to feel challenged and no longer feel I have the focus to continue doing a weekly drag night-club much longer." And although her appearances won't stop, the Tuesday night destination for many homos and tranny-chasers will. ... By the end of December, or the beginning of January I will be announcing the date of the big blowout, which will be a massive Miss Trannyshack Pageant/Wigstock scale farewell bash featuring Trannyshack performers past and present, as well as some special guest stars.

Cowgirls Suck: Top 5 reasons to be happy you’re not a Dallas Cowboys fan

1. You don’t have to root for a team whose cheerleaders wear such demeaning outfits that they look like walking STDs.

2. You don’t have the embarrassment of knowing the referees (and their dubious calls) are the most likely contenders for winning as Dallas’ Most Valuable Players in last night’s game against the Green Bay Packers.

3. Dallas is deep in the heart of Texas, the state that brought you Halliburton and other corporations notorious for cronyism and corruption—not to mention George W. Bush, a politician notorious for cronyism and corruption.

4. Your favorite team’s cheerleaders best performance wasn’t on The Love Boat—and even then they were upstaged by Charo.

5. Your quarterback isn’t rumored to be dating Jessica Simpson (Ewww!)

So we survived the Turkey Holocaust, only to confront you, dammed reader and your voracious desire for news, culture and food entertainment this week. We gotta admit, our performance this post-Turkey Day week was a bit lackluster. So let's get trashed on Vicodin and tequila and forgot all about it, shall we?

Welcome to Your Friday Morning Pre-Party, I'm your host, Web Editor David Downs.

First off, this pre-party needs a coked-out, disco muppet vibe. So click on this youtube embed of the Brooklyn sex-funk 18-piece Escort, who play Mezzanine this weekend.

Feel that disco funk? Damn, that's stanky! Now, looking back on this week, we raise our pimp cups to :

Talking shit (and pish and farts) with Yiddish-language maven Michael Wex

By Joe Eskenazi

The recitations of St. Augustine don’t usually make a cameo during lectures on the dynamics of the Yiddish language.

And yet, earlier this month, there was Michael Wex quoting the Fourth Century church father -- albeit about substances more commonly found in a chamber pot than a lecture chamber.

“St. Augustine said, ‘Inter faeces et urinam nascimur’ – ‘we are born between feces and urine’ so we shouldn’t be too proud of ourselves. Looking at it from a Yiddish point of view, you can see that St. Augustine was a nice guy – but, ultimately, a bit of a goyishe kop.”

The Saint got it all wrong, see? We start with urine and end with feces – at least in Yiddish. A young person is a “pisher,” hearkening to a newborn pissing babe. And an old man is an “alter kocker” – an “old shitter” and you know all too well what this hearkens to.

“Life is simply one long waiting period from one movement to the other with increasing discomfort as we get closer and closer to the anti-climax of life,” said Wex, author of...

Well, that's one way to deal with crazed commenters: make them think their tirades are still live on the site, while to everyone else in the universe, they've been erased. So says Investigate the Media, a blog that seems to have been established solely to expose the "devious" new "crypto-deletion" system adopted by the Chronicle:

"So the end result is that the only person who can see a deleted comment is the person who originally made that comment. To everyone else in the world -- the comment is gone, deleted, non-existent. And the only conceivable purpose for this is to trick commenters into not knowing their comments had been deleted."

Sounds like a good idea to me. And while the merits of deleting comments on a newspaper website can be argued, there is -- apparently -- at least one pleasant consequence: incessantly over-opinionated commenters like Mr./Mrs. Investigate the Media "jimjams" are forced to strike out with their own blogs instead of leeching onto, and annoying the shit out of everybody, on ideologically-opposed forums. Ain't the internet grand?

-- Brian Bernbaum

It seems like a pretty obvious conceit: Hate Hurts America, but apparently it took a coalition by the same name to convince corporate giants Wal-Mart and AT&T to join other advertisers boycotting local right-wing radio nut Michael Savage's radio show "Savage Nation." In fact, Hate Hurts America -- described as "a group of religious and civic organizations seeking to challenge hate speech on talk radio" -- was formed specifically for this purpose.

Citing Mr. Savage's "history of hateful and bigoted comments against minorities," the group has convinced a growing list of companies to yank and/or refuse to place ads on "Savage Nation," including JC Penny, OfficeMax and AutoZone.

Here's a small sample of Savage's charming, hate-filled rants:

"What do I give a rat's behind about which dog is related? Why is this study done? All I know is we treat dogs very well here, and the great originators of the dog eat them. How come they don't put that in their story about 'em, the Asians still chew 'em up? In China they're in cages waiting to be cooked. Yeah, I know, you're not supposed to say that. All the quiet, sacred soy eaters over there." (via mediamatters.org)

"I think [Muslims] need to be forcibly converted to Christianity...It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings." (via hatehurtsamerica.org)

"intelligent people, wealthy people ... are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, 'Oh, there's a billion of them.' ... I said, 'So, kill 100 million of them, then there'd be 900 million of them.'" (via mediamatters.org)

"Well, what does that tell you about the loving, kind lesbian who just assaulted you in your car? ... She's a -- the type that stuffed ovens in [Adolf] Hitler's concentration camps. Whenever I hear anyone preaching to me about how compassionate they are, I reach for my Glock. That's all I can tell you. They can all drop dead." (via mediamatters.org)

Stupid Savage by Magillicuddy on Flickr

-- Brian Bernbaum

Dear reader community, similar to the Onion, this publication is a one-way conduit for information, we appreciate your lack of daily input.
However, we occasionally amuse ourselves with your reactions when they penetrate our calloused, evil media hearts.

Here's our faves of the week. —David Downs

We say, slacker guys and striver girls shouldn't date, or something:
billy says,

Well if this the best story EVER in the SF weekly then it just goes to show the sad state of journalism in this City. Fluff, fluff, and more fluff, hipster nonsense. It reads like some yuppie chicks Teen People mag and it is just as important and relevant.

but E Taylor says,

I really enjoyed this article. I used to depend too much on my girlfriend, and I didn't see how it was hurting her. Now I work a lot harder to be supportive on all levels. Thanks for bringing the issue to the surface.

We say, the moped gangs of SF are angry and silly!
john doe says,

You are a total hack. Fuck you and your paper.

while Chris P. Bacon says,

You're scum. SF Weekly is scum. Not only is this REALLY OLD news (as in your a year too late!), but your throwing peoples names into a paper where anyone can read it when they clearly said they didn't want to be featured in your stupid little article.
Lame.

Whereas Lucy the Daughter of the Devil says,

#1: The SF Weekly is a locally owned/run paper that often prints stories that the corporate rags don't or won't.
#2: This is a FREE paper. If you don't like it, don't pick it up or surf to it (no brainer)
#3: The words 'Moped' & 'gangs' should NEVER, I repeat, N-E-V-E-R be used together (unless it's a joke)
#4: Men/boys don't look cool on a moped in the US -EVER

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Tags: kings of commenting

Obviously “Shot Spotters” can spot gunshots. But one S.F. Supe is hoping they’ll do more -- and drag the police department into the 21st century.

By Joe Eskenazi

In yesterday’s article, we revealed how the amazing “Shot Spotters” recently approved for use in San Francisco can detect the sound of gunfire and send cops to the scene in a matter of seconds – yet still are far from a cure-all for a beleaguered department.

Today we’ll explore some of the more counter-intuitive and subtle rewards the system can deliver.

Across the Bay in Oakland, violent criminals have been prosecuted as a result of the high-tech system – but not in the way Shot Spotters’ proponents may have envisioned.

“Shot Spotters has many capabilities other than...

By Benjamin Wachs
Announcing that it’s never too late to jump on a trend after it’s already popular, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced last week that’s he’s proposing legislation that would merge the San Francisco Taxi Commission with the MTA (which runs MUNI).

“The passage of Prop A earlier this month showed that the public continues to want their transportation all under one department and not under a fractured system,” the press release said.

Yeah … Prop A … isn’t that the one which the Mayor technically endorsed but then never campaigned for? I’m pretty sure it is. But hey, jumping on the bandwagon is what Newsom’s good at – so by all means, play to your strengths.

What this means in concrete terms is the formation of a “Mayor’s Taxi Working Group” to “work with industry representatives, city departments, hospitality representatives, and constituents of the taxi services” for 120 days to hammer all the details out.

What the press release doesn’t say is why they’re doing this in the first place. Prop A had very specific goals it wanted to accomplish by making MUNI an independent system: greater funding, more stable operations, and increased flexibility to do its job without political interference.

When it comes to the taxi commission – what problems are we trying to solve? What services are we trying to improve? Is there any reason we’re doing this except for the sake of doing it?

The Mayor’s Press Office said they’d have to get back to me on this. Sigh.

Mind you, they could be right: this could be the greatest idea for city streets since the invention of broken white lines. But, you’d think that when they make a major policy proposal, they’d have a reason for doing it other than “voters like this stuff.”

The Mayor’s spokespeople said they’d get back to me on that today. I’ll let you know as soon as they holler.

Readers, what are the problems with Taxis in this town, aside from the standard bitching about never finding one when you need one (i .e. 2 a.m. Thursday morning, in front of some depressing strip club; but that's just sad, lonely us).