Quick Links for March 13th

Oh hey, it's Sexy Friday. Fucking sweet. Let's knock out some Quick Links to help you get through the home stretch before the weekend. And apologies for this being so late, my internet connection took a shit.

This maverick renegade is so good that the arena will only be empty two-thirds of the time!

After spotting him the rest of 2008 as a lost cause, Fitzy checks in with IFG's Stockton rep Stephen Grossman (presumably not related to Sexy Rexy) today. The verdict? Jack shit. He wants 10 events/concerts in 2009. We're about a quarter of the way in, how many concerts/events have there been? What's that? Oh yeah, GIANT FUCKING GOOSE EGG. Good to see that strategy Grossman was talking about was to call promoters over and over again as if he were Mickey in Swingers. ("Oh hey, LiveNation? This is Stockton again. It's been 12 minutes and you haven't called back. Just wanted to make sure you got my message. Can we have Santana yet? Call me back!")

Oh and Fitzy, we hate to repeat ourselves but, the reason the public thinks redevelopment was wasted was because of the money that went to your pals at Paragary's and the money that went to the Sheraton. What was it we said yesterday? Something about subsidizing a playground for the wealthy in a town where the average resident is well, not wealthy. Again, that's where all the hostility from. We're not stupid, we know the Arena's not going to be a big money maker. It can't even sell off it's naming rights for fuck's sake. It's there so people will come downtown for sporting events the hopefully go see a movie. So when bitching about the Arena, it's foot traffic that's important. Not dollars and cents.

Our only anti-drug PSA

Regular readers are probably aware of our casual attitude towards most drugs. We say "most" because there's one drug that not even we will touch, and that drug is fucking meth. Lately, meth's been a factor in the Paradiso case, the Flag City shooting, and now that crazy dude who tried to run down the cops. And that's just off the top of my head. We're still trying to find the positive in doing meth. Weed mellows you out. Alcohol makes you love everybody (it's not uncommon for the phrase "I'd take a bullet for you man!" to be thrown around like a crowd surfing midget when the RTT crew goes on a bender). Hell, even shrooms and acid makes you see funky shit. What does meth do? Kills your teeth, keeps you awake for a week, and ages you 10 years in 10 minutes. And then you still gotta come down. The "Meth made me crazy" defense needs to be retired because you've got to be fucking crazy to try that shit in the first place. Shit like meth makes me miss the days when the a WTF murder was something like "Drunk guy hits guy in head with rock after he welches on a pool bet." (Have we mentioned how much we miss Jack's Back lately?)

If a team leaves and nobody notices, was it ever really there?

We're linking to this for 2 reasons. One, the opening lines are a laugh riot. The Thunder are not in any way, shape, or form a part of the essential fabric of this city. They haven't even been here for half a fucking decade yet. Worst case scenario if they leave? We have a bunch more available Arena dates open for IFG to ignore and an easy way to tell who all the rubes in the city are. They're the ones wearing Thunder gear. History doesn't happen overnight. We're not just going to magically wake up one day and bleed...err what are the Thunder's team colors again? I'm pretty sure one of them is pink.

See, in-fucking-difference. That's what would happen if the Thunder left. 300,000 people would shrug their shoulders and move on. Then we would point and laugh at the 6,000 people who actually thought going to minor league hockey meant they were a part of something.

And second, this editorial also clears up that whole "which contract are we talking about" debate from the other day. We were right, Fitzy was wrong. We'd be happier if that didn't happen on a regular basis.

Speaking of indifference...

This probably isn't good news for the Record. Of course Gawker was stupid and assumed newspaper editors/publishers use conventional wisdom. Judging from what we've seen here they don't know the meaning of either wisdom or conventional. But hey, they do see a lot of shit!