Quick Links for Feb. 27th

Holy shit, is it Sexy Friday? Fuck yes! It's Sexy Friday! Let's knock out some Quick Links while I nurse this wicked hangover and remind myself that this is why I stopped staying out 'til last call on weekdays. The things I do for incredibly hot bartenders who bend down and unwittingly give me a quality downshirt view. And can somebody turn the dimmer switch down please? That lamp is like the fucking sun, and it feels like it's piercing a hole into my forehead. (Note: This part was written at like 9 AM. I'm slightly less hungover now. Although my mouth still feels like I ate a down pillow after smoking a pound of Grandaddy Purp.)

I've got a fever, and the only cure is more live blog!

I guess David Siders loved interacting with us so much yesterday that he's ready for round two. It's nice to see the Record finally embrace a technology that most blogs have been using for at least 2 years now. It's like their website is the midwest, and the rest of the internet is California. I can't wait until they find out about CafePress. Because deep down, who doesn't want to rock a "I went to court and all I got was a picture with Scott Smith's soul patch" t-shirt.

Really? That's the best you got?

We didn't really expect much out of the State of the City speech. It's usually pretty boring and panders to the business folk in attendance. Real Stocktonian Ed Chavez tried to bring some pizzazz to the event by announcing useless shit, we all know how that worked out. Ann Johnston said she wasn't going to make some big, costly, showy announcement, and she didn't. She just took away the costly part! What was her big, not costly, showy announcement? She's calling on you! Yes you! And you! You! You! You! You! Yes, apparently Ann Johnston used her best pyramid scheme sales pitch skills to say that you (yes, you!) can help bring Stockton out of this economic crisis. And it'll only cost you an initial $300 investment time! You can volunteer in the unfortunately named VISTAS program (seriously, who thought that was a good name? Even the STARS people think that's lame) and work at the library or something. Hopefully this is just the first step towards a citizen volunteer police force where a band of ragtag misfits go through the police academy while wacky hijinks ensue. I call dibs on being Guttenburg.

So ummm, checkmate?

I don't really have much to add to this. At least without sounding repetitive. You know what? Fuck it. THEY DON'T WANT YOUR STUPID FUCKING STORE WITH IT'S LAME ASS PRODUCE DEPARTMENT. THE CURRENT WALMART IS FINE AS IS! JUST GIVE IT THE FUCK UP! Man, that felt good.

Maybe we can find some common ground

We've had our fair share of fun at the expense of Mike Fitzgerald, and don't worry there will be plenty more to come. But we'd like to put that all aside for a second. In his blog he wonders why the Arena couldn't book a band like Poison. While we wonder why anybody would want the Rock of Love Bus to head to Stockton, it's still in the realm of my love for horribly over the top 80s music. And if Fitzy also wants an 80s band to play the Arena, then maybe we can all get along. Even if just for a little while.

So what are we proposing? Well, first of all, fuck Poison. They're playing the county fair because nobody would pay just to see Poison. You gotta throw in a bunch of exhibits and a funnel cake to get me to pay to see them. But you know who would sell out the Arena? Journey. It makes perfect sense. For one, they're fucking badass. Second, Journey has localish roots. Lights notwithstanding Steve Perry once lived in Banta. I say that's a local enough angle, even though Perry isn't with the band anymore, to warrant making a push to bring them to the Arena. And we think Fitzy should help make that push. If he does, we promise to not make fun of his tree fetish for a whole month. In fact, we'll even plant a tree and take care of it in my backyard. You want to save the urban forest? Bring us Journey. Then you can do all the tree loving, touching, and squeezing you want.

Quick Links for Feb. 26th

Take me down to the Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Oh won't you please take me...to the Quick Links!

When did the Record learn how to use technology?

Today's State of the City address is apparently being liveblogged by the Record. Ian Hill's at it and David Siders should show up shortly if he's not there already. Mayor Johnston's also allegedly coming by, because if there's one voice that she needs to hear, it's the voice of the biased, racist commenters on Recordnet.com. I'd pop in and participate, but I have work. Somebody tell us how it went. (Update: Ok, so I poked my head in for a sec. I couldn't help myself. It looked about as exciting as a liveblog about a speech would. Plus the SaveStockton guy was there. They were using Cover It Live! so all the comments had to be approved. Which was probably the reason there were so few reader comments. But that's probably a good thing.)

We're gonna need more than this if we want to land Robocop

Christian Burkin breaks down a brochure advertising the Stockton Police Chief job in his latest blog post. Suspiciously missing? Any mention of our violent crime rate. They also say the budget is just over $100 mil when in reality it's just under $100 mil with more cuts coming. Either way it's an interesting read. One would think the search for a new police chief wouldn't resemble a Cragslist personal ad so much.

On a side note, we'd like to ask McClane to say hi to Carl Winslow for us. Now there's a guy who should be police chief. You could pay him in Twinkies!

Ok, so we lied Lori. There won't be any pie. This is an intervention.

Lori, we're here because we love you. Ok, we don't really. We wish you would disappear forever, but we're here to help you. You have a problem, and it's hurting the people around you. Not just your family, friends, and co-workers who have to deal with the constant questions of "Why did Lori write about a dead person turning 100?", but you're also hurting old people. You're making them believe that their stories are interesting, and giving them false hope is mean. Plus, they might start blathering on about their life story to random strangers because they now feel that since they made it in the paper, everybody wants to hear their life story. And we don't. I don't even listen to my Grandpa's stories and he's talking about people I actually know.

I know, it's going to be tough, but you have to get help. This fetish is getting to be too much. I don't think you've written about anybody under the age of 50 since we pointed out your affinity for the elderly. And while we appreciate your efforts to prove us right, frankly we worry about your mental health. Of course being somewhat close to SF, we've learned to accept people for who they are despite whatever weird proclivities they might have. So maybe, instead of quitting old people cold turkey, you could get a job writing the newsletter for a retirement community. Perhaps you could take some time off and write a book of stories old people tell you. Like Tuesdays with Morrie minus the inspiration and anything remotely interesting.

But whatever you do, for the love of Wally stop writing this shit for the Record. It's nowhere near the realm of relevancy.

Oh hey look, a special holiday Quick Links!

We usually take holidays off, but considering the pain in the ass it is to find stories once they've been bumped from the main news page, I felt the need to shit out a Quick Links before I'd be forced to navigate the Record's search engine. Which is the equivalent of taking a claw hammer between the eyes, or wading through a 12-page special edition commemorating a horrible event most people would rather not relive. They're all pretty much the same.

Finally, someone represents our point of view

It was inevitable, but yeah, we reached the "fucking still?" part of this debacle at least 3 years ago. They don't want a fucking Super Wal-Mart. Just leave it the fuck be. Lodi took decent care of their current Wal-Mart and they don't see why they need a new one. Hell, Lodi's Wal-Mart is cleaner than Stockton's Super Wal-Mart and Lodi's has been around for a shitload longer. Can we just end this? Please? Build one in Galt. Nobody gives a shit about Galt.

Fuck! How am I supposed to spend my Friday nights now?

You may not have known this, but we're all staunch advocates of cockfighting. Chickens are barely sentient beings that we raise because they're delicious. Why not have them fight too? They're not cute and cuddly, they look like fucking dinosaurs for fuck's sake. It's not like they're a fucking dolphin or something.

Hey, speaking of, what happened to that dolphin? Alex Breitler (the reporter, not the dolphin) takes off for DC all hopped up on hope (Side note: Nice sweater) and nobody's left to cover the dolphin story? Is he dead? Did it jump over the levee into somebody's pool in some reverse Free Willy thing? And most importantly, why hasn't it been named yet? You gotta jump on this shit or else you end up with Mark S. Allen naming that fucker. You know, the guy who never met a movie he wouldn't give a positive quote for. Do we really want this thing to be named after some shitty kids movie? Oh hey, we got sidetracked for a sec...

Yeah, cockfighting is awesome. It's an accepted sport in many Latin countries and we shouldn't deny our large Latino population a chance to participate in their exciting sport of choice. How would you feel if you went to Mexico and they said you can't play American football? You'd be pissed. Let them play! Let them play! Let them play!

Yeah, because this shouldn't be confusing at all

Remember that whole thing about renaming Charter Way MLK Blvd? Yeah, I tend to stay away from that area too, but on the chance occasions that I've been down there I see the double named street signs and shake my head. And now they're gone. And it's a shame because it was a great reminder as to just how stupid our city government is. Here's a city that went through unprecedented growth, building houses (and the resulting infrastructure) faster than we could fill them. Yet instead of naming one of the numerous new streets after Dr. King, they had to rename one of the larger streets in Stockton. There's a street named after Vlade Divac (off of Holman between March and Hammer across from Chavez), fucking rename that. And I love Vlade Divac. Fuck, rename Holman. I'm not even used to that one yet and only a few businesses would have to change their business cards. I'm pretty sure Dr. King would have preferred that over the shithole street we ended up giving him. I'm sure his family is excited that King's name will appear in the Record a lot in association with shootings and hit and runs.

Quick! Get the Pinasco's lawyer on the phone!

What the fuck are people doing running from cops in Morada? That's the safe part dammit! According to the reader reactions (which only occasionally carry extra nuggets of news hidden behind blatant racism) the family is claiming the CHP is in the wrong. Look, they pull over, you ran. Once you run it's your fault. End of story.

Ok, see you guys tomorrow. Hopefully we won't have ODed on hope and change by then.

Quick Links for Jan 16th

At last, Sexy Friday is here. This Sexy Friday is extra sexy because of the 3-day weekend and the last weekend of good football before the sports media crushes our will to live with soft news stories about shit various NFL players have had to overcome to get to the Superbowl. Pretty much this Friday is super sexy because with Super Bowl media week coming up and the nation is preparing to collectively blow Barack Obama on Tuesday and this it's the last time we'll wake up and not briefly consider throwing our TVs out the window until sometime after Valentine's Day. In short, fuck the media for the next couple weeks (us included. No really, I could use the slump buster). On to the Quick Links.

Note to self: Never get drunk and pass out around Susan Eggman

Out of all the blogs Recordnet has, we probably visit David Siders' with the most frequency (outside of feverishly reloading Joe Goldeen's gas blog every 5 mins to see if Costco still has the cheapest gas). Sure, Fitzy posts more, but his shit is usually self-serving and boring as fuck. Plus it's where he stashes all those updates on the Delta Queen that only he cares about. Siders on the other hand gives us hilarious window into the "exciting" world of city government. What can we see through that window? That the city council is apparently run with the organizational skills of a summer camp.

Yes, they actually went around the room and had everyone introduce themselves and tell the room something nobody in the room knows about you. Susan Eggman was a self-described pecker-checker in the military, known for her vasectomies and circumcisions. Which explains, well, a lot. The most shocking revelation was that somebody there admitted to being a Cardinal fan (a season ticket holder at that!). And of course, it wouldn't be the city if somebody didn't take what's supposed to be something silly and fun and bring the room down. Enter HR Director and lover of dark chocolate Dianna Garcia! She acknowledged that she's somewhat unpopular amongst certain labor circles (specifically with the ex-mayor's wife. But who gives a shit what she thinks? She's gone).

Ann Johnston also returned to form. After spending the better part of 2008 slinging as much mud as she could get her hooves on, she started off (well, you know, after the whole introduction thing) the goal-setting meeting with "There will be no finger pointing or blame or looking back." She also may or may not have noted that Clem Lee was going to start that negative campaign any day now.

Really? No really, Really!?

We're going to preface this by saying we understand the Cleveland school shootings affected Stockton more than we could comprehend at the time. We were all just starting school around then (not Cleveland though) so I can only guess what my parents thought sending their first born off to school only to have another elementary school get shot up 6 months later. But, and I'm trying to be as measured and tactful as possible, that was 20 fucking years ago.

If you've lived in Stockton for the better part of 2 decades, there's a good chance someone's pulled a gun on you. Ignoring that, in 20 years there's a good chance you've experienced something mentally scarring like a near-death experience, the untimely death of a loved one, or catching your roommate masturbating in the living room after you took an impromptu sick day (we've since burned that couch cushion). Shit just happens, then you deal with it.

Which is why the story of Sarah Garcia perplexes us. She wasn't even actually shot at. She wasn't even on the fucking playground. She was safe, under her desk, in a classroom. Yet, just the thought of being present at a place where a shooting occurred apparently caused 20 years worth of mental damage. Get the fuck over it.

Now, I know people are going to think we're being callous, but hear me out. This lady's problem isn't some shooting that she happened to be present for but didn't witness. If it's taken her 20 years to muster up the courage to just drive by her old school, she's not exactly the strongest-minded person in the world. She thinks nobody will be at the school on the anniversary of the biggest thing that happened to it. She claims she didn't care that the kids laughed at her for jumping under her desk at the first sign of a loud noise, but then decided on home schooling for the rest of her academic career.
Let's face it, she's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Chances are, if that shooting doesn't happen, something else would have happened later on in her life and taken the same effect. Like the Baskin Robbins robbery. Or the death threat phoned in to the medical facility. Or someone telling her that those jeans make her ass look fat (which isn't a good idea regardless of the woman's mental strength).

And to think, we still have a whole weekend of this shit. Including a 12-page special about it on Sunday. 12-pages!? That's just 2 less than the A-section had today.

Maybe we're just dicks, but then again, we're not the one's still hung up on shit that happened during the first Bush administration.

So how was that for measured and tactful?

El Guapo brings you great deals on mp3 players!

After procrastinating until the last possible second to check out what kind of sales they had at Mervyns, you can bet I'll be one of the first people in line when Circuit City starts liquidating it's inventory. Hopefully the nerds coming to get a discount on computer software and video games will be more civil than the last day at Mervyns. 90% off everything plus women plus the economy equaled martial law. I'm surprised I got out of there with the clothes I was wearing. Luckily, when you dress like a borderline homeless man like I do, nobody mistakes you for a mannequin.

Next up, local boy goes to state finals of POG tournament

We hate to make fun of myRecord because it's just wayyyy too easy. It'd be like making fun of the kids on the short bus. But today's was particularly funny if for no other reason than we didn't know they still had Pokemon turnaments. Hell, we didn't even know they still made Pokemon cards. This makes El Duke happy because it keeps his hopes of entering an NES-tournament and school kids with his Power Glove Wizard-style alive. And he's always really wanted to take a cross country trip with Jenny Lewis.

Also, that cat photo was adorable.

Actual good ideas on recordnet? Excuse me while I got salt down the icy spots from where Hell just froze over

We'e had our fair share of fun at the expense of Recordnet.com over the past 6 months. Hell, we'll be having some more next week when we post a revised top 5 things needed to improve recordnet.com. But there are rare times when they have a good idea without our help.

One of the issues we had in the original Recordnet Top 5 was the fact that some stories that appear in the Record don't appear on the website. Unfortunately we used like the worst example possible. Plus we've pretty much grown used to the whole "stay tuned tomorrow" thing. We get it, peeps is busy and they need time to do actual research. Being the stoned test monkeys that we are, we neglected to think about the opposite. Web exclusive articles that don't appear in the Record.

Now, we'll touch on this a little bit later when we talk about the Record's redesign, but judging by the subjects of the web exclusive content (from here on out referred to as "websclusive". We're not totally sure how that s snuck in their either) it appears that the Record's slowly gearing it's website towards the local young people. You know, building a web readership for when the Record print edition downgrades itself to a pamphlet. Which is kind of a smart idea. Which scares me. All smart ideas at the Record are supposed to be swatted down by management because they would cost too much or they just don't like change (or don't know how to enact it).

We're also pretty sure Record management treats the internet like my grandma did after I set up her computer for it. Can't you just imagine The Coozer pointing the mouse at the computer and clicking it like a remote and asking the webmaster how to check "the MySpace"?

We'll be back a little later today to discuss the redesign. Duke should be by shortly to give us some Shit to do and then we'll all hunker down for a 3-day weekend of binge drinking and video games. I know, you're jealous of our glamorous lifestyles.

You might say Stockton's music scene has had a plethora of problems

"Every time anybody wants to do something for the Stockton music scene, it gets bashed into the ground."
-Daniel Gutierrez of Hey Manna! December issue 209Vibe

For the longest time Stockton seems to have been battling a force trying to suppress the music scene. An El Guapo if you will. Sometimes El Guapo is a complicated permit process. Sometimes El Guapo is old people living across the street with a lot of free time and a quick dialing finger. A while ago El Guapo was disorganization throughout the entire scene. There was no real place you could go to look up and advertise shows. The most advertisement a band would get for their shows would be word of mouth and flyers. Ian Hill slayed that El Guapo. And for that I will be forever grateful.

OK, maybe "slayed" is too strong of a word (is slayed even a word? Slew maybe?). You can't kill El Guapo, you can only hope to keep him at bay. For a little over a year, 209Vibe did their best to fight El Guapo. Unfortunately this week 209Vibe succumbed to it's own El Guapo, the economy.

The economy is El Guapo for a lot of things right now. It's the Guapo that has a stranglehold on the entire nation, especially here in the valley. Multiple venues have closed, Modestoview shut down, and now we can add 209Vibe to the roll call. "Obviously, the economy sucks, and everyone's struggling," said 209Vibe editor emeritus Ian Hill via e-mail. (Oh, did we forget to mention we got real quotes? Just like real journalists.) "It's difficult to start any business in this atmosphere, no matter what the potential," he continued. "We had hoped to see more revenue growth from 209Vibe - when it did not happen, we had to close shop."

The economy wasn't the only El Guapo 209Vibe had to fight. While other sections done by the Record come as inserts with the paper (TimeOut, Elegant Lifestyles), 209Vibe had it's own distribution run which was erratic at best. Quick, name a place where you know you can definitely find a copy of the print edition of 209Vibe. Can't think of one? Say hello to El Guapo.

The name was also a small Guapo that dogged 209Vibe, for us at least. The "Vibe" part always made us think they were headed to some weak rave with glowsticks and shit. Plus we've always kind of hated referring to an area by their area code. It's not original, every rapper ever seems to be doing it now. Plus, it's usually used to signify hometown pride. Something that not a lot of people have around here. Local apathy was also 209Vibe's El Guapo. Hell, it's our El Guapo. That's kind of why we liked 209Vibe, we were fighting a common enemy.

Look, we know when boiled down to the bare essentials 209Vibe was just a scene mag. But for being just a scene mag it accomplished a lot in it's year-plus existence. "I think we did a lot of good for local music and entertainment in the past year," Hill opined. "People began to see that there was more to do in Stockton than have dinner at Olive Garden and check out the new Martin Lawrence flick. And they were introduced to talented artists in their community." After wondering when Stockton opened up an Olive Garden, we have to agree with him. The local music scene has seen unprecedented growth in the past year, culminating (for us at least) with the opening of the Plea for Peace Center on downtown's east side. Considering the Center was the cover story for December's 209Vibe, it's safe to say 209Vibe helped a bit.

Of course now the it's gone, the obvious question is what's next? Who will help us fight El Guapo? Unfortunately, that answer isn't immediately clear. Something that is clear is something 209Vibe taught us (and something Ian just said in the previous quote), Stockton has a fucking talented group of artists. "That talent, really, is what's most important," Hill continued. "209Vibe's existence was a result of that talent - we didn't create the local music scene, we just covered it. We'll continue to have scene even though coverage of it is going to decrease."

The scene will always be around, but with what strength is unknown. 209Vibe played a large part in helping promote the local arts scene. Whether it was giving bands exposure they otherwise wouldn't have, sponsoring shows directly, or giving area residents under the age of 35 a paper directed towards them for once. There are other places to fill the void in 209Vibe's absence. Middagh's Stockton Rocks! MySpace is highly recommended. Middagh's been fighting El Guapo for the better part of 2 decades. Most recently that fight has included opening and running the Plea for Peace Center. The Stockton Rocks! MySpace is a list of shows Middagh books (for the uninitiated, everybody's favorite peroxide gargler books a decent chunk of the shows in Stockton) plus shows he would personally go to. In the shutdown announcement on 209Vibe.com Hill says he'll try and maintain the 209Vibe MySpace (now called 209Music) (Update: Now it's called "209Vibe.com is still here!" why must you confuse us so?!) as a place to post local events. So while the arts scene may not get as much coverage as it once did, there are still a few places to go to advertise/look up shows.

That really only leaves one question. What about Ian Hill? The economy has his journalism especially hard this year. There aren't exactly too many spare newspaper jobs lying around. So what's going to happen to the man that fought El Guapo and lived to tell about it? "I'll continue to work at The Record in another capacity that will be announced very soon," said Hill, "and I'll keep doing what I can to provide local musicians with coverage and exposure."

The fight against El Guapo will never be over. Even if we do defeat him in one form, he always comes back in another. We lost a bit of firepower over the last week, but in the end I think we'll be ok. We'll just have to shoulder some of the organizational process ourselves and slowly continue the fight to gain respect in the art community. It won't be easy, we may not have the best weapons to fight El Guapo anymore. But all we can do is keep sewing, sewing like the wind.