Slow News Days Suck!

I hate slow news days, don't you? And don't let bullshit swine flu stories fool you, it's a fucking slow news day. Just look at the front page of the Record today. What's the big news? Mickie Grove Zoo is getting birds! Oh man! So amazing!

Oh, and the police and some other city workers got layoff notices. Not laid off, just notices that they miiiight get laid off depending on the number of people who take advantage of the retirement incentives offered to workers/cops over 50 (those wanting to take advantage have until today to do so). So, you know, more waiting. Awesome.

Oh, and Fitzy is apparently on the restaurant beat now as he tells the tale of Chuck's getting sued for ADA non-compliance by an overly litigious dick in a wheelchair. Yup,lawyers are soulless dicks, that's some crack investigative reporting right there.

But the real sign of a slow news day is how many ads for The Record and its various services appear in the paper to fill space. And good Lord there are a few today. That's nothing really post-worthy, the Record has been slowly turning into a catalog interspersed with news for years now. What makes the ads notable is what they're for. Everybody turn to A13! (We'd link, but why would the Record want these online? It makes too much sense.)

Yes, you too could have a picture of your little one's Kindergarten graduation picture in the Record for the low low price of $40! I don't even think my school had a kindergarten graduation. If we did, years of hard living have erased it from my memory. If only my parents had shelled out 40 clams so they could tell me how proud they are of me for being named "Most likely to continue eating paste" next to a picture of me wearing a paper hat and a bathrobe! It's great to see the Record display such great out-of-the-box thinking like this to recoup some lost ad sales revenue. Because, if there's one section of the community that totally has disposable income in this economy, it's relatively new parents.

Of course, the second biggest community sect with cash just pouring out of their pockets it's people who are getting married! And for the bargain basement price of $25 you can, ummm, announce your wedding in some sort of bride and groom insert the Record's doing next month! Of course (flipping to B4 now), if your wedding was really wacky and over-the-top, you can contact the Record and have them do a feature story on you for free! Did your uncle get too sauced and hit on the bride? Was your bridal party so big the limo had to take people to the wedding in shifts? Did you get to ride the chair at a Jewish wedding that wasn't yours? The Record wants to know! Oh man, the zany stories are endless.

So, to clarify, the Record wants your money for some features they're doing that serve no other purpose other than to make money. See, journalism is alive and well. (Takes swig from flask)

Quick Links for March 26th

What day is it? Thursday? Fuck. Why can't it be Sexy Friday? Let's look in the paper to see if anything happened. Oh look, jack shit. A-fucking-gain. Thank God the NCAA Tournament starts up again today. Finally basketball that actually matters will be in the news again.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure we're done with the Nasty Fetish Tourney until next week. I'm not entirely sure how long the second round voting is going to go for, but I'm fairly certain we won't be posting any more matchups until next week. Unless of course Punter asks us to post more, then we'd totally oblige. But until then, Quick Links!

Last time I checked people were allowed to not know who Ceaser Chavez was

We didn't touch on this in yesterday's Quick Links because we thought it was ridiculously unremarkable. Granted, we're surprised there's somebody living in the state of California that doesn't know who Cesar Chavez was, but we weren't offended by it. I mean Jesus, all he did was send a private e-mail reply that contained displayed his ignorance. He didn't make a racist comment like Jim Rachels. He asked a seemingly innocent (although, again, incredibly ignorant) question. He even realized his ignorance and profusely apologized before the story even hit the news. So we ask, what's the big fucking deal? Why is this story in it's second day?

We understand Cesar Chavez is an important figure in Latino history. But not knowing who he is shouldn't result in a fucking rally at a meeting. The dozen or so people who showed up showed up there specifically to garner press for their cause, and that's bullshit. It was a classic example of political grandstanding through the press. And they weren't even that fucking subtle about it. Yes, Bestolarides made an error in judgement. One he's admitted to. So there's absolutely no point in showing up to tell him he fucked up because he already knows he fucked up! And that's even if he did fuck up.

Frankly, not knowing/forgetting the history of something isn't that big of a deal. I've forgotten half the shit I learned in high school, does that mean I need protesting press whores handing me fucking history books? No, I'm free to know and not know whatever the fuck I want. Same goes for Bestolarides. He shouldn't be getting shit for his admitted ignorance.

David Siders is a live-blogging machine!

If I had known about this town hall meeting I probably would have shown up...ok, that's a lie. Wednesday night's are South Park night and last night's episode was a million times better than anything that went on last night with with City Council. I know this because David Siders did a running diary of the whole thing. Typical topics were discussed, bankruptcy, trees (of course), IFG, water (oh the unwarranted influence of Mike Fitzgerald), and Sanchez was there to do his usual grandstanding. (Bullshit public grandstanding is apparently today's theme in the Quick Links.) It's a fairly interesting read, but at the same time I'm glad I'm reading it and didn't actually have to experience it.

Misc. Shit

I usually try and have three items to write about in the Quick Links and today's so slow that I ca't do it. The story about the Tracy sub who allegedly molested some kids by touching their shoulder isn't inherently interesting. I blame teen slave for making all other forms of child abuse look tame by comparison. "Oh, some guy got off on rubbing your shoulder? I was chained to a fucking fireplace and force fed booze and pot! Beat that!"

UOP's early exit from the CI.CT was kind of funny but if it happens and nobody sees it, does it really even matter? And what does this mean for a team that for some God forsaken reason was hoping for an at large bid on Selection Sunday? Well, it means that people are retarded and couldn't remove themselves enough to see this team for what it was. A mediocre team at best that was crippled by the university's unsuccessful attempt to keep a rape allegation quiet. This team wasn't going to be good going into the season, wasn't good during the season, and didn't come through during their joke of a postseason. While I feel for the seniors who totally got screwed in this situation, it is what it is. The team was just not that good, and they couldn't even win the lowest level postseason tournament. Prolonging the season officially accomplished nothing. And that's why we'll continue to maintain that the CollegeInsider.com Tourney is fucking useless. The best case scenario for that tourney isn't even that great. Anything less than that is, well, fucking embarrassing.

Quick Links for Dec. 29th

Ok, we're back from Christmas vacation. It's not like we'd have had much to post about while we were gone. On the 26th there were exactly 9 news stories written by the Record. And shit doesn't look like it's gonna pick up anytime soon. Luckily we still have an award to pass out later. Hooray filler! Quick links time bitches!

A guy bit off a piece of his neighbor's cheek during a drunken Christmas fight. I'm not even really sure how that's possible. Was his neighbor a chipmunk or something?

We're waiting for this list to be over before we say anything about it. With only two slots left we're guessing the rodeo might sneak in there, and maybe the referendum/general plan. Of course, this is being voted on by the Record's readers. The same readers who voted the economy only the 7th biggest story of the year, which I guess if a bit revealing as to what kind of readers the Record has (coughricholdracistwhitepeopleunaffectedbytheeconomycough). Let's just say I'm not holding my breath that any of them remember who Mayra Lopez is (a death we thought was way sadder than Aaron Kelly's).

Hey everybody, guess what? You know old, crazy, rich, white dude Alex Spanos? Well guess what? He's old and crazy! This is how slow news has been lately. The guy's roughly 600 years old, of course he's losing his marbles. That whole referendum thing didn't tip you off? (We kid, we know his ancient ass had about as much to do with the referendum as the loss of potential jobs did.)

And finally, they got rid of the sea lions at Mickie Grove Zoo? To make way for birds? Fucking weak. Of course the first time a bird lands on my shoulder pirate-style in this exhibit all will be forgiven. McDyver is a genius name though by the way.

We'll probably be here all week this week. Look out for an early New Year's Eve edition of Shit To Do, Real Stocktonian of the Year, and if I know El Duke we'll be getting a Kings Kolumn about last night's debacle shortly.

Quick Links for Dec. 22nd (aka. not Christmas yet)

Considering the fact that this week should be a news wasteland, I wouldn't expect much out of us this week. Yes we're lazy fuckers. No, we didn't forget about Real Stocktonian of the Year. Let's see what blood we can squeeze from the newsless stone that was this weekend.

Just how slow a weekend was it? Let's pull back the curtain a sec. When we do the quickl links, unless we stumble upon something while surfing the web (aka, looking up porn) or have the link e-mailed to us by a tipster (which usually isn't very fucking likely), we get links from this page. It's easily the most convienient page on all of recordnet.com. It lists the various news stories from the Record in chronilogical order and lists all of Record blogs right there. One of the downfalls of this page is that you can't go further back than the front page. So once the stories from the next day bump the previous day's stories, you have to use a search engine to find it. In other words that story is hopelessly lost forever. At most the oldest story usually listed is the web-updates from the previous day telling you to read the full details in that day's Record. Today? You can go back to Saturday. Nothing fucking happened this weekend.

Oh wait, I know what happened. St. Mary's Rams football happened! Are you excited!? No? Congrats, you're just like the rest of Stockton that doesn't give a shit about those spoiled assholes. St. Mary's had to overcome so much adversity to be successful. Being the only high school in the area allowed to recruit athletes really makes it tough on them. In conclusion, high school sports don't matter. Especially when it's some prissy private school.

In news we actually care about, Mike Klocke announce in his column Sunday that the economy's so bad that instead of having local reporters, he wants the citizens of Stockton report the news for him! That's right, instead of paying people to report the boring shit noone reads anyways (i.e. Church activities, new business openings, service club functions), he wants the community to report on...well, the community. That has to be some sort of conflict of interest. You can also cover concerts and festivals. Sound familiar? That's because concert coverage kind of sounds like that whole 209Vibe thing the Record killed last week (but is still open for another month). Ian Hill's even in charge of the whole thing. Yes, that's right. Ian Hill has apparently gone from the editor of his own alt-monthly newspaper to web content moderator. Poor guy. Editing all that user generated content that, if the Recordnet forums are any indication, should be dripping with casual racism. Wait a minute. Where have I heard Recordnet.com and user-generated content together before? Hmmmmmm... Oh hey! I remember, it was number 5 on our Top 5 thing recordnet.com needs to do (A list we may revisit soon)! That's becoming a rather prophetic post isn't it? Linkbacks happened shortly after that post. Now there's UGC. One of these days we hope their search engine will do something besides want to make us slit our wrists. Mostly because if we did kill ourselves nobody would be able to search and find the story baout our grizzly deaths. Maybe some citzen journalist can report on it.

And finally, remember those furloughs? Instead of doleing them out on a case-by-case basis based on need, the city just imposed them for everbody working for the city. Blatantly ignoring that doing so with the 911 dispatchers would actually cost the city more money. Surprised? Yeah, me neither. Although they're hiring apparently. Making them the only place in all of Stockton with job openings.

No news may be good news, but it's still fucking boring

We have to give it to the Record. When jack shit went on the previous day, it's fairly easy to tell. Whether it's the 7 full page ads in a 16-page section (and a mind boggling 4 straight pages of full pagers from A6-A10, and that's before we consider the half page ads. Is this a newspaper or a fucking catalog?), or Fitzy's column which breaks the hard hitting news that old people are stubborn (have a dispute that isn't inherently humorous and is extremely petty? Shoot a phone call over to Fitzy. Duke's e-mailing him about his ongoing saga with Wells Fargo as I type this), or something as simple as a fat kid running (putting the word "streaker" in the headline may have been a bad idea by the way), the message is clear. Nothing good happened yesterday.

Not to mention that fat kid who can run story made the front page of the Sports section while a preview of the Kings and their first game of the season doesn't make the paper at all. And we know they know the season is starting because they included a Warriors preview. Which (bold prediction alert!) is going to be hilarious because the Warriors are going to be worse than the Kings this year (you can't replace Boom Dizzle with Corey Maggette and Ronny "Zoneil" Turiaf and think everything's going to be ok).

Although we have to say, this slow news day is a lot easier to stomach due to the inclusion of not one, but two pictures of the beautiful Jenny Lewis. God, we would do dirty things to that woman. Even if she is technically a midget. (No really, we've met her a couple of times. She came up to our nipples while wearing platform boots. She's 5'0" tops. YouTube one of Rilo Kiley's appearances on Conan. She comes up to his kneecaps.)

And while were here we might as well dump some things we've been meaning to get to. Yes, we realize we still have a promised BWDW to do. We blame car troubles. Hopefully we'll be able to knock that one out by the end of the week. And if you know of a Halloween party that's not listed on 209Vibe's Events page, let us know so we can include it in the Friday "Shit to do" post. Oh, and we missed Saturday's Record so we're not entirely sure if Dolemitewatch should continue or not because the Record doesn't include the 3MR online (eRecord doesn't count). So Dolemitewatch continues until further notice.