Top 5 comics the Record needs to ditch

When we heard the news that cartoonist Berkeley Breathed was retiring (again), and ending his comic Opus, we were kind of sad. Sad because Opus was one of the few actually funny comics out there, and kind of because the Record stopped printing it a while ago. Too political apparently. Pussies. Also kind of because we don't really read comics that much anymore. The Record's comics page has always sucked. Which is surprising considering they do surveys periodically and actually seem to make changes based on our input. They must have lost our survey card. They also ignore common sense. Like the last survey they did resulting in, if memory serves correct (have to go by memory, there's no link to those stats. Or at least I pray to God there isn't), "Zits" being one of the higher rated comics. Yet they neglect to include it in the Sunday comics. "Get Fuzzy" is also one of the better comics that's featured in the Mon-Sat editions, but omitted from Sunday. Yet, for some unknown reason, they continue to print "Cathy" every Sunday. And "Classic Peanuts". That shit wasn't funny the first time around. If that's a classic then where the hell is the classic "Calvin and Hobbes"? Prince fucking Valiant? What the fuck is that shit?

So without further blabbering, here's the...

Top 5 comics the Record needs to ditch

1. "Watch Your Head"

We started reading this comic when the Record first slapped it on there, and it has yet to be funny. Is this like "For Better or For Worse" or "Family Circus" where there is no joke, just observations on life? Was the "Boondocks" that scarring of an experience for the Record that they had to punish it's old spot with this bullshit?

2." F-Minus"

Technically this comic is on the 3-Minute Record, but that makes it even worse because some days we just skip the comics, but never the 3-Minute Record. (We're suckers for the Quote of the Day) Regardless of placement, it's still painfully unfunny. We get the whole attempt at dry humor thing. But, and take it from us, dry humor is hard to do in a written format. F-Minus has the added bonus of visual aid and it's still unfunny. Can't that space be better used for more celebrity news?

3. "Family Circus"

Where's the fucking joke?

I would gladly hand a dollar to anybody who can show me a funny Family Circus. It's not possible. Dysfunctional Family Circus does not count. Sure, these were funny when you were like 4, but as an adult do you really feel responsible letting your child read that shit? They'll go try blaming shit they did on gay ghosts. Plus kids have to learn they don't leave a dotted line when they go running around the neighborhood by themselves.

4. "Mutts"

Sorry, just not funny. But then again, we doubt we're the target audience. Although what comic's target audience is a bunch of dudes in their mid-twenties. Ok, besides "Pearls Before Swine" (Another glaring Sunday omission).

5. "Dennis the Menace"

A painful but needed choice. We were fans of this one as kids, but that was back in a time where there was no internet. Hell, that was before any of our families even owned a computer. Long story short, the 80s were a crazy time. Plus in real life Mr. Wilson would have gotten a vicious pitbull by now to keep that little fuckshovel out of his yard.

Coming sometime later, the Top 5 comics that should replace the last 5.

If you signed that petition, here's the result.

Remember earlier this week when A.G. Spanos Cos. dropped it's referendum bid? Well David Siders has the resulting letters (.pdf warning) posted on his blog for anybody interested. Don't blame you if you're not.

Your quick guide to the General Plan

The General Plan of 20fucking forever has been in the news a lot lately. A lot of legal wrangling and posturing has gone on during the past 685 years they've been trying to hammer this thing out and it can get fairly confusing pretty easily. (We're still not sure what Morada's beef is if they've already agreed to not go east of 99.) We thought it would be nice to try and put all the info on it in an easy to navigate place for people who search the intertubes for more info on it (since recordnet.com is decidedly not easy to navigate.). Plus we've added all the bias not included in the Record since we're not a respectable news organization like them and can do stuff like that.

After God knows how long, the City Council approved the General Plan of 2035 near the end of last year. It was a fairly shitty plan that presumably gave Alex Spanos' wallet a boner (Yes, his wallet has a penis. It's a Greek thing.) and pushed Stockton's boundries even further outward, therefore stretching Stockton's public services even thinner. But hey, the City Council agreed on something, party time.

Then the hippies decided it wasn't good enough. They (somewhat rightfully) claimed that Stockton's plan was too ambitious and the construction of all that housing would be too harmful to the environment. Not to mention it possibly would have pushed Stockton's boundries so far north that they might have run out of farmland to pave over. The city tried to promise it'd think about the environment. Nobody bought it (because let's face it, it was said by a city official.) so State Attorney General Jerry Brown got involved. The city then hemmed and hawed for a little bit, presumably to gage what their chances of winning the lawsuit were. Then finally relented and amended the plan.

But wait! There's more!

Where's my pudding?

Everybody's favorite old, crusty Greek guy took some time from dealing with getting royally fucked on Sunday to say there was a royal fucking going on in Stockton! Who's getting fucked? US!? Oh shit! But I'm Joe Taxpayer, I demand more jobs and I want them now! Give them to me Mayor Chavez!

In actuality A.G. Spanos Cos is just pissed they/we were left out of the discussion about the settlement. (Even though they were the first to ask about the settlement at a meeting a couple of week ago.) Plus if Stockton decides to impose the green standards they're required to consider under the new plan, it would cost them a shitload more cash. So what do you do when someone tells you "No" for a fairly decent reason? File another lawsuit of course.

It also helps to take a full page out in the paper (because god forbid that ad space be filled with actual news). Plus, it helps to give yourself a buzzword-filled name like Alliance for Responsible Planning to show you really care about us. Then make wild claims like the new hippy-friendly plan means less jobs for Stockton, even though nobody really knows exactly how many jobs will result from the General Plan.

We could go on. Jesus Tapdancing Christ we could go on. But you should be up to speed on what's going on. The Recordnet blogs also have really stepped up to the plate in General Plan coverage. David Siders (who was the writer for like every story we just linked to) has some interesting shit about the plan in his blog if you're not too overloaded on political posturing. Fitzy's also been on top of things as of late (and by "as of late" we mean he started yesterday. But we suspect that's more a result of his practice of writing follow up blogs about columns he just fucking wrote), including a post about a chat he had with ex-Mayor Podesto (who we hear knows a thing or two about referendums).

COME TO OUR BOOK THING!

Does the Record have something going on today? I couldn't tell based on the 307 references to it in the Record this week. (OK, Google search only brings up 5, but look how god damn organized the results are.) They even invaded the fucking sports page! Funny, I don't remember the Record mentioning that same Slamson and Kings Cheerleaders when they came to Fats last year. EliteXC wishes they had gotten this kind of steady publicity. I don't exactly remember a full page feature for them. But thanks for the added meaning to the "shit noone will read" tag.

Top 5 things recordnet.com needs to do to actually be eligible for an award

First of all, please join in in welcoming Bris Isaak into the fold finally. We're expecting his second post in approximately 4 months.

When Duké told me Recordnet.com had won an award I thought he misspoke and was actually talking about 209Vibe.com, which is an outstanding site. Then he showed my the half page ad they took out to blow themselves over it and I still can't believe it. Something's fishy. Why? Because as we've stated time and time again, Recordnet.com sucks a bag of dicks. But instead of focusing on the negative like we tend to do, we got the brain trust together and came up with 5 basic things Recordnet needs to do to actually be mentioned anywhere near the word "award". Unless it's an award for frustrating unnavigability. (Yes, this list is still painfully negative, but at least it's constructive criticism this time)

1. Linkback to relevant stories

This has to be one of the most frustrating things they do that's easily fixable. Let's use the recent Stockton Rodeo debacle as an example. Here's the Record's story about the Rodeo being called off/postponed/whatever the fuck they're doing. Now, if you happened to miss the Record's story about the Rodeo coming to Stockton (like Duké did) or perhaps saw the word "Rodeo" and skipped the story completly (like I did), then when you saw the story about it's cancellation your reaction was probably similar to ours. "What fucking rodeo?" The story on the Record's website doesn't linkback to the original story about the Rodeo so you have no idea how some hick duped the city council into giving him $75,000. (Hint: Bring a cowboy hat)

2. Have the search engine organize results in a way that makes sense

So since Recordnet doesn't post a link to the story a followup story is actually following up, your next option is using their search feature. For a story about the Stockton Rodeo it would make sense to just type in the words "Stockton" and "Rodeo". Here's what you get when you do. The first page is all links to the rodeo being called off. Three of those stories have nothing to do about the rodeo. They just happened to contain the link to the story about it's cancellation, so putting quotations around the words "Stockton Rodeo" to narrow the search down to just stories that contain the phrase Stockton Rodeo together won't work.

3. Quit telling us to read about a breaking story in the paper tomorrow

When the rodeo cancellation broke, I found out about it through 209Vibe's Twitter. Ian Hill had an entire story up on the 209Vibe.com. What did the Record have? They told us to come back tomorrow. What's the point of even having a website if you're not going to break already broken news? The reason print journalism is going the way of the dinosaur is for reasons like this. People want their news and they want it fucking now. Telling someone to read about it in the paper on your website is a dickish move to begin with, but at least we understand the reason is that The Record is clearly still dedicated to the pulpy version of news than the current generation of journalism. But if you're going to then post David Siders' story on the website when Ian Hill had already written it a day earlier, that's just spitting in the face of a guy who alrady broke a semi-important story. (We're still debating whether or not anybody should be crestfallen that we'll be denied a rodeo in 08.) And putting that Hill contributed to the story at the end doesn't make up for the fact that Recordnet.com refused to give him his daps.

4. Put your news stories in some discernible order

Let's get away from the rodeo now and focus on something Duké mentioned earlier. (See, a linkback, html isn't that hard. Promise.) He wrote about the story that was on the front page of the Record about the prison guard union trying to recall Gov. Schwarzenegger. Considering our proximity to the state capitol and the amount of time the average Stocktonian spends around prison guards, you'd think this would be a fairly important story. Too bad you'd only read about it if you got the print version of the Record. The story was nowhere in the Recordnet news section. You will however see the stories about the 1-5 crash and Stockton PD blowing up a dufflebag full of clothes (way to earn that raise guys) listed twice! I assumed it was because they only listed stories they wrote and left the AP stuff to the AP. But then I saw not one, not two, but eight AP stories in that same list. The most locally relevant of which was about the morgatge crisis. Go figure. Alright, let's round out this list.

5. User driven content!

This is the most frustrating out of any of the things on this list, it's just not as easily fixable as the first item on the list. It's also one of the simplest ideas of all time. People want to give their opinion on shit to other people. (Hey, I wonder if that'd make for a good website...) The reader feedback used to be a decent feature because it appeared on the same page as the story, made it kind of easy if you needed to reference something in the story. They moved them to the forums probably because most of the time the reader reaction at the bottom of the story was negative towards the Record (Which is actually how I got the idea for this place). Past the forums though, there's no real reader driven content. You can submit photos for them to put up, but you'll only see them if they fit into one of the categories. Look at the rest of the Reader Interaction Homepage. You don't interact worth a shit, it's just their fancy word for "internety" stuff. You can read a bunch of blogs that are updated once every equinox. You can suggest a poll? Buy a photo? Is that really interacting? Buying a photo from the record is interacting like buying a cheeseburger from McDonald's is "interacting" with Ronald McDonald. And it's not like Stocktonians don't want to contribute. 209Vibe thrives off of user contributions and they're run by the Record! (Note: We don't include 209Vibe.com as part of the recordnet.com site's user driven content because for all intents and purposes, it's about as separate from the Record as we are. The only difference is Ian Hill also works for the Record from time to time) In non-San Joaquin Media Group sites, Stockton's creative side still comes bursting out. You ever type Stockton into YouTube? Here, we did it for you. You're saying that can't easily be put into a YouTube channel and put on the Recordnet's website? Hell, I think we might have just done that here with that fucking link.

Now, that isn't all that's wrong with recordnet.com. (#6 would have been "Fire Lori Gilbert", but that's not really the website's domain.) I'm sure if we tried we could find a lot more, but we're starting to feel like we're picking on their webmaster. We don't want to, but we're the audience you're trying to reach, information junkies who get their news mainly on the internet. When print finally dies, all you're going to have is that website. And when it comes to that we want it to be good. Same reason we criticize the paper version of the Record, we just want it to be good.

BWDW Special Edition: Goodbye Jack's Back

We hadn't really planned on doing a BWDW last week. Initially we were planning on doing 2 a month or so. Slick even planned on some gay camping retreat. But we got some horrific news last week that warranted doing this special edition of Bars We're Down With. We're ditching the typical scoring format because this isn't as much an induction as it is a eulogy. Jack's Back has closed down.

Jack's Back was also the first bar I was ever considered a regular at. Whenever I strolled in, Amanda (aka the best bartender ever) would have two Jagerbombs ready within the next minute. I don't even search the jukebox anymore. I just know that 7113 will get me Strokin' by Clarence Carter. 2502 will get me Night Moves by Bob Seger.

I've been trying to find a way to properly eulogize Jack's, and I realized I have more bar stories from Jack's than any other bar. So here's a few classic Jack's experiences over the years. If there's anybody reading this who has some, post them in the comments.

Jack's Back is the only bar that I've been 86'ed from and even that only lasted a grand total of 3 hours.

Owner Jack Morgan is a hilarious SOB and could be seen there most nights telling one of his 800,000 hilarious jokes, none of which I remember because I was usually 14 or 15 4 or 5 drinks in by the time he told me one.

His lady Sally once tried to kick us all out at midnight because she thought it was 2 am. After about 15 mins she realized she was wrong and bought us all a shot. We all needed a smoke break anyways.

The ongoing saga of Lynn's employment there has kept me entertained for the better part of the last 2 and a half years. One week she's there, then bam she's gone for a month. I never asked what happened, I just knew she'd probably be back within a couple weeks.

Jack's is the bar where a Mexican guy who I'd never met before and who didn't speak a lick of English walked up the bartender and pantomimed that he'd like to bum a smoke. When handed a cigarette he scowled and shook his head. He was asking the bartender if he could bum a joint.

I once relayed one too many bar stories to my girlfriend to the point that she thought I was cheating on her with Amanda and she forbade me from going there. So I broke up with her. I later found out she was cheating on me the whole time. Cunt.

To this day Wiley and I still believe some sort of black hole in the women's bathroom at Jack's ate the cueball.

And probably most important of all. Jack's Back is where I first got the nickname of The Duke.

The going away party was awesome. Within 10 minutes of being there some drunk lady was telling me she got a vibe from me that I was going to be a congressman or even President as long as I don't let a woman hold me back. Yes, Jack's was in full form Saturday. Nowhere was that more evident than during the roast session in the back amongst the most hardcore of Jack's regulars. I'm going to miss Karl. Jack himself failed to show up, which was disappointing. Everybody agreed that Amanda needed to be behind the bar but Action Jackson wasn't there to give it the OK. So we reminisced about the glory days of Amanda and Lynn's employment there. My best recollection is that I downed the last pitchers of Hefeweizen and Natty Light left in the taps. After an unusually early last call (about 1:15 bar time), I downed a final Jagerbomb with everybody's favorite bartender and headed out as my songs finally hit the jukebox. It was as fitting a goodbye to a good friend as I could've expected.

We kid because we love

Oh the beautiful Stockton "Your name here, please for the love of God we need the money" Arena

Hey, we're just starting out. So forgive us if this is a little janky for a few weeks. We're on a skeleton crew for a while. (Interested in writing about our beloved local area for no pay? e-mail us ) Plus my the gerbil powering my computer died a couple weeks ago.

I love Stockton. In fact, let me say it again. I love Stockton. I make a big deal out of this not because the city's paying me to (although if they'd like, they can) but because if we stick with the intent of this blog, people are going to be under the impression that we hate this town. We don't, we criticize because we love. We also criticize because we think The Record does a shitty job at it. Granted The Record does a lot of things shittily (like say, the entire sports section), criticizing city leaders is just one of the things they excel at sucking at.

But we'll have plenty of time to bash The Record later. Trust me, until we get an actual core group of writers, this site will mostly be bashing The Record. Plus we'll also be relying on you. That's right, this site's going to depend on you guys, the eventual readers. We need you to go out there and find the ridiculous stuff that you can really only find around here. Whether it be a firsthand account of a shooting at a bank, overhearing a minor league executive disparage Latinos through hilarious stereotypes, or if you just want to tell us about that random sculpture at the McCaffrey Center at UOP that suspiciously resembles a vagina, we want to see it. (all that stuff, not just the vagina statue.) Not just Stockton stuff either. If it happens anywhere in San Joaquin County, we want it. We might even include Modesto, but no Galt.

Again, don't take these jokes at the expense of our city as a sign of hatred. I've been in way too many fights arguments discussions with people who tell me that if I don't like it (it being Stockton), then I can leave it. These people are usually Thunder fans, Lightening fans, or Cougar fans. (Oh wait, I forgot, there aren't any Cougar fans, the city told them and the prime attendance dates to fuck off) I always disagree with them, mostly because the only time I see any fans of our minor league endeavors is at Valley Brew. And I'm a surly, disagreeable bastard when I'm drunk.

I also disagree because I'm right. I'd detail why I'm right, but that's the point of this blog. There's some weird, fucked up shit that goes on around this place. If we leave it up to city leaders to figure it out, they'll just set up a neighborhood renaissance program in the neighborhood where all the white people are to figure out what's wrong.

Now, I'm not saying we'll figure it out ourselves. That's way too douchy of a claim to make. Instead we'll just poke fun at the place we lovingly call home. So fuck you Sacramento, at least we managed to not give two freeways the same freeway number.

There'll be a lot more in the coming weeks. I apologize if this makes no sense. I'm knocking the rust off.