Fremont: A parking lot with a mayor

The Oakland Athletics are giving up on a plan to relocate 20 miles south to Fremont, Calif., because of delays on the project. Who could blame them, really? Fremont lacks the joi d'vivre of Oakland, which is to say it lacks whistle tips.

I'm happy to keep the A's in Oakland, but not as happy as I'm sure these two are. Take a look at how they reacted to word a couple years back that the A's might bolt.

Not necessarily the news

"911 is for if you’re dying," the dispatcher said. Jean Fortune got upset when a Boynton Beach, Fla., Burger King didn't have lemonade, so he called 911. Naturally. Imagine if they'd run out of pickles! Click this link to listen to the 911 call. You'll be shocked at how patient the dispatcher is. "Sir, c'mon, c'mon. I know you don't seriously think the police need to make Burger King give you food faster." He's so nice that Mr. Fortune even calls her "sweetie."

Funny, I always figured she'd end up with Paul. The actress who played Winnie Cooper on the TV hit The Wonder Years, Danica McKellar, is getting married to her longtime boyfriend Mike Verta. Several "news" sources describe him as a "film and TV composer/visual effects artist." I put news in quotes because I'm not really sure how to classify OK Magazine.

Ugh

Here's a screenshot of ESPN's baseball homepage, from yesterday morning. You can click on it to make it larger.


You have to get down to the sixth story in the news feed (which I put a red box around) to find something non-steroid related. (And the story you do find is about how a guy I took for my fantasy team is hurt.)

Is anybody else ready for them to start playing the games so there's something else to talk about?

Socks the Cat, RIP

I wrote a few months back that my favorite former first feline Sock the cat was near death, and it's with a heavy heart I tell you he passed away last week at age 20 (or maybe 19).

Socks won America's heart when freedom-hating liberal media types coaxed him out of the White House in order to take his picture, angering the President and first family.



According to this creepily detailed obituary, Socks fame spanned the globe after he was featured on a set of collectors’ stamps in the Central African Republic.

Buddy the Dog displaced Socks as the favorite pet in the White House, and upon the end of the Clinton Administration Socks went to live with former Clinton secretary Betty Currie in Maryland.

It's reported Currie will have him cremated. It's unclear if he has any survivors.

Jobs I Wouldn't Mind, Vol. VII

I'm back with another installment of my occasional series "Jobs I Wouldn't Mind," in which the blog chronicles endeavors that would interest me if the liberal media ever kicks me out of the club.

I wouldn't mind being a NASCAR pace car driver.

This probably isn't a full-time gig, but I think I'd enjoy it anway. You get to drive on the nation's best race tracks. You're always in first place. And there's very little risk of a wreck.

I've also been known to pace, for whatever that's worth.

Stop this joke

You know what really grinds my gears?


For as long as there have been joke tellers, they have been making jokes where people relay news from medical tests and there's confusion about whether a negative test is good news or bad.

You know how this joke goes. "I can't bear to hear the news. You talk with the doctor. It's positive? Oh no! Oh, you mean it's positive like it's good news? Oh thank goodness. What a hilarious mix-up."

Even 30 Rock has stooped to making this joke. It's so tired, so old. God does this joke grind my gears.

"This is an experiment.... We're not in it to make money."

Way back in 1981, a group of newspapers started fooling around with making their content available to home computer users. Those intertubes might as well have been a trojan horse.

Blog Fail

I'm an occasional reader of the very entertaining Fail Blog, and I'm now ready to contribute to the fail lexicon.

I snapped this picture of a parking meter the other day. Hopefully you can make out the display.

Classic Boston

The artist behind the Barack Obama "Hope" poster, Shepard Fairey, (he's the same guy who did the Andre the Giant "Obey" stickers) has his first-ever solo exhibit, and it's at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.

Naturally, Boston Police arrested him on outstanding graffiti charges. Here's a photo.

New York Post 1, A-Rod 0

The New York Post gives A-Rod the business today over steroid allegations. Look on the bright side, Alex: This makes your A-Fraud nickname seem much nicer by comparison.

A prescient warning?

Pranksters in Austin, Texas, reprogrammed this highway sign to warn of a very serious danger. (Thanks to longtime reader Biff Tannen for sending it along.)


If I saw this sign, I might just pee my pants. Zombies are very serious business, and they're not to be trifled with.

I've spent hours and hours scheming how to survive a zombie attack. These tips aside, if I saw that sign above, I'd reverse direction and just keep driving.

That's an odd way to apply the "franchise tag"

At a Super Bowl party, backup Patriots quarterback Matt Cassel angered someone in the bathroom line, and the man extracted his revenge later. At the urinal. When he peed on Cassel's leg. Cassel's a gamer, so he stayed at the party.

Gossip mongers don't know the phantom peer's identity, but I have a pretty good idea.

Too little, too late

Sorry that I've been out of commission a few days, so you've had to wait for my sort-of annual Super Bowl advertising write-up. This year was pretty uninspired, minus the couple of ads for job search web sites.

Three things stood out for me.

• I saw a pair of ads for Nerf swords. That led to a pretty obvious query: Nerf is still around? I can't remember the last time I saw a Nerf product. They should take that ad budget and rededicate it to product development. That plan would also give them a chance to quote from one of my favorite movies: "I had the boys down at R & D throw together this prototype so that our discussion here could have some focus."


• Danica Patrick is still shilling for the web registry firm Go Daddy. These ads have blown for a couple years now. It's over between Danica and me, and she'll soon get a full separate post dedicated to how annoying she's become.


• And speaking of stuff that greatly disappointed me, how about MacGruber. It went from being a clever SNL sketch that poked fun at MacGyver to a vehicle for selling Pepsi. It makes it even worse that the real MacGyver got involved. Shame on you, Richard Dean Anderson.