the hills of beverly

So, the Bou' wants to know which is more lame:

1) Naming a bank "First Bank of Beverly Hills" even though your bank is not located in Beverly Hills

or

2) Naming a bank "First Bank of Beverly Hills" and not having your crap together enough to avoid being shut down by the government?

Thanks for getting our hopes up that a bunch of smug assholes would be losing their money only to realize it's not the same assholes we thought it would be.

Also thanks to the LATimes for the lamest URI i the history of URIs:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/04/federal-regulators-shut-down-the-first-bank-of-beverly-hills-late-today-and-said-they-would-send-checks-to-insured-deposito.html

smugness as hell starts freezing

what happens when you want to rub california's awesome weather into everyone's face?

you include a news article that snow actually fell in a little corner of the city and then, to really rub it in, you include a link to the wikipedia page on snow in case no one is SF doesn't know what it is.

yeesh

Yesterday a group of us piled into an english performance sport utility vehicle, drove to the extreme trailhead with the best parking and went for a scramble. Afterwards we barbequed organic pizzas from local produce on a large deck and debated which wine to pair with the local catch fish while talking about custom bicycles and best bicycle commuting routes.

Throw in a little conversation about interesting intellectual property cases and the problems with finding good partners for private planes and you've pretty much got what I'd call a quintessential Californian weekend.

wait for it....wait for it

there it is!

in the last paragraph.

"I used to leave notes on Hummers, how inconsiderate it was for the rest of us"

Ahhh San Francisco.

To be fair - I actually saw a Hummer yesterday in Marin county. really - I swear.

proudly expressing shame publicly

San Francisco citizens will be voting this fall on if they should name a wastewater treatment plant after a sitting president. Apparently not everyone is amused.

flash from the past - tinky winky supported by berkeley

I could probably dedicate 3/4 of this entire blog to berkeley. I probably have without thinking about it.

But the bou' is bustin' out the way back machine to take you way back to a high (err, low) point in the nuclear free city's fine history:

City council passing a resolution honoring the Teletubbie Tinky Winky.

"Long live Tinky Winky and long live freedom from self-righteousness!"

our first corporate sponsor!

None other than the New York Times!!!

I feel so specially that this bastion of not California has pointed out the obvious to the entire world:

"The ‘L.A. Look’ needs to go away forever, please. If they banned fedoras, tacky sunglasses, blazers over T-shirts, leggings and Kitson, Los Angeles would become a nudist colony."

for good measure I am going to add my favorite quote from the sponsorship press release:

"If you took a snapshot of Kate Moss and Pete Doherty from two years ago, photocopied it 27 times, covered it in Velveeta, ran it through a Hot Topic sample sale and then sold it as a cheap knock-off on Canal Street, it would look like this picture."

today is a good day

not only did I not have to you my AK (nods to mr. cube) but the most perfect example of california fell into my laptop this morning.

puke your hearts out.


let's see:

met in india? check.

built a mahayana for the rapture? check.

name drop where they buy their made by 5 year olds in indonesia parasol? check.

live in a neighborhood that has heights in it that's not actually full of poor people? check.

children with names you've never heard before that probably mean things like "wellness" in some other language? check.

say it's not hard to grow chard in the yard? check.

SMOOTHIES? duh.

am I missing anything? oh yeah:

are featured in photo exposés in the LA Times? CHECK!

the economic stimulus party

what happens when you cram too many rich white bastards into one formerly poor mexican neighborhood?

the smugness just oozes out all over the place, that's what happens.

I got an email the other day that said this:

"THE ECONOMIC STIMULUS CHECKS HAVE ARRIVED!!!

Hello my friends-

I while back I sent many of you a lengthy email detailing my plan to throw an economic stimulus party. Im sure many of you have been waiting with bated breath to hear details about when and where you will be able to participate in this fabled event.

A number of factors have been distracting me and as a result I have sent you all no updates. Luckily, two local geniuses have been working in parallel to develop their own flavor of the Econ Stim party (economicstimulusparty.org) and they are throwing a kick ass shin dig on June 7 at the Northstar bar in Northbeach (check the website for details). All proceeds are going to a great charity and its an open bar. No losers there.

I have also not been totally neglecting my end of the econ stim party. In partnership with the residents of [insert hipster address here], I will be hosting a lamb roast, local foods and beer extravaganza this coming sunday. THATS RIGHT, A LAMB ROAST. We will be cooking an entire lamb provencal style and serving wonderful side dishes that even our vegetarian and vegan friends will find sumptuous. The key details are as follows: this coming sunday (May 25) we will be hosting an all day grill out at [more hipster address goes here] Mission, San Francisco, Ca.
You are all encouraged to bring something to share with family, friends and neighbors.

PLEASE CONSIDER BUYING LOCAL, SUSTAINABLY GROWN WHEN THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU BRING."

Now, I know what you're thinking: why don't I give you the address so you can go and beat their asses. Well, the Bou' doesn't want blood on his hands, that's why he left the UN and joined up with the kickoutcalifornia.com efforts, duh.

So, what are your options? Did you have to ask?

fresh goddamned fruit is our birthright

having a new yorker tell you that you have better produce than they do is like having the person that washes your bently tell you that you have have a nice car. first of all: like, duh. second of all: if it was worth the extra effort I would totally tell your boss that you should be fired for talking to the customers.

still, i point to this article.

not to boast though. I point to it because there's a goddamned statue of ghandi in front of the fairy building.

HOV lanes

ever been in a car with less than three people in it and found that you can't use the fast lane?

blame california!

oh, and start carpooling, jerk.

Larry Ellison

It's not the $300,000,000.00 home. It's not the tax deduction he got because his $300,000,000.00 home is "outdated" and therefore not worth as much as it appears because he'll have to spend EVEN MORE MONEY modernizing it to keep up with, ummm who exactly? It's not his boats, errr... ships. It's not that he looks pretty much exactly like an evil superhero.



It's not his smug prognostications or his willingness to buy all his competitors and fund new ones to undercut the ones that aren't for sale. It's not the god awful ugly campus he put right on the water. It's not that he loved the combination of wealth power and danger associated with regattas until he realized they were expensive and dangerous and promptly bailed. It's not that he owns multiple versions of the same car, or that he owns multiple cars that cost more than $250,000.00. It's not that he owns military jets for personal use. It's not that he repeatedly violated nighttime flight restrictions at his local airport with his personal jets. It's not even that he got a federal judge to order the city which controls that airport to grant him a personal waiver from their nighttime flying restrictions because he wasn't ever going to stop no matter what the losers in charge of that puny little city of did. It's not that he bought 12 houses in Malibu so he could build a home down there too. It's not that he married an Oberlin graduate. It's not even that he was allowed to donate $100,000,000.00 to himself as punishment for illegally dumping $1,000,000,000.00 of Oracle stock rather than pleading guilty to in an insider trading deal. It's not any one of those things.

It's all of those things together.

Now, clearly there is a risk for Californians that if we were to get kicked out of the United States that Mr. Ellison would become king. This is a risk we will have to take. This is a risk the rest of the world should be foisting upon us. Do your part: donate - especially you Larry - this is your big chance.

apple computers

you knew this was coming didn't you?

I get these emails all the time - Bou', you haven't really mentioned Steve Jobs yet, why not?

Well, I probably will some day soon (and I will not forget all the other California CEO luminaries either), but I doubt I can do a better job than Steve Jobs himself.

What I will do here is spend just a few moments on the company formerly known as NeXT.

I focus on apple because it is essentially the quintessential California company: smug, fashionable, smug, expensive, self aggrandizing, and smug. I might suggest that there are other companies in the running on the ecosmug tip, but I'm talking about NeXT now.

Secrets? check

Special KoolAide? check

Genuinely innovative products? check

Smug dial that goes up to 11? check; and I'll point out that the macbookpro goes up to 12 in the function keys.

CEO that wears the same clothes every day? check

Stole all their ideas that then got stolen from them? check

Am I missing anything? oh yeah, a DIVIDEND!!!

carrotmobs

so, here's the basic idea: you're rich, 'kay? and you, like, want people to respect what're, like, your opinions right? so what do you do? well, how about you promise to spend your money at their store if they do what you want? you get to feel good about yourself; you're saving the environment while getting stuff you want. But better than that - you get to tell some lowly small business owner that they ought to be doing what you want them to do with all that money you're giving them.

All of the benefits of slavery with none of the guilt - a real win/win scenario. You win because you get to spend your money on crap you want and you win because you get to force people to agree with you because you're rich!

AWESOME!!!

Now if only one of the fourteen Medical Cannabis Dispensaries in your hood will sign up you can really stick it to the man.

frank zappa

I figure if I'm going to start listing individual Californians I better start with the very best example of the benefits of kicking California out of the union.

Frank Zappa.

You remember, the whole PMRC fight with Tipper Gore (funny how they never mentioned that during the presidential races), but lets not forgot all the other great Zappa-isms:

1) Wearing blackface on an album with an integrated band

2) Making fun of other people's religions

3) Songs like "why does it hurt when I pee?"

4) LONG HAIR

and that's all just on ONE ALBUM!!!

This guy pretty much epitomizes everything wrong with Californian's smug irony and cynicism AND he bred kids that were not only named Dweezil and Moon Unit, but who are actually Dweezil Zappa and Moon Unit Zappa.

Here's some proof:

yoga mats

Look, roll on the ground all you want; I know plenty of three year olds and they seem to enjoy it just fine.

I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with it even, but none of the three year olds I know carry around a little rolled up mat just for rolling around on.

We all know the real reason is because you are trying to identify members of your open secret club - HEY! I DO YOGA TOO!!! LOOK AT ME!!! WE'RE SO CALM AND COOL!!! except, actually, you're like three year olds than need special diapers to play on ground.




Also: Whose dumbass idea was it to make them "calming" colors like play-doh purple and orange mold green? BOGUS.

not just vanity plates, eco vanity plates

ugh.

I have previously mentioned vanity plates on prii, but here's proof.

smug irony

Probably the easiest thing to point to that is wrong with California is the overwhelming sense of smugness that is accompanied by irony. I think a lot of those jerks would call it "wry wit".

Lets face it, do you really have to guess which state the Prius with the vanity plate that says "u (heart) my mpg" is from?