Alan Scherstuhl

Debate: Even This Heart-Shaped Crotch Shot Couldn't Help Romney

President Obama and Mitt Romney squared off last night for the second presidential debate, fighting over all the things Americans argue about while boozing at the bar -- immigration, women's rights, and money. And while Romney was getting his ass handed to him over technicalities like how many days ... More >>

Tell Us Your Hangover Cure and Become Famous!

...famous on this blog, at least. Things got a little wild last night at the Savoy Tivoli during the sendoff party for SF Weekly's former managing editor Alan Scherstuhl (he's moving to NYC to become film editor for all Village Voice publications -- go Alan!). I'm paying for my sins today (includin ... More >>

Patrick Lee Wants To Fry You Anything At Batter Up

A graffiti-laden sliding window masked by a cold, windy MUNI stop in the Excelsior district seems an odd spot for the city's lone dive specializing in Texas State Fair "cuisine." Odder still, its owner, Patrick Lee, is a San Francisco bred dot-com escapee whose only prior restaurant experience consi ... More >>

The 50 Best Rolling Stone Special Issues Ever

A magazine that you sometimes see in the waiting rooms of tire stores, Rolling Stone remains tirelessly dedicated to reporting on its own place in the history of the teensy sliver of music that its publisher enjoys. To that end, the august rag is forever publishing important lists ranking the best m ... More >>

Fox Nation: Your Site for Boobs, Outrage, and Racist Remarks About Alicia Keys' Hips

Fox Nation is a website where angry American men yell about liberals, stare at tiny photos of famous women's "bikini bods," and type terrible things about black people. It's like Huffington Post meets Maxim meets the John Birch Society, all soaked in Mountain Dew.The main page has a couple ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

McDonald's (Purportedly) Healthy, Sustainable Berkeley Location: Yes, We Went to It

First off, I apologize in advance for the following comparison to anyone struggling with serious addiction. But my two visits to

The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 5-1

See also: * The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 15-11 * The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 10-6 Here we are, at the end of the blizzard: the final installment of our list of the most coked-out records ever made. Less an endorsement than an assessme ... More >>

The Top 15 Most Cocaine-Influenced Albums of All Time, Nos. 15-11

"Cocaine," as Rick James famously said, "is a helluva drug." Yup: The white powder's effects have left an influence that's both sublime and downright hideous on decades of pop music. So what happens when you give already-famous musicians a quick burst of energy, ego, paranoia, and euphoria? Most of ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Live Review, 4/17/12: Pulp Makes the Class War Sexy at the Warfield

Pulp Tuesday, April 17, 2012 The Warfield, San Francisco So, last night, on the 29th anniversary of the release of their first record, svelte glammy/chatty Britpop heroes Pulp stormed the Warfield, where they played the shit out of their best singles and album tracks, stuck around for two encores a ... More >>

So Madonna Is a Satanist, According to This Detailed and Hilarious Christian Post Article

You know everything that's ever been memorable about Madonna? The dunce-cap bustiers, the dry-humping of various taboos, the deeply remunerative pop-sexual controversies? Oh, and all those great songs?Turns out, those aren't just the signal achievements of a woman who has for decades ... More >>

Harold Camping Apologizes for There Still Being a World

​A letter of apology from apocalypse-predicting nonagenarian radio preacher Harold Camping was released yesterday on his Family Radio web-site. "Yes, we humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing," Campbell writes, and he even goes so far as to call his prediction "incorrect and sinful ... More >>

Sandra Fluke's Most Crude and Cowardly Online Attackers: A Literary Analysis

​Because she had the temerity to be a woman in America with an opinion about something, Sandra Fluke has spent the last week being both attacked and honored by people who have not read or watched the testimony she gave before congress but still somehow know everything about her. Rush Limbaugh, tha ... More >>

Netflix Says That Actually it Doesn't Advertise with Rush Limbaugh at All

​For the last year or so, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has been behaving like the hero of Brewster's Millions or some other sad 80s comedy (probably available for streaming!) where the hero has to piss away a fortune or a corporation or something while pretending to be a reasonable person. (This was ... More >>

"Commie Girl" Rebecca Schoenkopf Promises a "Jollier" Wonkette

​Here's another reason Rick Santorum is wrong about college: When you go to school, you meet other people who have gone to school, and then later you can call them and interview them for blogs or whatever's left when they're suddenly in the news for doing something awesome. That's what happened to ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Rick Santorum, 1967 Otis Redding Knows More About Education Than You Do

​Sunday ad-circular vest model Rick Santorum is going around the country arguing that pretty much every new feature that America has developed since 1950 is in fact a bug that Quality Assurance should have stomped out. This weekend, though, he reached back even further in time to find better days: ... More >>

Rick Santorum, 1975 Loretta Lynn Has Something to Say to You

This morning, a Wyoming gasbag who backs Rick Santorum puked up some ridiculous words on TV news for all us Internet people to laugh at. (This is what TV news is for.) Big-money Santorum super PAC donor Foster Friess told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell: Back in my days, [women] used Bayer aspirin for con ... More >>

Mitt Romney Will Win Republicans Over By Teaming Up With Nancy Pelosi

Mitt Romney is all set to be the Republican nominee for president, except for one stubborn hitch: Republican primary voters -- like most people -- don't like him, perhaps because he's actually an actor playing a presidential candidate on a soap opera in 1986. Instead, lately, lots of Republicans se ... More >>

The Dumbest Thing A Professional Critic Wrote in 2011

Like all noble arts, reviewing is at its heart a craft, one in which a uniquely personal impulse is worked over and given shape within the boundaries of formal constraints. Those constraints vary by the critic, of course, but the chief responsibility is a clear constant: to justify his or her subjec ... More >>

Kids' Letters to Santa Demonstrate Everything Wrong with America Today

Explore The BruceLike prayer, but secular​This Sunday The Oakland Tribune ran a selection of kids' letters to Santa. Some clever editor or layout person made a point about things by placing the following two letters right on top of each other: Dear Santa, I'm so happy I am saying a hello to you. I ... More >>

Un-Scripted Theater's Improvised Dickens Musical Is Hard Times Indeed

Here's a testament to the make-it-up-as-it-goes ethos of improv. If a show isn't going anywhere, really, the cast might have it in themselves to fix it as they go. Such a phenomenon occurred last weekend at a performance of Un-Scripted Theater's A Tale of Two Genres, and ambitious -- perhaps too m ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Live Review: They Might Be Giants Improve Flood By Playing It Backwards

Matt SmithThey Might Be Giants at the Fillmore​They Might Be GiantsJonathan CoultonNov. 13, 2011The Fillmore"We know you had your choice of ossified alternative rock bands, so thank you for flying with us!" hollered John Flansburgh, the gregarious, guitar-playing half of Brooklyn's They Might ... More >>

Il Cane Rosso's Rich, Surprising Pancetta

Alan Scherstuhl​ The current iteration of San Francisco-style pancetta seems at times a cheap ploy by the fancier restaurants in town at making good old American bacon an elegant side dish for the peaking trend of dignified brunches. It's too often straight slabs of seasoned pork that bear a s ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

"Cookie Monster" Offers Best Explanation Yet for Occupy Wall Street

"C is for Corporate Malfeasance"​A guy calling himself Cookie Monster has written what looks to us like the most clear and persuasive explanation for the Occupy movement we've seen anywhere, a copy-and-pastable screed that everyone should send to their crazy aunts and skeptical grandfolks. Admi ... More >>

Eric Church's Front Porch Breakbeats: Nashville at Last Fully Integrates Hip Hop

"Dig my beats, but pull your pants up."​Eric Church is the first country star to fully incorporate hip hop into country hits. He's not the first to incorporate it, of course. "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy," and "Stuck Like Glue" -- that glitterbomb Sugarland single wit ... More >>

Occupy SF ... San Francisco-Style

In New York City, they Occupy Wall Street movement has drawn thousands of people to the lower Manhattan area to protest "corporate greed." On one occasion, more than 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, sparking what some are calling a new era of dissenters. Meanwhile, in San Francis ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

The Golden Gate Meat Company's Breakfast Sandwich Can Get You Through a Morning

Om nom nom​ Look, I understand that the very existence of breakfast sandwiches is evidence that something is deeply wrong with our society: They're scarfables not meant to be tasted, cheesebombs we galumph down as we dash through a world that affords us not just no time to cook but not even ti ... More >>

Robyn Hitchcock Looks Back on Looking Back on San Francisco

Nathan Gallagher​ This Saturday, Robyn Hitchcock plays a solo acoustic set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. (Look for him at 12:25 p.m. on the Rooster Stage.) Since 1976, Hitchcock has been writing and performing top-flight psychedelic pop, first with the Soft Boys and then as a solo artist of ... More >>

What's Your Death Row Last Meal?

James Reynolds/Last SuppersRecreations of condemned inmates' actual last meal requests​I got to thinking about death-row last meal requests last week, which naturally made me think of mine. I don't want to speculate about why I'd be executed. Naturally, I would be being framed. I also asked ... More >>

Rascal Flatts Is the Worst Hugely Popular Music Act in America

Executive Visions, Inc.Rascal Flatts or a heartland radio station's morning zoo?​Rascal Flatts will be performing tonight at the Shoreline Ampitheatre in San Jose. We won't be there. Rascal Flatts is produced by the guy who played guitar on "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul. That's not reason en ... More >>

Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney: Bullshit & Transcendence in This Week's Top Country Singles

Thing Toby Keith has never said: "Nah, man, that might be a little much."​On occasion, All Shook Down gives a listen to the music that is to real America what brine is to a cucumber. This is one of those occasions. Toby Keith, "Made in America" Chart Position: No. 5 Verdict: Fantastic, but ... More >>

Billy Ray Cyrus' 9/11 Album: The Tragedy America Forgot

​Unlike his rash colleagues Alan Jackson and Toby Keith, Billy Ray Cyrus passed a full decade in contemplation before sharing with the world art wrung from his feelings about life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001. Unleashed this June, the resulting disc, I'm American, should clear ... More >>

Merle Haggard vs. San Francisco: Five Songs in Which Country's Best Works Through His Issues With the Bay

The Hag will make you eat that gee-tar, hippies​Merle Haggard may contain multitudes, but he tends to feel just one of those multitudinous things at a time - and to feel it so hard and pure that he seems to have forgotten all the previous things he's felt that might not square with it. Perha ... More >>

Nine They Might Be Giants Songs That Should Be Heard by People Who Think They Don't Like They Might Be Giants

​With the release last week of Join Us, their first album for grown-ups in four years, They Might Be Giants has managed something that few pop musicians ever pull off: still creating music of the type and caliber of what made them famous full decades after their start. The record has been hera ... More >>

Exclusive: Rebecca Black's Secret Debut CD Tracklist!

This is her moment, we just live in it.​In her brand-new single "This is My Moment," YouTube superstar Rebecca Black continues her great artistic project: applying the stream-of-consciousness narrative mode to pop-songs built for kickin' it in the bouncy castle. 

The Absolute, No-Debate Worst Song Any Beatle Ever Recorded

Young McCartney always dreamed of the day he would become a real boy. ​Last week, our colleagues in Broward County and Los Angeles shared their lists of the five worst-ever Beatles songs. While amusing, both omitted what objective science tells us are, in fact, the honest-to-God stinkiest fab flop ... More >>

Wynton Marsalis at SF Jazz Reminds Us Why We Need Wynton Marsalis

​Jazz at Lincoln Center OrchestraDavies Symphony HallSunday, June 19, 2011Look, Wynton. You've taken a lot of shit over the years for rankling the people who -- like you -- worry over ideas of authenticity in music almost as much as they worry over music itself. They carp at your insistence that E ... More >>

Prince at HP Pavilion in San Jose: Still Something We Will Never Understand

Prince didn't let us bring in a decent camera.​ Even 27 years on from his magic 1984, there's still something grand and peculiar about Prince inspiring an arena to shout, "I'm not your woman/ I'm not your man/ I am something you will never understand." At Saturday's hit-packed, blissed-out, ... More >>

Common: Five More Reasons for Talk Radio Conservatives to Hate Him

This man is dangerous!​Turns out, we were wrong. For all these years, we considered Chicago rapper/romantic comedy star Common just a hair more hardcore than Jamiroquai. We thought of him as a somewhat conscious MC boasting a warm baritone, some strong tracks, and the allegiance of white guys who ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Country Star Eric Church Hates Your Hip-Hop Hat and Sagging Jeans

On occasion, All Shook Down gives a listen to the music that is to real America what brine is to a cucumber. This is one of those occasions. Eric Church, "Homeboy" There's a fine bit of bullshit in Jay-Z's Decoded, that tony slab of image-sprucing book art in which the man who once bragg ... More >>

'Rapture Party' Planned for May 21

Time to party with the Whore of Bablyon​On May 21, fans of American hip hop music will have a chance to celebrate the birthday of the late Christopher George Latore Wallace, popularly known as Biggie Smalls. But those who don't like rap need not feel left out, because we all have a reason almost a ... More >>

Gay Pride Movement Is Cited as "Proof" That the World Will End on May 21

It's hard not to pass judgement on this​Some SF Weekly readers had a hearty chuckle when we showed them a pie chart illustrating exactly what would happen if gays were allowed to tie the knot: No, the terrorists would not win and schools would not start teaching gay sex. But apparently, Family Rad ... More >>

The Band Perry and Ashton Shepherd: In Today's Country, Women Roar While the Menfolk Whimper

The Band Perry, apparently on the set of the "Losing My Religion" video.​ You don't have to see the numbers to get that country radio skews female these days. The hatted hunks who a generation back might have had ramblin' fever now sing of sunny-forever fidelity that would be right at home o ... More >>

Reba McEntire & Ronnie Dunn: Today's Country Is Yesterday's Coldplay

On occasion, All Shook Down gives a listen to the music that is to real America what brine is to a cucumber. This is one of those occasions. Reba McEntire, "If I Were a Boy" Since Americans only got around to segregating their mongrel pop music into discrete categories like "Race" and "H ... More >>