The Zong

Uh oh.

In a significant hurdle to bringing the NFL to the South Bay, the Ohio-based company that controls the San Francisco 49ers’ proposed stadium site in Santa Clara said Friday that it opposes the project - at least for now.

Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. has been in talks with the 49ers since before the team announced plans in November to build a 68,500-seat stadium adjacent to the amusement park. But based on the “limited information” the 49ers have provided, CEO Dick Kinzel recently concluded the stadium could damage Great America because of the loss of parking, traffic issues, and during construction, the impact of noise, dust and inconvenience for Great America patrons, a spokeswoman said.

I guess that could be a problem. This all came a few days back, right before NFL officials came to tour both sites, making it obvious through public statements that they’d like to keep out of the smelly streams of piss coming from the collective urethrae of the York and Newsom camps.

On the San Francisco site:

Neil Glat, a senior vice president with the NFL, called the view “pretty terrific.”

Hunters Point is “right there on the water and could be a special place, but the devil’s always in the details and those infrastructure issues can be thorny issues,” and environmental “remediation issues can be time-consuming and costly,” he said.

On the Santa Clara site:

 After Tuesday’s tour, Glat called the Santa Clara site “beautiful” and “very doable for an NFL facility” but said he didn’t want to compare it to Hunters Point.“Every site is different and every site has different potential and different opportunities,” he said.

Inexplicably, Jed York’s heart is still in Santa Clara. I’m not sure what the young prince has been reading, but it certainly isn’t the same shit I’ve been talking about.

“We’re still focused 100 percent on Santa Clara, and I think we’re getting pretty close to something in Santa Clara,” Jed York said in an interview with the Mercury News. “I think we are getting close to the point where we see there’s a big light at the end of the tunnel.”

Getting close to the point where we see there’s a big light at the end of the tunnel, huh? When will we be getting close to approaching a strategy to begin to stop starting conversations and where we might be getting close to planning a solution for beginning to draw up some preliminary blueprints so that we can get close to the point where the team is playing in a new fucking stadium?

I guess I can see why Hillary Clinton is the front runner for the Democratic Party. Her new campaign song is by a fucking French Canadian!

Celine Dion has the distinction of being the only singer whose music acts as an instant laxative for me. I guess I’d better get on the shitter when the convention comes around.

Yesterday, at a benefit event for a charity called Cars For Kids in Tennessee, 6 people were killed while watching a drag car doing an “exhibition burnout.” The video shows the car burning out down a lane bordered on both sides by thousands of spectators.

Liberal that I am, I’ve been to exactly one drag race in my life, but the people who organized that shit probably knew how dangerous a car moving at that speed can be to a huge crowd of people, because they had huge barricades on each side, and the crowd was not allowed to get closer than 30 or 40 feet from the track, if I recall correctly. I should note that many people have still been killed at drag races even with these precautions.

So I guess maybe I’m an asshole for saying this, but it pisses me off when something like this gets news coverage and everyone calls it a “tragedy” or and “unfortunate accident.”

Events like car shows and stunt shows draw large audiences, and the Tennessee tragedy raises questions about how safe it is to stand in the crowds.

“It did careen into the fans, which was extremely unfortunate,” said Robin Ammon, author of “Sport Facility Management” and an expert in crowd management.

It “raises questions,” now, does it? What kinds of questions were raised by the dumb fucks who organized the event when they were told that a giant drag-racing exhibition was going to be held in between two huge crowds of people? What country is this?

I think it’s time that we start to ration the word “tragedy” in our national consciousness. While it is really terrible that people were killed at this event, and they will be mourned, calling this a “tragedy” really kind of distracts people from how stupid the people involved actually were, and gives much more credibility than is deserved to those who organized it.

Like using the word “hero” to describe just about everyone, the usage of “tragedy” to describe every time someone dies for no reason dilutes the word beyond meaning, and discourages people from talking about what actually happened. In this case, what actually happened is that a bunch of people died because nobody who organized this charity event (ironically, to raise funds for disabled kids) thought it was a bad idea to run a bunch of fucking DRAG RACERS through a crowd of people. If there’s a tragedy here, it’s that there was no law preventing this from happening, and that the response will be simply to hang our heads and say that this was “unfortunate.” On the contrary, from where I’m watching, these deaths were pretty much inevitable.

Is it possible, nay probable, that the San Francisco Giants are the worst franchise in Major League Baseball? I was definitely getting my hopes up that they weren’t so bad after a brief stretch of great pitching and timely hitting, and then the Giants did what they always do to my hopes when they’re up: They bring them right the fuck back down again.

It’s not time to chastise ownership and the front office for their ridiculous method of fielding a team each year; it was time to do that four years ago. How many times do I have to listen to fans calling into talk radio after the Giants get beat despite great pitching performances, saying the team has been too old for years now, that the farm system is thin on position players, and that nothing is going to change until Bonds is gone? I’ve been hearing it for as long as I can remember, and now that the Giants are in DEAD LAST in the National League West, maybe it’s time to realize that if all the writers, fans and bloggers knew about it before the season began, then how the fuck did it get past the owner and general manager?

The answer isn’t so simple. It would be easy to say they don’t know anything about baseball, if only that were true. It would be even easier to say they have a strategy that didn’t work, which is only half true. They have a strategy, and it has worked exactly the way they wanted it to.

Until now, I would have been willing to hear that the dipshits who run this team really want to win, that they’re willing to put time and money and personnel into achieving that goal, that they’ve just been hamstrung by injuries or larger market teams. I wouldn’t have agreed outritght, but I would listen to someone telling me that without resorting to violence. Now, the gloves come right the fuck off. I mean, I’m a terrible fighter, but if someone tries to tell me that the Giants’ strategy has had anything to do with winning for the last 5 seasons, I’ll punch them in the fucking face, I swear.

But their strategy has worked! The reality is that anyone who thought re-signing Bonds was anything but a ploy to sell tickets to corporate idiots who don’t know anything about baseball was just another reason the plan worked.

Wanna know why people in San Francisco still cheer for Barry? It’s because everyone who actually cares about baseball in this city has stopped going to games on a regular basis. Your everyday season-ticket holder isn’t a person but a corporation, and the people in the seats are there to eat, be seen with their fellow suck-ups, and to get home in time to watch American Idol. This is what Seat Licenses do to a team, but that’s a different post.

Still, the Giants are selling a lot of tickets, so the strategy is working. The last game I went to was a sellout with a third of the seats empty. The money continues to come in, the ballpark is a beautiful place to see a game, and so it doesn’t really matter what the end result is. The thing is, even people who don’t know anything about baseball can enjoy it, if their team wins. The Giants are not going to be doing any of that for awhile, and maybe Peter Magowan and all the people he’s about to fire will realize how fucking stupid their strategy really is in the long term when even the businesses stop buying tickets to see a worthless team get shut out twice a week.

I’m not hearing a lot of people say it, so I’m gonna go ahead and just say it:

I fucking love cloning.

There. It had to be said. This week, our congressional representatives tried to pass a ban on human cloning for reproductive purposes. For reals. It’s all right there in black and white:

House Rejects Bill to Ban Human Cloning

When I read this headline at first, I didn’t think much about it. Then I thought, holy shit! The future is now! Wrap your mind around it if you can; cloning is so real, Congress is passing laws against it!

Of course, this isn’t the first time they’ve done that. I remember everyone freaking the fuck out when those crazy Scots cloned Dolly the sheep, which was supposed to be like the 3rd seal being opened on the way to the effing apocalypse. It wasn’t long before the dread specter of cloning hung over all of our heads, as if one day we’d all be cloned if we left a few stray cells laying around, only to come home to find our wives cheating on us with ourselves, or have our names ruined by rogue clones pouring sugar in people’s gas tanks and nailing kittens to trees and shit.

Try as they might, our congress hasn’t been able to truly ban cloning, and this latest bill was no exception. The Republicans, who by all accounts think cloning is NOT COOL, actually blocked the passing of the ban because it was “phony” and only banned reproductive cloning, not the cloning used to produce embryonic stem cells, and lord knows we’d rather have a shitload of clones running around than even THINK of allowing scientists to cure a bunch of diseases that are killing people.

What does it all mean? Much to my vociferous euphoria, it means that embryonic cloning is legal! Right now! I’d be really excited to go out and try and clone myself, if only so I could tell my clone not to make the mistakes I made as he gets older, but as it turns out, it’s not exactly an outpatient procedure just yet.

“Because the federal government has prohibited academic institutions from working on embryos, we really know almost nothing about human embryos in the beginning stages,” says Susan Fisher, a stem-cell scientist at UC San Francisco.

That blows. Why the hell do we need to ban it then? Is it to prevent our world from being completely taken over by clones of this adorable baby?

Once again, we reach a point where Republicans and their crazy schemes fuck my brain but good. They don’t want us banning cloning unless it includes the banning of cloning human stem cells because they value life so much, but expanding the ability to do this research could actually save the lives of millions of people with horrible diseases? I’m pretty confused, so I guess we’re just left with what Weird Al Yankovic says about the whole thing:

“I Think I’m A Clone Now”

Isn’t it strange
Feels like I’m lookin’ in the mirror
What would people say
If only they knew that I was

Part of some geneticist’s plan (plan-plan-plan)
Born to be a carbon copy man (man-man-man)
There in a petri dish late one night
They took a donor’s body cell and fertilized a human egg and so I say

I think I’m a clone now
There’s always two of me just a-hangin’ around
I think I’m a clone now
‘Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

Look at the way
We go out walking close together
I guess you could say
I’m really beside myself

I still remember how it began (gan-gan-gan)
They produced a carbon copy man (man-man-man)
Born in a science lab late one night
Without a mother or a father, just a test tube and a womb with a view

I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
There’s always two of me just a-hangin’ around
I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
‘Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
And I can stay at home while I’m out of town
I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
‘Cause every pair of genes is a hand-me-down

Signing autographs for my fans
Come and meet the carbon copy man
Livin’ in stereo, it’s all right
Well I can be my own best friend and I can send myself for pizza so I say

I think I’m a clone now
Another one of me’s always hangin’ around
I think I’m a clone now
‘Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
I’ve been on Oprah Winfrey - I’m world renowned
I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
And every pair of genes is a hand-me-down

I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
That’s my genetic twin always hangin’ around
I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)
‘Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

I think I’m a clone now (a clone now)

I used to think economists were full of shit, especially when they tried to tell us that deficits don’t matter. As it turns out, maybe they’re not all that worthless. As it turns out, economic science has revealed that the land in Santa Clara that will be used to build the proposed $160 million stadium for the Niners might be a more economically viable site if they built a big frigging office park or mall there.

Keyser Marston Associates, a real estate consultancy, generally validated a 49ers-commissioned report that said a new stadium would produce roughly $42.5 million per year in new direct, indirect and induced economic annual activity in the city of Santa Clara.

But Keyser Marston also concluded in a report released by city officials Friday that a 15-acre Class A office complex would produce $3.3 million in revenue for the city annually, while a stadium would produce just $650,000, slightly less than the $700,000 predicted by the 49ers. The findings will be presented to the Santa Clara City Council next Tuesday. Those numbers do not include construction activity.

In addition, because the land the 49ers are targeting sits in a designated entertainment district, the firm suggested that the council “may wish to seek an entertainment/tourist use, which could be more compatible with the nearby Convention Center and Great America Theme Park.”

Well, lord knows that Santa Clara is pretty damn good at building Class A office complexes. It’s almost like they invented it.

Anyhow, the Santa Clara 49ers of San Francisco are spinning the shit out of the report.

49ers spokeswoman Lisa Lang said team officials’ initial reaction to the report was positive.

“We’re very pleased that the city’s economic analysis validates our study. It reinforces that a new stadium would create thousands of jobs, generate millions of dollars in new tax revenue, and provide an important economic stimulus for Santa Clara,” Lang said.

Right, except for the fact that it’ll be more economically viable if they install a bunch of cubicles on the field.

Maybe this is why the Niners have resorted to threatening Santa Clara with moving their headquarters if the city doesn’t suck it up and give them their $160 million.

The San Francisco 49ers say that if Santa Clara doesn’t pay about $160 million toward building a new football stadium, then the team probably will move its headquarters and training facility.

Sounds great. Although team officials have stated that this isn’t a threat, one can probably assume that it’s a promise. Those 49ers sure do know how to treat a girl!

I know that CNN called the proceedings on Sunday evening a “debate,” but even though a bunch of Democratic candidates were there, it came off as nothing more than a disorganized simultaneous interview of the candidates by Wolf Blitzer. Senator Chris Dodd’s campaign took a good, hard look at the tape and came up with kind of a goofy-looking but simple chart showing the discrepancies in speaking time between the candidates. It looks somewhat similar to CNN’s current polling numbers, although the polls aren’t really as close among the also-rans.

Putting aside for a second the surprising fact that someone actually got less speaking time than Kucinich, it’s fair to say that having CNN run the debates is a surefire way to suppress the opinions of “fringe” candidates, who despite their obvious drawbacks in a general election, are nonetheless candidates in a democratic election and bring some very real ideas to the table that should contribute to the debate in general as we get closer to the primaries. I thought Senator Dodd, who had just over half the amount of speaking time that Barack Obama had, sounded very eloquent and direct in his answers, as in his succinct take on why he would move to bring the troops home from Iraq if elected.

“It is incumbent upon us, given the fact that we are less safe, less secure, more vulnerable, weaker today, not stronger as a result of this policy, that we ought to try and bring it to a close.”

It’s amazing how simple his position sounds, isn’t it? Senator Dodd’s surprising performance may not result in any significant change in votes for him, but the front runners could learn something from his unequivocal method of addressing his issues. While I have very little reason to be optimistic about the American electorate, I really want to believe they don’t want to hear the mealy-mouthed non-answers being given by Hillary Clinton when asked direct questions anymore. Her transparent (and tired) efforts at appealing to the middle by coming out in favor of everything, coupled with her smarmy, forced cackling while being criticized by other candidates pretty much proves to me that she cannot win the general election.

As much as I like the policies and charisma of Barack Obama, his answers seemed fairly ho-hum and not so sure footed compared to Senator Dodd and John Edwards, and while I think it’s too early for this “debate” to matter much, it raises some serious doubts in my mind that Obama is necessarily the savior of the Democratic party. That distinction probably belongs to someone else, but until he enters the race, I guess we’re stuck with whoever Wolf Blitzer likes to hear talk the most.