Update! Whoops, I meant to post this on SFist. Ha ha, wrong blog.

Remember mid-June, when we posted video of a driver pulling over and wandering into Walgreen's to do some errands? There's new news to report! Well, actually, there isn't -- Muni has just officially admitted that they failed to capture any data relating the to incident.

We submitted a report to Muni about it (it's number 226478, in case you care); meanwhile, Sunshine-champion Kimo Crossman requested that Muni turn over footage from the bus in question.

For a week and a half, nothing happened.

We got a reply from Muni on the 27th. This is the extent of the response Muni will provide to a passenger; to get anything further, you have to do a Sunshine request.

And now finally, this past Friday, Muni responded to Kimo: they can't figure out on what vehicle the incident occurred, and who can blame them, given the limited details? (11:45am on the Westbound 33 at 18th and Castro driven by a heavyset African American woman.) They were able to narrow it down to three different buses, though: two of them had broken cameras, and the other one didn't capture the event.

At this point in Muni's email, the font changes to a teeny tiny little script, as if Emily Litella wrote the closing words: "As a result, the MTA has no records responsive to your request."

Another jorb well done, Muni!

Just saw Ratatouille -- it's great, of course. I think it's the most complex Pixar film I've seen (still haven't watched Cars). I definitely think I'd benefit from one or two repeat viewings. A pleasure.

It also, weirdly, has what may be the worst Pixar scene I've ever seen -- a bit of dialogue that steps out of the movie and becomes the hand of the screenwriter. I can't imagine how it got in.

I don't write much about public policy on my blog, because it's something I devote a lot of thought to in my professional writing and it's nice to have a blog where I don't have to fret about buses and homelessness and downtown zones.

But this is important.

There's a group of businesspeople in San Francisco who've figured out something very clever: if they spend enough money on lies, they can trick the government into forcing developers to give them a lot of money for projects that are in everyone else's worst interests.

Outside of the Safeway near my work, there's a person collecting signatures for a parking-related ballot proposition. She has two signs: "MAKE OUR STREETS SAFER" and "OUR NEIGHBORHOODS NEED MORE PARKING." Nobody can argue with safer streets, right? Everyone's in favor of that! But if you ask her how more parking would make streets safer, she'll admit, "actually, the safer-streets sign is from a different petition." Oh.

That's typical of the trickiness that's necessary to sell this proposition. Here's what it'll actually do:

- The city will require that every new apartment has at least one parking spot.
- Reduce housing and raise rents in order to subsidize parking spaces.
- Landowners will be allowed to remove bike lanes near their property.
- It'll mean more strip malls, more parking garages, slower traffic, slower buses, more air pollution, and fewer parks.

Ick. Who would be in favor of that? In fact, the in-the-know busybodies who make it their business to follow what's going on in the city are overwhelmingly opposed.

One of the only people not opposed: Andy Ball, the owner of Webcor, a company that pours concrete and builds parking garages. Well, of course.

In order to sell this measure, its few supporters are having to be very misleading. It doesn't stop of mismatched signs: supporters claim that it doesn't change anything, and just reaffirms the measures that are already in place. If that was true, then I doubt very much that Webcor would have taken such an interest in pushing it.

My big objection to this stupid idea is that it's so weirdly socialist; but instead of giving everyone equal access to medicine, it's giving everyone equal access to blight. All citizens pay the price of parking: less housing/higher rent, less public space, longer commutes, worse air. And only a few people actually benefit: car owners. Socialized risk; privatized benefit. Sure, go ahead, park your cars -- but don't try to make the whole city pay for your spot.

We got a new copier at work today, the kind that can send emails. They had it send out a test email, and here's how it looked:

I'm very disappointed that you can't play as a bunny.

Fantastically, the dramatic prairie dog has a blog that collects all of the remixings.

Dramatic Us from Jeff Rubin on Vimeo

Good lord, I can't believe how I dressed back in college. This was normal attire for me -- Jesus Christ. Big flannel shirt, t-shirt tucked-in, huge pants and a necktie used as a belt, and sandals with socks. I am mortified. But what's funny is that 10 years ago, I would have been mortified to know that the me of 2007 would be so concerned about outfits.

I'm watching Tales of the City right now, the one with Parker Posey and Olympia Dukakis and all the self-conscious affectations. Is there something I'm missing here? Why do people say this is good?

In my ongoing sorting-through of old VHS tapes, I found the following clip. We had a videocamera set up in the booth, back when I directed The Importance of Being Earnest for Southington High School Drama Club, and after the show ended, it captured some delightful slapstick involving my dad and younger brother.

I've been sorting through my old VHS tapes -- ever since I moved in, five years ago, they've been taking up a ridiculous amount of shelf space, despite my never using them once. I actually had to buy a VCR just to see what's on them.

One of the finds: a collection of episodes of "The Adventures of Patchhead." Or, if you like, "The Adventures of Patch Head." I can't make heads or tails of the thing -- it's a bunch of kids running around in front of blue screens, composited in with models and crude animation, in vaguely Brer-Rabbit-ish scenarios. The only record of them ever having existed are in episode guides for a Nickelodeon sketch show called "Kablam."

Why do I bring this up? Because it's not interesting enough for Wikipedia, but still deserves to have a better set of references when Googled. So, if you got here because you were looking for episodes of this awkward show, let me know and I'll put them on YouTube or something.

Animation Magazine wrongly reports that the new Tintin movies will be filmed in stop-motion. That would be awesome, if it was true -- lush, extravagant stop-motion is the perfect medium for Tintin. But sadly, they'll be using mo-cap instead: the uncanny computer-follows-human style that's never as expressive as keyframe animation and never as natural as live-action.

Tintin actually has seen life in stop-motion before -- the extremely hard-to-find 1947 film "The Crab with the Golden Claws." What a lovely DVD release that would make.

This afternoon, I was thinking about this one uncomfortable moment at summer camp.

The director of the camp had just given us a little talk -- we were about 100 campers at an artsy residential program at Wesleyan -- about how great multiculturalism is. She asked how many people were bilingual, and a couple people raised their hands. She asked them, one at a time, what those languages were, and at first they were pretty unique -- Japanese, Portugese, Malay. Then a couple people started raising their hands for French and Spanish, and it was obvious that they were just talking about the "can we buy a soda please" foreign languages that they'd picked up in high school classes. As soon as the crowd realized that they could raise their hands for having taken French I, everyone was suddenly boasting bilingualism. It was a little awkward -- the director couldn't say, "I think that's enough now" and stop calling on people, so we just had to sit and listen to every single snooty Connecticut suburban teen get called on and say "Spanish."

Then she called on one kid, a little mousy pale boy named Noah on whom I had a crush, and he said, "ebonics," and that was the end of that.

In response, one of the black students then yelled, "oh no you diin't!"

You know what unsettles me? The idea that my Netflix queue, which is up around 600 items, might outlive me.

I can't remember where I found this picture, but it makes me SO HAPPY.

I don't know what the big bunny is carrying. Possibly an wicker basket full of Indian snake-charmer cobras. Seems like a dangerous thing for bunnies to have lying around.

This is pretty much the best headline for a website ever.

When I was in high school, there were a group of older boys who had a public access TV show called "What About a Chicken Fajita." As I recall, it was the funniest, most brilliant thing ever conceived, although at the time I felt the same way about Ricki Lake, t-shirts with pockets, and QBASIC.

Disappointingly, there is no record of the show ever having existed anywhere on the Internet, which is why I'm writing this post. LET US NEVER FORGET.

A bunch of saucy new pix up on Flickr, from last Sunday's brunch and viewing of the abysmally gay Queer Duck.

In case you're interested, here's a description of the dream job that I'll be starting on July 9th.

Digital Training Dept. Admin I Job #ILM00810

Summary:

Working closely with the Program Manager, provides general administrative support to the Training Department.

Primary Responsibilities:

* Coordinates arrangements for all fine arts classes: maintains wait lists, coordinates models, works with instructors, orders food, and collects student feedback
* Performs library duties, including fielding library requests, entering new materials into database, researching library requests, checking out and delivering library items, taking inventory, and locating missing or overdue library items
* Provide general administrative support, including copying, typing, filing and running errands.
* Provide assistance to the Program Manager with project organization and management; identify opportunities for process improvements, and design and implement changes.
* Acts as liaison with Workplace Services, Shipping and the Help Desk to address various training needs
* Processes expense reports and check requests
* Orders office supplies
* Maintains classrooms
* Videotapes lectures and prepares them for publication in LOIS
* Assists with special projects as needed, including preparations for such events as the Speaker Series, SIGGRAPH, and the Educators’ Symposium

Education, Experience and Skills Required:

* Bachelor's degree.
* Excellent time-management and organizational skills; ability to establish priorities in a demanding environment.
* Word processing and database experience helpful.
* Proficiency with Macs and PCs; Linux experience helpful.
* Familiarity with video/video editing equipment.
* Extremely self-motivated and self-sufficient.
* Interest in computer graphics and filmmaking highly desirable.
* Desire to learn new things.

I was thumbing through Variety today (looking for articles about me, of course), and noticed an ad for a show called "Starter Wife." The tag line was, "wife goes on." HA HA HA. Even funnier: the ad was placed on a page opposite the obituaries.

Somehow, PBS was snookered into distributing "The Wall of Separation," a crazy documentary by a group that wants to edge the US from democracy to theocracy.

The Cartoon Network announced today that it had put together some kind of website that'll deliver games and video specifically for Wiis and PS3s. At least, I think it's a website -- the press release calls it an "application," but says that you can access it through the console's browser. So I think that just means it's a flash app living on a webpage. I'll be impressed if they can do something cool with the Wii's browser; its resources aren't very great (its runs out of memory if you try to use Pandora). I'm skeptical. Also, Cartoon Network? Wha?

The new iTunes is NOT HAPPY AT ALL that you burned your songs to CD and then ripped them back as MP3s. Oho, you actually want to use the songs that you bought? We'll put an end to that!

The new version of iTunes is reluctant to copy over any songs with which it suspects you've taken too many liberties. Oh noes! Folks are pissed. Of course there's a workaround, since the idea that you can digitally manage rights is just silly.

SEMEN: Not only does it taste good, it's good for you.

The study, which is bound to provoke controversy, showed that the women who were directly exposed to semen were less depressed. The researchers think this is because mood-altering hormones in semen are absorbed through the vagina.

If you like the TV show House, here's a code you can use to get a free episode on iTunes. The only catch is that it can only be downloaded once, so if you want it, you'd better be the first one to use it.

Open iTunes. Click on the store. Click on "redeem." Enter the code M9T9T33R3P9R. If it doesn't work, that means someone else got to it first.

I also have eps of The Tudors and a bunch of ABC shows, but sadly they're on eco-unfriendly DVDs instead of online.

This is all happening because it's Emmy-nominating season, and each issue of Variety comes with a new TV show attached in an attempt to curry favor among the magazine's elite industry-insider readership. Since I do not have access to any particularly insidey people, I'm just distributing the unwanted gifts to whomever wants them.

My favorite pizza trick is to switch to the broiler for the last 30 seconds. It makes the top get all browned, without drying out the interior. But you have to be careful, because just a few seconds too long and it'll burn.

This time we tried it with cheddar, which tasted sharper and more sour than mozzarella and also looked more appealing -- it wasn't as thick and gooey, and the texture conformed better to the food underneath. (I like to use the cheese as the top layer, as it helps stick all the ingredients together, with seasonings on top so it's not a uniform white.) Cheddar also seems to be less prone to setting off my dairy allergy, and I don't know why -- maybe because it's a harder cheese? Or isn't as fatty?

I brushed the bottom of the dough with grapeseed oil, which James says made it greasy, but I thought it crisped up well and didn't get on my fingers, so obviously he's lying. I can't tell what the advantage to grapeseed oil is yet; I've only been using it for a day, but my impression so far is that it's nearly tasteless. I think it might have a higher smoke point, which could be handy for browning meat (when I sautéed the chicken, it didn't smoke when olive oil would have). Using it on the underside of the dough doesn't seem to have worked too well, as it didn't really get hot enough.

Some spinach, chicken, and chopped tomatoes rounded things out well. A fruity side-dish would have been good, too. It all went well with white wine.

All in all, I was pretty pleased. And James said he liked it.