The welcoming committee for the Republican National Convention was out in force -- and contrary to all that "anarchist" talk in the media, everyone we saw in Union Square was perfectly well behaved. (No one dared waste a day of perfect NY picnic weather wiping tear gas out of their eyes.) Our only complaint with these protests: If you want your cause to be taken more seriously, how about less Hackeysack and more hygiene? Just a thought.
So, who will the GOP trot out this week? Among them: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney. Interestingly enough, NONE of them actually support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
2. Meanwhile, did Bush really win a varsity letter for cheerleading at Yale? Cheerleaders for Truth wants to find out. (via Wonkette)
3. Three Hours of Your Life You Will Never Get Back (aka the MTV Video Music Awards) aired Sunday night. In a nutshell: Usher lip-synched, Hoobastank should have lip-synched (rather than go through puberty live onstage), Stevie Wonder reminded us that the music business once had talented people, and the Polyphonic Spree still creeps us out.
Finally… Fresyes is going on tour this week, hitting Chicago to re-enact "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and then down to Fresno for Labor Day Weekend. If you're not too busy funneling Budweiser tallboys at Millerton Lake, keep your Sunday night open: Two of Fresno's favorite blogs will be hosting a Happy Hour and Bingo Night with special prizes and some kickass music. More details to come …
1. It's iPod Day in the national media, as The New York Times finally cracks open the musical conspiracy known as "the shuffle feature" -- in which the iPod seems to play favorites when picking random songs. On a personal note, we've noticed our own iPod has an unhealthy obsession with Burning Airlines, 50 Cent, Paul Simon's "Rene and Georgette" and everything from At the Drive-In's "Vaya" EP. Damn you, iPod … damn you to hell.
Meanwhile, other people (read: jackasses) have decided the iPod's constant musical stimulation is ruining their "New York Experience," and have quit using it altogether. "I moved to New York, in part, because I wanted to experience the city’s sidewalk cacophony, everything from the rumbling buses to cabbies hollering 'Get the f--- outta my way!' With my earphones in, I became deaf to the urban orchestra playing around me. Even worse, my iPod had sapped the energy that makes New York more exhilarating than the places we all escaped from. Except for better bagels, I had traded one kind of suburban isolation for another."
Blah-dee-blah… Just yesterday, we used our iPod to block out a spontaneous hippie drum circle in the Union Square 6 Train station. Thank you, iPod. Thank you very much.
Ok, folks. I've just returned from the Great Valley, and I brought back with me a trivia question...in Fresno County, which are there more of: churches or fast food restaurants?
T-minus 10 days until the Governor heads back to Fresno (for real this time), but our West Coast Bureau Chief 559 por Vida was just in town over the weekend. He sent us this EW-style "Shaw Report" to keep us up-to-date on the hot Central Valley Trends:
IN: -Campagnia -Fake Boobs -Bud Light
OUT: -Elephant Bar -Sunburned Boobs -Champagne & Strawberries
He adds this: "Campagnia, for those of you not living in town, is like the Tribeca Grand lounge, full of the people they don't let into the Tribeca Grand. That being said, give props to Brad the bartender for giving the best 'What the f---' look when someone orders a Grey Goose dirty on the rocks."
Put that in your Zagat. Meantime, here's a couple of links to keep you occupied:
1. Check out a leaked MP3 from Brian Wilson's "Smile" redux. Stereogum and company are calling the track "Heroes & Villains 2004." This is some very cool stuff.
Javier, I Want You to Be Nice Until It's Time to Not Be Nice
We'll start with the serious crap first: Iraqi soccer players don't like being used as propaganda tools by President Bush, John Kerry isn't scoring points with Helen Thomas after wimping out and saying that, yeah, he would have done the same thing Bush did with Iraq (but with more allies and better planning, of course), and the rest of the country is more preoccupied with Vietnam than Iraq. It turns out the Swift Boat Vets do have ties to the Bush campaign. How about that?
Everyone's favorite Ledge spinoff band, Earlimart, is back with a new CD, "Treble and Tremble," due out Sept. 28. Two tracks are available for streaming, while their music also has been featured amid all that cheating on "Six Feet Under" this season.
Meanwhile, to those of you who love the Olympics and "Alien vs. Predator," McSweeney's presents this handy chart of winners and losers.
For some reason, this also reminded us of a brilliant idea we once had, which bubbled to life after some friends rented "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights": What if producers created a Cuban version of all of Patrick Swayze's movies? Herewith, the Top 5 Swayze movies that should be Cubanized:
"For the past week, the rover has conducted a series of tests on a rock nicknamed Clovis that is perched on a spur about 30 feet above the plain, chief scientist Steve Squyres said at a briefing on Wednesday."
Editor's Note: The postings on Fresyes will be a little sporadic this week (as opposed to the clockwork precision with which we normally update) while the Governor unearths his computer from one of these boxes.
With all this newfound time on your hands, we suggest you start packing your own belongings before the Republicans invade New York.
Fresyes stat department factoid: 559 por Vida spends 1.6% of the year in Fresno, and 3.2% of the year in Las Vegas.
Oh yeeah, it's the #1 Tourism and Terrorism destination for family folks from Fargo to Fallujah. It was pretty sweet timing actually: The newspaper headline read "Las Vegas Officials Deny Charges They Ignored Terrorism Threat"...just as I was about to board my flight. YES!
Celeb sighting here at the fabulous Venetian: Kobe Bryant and wife Vanessa. Contrary to my prayers, no one actually heard them fighting over whether to dine-in or go out. Also seen, Horace Grant — not (unfortunately) carrying Kobe's luggage.
Best place for Fresnans to go in Vegas....GILLEY'S at the Frontier. Bikini bull riding, line dancing, cheap beers, and mud wrestling on Wednesdays.
And if I hear another 60-year-old couple look each other in the eye and say "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas", I'm gonna puke in the canal.
What's the quickest way to a Fresnan's heart? How about drinks at the Elephant Bar, a trip to the Radisson Hotel, strawberries & champagne, and a psycho fertilizer salesman whispering sweet nothings (and bad karaoke) into your ear.
This, at least, is what led Fresno massage therapist Amber Frey into the arms of Scott Peterson — and into the Bad Blind Date Hall of Fame — according to her testimony Tuesday as the prosecution's star witness in the Peterson double-murder trial.
While the Governor's idea of a good first date is 12 hours on the Pai Gow table at Chuckchansi after drinking 40s in the parking lot of Denny's, Scott Peterson went the Smoove-B route -- luring Amber Frey back to the Radisson Hotel so he can "freshen up," only to then whip out strawberries and champagne. The couple then dined at a Japanese restaurant and capped off the evening with some karaoke. Frey testified that she kissed Peterson, and eventually went back to his hotel, where they were "intimate." The morbid fascination with this case continues, and Frey, unfortunately, has been swallowed up by this media crapstorm solely because of her horrible, horrible dating luck.
Has anyone else ever gone out with a future alleged murderer? Can any mathematicians out there help us with the odds of that happening?
Everyone, meet Kori. She's half-Fresnan. They're one big happy family, but not everyone is as overjoyed as Brit & Kev these days:
1. Take Mr. Burns, for example. Harry Shearer, the voice of Montgomery Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders and a handful of other voices on "The Simpsons," acknowledges what we've been thinking for a while now: The show has been sucking for the last couple seasons. "It makes me sad," he says. "They used to have whole scenes. Season four looks very good to me now. I'd rather not be there right now."
2. John Kerry finally answers the question we've been waiting to hear: He says he wouldn't have voted differently on Iraq, even without the WMDs. "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively." Oooohh, snap!
3. Bush, meanwhile, runs into trouble just trying to answer this question about tribal sovereignty. (This has gotta be straight out of a Will Ferrell sketch.)
4. We didn't want to report this latest celebrity sighting from Café Habana, mainly because we're getting sick of these stars bogarting all the corn-on-the-cob and black beans. But here goes: Jared Leto and Scarlett Johansson stopped through this week, looking very couple-ish. The erstwhile Jordan Catalano was sporting a trucker hat, and Scarlett … well, she's just hot. Simple as that.
While you were all out on that peyote trip in the Arizona desert, here's what you missed:
1. You have bad taste in music. Let this man show you the way. He's putting up a Hoobastank clip tomorrow, but c'mon… can anyone really hate on a song like "The Reason"? It's a magical anthem of love and redemption, people. Turn that 'stank up -- and pass us some Maroon 5 while you're at it.
3. Republican Pearl Jam fans, you face a real dilemma: Suck it up and go see what will be some amazing concerts with Death Cab for Cutie, or stew in your own bitterness that the only good GOP concerts this fall will be a Toby Keith-Pat Boone double bill … if you're even that lucky. Thankfully, Will Ferrell has reprised his role as George Dubya, so maybe he can tell you what to do.
5. This is old… the merch guy was talking about this legal feud when we went to see Dios and Beulah (R.I.P.) at the Bowery Ballroom a couple months back. Now it's settled: Dios has been forced to change its name to Dios Malos after a cease-and-desist order was issued by Ronnie James Dio. A Rainbow in the Dark, indeed. (Stereogum)
**Editor's note regarding Monday's post: Apparently we're the only people who spent our childhood watching "The Great Space Coaster." (Or maybe we're the only ones who will admit it… Gary G-Nu, anyone? Geeez.) Thankfully, our brand new Fresyes correspondent, Raisinette, has dug up the lyrics to that show's classic tune, "Yellow-Orange Day" -- which is now the new summer anthem for New York terror alerts. Feel free to hum this little ditty while watching heavily armed cops flag down cargo vans outside the Citicorp building:
Today is a yellow-orange day. Everything is looking up. I think I'll take my yellow-orange crayon. And draw a yellow-orange buttercup. Today has a yellow-orange feel. Everything is beaming bright. I think I'll fold some yellow-orange paper. And send a yellow-orange plane in flight. So many ways to express my emotions. To say this is a yellow-orange day. I could write a yellow-orange poem. Dance a yellow-orange dance. Bake a yellow-orange cake. Play with yellow-orange clay. Today there's a yellow-orange sun. Everything is all aglow. I think I'll share my yellow-orange feeling. With everybody everywhere I go. And I been feeling in a yellow-orange way. All day long. Today is a yellow-orange day. And yellow-orange is the color of my song.
It was only a matter of time before the British tabloids parachuted into Fresno, lapping up the puddles of celebrity bile that Fresno Famous and yours truly first spit out to the Internet-reading public about Britney Spears's fiancé. But these dudes aren't holding anything back.
Most notably: Kevin Federline's Fresno past gets ripped wide open by the Daily Mirror, which purportedly interviews two of his jilted ex-girlfriends -- who claim he was a habitual cheater -- and Federline's former dance instructor, who defends the poor guy.
We say "poor guy" because one ex, Felicia Cabiero, went as far as to sell Kev-dogg's old love letters to the tabloid. The alleged missives (fake or not? You make the call) are pretty much standard high school fare, complete with "please, baby, please" apologies, little-kid cursive handwriting and a few misspellings. (The prose can be seen in full at Stereogum, you horrible, horrible people.)
As for Cabiero, she tells the Mirror:
"I just hope he doesn't break Britney's heart like he did mine. … He completely cut off contact with me and it caused me a lot of pain," she says. And she thinks it is "hilarious" that he is getting hitched to Britney.
Ahhhhh, it's a beautiful Monday morning… and who needs coffee when you have cops armed with AKs and "yellow-orange-ish" terror threats? New York is on lockdown today, the Holland Tunnel is closed to commercial vehicles and friends practically require police escorts to walk their dogs in the Financial District. But some skeptical New Yorkers are still shrugging. At a rooftop bar on Sunday, the one local noted: "Of course there's a terror alert. The GOP had to prevent John Kerry from getting a post-Convention bounce in the polls."
Meantime, for your terror-alert entertainment, imagine America being protected … by marionettes. That's right, it's the next must-see movie from "South Park"'s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, "Team America: World Police." Drudge claims the White House is in a snit about the movie mocking the "War on Terror." But as far as we're concerned, any movie with ass-kicking puppets sounds like fun to us.
Fresyes is a web collective whose current interests include (but are not limited to) rock music, the central valley, new york city, chipotle burritos, "granny gridlock" and people who hamper the flow of pedestrian traffic.
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We'll start with the serious crap first: Iraqi soccer players 
Fresyes stat department factoid: 559 por Vida spends 1.6% of the year in Fresno, and 3.2% of the year in Las Vegas. 
While you were all out on that peyote trip in the Arizona desert, here's what you missed:
