In the latest installment of "House of Mirrors," a special SF Weekly feature where we write about it when a certain political pamphlet writes about us, so that they'll write about us again, so we can write about them again -- thus dispensing with the need for finding news or readers -- a man named Tim Redmond left a message today asking to interview columnist Matt Smith.
The question was necessitated: So Smith's become an interview-worthy newsmaker?
Did he kill some people?
Or perfect cold fusion?
Or discover secret BART tunnels?
According to the pamphlet's apparent news judgment scale, Smith did something nearly as fascinating: He wrote a column containing information not adhering to an ideological scheme cooked up over in pamphlet-land.
Smith's column this week unearths the fun fact that California taxpayers have spent nearly $50,000 to over three years to train producers of torture-themed porn at Kink.com. Smith deleted Redmond's message before it finished playing. But Smith does remember that Redmond seemed to be asking why Smith seemed to believe something that Redmond didn't believe.
Ball's in your court, pamphlet-writing dude. Send us another interview request -- about this item -- so we can write about it!
New York baseball fans of the 1950s used to argue which of their center fielders was the game's best: The Yankees' Mickey Mantle, Brooklyn's Duke Snider, or the Giants' Willie Mays.
Mays' case is looking better and better in retrospect -- and, in the ultimate coup de grâce, The Say-Hey Kid is the only one left alive. Soon, he'll also be the only one with a Ph.D from San Francisco State.
The school recently announced that Mays will receive an honorary doctorate at its May 23 commencement. Well, congrats to Willie! We wonder if his mortarboard cap will fall off as he receives his degree.
But we can't help recalling a very un-Ph.D moment involving the baseball great when he joined the San Francisco Giants' broadcasters many years ago for a never-repeated experiment of putting Mays on the air. The term "hitterish" was employed one time too many, but that paled in comparison to the moment when the Giants' grounded into a 6-4-3 double play to end the game -- and Mays loudly exclaimed "God damn it!" on the air.
Oh, it was Easter Sunday.
