Image credit: Nature abhors a vacuum

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost.

Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into a bit of an argument about whether gridiron—that's American football—is "rubbish".

Chicagoist sounded a cautious note about the supposed declared candidacy of Barack Obama this week. The staff were much more optimistic about the plans to put organic food into the public school system, even if they usually start their mornings with a can of pop (they don't call it soda in the Windy City). Finally, Chicagoist took a moment to remember when Martin Luther King, Junior's journey brought him to Chicago, and talked with some experts to compile a list of the biggest sins in sketch comedy.

Torontoist had some serious skunk in the trunk. But, after taking a dip in a tomato-juice filled tub, they were able to look at ugly condo branding, get excited about mascot heads, and even move snow.

Austinist reported that last week's bird deaths weren't caused by poisoning. Texas Governor Rick Perry seems to have mastered the musical art of the "not" joke by inviting Ted Nugent to his inauguration, but Austinist is taking its music seriously. A new upscale Austin restaurant is trez disappointing, but the heroics of a UT grad student and his brother definitely are not. And, um, ice storms in Texas? Seriously?

Houstonist discovered why some people shouldn't be mothers: they misplace their babies. They also cooked up some dumplings (that's dumplins, in Texan), and taught their readers how to pick up men in the gym. A guy is cashing in on Houston's mini-ice storm by selling a chunk of ice on eBay, and some Houstonians decided who's to blame for sex offenders molesting kids they meet on MySpace... it's MySpace!

SFist was smokin' this week! David Cross responded to a review and all hell broke loose. "Gleegate" continues to heat up, and a town hall meeting went to the birds.

Phillyist is mourning another Eagles-free Super Bowl, but is making up for it by talking about sex, baby, getting high, loving on cheesesteaks, and appreciating optical illusions.

LAist interviewed LA's new all-sports radio afternoon-drive hosts and Chaunte of Maui Fever, and discussed a sexual holy grail: female ejaculation.

Gothamist reported that if you have a French accent, you might automatically be charged a tip. Which, you know, makes perfect sense. A Manhattan antiques dealer is suing the homeless people who live outside his store—which makes even more sense. A neighborhood power station might just be possessed, but there's nothing that some good brisket and projected art can't fix.

Seattlest discussed who's to be blamed for the death of James Kim and PDX bumper cars that look more scary than fun. They found themselves completely tongue tied as they learned about Pearl Jam's coffee drinking habits, disappointed with David Lynch's new film, and able to blog about all it from public transit seats.

Parisist was taunted by the idea of late-night Metro service every night of the week. Too bad it's not terribly easy to take babies on mass transit! But of course, why would you want to take your babies with you on a tour of a chocolate factory, or as you follow a day in the life of The Legendary Tiger Man, anyway?

Shanghaiist wished that Tommy Lee Jones would make Chinese commercials, too. Meanwhile, it's no surprise that China is full of knockoffs and bootlegs, but more surprising that there might be a mainland smoking ban by the end of the year. Meanwhile, both bubble tea houses and taxi drivers really need to keep it clean. It's for the children.

Bostonist would take this episode of Vendetta and Gunn over Miami Vice any day. They've fallen back in love with Allston, and might just have a crush on the subway knitter on top of that. But local newscasters are trying to steal Bostonist's heart with some mechanical bull riding that may not quite be up to sexy snuff.

And last but not least, DCist guided its readers through the explosion of new local businesses on 18th Street NW, wondered what the arrival of paper copies of The Onion would mean for the local media landscape, scolded the Washington Wizards for having ugly fan apparel for women, and reviewed a recent monster truck rally.

Compiled and edited by Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey.

Top photo by Londonist M@. Second photo by Ted Adams.

It's Week Four of the National Football League's 2006 regular season. Things have been tough. How’ve you been? Here's what happening with your Niners and Raiders for this October 1st.<

* San Francisco vs. Kansas City
Sunday, October 1, 2006. 10:00 AM, PST.
Week 04
The Battle Of The Wounded

Both teams limp into this Week Four matchup having absorbed terrible personnel losses during the first part of this season. Personnel, not personal, though, of course, any injury is personal as well. Let's just move on, shall we?

Last week, our 49ers lost first round pick TE Vernon Davis with a broken leg and and RB Frank Gore to a rib injury on the same play, while Eagles' DT Mike Patterson ran Gore's goal-line fumble over 95 yards for a touchdown. It was The Saddest Play Ever. Things did not improve from there, despite the Niners fighting back as best they could.

But the Chiefs, hoo-boy, they have it worse in terms of who they've lost. Kansas City's fulcrum QB Trent Green sustained a horrific concussion in the first game of the season against Cincinnati. Without Green to manage their nimble passing game, the Chiefs become one-dimensional. Defenses can conceivably load the line of scrimmage against the KC running game, daring backup QB Damon Huard to put the ball in the air. Huard?! It's as though Ren And Stimpy named a quarterback. Who's afraid of Damon Huard? What is a Huard? Here at American Football Spectacular, our spellchecker just threw up.

By SFist Christopher Rogers for "American Football Spectacular," contributing

It's Week Three of the National Football League's 2006 regular season. Here's what happening with your Niners and Raiders.

* Philadelphia vs. San Francisco
Sunday, September 24, 2006. 1:15 PM, PST.
Week 03
The Battle Of The Tee-Owned

Jeff Garcia is comin' back to town with the Eagles. A good local son, he's still worthy being considered Gilroy's second favorite export.

There's been plenty of mentions made about the fact that Garcia and Philly's franchise quarterback Donovan McNabb can swap stories about how Terrell Owens threw them under the bus. In a Chris Webber-like way, Owens helped contributed to death-spiral seasons for both the Niners and Eagles.

And poor Jeff. He deserved better then the walking papers that the foolhardy former 49ers General Manager Terry Donahue gave him while Donahue was busy ruining the team in 2004. Y'know, after he's done with the Eagles, Jeff would be a great fit to mentor Alex Smith after current QB/Yoda Trent Dilfer retires.

Anyways, the Philadelphia Eagles are coming off a loss to the New York American Football Giants last week wherein Philly couldn't finish the game after being ahead by two touchdowns. The Giants came back and won. At least someone's Giants are doing OK. Ours disappoint.

"The Eagles had a thorough whooping on the Giants for the majority of the game," said American Football Spectacular's Philadelphia correspondent Phil Deepthroat, "That does two things: [It] shows that we're one of the top teams in the NFC, and [PHI Head Coach Andy] Reid will most likely not make that mistake again playing so conservatively when placed in that situation, assuming we'll get there in the first place."

We don't know if Philly can yet claim a return to the top of the NFC, but the team is obviously far removed from last season's utter catastrophe of ten losses.

By SFist Christopher Rogers for "American Football Spectacular," contributing

After the first two games of the season, Niners fans are all giddy and glowing about things. They have the same look on their face one has when one finally hooks up with their obsessive infatuation and starts dreaming up whole relationships/trysts in their heads. But the problem with all this giddiness is that, well, said infatuation was also really, really, really drunk and pissed off because their obsessive infatuation blew them off. And no, we're not projecting. At all. What we mean is that while the Niners are 1-1 and played well even in their loss, their two opponents in those games were not exactly the top of the line in NFL teams. The Cardinals are the Cardinals, perpetually doomed to doormatness, and the Rams appear to be still trying to find their way in a post-Martz world.

So here comes to the 'Stick the big, bad Philelphia Iggles-- two years removed from the NFC Championship, four time division winner, and one epic fourth-quarter collapse from being 2-0. They have a great D, their physical, and their lead by one of the stars of the NFL, Campbell Soup's very own Donavan F. McNabb. All of which means that we'll be sure to discover more about the Niners this week than we did the previous two weeks. The truest way to determine just how a team measures up isn't how they do against bad teams, but against really good teams.

Last year, the Eagles KILLED the 49ers, losing 42-3 as Donavan threw five touchdown passes, two to T.O. Okay, granted, anything other than losing by 39 points again will be a vast improvement but considering how well the team looked the past couple of weeks, Niners fans should be expecting a competitive, hard-fought game. If it is, the Niners can legitimately claim to be up-and-coming. If not, the Niners will have to face the fact they just might not be as good as they are now thinking they are. In a way, it's not necessarily to win the game, but more important to lose well. Although a win would be super sweet.

First, a recap:

* Picked round 7, pick 47; 455 overall / Kevin McMahan / WR / Maine / 6'2" / 196 / "Mr. Irrelevant"
* Picked round 7, pick 6; 214 overall / Chris Morris / C / Michigan State / 6'4" / 305 / "The Heady Snapper"
* Picked round 6, pick 7; 176 overall / Kevin Boothe / OL / Cornell / 6'4" / 327 / "The Ivy League Hotelier"
* Picked round 4, pick 4; 101 overall / Darnell Bing / S / USC / 6'2" / 230 / "The Match-up Solution"

* Picked round 3, pick 5; 69 overall / Paul McQuistan / OT / Weber State / 6'6" / 315 / "The McNasty"

Story: Paul McQuistan and his twin brother Pat were both chosen in the 2006 NFL Draft, with Paul to your Raiders, and Pat to the Cowboys. Paul went in the third round, and Paul in the seventh. They both play on the offensive line. Hmmm, how would an NFL scout rate one better than the other? What if they'd switched jerseys and not told anyone?!

In any case, Oakland's McQuistan is already making waves in The Raider Nation -- he's already got his own fansite! Paulmcquistanfans.com was alertly noted by Patrick Patterson over on his Thoughts From The Dark Side blog.

And how do they fit?: Another big, raw O-line recruit for Coach Shell to mould.

Outlook: The big redhead will be starting at right guard this Sunday against the Eagles.

This year, both Live 105 and 107.7 the Bone busted out their Top 500 lists and that made the weekend even that more exciting. It was a veritable smorgasbord of rock. It also meant we got to hear what the favorite songs of both forty-something mullet heads and the alienated youth are. It's like a parallel world thing-- one is a list of everything before 1990 and the other is a list of pretty much everything after 1990. If we had only gotten Top 500 lists from both Alice and KFOG it would have been that much better because we could have also have gotten the favorite songs of Marina Chicks and white-bred Yupsters too. But, alas.

So what songs do we in the Bay Area think rock the hardest? Given our predilection for wanting to be different, would our lists be any different than expected? What is Alternative Nation's "Stairway"? And finally, What Does it All Mean?

Let's take a look shall we:

Normally, we get a little grossed out by work that uses blood (although we admire the chutzpah of the artist) – Andres Serrano and Gina Pane come to mind, but their work was more about self-mutilation and shock value. Eagles’ pieces instead reference transformation and history (think tree rings) or as he puts it, “moments frozen in time.” Because the work is so mesmerizingly beautiful, it is hard to believe that it was banned from New Jersey’s annual “Art at Overlook” for the simple fact that it contains blood (not the artist’s, it was obtained from a slaughterhouse).

Eagles is also a master of craftsmanship, managing to create a flawless series that has depth, rich texture and brilliant color from natural materials that can be difficult to work with. To create a darker red in some pieces, he left the layers of blood in the sun to oxidize and change the hue. The result is a solid body of work that is practically perfect and manages to elude any shock value that comes with using the medium, and instead conveys the intangible connection between body and spirit.

Image: Jordan Eagles, "Unity," mixed media

Also not shown was the big, first place battle between Michael Vick's Falcons and the Tampa Bay Bucs. As well as the old skool defensive battle between Da Bears and the Panthers that had everyone talking '85 Bears. We also didn't get a chance to see the big Giants/Eagles game and for anyone who has ever lived in the East Coast knows, a big, late-fall throw down between two NFC East rivals is the kind of game that one can just hear John Facienda calling.

What we did see, however, was a Raiders/'Skins yawner, a battle between a boring team already out of it and a boring team rapidly falling out of it. Unless you're a Raiders fan, that game held no interest to anyone unless they had someone on their fantasy team (like us). What did the other channel, that being FOX, show instead? An interview with Don "Chuckles" Rumsfield. Football, football everywhere, but not a good game to see.

Why, oh why can't we see good football games?

Let the record show that we have serious issues with anything related to exhibition pre-season football. We hate how hyped they are, hate how seriously they're taken, and we especially hate how they put the games on TV when we want to watch something else. All this for a game primarily played by a bunch of people fighting to not be cut. Nevertheless, this week features the debut appearance of both Bay Area teams, the Raiders and the Niners. Of even more interest is that they're playing each other Saturday night at the 'Stick which actually works out for football fans because they only have to waste three hours of their life this weekend instead of six. But if you want any clue to how over-hyped and over-done preseason football is, check this out-- both KPIX and KTVU will be showing the game. Not to mention showing pre-game shows AND post-game shows. All we can say is thank God for Tivo.

This game will feature the debuts of the Bay Area's newest football star and wanna-be football star, Randy Moss and Alex Smith. Moss has already made a big splash this season with his pimped out purple truck and for apologizing in advance for any sort of outrageous touchdown celebration he'll pull this season. Yes, Moss is a bit of a douche but it says a lot about the modern day NFL that he actually comes off as mature classy when compared to Terrell Owens, he of course, of the recent press conference held while working out at his home (and is there anyone out there who isn't loving the Eagles pretty much giving him the equivalent of the sending him up to bed without any supper?) We would say that this game would give us the first chance to see the Raiders high-octane offense, but they'll probably be out of the game before the first batch of nachos have appeared. As for the Niners, their million-dollar savior, Alex Smith, was announced as the starter which means that this will be the first chance the 49er faithful will have of seeing the kid tasked with redeeming John York.

Kick off is 7. Tickets, surprisingly, are pretty easy to find.

Photo of Terrell Owens talking to press by AP. Yeah, it has nothing to do with the 49ers/Raiders game, but we so love the picture

We personally think the whole "Top Whatever" lists thing to be totally overdone and usually laughably wrong. On the other hand, they are darn fun to ruminate over. Especially a particularly juicy one that hasn't been done before.

Recently, USA Today put together a list of the "Top Twenty American Rock Bands." The top American band of all time, as voted by the readers? Pearl Jam. Something they got in part for "longevity" even though we thought they broke up in '95 or something (we kid! We know they're still around. It's just that they’ve been releasing the same half-assed disc for the past 10 years). Of local interest is the fact that the Bay Area throws down and represents. In fact, four out of the 20 (well, actually, 21, but do we really want to include Bon Jovi?) all hail from our hallowed climes. Those bands? The East Bay's own Creedence Clearwater Revival (15, tied with Bruuuuuce!!!!!) and Metallica (12), the Dead (7), and clocking in as the highest ranked Bay Area band-- Journey (5). Don’t stop believing, indeed. For a bit of perspective, that's more great bands than Chicago (zero bands), Boston (one band), Seattle (three) and the mighty New York (three). Take that, Big Apple! The only area more rocking than the Bay Area is SoCal, with six, but there should be some sort of penalty incurred for giving us the Eagles.

Reuters photo by Jim Ruymen via Journey Digest