For reasons better left unsaid (and in the name of tasteful censorship), we here at SFist are enjoying ABC 7 Dan Noyes' new publicity shot. Very much so. (Even better than the old one, yes? Yes.)

Update: Now with "correct" spelling!

We understand that it's common for coaches to put their game plans (strategy notes? football-y documents?) in their pants. What is strange is Standford using the following shot of Coach Jim Harbaugh, with his plans tucked neatly near his crotchal area, as their marketing tool of choice on 2007 football publicity handouts, wallet-sized calendars, and flyers. Behold:

Looks a bit crude, which we like since it almost makes football interesting to us. Marketing imagery aside, congratulations, Stanford, on the upset over the vulgar institution of learning that is USC!

Thanks, Mark, for sending this our way.

There's a gym at the Super Mondo Corporation where we work and today there was some big volunteer thing going on with a bunch of kids learning basketball moves. Attending the big goings on was Thunder, the mascot of the Golden State Warriors. Or at least we think it was really the Thunder (who knows if it was really him behind the mask. There could be hundreds of people out there dressed like him to do publicity stuff, like how Krusty once hired Barney to pretend he was him at Kamp Krusty). Now the funny thing is that we happened to notice that right outside of the gym was a limo and standing in front of the limo was the limo driver, just waiting around for what we guessed was Thunder to finish up. So, yes, for those of you wondering, Thunder gets driven around in a limo.

No word if he got into the limo in or out of his costume. We thought about waiting around in the men's locker room to see if he would come up to change but decided not to when we realized that could look kind of creepy.

Reds 4 Giants 2- Oh, Matt Cain, what did you do to deserve this? He lost again last night after giving up only two runs in six innings. One of them, the one that gave him the L, came as a result of first a horrible call by the third base umpire and then a little flair that went off the glove of second baseman Eugenio Velez. With those two runs, his ERA is now up to 3.68 which still puts him in the top 30 in the league for ERA. He has a better ERA than Greg Maddux, Justin Verlander and Chien-Ming Wang. Wang, btw, has 18 wins. Also, batters are only hitting .235 against him, better than, well, a whole hell of a lot of other pitchers. If there's any consololation for the Cainer it's that somebody looked at some numbers and came up with some stat called "Worst Records by Pitchers Who Are That Unhittable" and he's ranked fifth, right below such notables as Nolan Ryan and Walter Johnson. Pretty good company, there. Pretty, pretty, pretty good. So cheer up, Matt, anytime you get to be in the same company as Ryan and the Big Train your in good company.

After the events of today, the marketing company behind it all told the SFPD where they could find the things so the police could disable them. It’s not quite known where all twenty of them are but CBS 5 is asking people for any information on where they could possibly be.

You know, we feel kind of sorry for the ad rep who dreamed this sucker up. There you are, all proud of your work when next thing you know, you’ve caused an entire metropolitan area to come to a screeching halt over your work. And then the Mayor goes live on TV and threatens to throw your ass in jail for whatever reason.

But, on the other hand, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?

And it's not necessarily because he's missing Question Time. No, he's also missing out on the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a less exciting but probably more relevant meeting featuring a Special Guest Appearance by Ms. Pelosi herself. This is bringing the usual jabs from the usual jabbers, mainly Messer’s Daly and Peskin.

Gavin's press guy, Peter Ragone, however, says it's in the best interests of the city for Gavin to go. Besides the fact it's an honor to be invited (it's not like the Mayor of Poughkeepsie New York is invited) but in all the networking and brainstorming, Gavin will be able to put together innovative and cutting edge ideas like city-wide Wi-Fi and environmental plans. We actually aren't surprised Gavin would find this more exciting than answering questions from Chris Daly as this is the kind of stuff Gavin thrives in-- wonkishly earnest discussions about ending such stuff as third world debt, global warming, and orphan kidnappings by publicity seeking celebrities. And actually, would you rather hang out with Brangelina or would you rather hang out with the above mentioned Mayor of Poughkeepsie? Or go to Washington D.C. or Switzerland?

Indeed, there are things that will be discussed at the meeting that are expected to help Gavin out, such as "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Symposium on Ending Malaria and Making the 38 Geary Run on Time, " as well as the "The Bill Clinton Seminar on Third World Debt Relief and Annoying I-Team Reporters."

Hell, we'd go if we could but as of this writing, there is no Davosist.

Yes, it's only been a few weeks into the main part of the campaign for Governor, that being after Labor Day, but questions are already being asked about whether Phil's campaign is either doomed or just F-----.. He's down in the polls, can't get much in the way of publicity, and is having trouble running money. As the article in the Mercury News points out, he appears to be in that political death spiral where people assume he is going to lose means, so he's having trouble raising money, which means he has less money to spend which makes it more likely he'll lose which makes it harder for him to raise money and so on and so forth.

It doesn't help when your opponent is a huge Hollywood star who gets publicity in anything they do. Even worse, when your opponent is doing everything possible to steal away your issues by signing "bipartisan" bill after bipartisan bill. First there's all the green stuff Arnie has been spouting out lately but on top of that is he's been going around campaigning for all those big infrastructure bonds with Democratic members of the Assembly. So much so, Fabian Nunez and others got into a little trouble with their party bosses for doing so. Hell, Arnie just hopped on the anti-Darfur bandwagon and signed an no investment bill with George Clooney at his side. It doesn't get anymore un-Republican than that.

Phil's one big chance to resurrect things and save his campaign comes on October 7, when he and Arnie debate man-o-man. Look good and he's back, baby! Do nothing and this sucker is pretty much over.