Results tagged “spangledbanner”

The Red Sox has permeated nearly every facet of Bostonist's lives. When they're not live-blogging the games, waxing poetic about the games, thanking Curt Schilling for his splendid work, or telling Dane Cook to watch his hair, they're watching certain presidential candidates hop on the Red Sox bandwagon (sorry, Gothamist). The Sox are so branded on the local brain that people are using the Series to spice up their sex lives. Speaking of spice, Bostonist is really sick of that taco promo. And, while they're proud of John Williams, Bostonist is still trying to figure out Williams' "Very Special Arrangement" of the "Star Spangled Banner."

As expected, the beating up of members of the Bakers Dozen acapella group is now a full blown story with all the breathless reporting and graphics that comes with it. It's even gone national with Drudge reporting that the singers were beaten up "after singing the Star Spangled Banner" as if we here in San Francisco are so anti-American that we'll beat anyone up who sings the National Anthem.

Two more murders in San Francisco on early Sunday morning, within 8 blocks and 40 minutes of each other: one at 13th and Folsom and another at 17th and Mission. By our count, that brings the murder total up to 5 for 2007 so far. In other Mission district crime news, there was a stabbing around 10 p.m. at the Burger King at 16th and Mission last night too. Would those proposed cameras at the corner have helped?

You probably remember that brief brouhaha about the CD price-fixing antitrust case, where that judge was going to give everyone who'd ever bought a CD from 1995 to 2002 $14.99 if they sent in their name and address, right? Well, as part and parcel of that settlement, all the CD companies agreed to send free CDs to public libraries across the land. Well, hey -- our beloved San Francisco public library just got its Columbia Record Club shipment, and received: 91 copies of Ricky Martin's Sound Loaded, 81 copies of Jessica Simpson's Irresistible, and 68 copies of Celine Dion's greatest hits. We're going to reserve ours online right now! Jaundiced athenaea-nauts are grumbling that the record companies appear to be dumping poorly-selling records on libraries (Irresistible, for instance, is the second Jessica Simpson album, the one that came out before Newlyweds), but cheerier librarians are storing, say, their 106 copies of Lenny to give away as prizes for summer reading contests. Check out what everyone else in California is getting. (For instance, San Francisco Unified (.pdf) is getting 51 copies of Whitney Houston's "Star Spangled Banner," 7 copies of "Carmen: A Hip Hop-era," 5 copies (clean) of The Wu Tang, and a smattering of Kronos Quartet and John Adams CDs, among many, many others).

The Star-Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812 on the back of an envelope as he saw with pride that the American flag still flew over Baltimore's embattled Fort McHenry. If Cal stirs similar feelings in you -- can you see that banner doth waving? The Cal band is sponsoring a contest for you to write the lyrics to the new UC Berkeley fight song.