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CHEAP EATS In weather, it was daytime and I had to go to work wearing a scarf. And gloves. On the bridge, traffic was red so I was running late, and I had to pick up dog medicine for the family dog along the way, El Cerrito.

I didn't know why the traffic was so bad. Time of day, it didn't make sense. But when I came out from under the upper deck into Oakland daylight, there was weather. And so maybe that was it. Traffic and weather together, as they say on the radio.

But this is the paper.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS CHEAP SPORTS

by Hedgehog

Greetings from Portland! Oregon! Chicken Farmer would be writing this, but we have a show tonight and she needs to rest her voice.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS This.

CHEAP SPORTS

by Hedgehog

I love my editor/column hostess. And not just because I'm domestically partnered to her (though that helps). Read more »

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Do you want to know how to settle a strike? Here's how to settle a strike: Capitulate. It's

fun and easy — just ... give 'em what they want. In this case, the letter 'e.'

Hedgehog, I says, henceforth, you can spell youse however the hell you want. In fact, you can spell all the other words however you want, too. I trust you to get the thing said, however you spell it. We're all good communicators here.

In fact, we're in the goddamn bidness of communication, ain't we.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS Dang it, my sports writer has gone on strike. Over something really stupid, too. Really really stupid. How stupid? A couple columns ago, I changed her spelling of youse to yous. Why?

Oh, you escape my meaning entirely, don't you?

Youse. Yous. The former preferred by Hedgehog, whereas I like the latter.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS Another new restaurant has sprung up at the corner of Castro and 18th St. across from Walgreens. Korean, this time.

CHEAP SPORTS

by Hedgehog

There are several problems inherent with writing a pirate sports column embedded within a "food" column in any free weekly paper, even when the "food" column isn't written by your domesticated partner. Which mine is. And don't think I haven't suspected that's how I landed the gig in the first place.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS Oh the horror!

Oh the hilarity!

Oh the black bean and chicken chili, spaghetti and meatballs!

No, it wouldn't look good, journalismically, for me to review Hedgehog's second li'l movie myself, being after all her ever-loving domestie. Not to mention my three (3) credits, for catering, co-production, and co-score. So, for once I have decided to do the right thing: ask my dad to review it for me.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS And then one day my left foot stuck to the planet and my left knee, under the influence of the opposing team's cornerback, bent backwards. First, two of my teammates tried to help me off the field, and both of them are med students but one is much shorter than me and the other much taller, so the refs tapped us all on the shoulder and said "here. Let us."

They made a kind of a chairlift out of their arms and carted me away. "The fireman's carry," they called this, but I knew that it was not.Read more »

CHEAP EATS Crawdad called me on speakerphone, like she does: in the car, with the childerns. "Will you tell us the story of Moby Dick?" she said.

"Moby Dick," I said, about as meaningfully as one can say, into an Android, Moby Dick. As it happens, I had just hung up with my dad, who (as it further happens) is an actual, dyed-in-the-whale Melville scholar. Me, no. Not so much. I've read it, of course, but . . .

"Dang, is traffic that bad over there?" I asked.

"No. We're going to get ice cream," she said. As if that explained everything.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS After the game we went to the Pilsner Inn to drink with the other team and watch the 49ers. Who, btw, ended up winning that Sunday by twice as much as we did.

Our relatively new li'l football team, like the big ol' San Francisco one, is developing an identity as a defensive powerhouse. I like this. It was the talk of the opposition, down the bar: how we had befuddled the bejesus out of them, to the tune of four interceptions, two returned by Stringbean for touchdowns, and a fumble recovery.Read more »