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Feature

Asymmetric Warfare: The Game

Advances in ultrarealistic simulation let soldiers experience the war in Iraq -- before they go

By Luke O'Brien

Published: April 13, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 17 -- From the sky, the buildings of the city look like toy blocks arranged in a precise state of disarray. The Black Hawk moves fast over the dun-colored roofs. It's the kind...

Matt Smith

The 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Public Relations

The envelope, please ... and the Pulitzer goes to -- Environmental Defense!

By Matt Smith

Published: April 13, 2005

Publicists have a dreary and emotionally exhausting job. Daily, they must cold-call and suck up to journalists in attempts to forge relationships that are built, fundamentally, on dysfunction....

Infiltrator

Nudespotting

A noble attempt to view 1,000 naked people in a single day

By Harmon Leon

Published: April 13, 2005

Beneath our clothes, we are all nude. Each citizen encountered is, deep down, a potential nude person to be viewed. I'm not kidding! With that potential in mind, I conclude that there's a lot of...

Dog Bites

Getting Over

What happens when the life coaches of Starting Over come to Silicon Valley?

John Mecklin

Published: April 13, 2005

Reality television comes off best when it's peeled down to its core of fun-to-watch hysteria and emotional self-indulgence. Remove the immunity challenges of Survivor , the boardroom meetings of...

Postscript

What's Matt Smokin'?

A state assemblyman explains why our columnist is wrong about legislation that would legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp

By Mark Leno

Published: April 13, 2005

I enjoy Matt Smith's wit and humor as much as he seems to enjoy my legislative work. His unique perspective is not always one that I share but is consistently intriguing, intelligent, and bemusing....

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Week of Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Published: April 13, 2005

Out of Joint What ever happened to laid-back pot smokers?: Your cheap shots about people who smoke pot ["Dumb as a Potted Plant," Matt Smith, April 6] are insulting and repugnant. Any time...

Music

Hello Nasty

After 25 years, R&B; crooner Lord Nasty is finally getting his message heard: Everything's better with a big, fat dick in your mouth

By Dan Strachota

Published: April 13, 2005

In 1979, James Lemmons wrote and recorded a song called "Disco Slut." He sent the demo to Epic, Columbia, and Motown, hoping that the labels would give him a record deal. The companies, however,...

Music

Twin Lesbian Duo From Canada!!!!

Tegan and Sara's delectable pop makes lazy headline writers look stupid

By Michele Laudig

Published: April 13, 2005

Tegan Quin is happy to set the record straight about some things that have been written about her and her sister, Sara. Their band, Tegan and Sara, is really a five-piece, not just a duo. Being...

Reviewed

Jennifer Gentle

Valende

By Sam Prestianni

Published: April 13, 2005

You're a couple of scruffy long-haired guys growing up in the laid-back northeastern city of Padova, Italy. Restless and bored, you drink lots of red wine, but the intoxicating grapes fail to...

Reviewed

The Wedding Present

Take Fountain

By Dan Strachota

Published: April 13, 2005

Take Fountain is a double breakup album. Not only did David Gedge split from keyboardist Sally Murrell, but he also ditched their post-Wedding Present band, Cinerama. Sort of. In actuality,...

Reviewed

Regina Spektor

Soviet Kitsch

By Rachel Devitt

Published: April 13, 2005

Regina Spektor is so precious I want to fucking bite her. This is not supposed to be the point. As part of the East Coast's anti-folk movement, Spektor is ostensibly avant-garde and profound, her...

Reviewed

The Perceptionists

Black Dialogue

By Sam Chennault

Published: April 13, 2005

The bicoastal Boston/Berkeley MC Mr. Lif makes the sort of politically charged Bolshevik boom-bap that warms the coffee of both old-school hip hop fans and MoveOn.org activists. Which -- despite...

Reviewed

13 & God

13 & God

By Garrett Kamps

Published: April 13, 2005

It really seemed as if 13 & God, a collaboration between Oakland's Subtle and Germany's the Notwist, was going to be this year's Postal Service, that wildly successful mind-meld of Death Cab for...

Reviewed

MF Doom

Live From Planet X

By Sam Chennault

Published: April 13, 2005

Spitting a slipstream of rearranged clichés, comic-culture allusions, and schizoid sci-fi references, MF Doom has spent the past two years ruling the underground hip hop ghetto with an iron...

OK Then

OK Then

Debbie Gibson's new material is her most revealing yet

By Garrett Kamps

Published: April 13, 2005

From the moment he emerged on the balcony, he was recognized as a kind of rock star of popes. -- Diane Sawyer Over the course of her two-decade career, Debbie Gibson has proven herself...

Bouncer

Bouncer

The best new club in S.F., Madrone Lounge, is a -- gasp! -- collective art space

By Katy St. Clair

Published: April 13, 2005

Good intentions are usually the kiss of death for a club. "Yeah, man," says the hypothetical art gallery/modern dance studio/bar owner, "we want to create a space where artists and musicians and...

Hear This

Hear This

Los Amigos Invisibles riff on racy themes with tongues firmly in someone else's cheek; Gratitude -- copycat emo act or earnest effort of a seasoned vet?

By Tamara Palmer, Garrett Kamps

Published: April 13, 2005

Hotblooded Venezuelan dance band Los Amigos Invisibles is a funky oddity in its homeland, but a natural fit in its adopted city of New York, where it resides under the watchful eye of Luaka Bop...

BeatBox

BeatBox

Trainspot great hip hop breakbeats at "The Breaks"; get transported to Jamaica at "San Fiasco"

Brock Keeling, Tamara Palmer

Published: April 13, 2005

Unfairly referred to as the Americanized version of the Chemical Brothers because of a sound that combines rock and electronica, the Crystal Method is a distinctive and oft-imitated pair of...

Eat

Slices of Heaven

Enjoying pizza in several locations, including between covers

By Meredith Brody

Published: April 13, 2005

Usually my omnivorous friend Robert is quick off the mark when it comes to a well-recommended new eatery, so I have no idea why he still hadn't been to Little Star, a new pizzeria on Divisadero,...

Social Grace

No Bacon, No Boys

When a queer vegetarian group excludes some of its own

By Social Grace

Published: April 13, 2005

Dear Social Grace, I'm a member of an online group of queer vegetarians -- the group has both male and female members, who have potlucks and occasionally some online discussion. Recently, a...