Siri gets replaced with a sexy stand-in
Having transformed the voice of Siri on his iPhone to that of an Australian male, Mark Abramson says he found himself “developing quite a crush on him. I imagine he’s a gay Hugh Jackman talking to me.
“The other day, I asked what the temperature was outside, and he said, ‘Brrr, it’s 47.’ ... I nearly swooned.”
The Chronicle’s Carolyne Zinko was at the soon-to-closed Oasis Beer Garden in Menlo Park over the weekend, with a large crowd who wanted to enjoy the place before its scheduled Wednesday, March 7, closing. Having shared with a pal a snack and a pitcher of beer, Zinko headed home, where she received a text from her credit card company: Had she used the card to pay for a bill of $251,710 at the Oasis that day?
It was the bartender’s mistake, and the charge was deleted. Her pal Lee Gregory said if she’d paid the bill, the cash infusion could have saved the restaurant.
A sign Erik Wilson saw posted on the pedestrian walkway near the Vermont Street off-ramp on Highway 101: “Could he act any guiltier?” As to who “he” is, think it over.
Robert Plant ,whowasintheBay Area for a show at the Fox in Oakland, had dinner on Tuesday, Feb. 27, at Boulevard.
As The Chronicle’s Justin Phillips has reported, the Wise Sons have opened a branch in downtown Tokyo. And according to Hoodline, Bernal Heights resident Amos Goldbaum created a mural for the Jewish deli that shows San Francisco, with some adjustments. Twin Peaks has been replaced with a giant image of Mount Fuji, and a ( Japanese monster) is pictured eating a bagel.
Having spotted the following ad in The Chronicle, Emmy Clausing wondered if it was an oxymoron: “Breast augmentation, $5,500 flat rate.” And Leah Fortin noticed the sign on the back of a truck parked in front of her house: “Dan the Bug Man, Pest Control & Catering.”
Actor Claude Jarman Jr. ,whoasa child starred in “The Yearling” and went on to preside over the San Francisco Film Festival from 1965 to 1980, is in the last stages of editing “My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood,” a memoir scheduled for April publication by Covenant Books.
Among Jarman’s reminiscences is the 1969 festival, “sheer insanity.” On opening night, a catering truck drove up outside the theater, “and out stepped what appeared to be waiters carrying trays of meringue pies.” They were not waiters but instead members of a theatrical troupe, and they began hurling the pies at guess and attendees. Having dinner in a restaurant across the street, Mayor Joseph Alioto stayed there to avoid being hit. Summoned to establish order, the police chief got hit in the face with a pie.
Emcee Victor Borge began the program by saying he was glad “we are getting violence off the screen and into the street where it belongs.”
Thanks to reader Jim Hannah for forwarding a yellowing copy of WednesDay, a 12-page newspaper published 50 years ago in January 1968 “on an interim basis by Ramparts magazine.” I hadn’t known that about this weekly, published during the newspaper strike of ’68.
Herb Caen was on Page One, Frances Moffat’s society column and Ron Fimrite’s sports column inside, as well as news stories and briefs, television and movie listings, stock reports and classified ads. Most astonishing, the strike paper includes ads, for the department stores Roos Atkins and I. Magnin, Circle Star Theatre, David’s Delicatessen, American Conservatory and Curran theaters, the hungry i, Olsten Temporary Services, Holiday Hotel in Reno and an array of car dealers, including Nelson Buick, which was having a “newspaper strike sale.”
Except for that reference in the car dealer’s ad, the newspaper’s copy makes little mention of the strike. Its editorial defends students at UC Berkeley who were disciplined for protesting on-campus recruitment by the CIA and Dow Chemical.
Caen makes reference to news stories about drifting silicone used for breast implants, warning Carol Doda (an advertiser in the publication) that she “may wind up with the two largest kneecaps in the world”; and Moffat writes of the wedding of Maryanne de Lichtenberg and Claude Jarman (who eventually became the parents of a little girl who eventually became Vanessa Getty). See item just above this.
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “What am I supposed to be learning at school? I know all my letters and I still have to sing along.” Girl of nearly age 5 to her grandmother, overheard in Rohnert Park by Naomi Weinstein