Season of the Fu Manchu

  

Pat Hill's Fu Manchu begins its season on national television Friday (ESPN). How long will it be this year? Will it get past Hill's chin and start taking over his neck? Will it finally motivate Hill to win the WAC instead of losing to Pac10 teams?

Answers to these questions begin on Friday against Nevada.

To keep up to date on all Fresno State football news, check in with Bulldogs Blog and Bark Board on a regular basis. For Hill Fu Manchu news, check this blog.

Dorktown will be part of the non-sellout game Friday. Look for a Dork stumbling around Bulldog Boulevard before the game.

Red Hot in Fresnut

I hate to put back to back posts of live clips from Fresno rock shows but I just had to. This past Sunday night The Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Mars Volta played some killer sets at Fresno's Selland Arena.

And Red Hot's lead singer Anthony Kiedus just might be opening up a shop in Fresno. Well, okay maybe not, but he did tell the crowd "Central California, I kinda like it here. Maybe I'll move to Fresnut and set-up a shop." (quote is almost exact)

Thanks to YouTube poster perezgabrie121 you can relive (or see for the first time) when the Red Hot Boys hit the stage. I happen to have had near the same vantage point as this video and I was able to spy lead singer Anthony Kiedus jumping up and down at the base of the stage stairs, getting himself pumped up as the band played.

There are few feelings like the buzz one gets at the beginning of a rock show, right before the first song kicks in. I get a little of that feeling every time I watch this:



HEY, WHAT ABOUT THE MARS VOLTA?! Perez hooks you up there too:
Mars Volta Clip

All I know now is 'Fresnut' is the new 'Fresyes'.

Updated your Tool

I promised an update when I found some new video from Tool's latest Fresno concert at Selland Arena and I got some killer stuff.

HuntingtonStreet has posted some great clips from the show. I just want to know how he got the video camera in, they searched everything but my crevices when I went though security.

Check out the opening song, Stinkfist:

This blog blows

Greetings Dorktown readers (all two of you), I've come here to tell you this blog sucks ass. It needs a new design.

Do you design web-banners, website templates, computer graphics or logos? Well Dorktown needs your help. We need a real design for this Fresno blog, Falcons blog andWiffleball site.

Something comic book meets Fresno.

Will you get paid? Probably. If you are a real site designer, of course you will. If not, you most, more than, probably, likely will. Or you could be just a super nice person a kick some logos out for the good of Fresno dorks everywhere.

Email me at mike@dorktown.net if you want to help out, get paid, or know somebody that's good at that kinda junk. Help a dork out.

The best of Fulton Mall ideas

Lately there have been lots of ideas floating around Fresno concerning the Fulton Mall. There's so many it's getting hard to follow. Here's a list of Dorktown's favorites:

ON FRESNO FAMOUS
Award for most creative list goes to Orcaoid - just click the name and you'll see what I mean. A true highlight of the list is the idea to turn the old Hilton into a Hostel-It says Holiday but Orcas talking about the Hilton. With all the Europeans that come through here on the way to Yosemite, it's a perfect place for it.

Let us not forget Craig Scharton, riling people up, on Fresno Famous with this POST.

Overall best list on Famous goes to: Elliott Balch

TOWN HALL MEETINGS
Several meetings were held downtown to get the public input on what should be done. Here are some of those:
-Keep the mall pedestrian.
-Keep a parklike environment.
-Bring more residential housing in and around the mall.
-Increase the number of shops.
-Have more activities and places to go after 5 p.m, including restaurants and events.
-Make the mall clean and safe.
-Honor the current users of the mall.

DORKTOWN SUGGESTS
If the mall is opened back up to traffic, it MUST only be a partial opening. Open up the section of Tulare to Tuolumne and gear it more towards retail. Then keep the section of Tulare to Inyo closed to traffic and make that the entertainment section.

THE FRESNO BEE
This one is written by the Bee editorial staff and it's my favorite; Peep it HERE.

Lets start doing things NOW! It feels like we'll be talking about The Fulton Mall forever - like...what...I'm doing...right now.

(Photo is taken from Jazzportraits' Flickr stream.)

Insert Fresno Joke Here

Southern and Northern California "Fresno haters" would love to see this picture. I can hear the lame 'one horse town' jokes already.

Well F*#K those guys!

I may hate being the acidic focus of supposedly better than us NoCal and SoWhatCal people, but I think a person riding a horse in the middle of the city is cool.

The man riding the horse (pictured above) is sometimes spotted at the intersection of Ashlan and Fruit. This dude is no doubt coming from the Armstrong Stables, just down the street on Fruit.

Paying For Fresno History

Fresno City College employees are getting the nudge. They are being nudged into giving up a days' pay, every month, for a the next three years, all in an effort to help bridge the gap between the money FCC has to restore the old Administration Building and the money they need.

Yes, this is a creative way to help pay for the old buildings' renovations, but I can’t imagine every employee is happy to do this. It’s a damn good cause, the building definitely needs to be saved, but if I was asked to do something similar at my work, I don’t know if I could do it.

I shiver at what losing a day’s worth of pay, once a month, would do to my monthly nerd budget.

I would fall WAY behind on my Spiderman and X-men comics from Heroes. There would have to be one less run to Mike’s Pizzeria for one of their killer calzones. Tower Records’ line to purchase whatever metal album came out on Album Release Tuesday, would have one less metal-nerd.

What would you have to give up? Do you have it in you to let loose some of your paycheck to revive a historic Fresno building?

River Park Kids Not As Fun

Fresnans almost had themselves a team in the Little League World Series. Unfortunately Phoenix sent them home with the reward of going back to school. At least they got themselves and Fresno on ESPN – by the way, why was a Fresno team considered Northern California? Does Central California only exist to people from Central California?

Whatever region they were considered to be from, it was sweet run by the kids. But I couldn’t help but think that it would’ve been so much cooler if a team from Central or West Fresno went to the brink of the LLWS. You know, a team that would have gone through some real adversity. A team you would never expect to win anything; The Bad News Bears team of Fresno, if you will.

I’ve probably watched too many Bears movies, but all the teams in the LLWS (including River Park) felt like one of those evil-jerk-off teams the Bears always have to face.

The River Park kids are privileged. It’s not the RP kids fault, but hey, face it, they are setup to win. They have as good as coaches you could ever expect to have in a little league and a million dollar complex to play in. Somehow I don’t think a little league team from the Westside is playing on the same “field” as the River Park kids.

But hey, at least the RP Little Leaguers weren’t an evil team from North Clovis.

Loud Fresno Tool

It's has been days since the Tool concert and my ears are still ringing. That was one loudass show and I am accustom to metal shows.

Tool was, as always, amazing. Unfortunately, Maynard made no Fresno references, but I didn't expect him too - he's not that kind of frontman. He just sings is metal guts out while the band plays perfectly, no matter what city he's in.

The Tool boys were late coming to the stage, but I don't think it was their fault. Selland Arena opened the doors late, causing a big concert goers jam at the doors. There were still hudge lines of people trying to get in at 8:30 (the show was scheduled to start at 8:00). Dorktown doesn't know if that was SMG's fault or Tool's, but the show kicked-ass regardless.

There is currently only one bootleg video from the show, floating around. Check it out below. Hopefully, there is more to come.



If that's not enough for you, come listen to Dorktown Podcast #29 where Bells and I play some clips of the Fresno Tool show. Just click HERE and download the show.

Dale Shoots Back

Most of the time, it feels like nobody's reading the junk posted here - usually I'm right. Apparently that's not true with Dorktown's Fresno Famous Blog.

Mr. Dale Julin himself was big enough to respond to my original Blog about his show leaving the airwaves. Here it is:

Dale Julin replies to wiffle
Dear Wiffle;

Thanks for listening to our show. But I'd disagree with you that we ended it in an unprofessional manner. As news-men, we always focused on the day's news, and what our listeners thought about it. We are not the story. That's why we waited until the last half hour to tell our listeners. But please google "Dale Julin" and read Bentley's column about the end of our show, and you'll know the full story.
I love Fresno. Best regards from Santa Cruz, Dale Julin

Submitted by Dale Julin (not verified) on Thu, 08/03/2006 - 17:24.

This is how I responded to Dale's post:

Yo Dale,
Nice of you to respond Dale, I'm just a little bitter is all. But you have to understand, when you're on the radio five days a week, it does become about you - to a small extent anyway. Listeners get to know you whether you mean them too or not, so they become personally invested in the broadcaster and the show - that's just good radio.

If I'm indifferent to the radio personality, I wouldn't listen to the show. Why would I?

Your show relied heavily on callers; some of them should have been on your payroll. That's really what the show was about: setting up a topic so that people would get interested enough to call in. But the callers weren't given a chance to say anything about the show suddenly ending (I don't know what Dennis told you, but it was more like the last fifteen minutets, not the last thirty).

So the listeners/callers (the show's backbone) were totally left out.

I still love ya Dale but COME ON, it was the last show; You can't let it be about you and the show for ONE day?

Submitted by wiffle on Thu, 08/03/2006 - 21:17.