Warm Fuzzy Feelings at the Cherry Blossom Festival

I'd like to give a big thanks to everyone attending the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival at SF's Japantown over the weekend. The weather was a little windy, but everyone had a great time with the parade and all the fun booths selling all kinds of goodies.

One thing I'm especially proud about is the people who generously donated to the earthquake and tsunami relief fund during the festival.

On Saturday, the Teriburger booth had one of those donation cans on their counter, but hardly received any donations. I thought to myself, why don't I solicit donations as part of my duties at the booth?

It worked out! I'm the street barker for Kimochi's Teriburger booth and I was advertising our burgers and also asking for donations by holding onto the donation can. Donations kept coming in, just within the first 30 minutes, I had several people drop their coins and dollar bills in the can. At other times, I had people feeding $20 bills. On multiple occasions, the can got so full, I had to push down the bills as far as I can just to accept more cash.

It's also nice to hear some of the great stories from people:

• A child donated all of her piggy bank savings.
• A second child sold baked goods in front of her home and donated all the proceeds.
• One said she already donated $80 and donated more out of kindness.

In the end, word has it the festival generated $200,000 in donations to help Japan. The Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California already received over $1,000,000 donations and the extra $200K will do great help.

Thanks for a great weekend!

KRON Bleeds the Earthquake News to Death

As you local Bay Area folks know, there was a level five earthquake that hit just after 8PM. Interestingly, I didn't feel it here in San Francisco, although one of my co-workers mentioned about it briefly after the end of my workday.

So, I get home, and I turn on the TV because I'm a little stressed and tired. Since we lived in earthquake country, an earthquake here or there may just put a little ten minute "breaking news" report on the channels, in which they did, and the occasional scroll bar on the top of the tube; yet there was one station that really pissed me off.

If you read my blogs, you know the TV news station I hate the most, KRON. They were the only station that kept bleeding the news from at least 8PM, and now it's 11PM, and it's time for their regular 11PM news broadcast.

When I say "bleeding the news," I mean, they were trying to squeeze every single thing out of the damn news. Hey, IT'S JUST A FUCKING EARTHQUAKE! Things get broken here and there, but there's no fire, no panic, no deaths reported, so why did KRON just send the TV news straight to hell?

Oh I get it, you get people to send photographs on the air, and have stupid hicks call LIVE on TV so that they can get their 15 minutes of fame to mention their "story" (which I don't honestly give a fuck). Like many of us would say "just the facts ma'am;" but it seems that KRON DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT.

I might HATE KRON, but the only two interesting programs that I watch on a Tuesday night is "The Academy" (LA Sheriffs academy school for wusses to become cops), and "Jail" (recycled stuff from Court TV about the jail system). It's interesting reality stuff, especially when I'm not into repeats of Law and Order. So by running their LAME earthquake coverage for THREE STRAIGHT HOURS, I DID NOT get to see that new episode of "The Academy" that I've been waiting for.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE SLAP THE NEWS PRODUCERS OF THIS STATION?

AND YES, I WILL STILL SAY IT: KRON NEWS STILL SUCKS, AND ROB BLACK (THE STUPID FINANCIAL JACKASS WHO RUINED THE 4PM NEWS) SHOULD BE FIRED.