Cyrus Farivar

Here’s something for all of you law geeks out there: Anna Nicole Smith’s legal wranglings over the estate of her former husband against his son, has landed her in the Supreme Court. WashPost: Sober as always as they wrestled with the legal dispute at hand, the justices nevertheless seemed aware of stepping into an epic soap opera of the kind that could have happened only in Texas. The battle between Anna Nicole and Pierce “is quite a story,” as Justice…

Please don’t call me at 11:30 pm and then proceed to leave a lengthy message which has nothing to do with what I wanted to talk to you about.

Sarah Vowell, NYT: Seems as if American voters picked the current president because they thought he’d be a fun hang at a cookout — a jokey neighbor who charred a mean burger and is good at playing Frisbee with his dog. What we should be doing is electing a president with the nitpicky paranoia you’d use to choose a cardiologist — a stunted conversationalist with dark-circled eyes and paper-cut fingertips who will stay up until 3 tearing into medical journals…

Among the treasures that Becky brought me back from Korea and Japan were two CDs of Korean pop music. One was of Rain, whom I first heard about from this NYT article about him. At 23, Rain, who has been labeled the Korean Justin Timberlake and the Korean Usher, is a serious and driven performer (with washboard abs, winsome looks and a Gene Kelly-like ability to leap through puddles while performing his hit song, “It’s Raining”). He wants nothing less…

Is that former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) is now lobbying his wife, Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) on behalf of Dubai Ports World. John of Americablog.com says it best: As if this deal to sell off control of US ports to the United Arab Emirates couldn’t become any sleazier, we now have former Republican Senator Bob Dole being hired as a lobbyist to influence – who? – HIS OWN WIFE. Yes, Bob Dole’s wife is a Republican Senator from North Carolina.…

So apparently I’m on some kind of kick to winning KALX tickets. I’ve now won tickets to four shows — and haven’t been to any of them. I guess I just happen to be listening while driving and happen to have my phone handy. Although, I probably will go this Friday to see The Wedding Present at Slim’s. I downloaded some of their music off iTunes and have enjoyed ’em so far, particularly “Always the Quiet One” — anyone got…

Dear Editor, I am writing to you to take issue with your editorial dated February 10, 2006. I find your argument against installing a municipal wireless network in Pleasanton to be overly paranoid and in some cases factually wrong. You wrote that San Francisco has a great deal of “hot spots” and presented a scenario where Pleasanton would become “jammed with laptops.” I work in San Francisco and despite what you may think of our local digerati, Market Street has…

So I’m not the No. 1 “Cyrus” on Google, but I am the No. 1 “Farivar”. If you want to link to my blog with just my first name to increase my Google PageRank, feel free. 🙂

Apparently the LA Times just figured out that there’s TONS of amazing Persian food all over LA. But nevertheless, for the uninitiated, here it is. LA Times: It’s punched-up barbecue, barbecue for the nose: smoky grilled meat swathed with heady scents of saffron, butter, onions and aromatic rice. No wonder the shah of Iran wanted his chelo kebab. About 150 years ago, Naser od-Din Shah was yearning for the kebabs he’d grown up on in Azerbaijan, so he ordered an…

WashPost Op-Ed by William Easterly (via Drezner): Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina Jolie toured the continent on behalf of MTV, with Jolie asking how we can stand by and let it be destroyed. The world’s leaders gathered at the United Nations in September to further discuss ending poverty in Africa, apparently unfazed by yet another voluminous U.N. report highlighting the failure of the grand plans (the “Millennium Development Goals”) to make any progress. They repeated a familiar refrain: If aid efforts…