It's (Once Again) the End of the World As We Know It

I've been remiss, I know. I'll see if I can be a better blogger this coming week.

As an amuse-bouche for a good week, here's a late-night/early-morning treat for you: a weather forecast of doom from the San Jose Mercury News!

This is slightly sinister, no? I'm not sure what is even sunnier than sunny, but I don't think it's a good thing. What is "and then some"? A tanning bed? A UV storm? A supernova? Twenty-four hours of daylight? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

It's clearly going to be a week of Biblical significance in the Bay Area. I'll try to keep you posted.

Getting Fish Wrong

Should "Foodie Friday" be renamed "Fact-checking Friday"? Just a thought.

Ever since Fosco was a small child, his favorite fast-food item has been McDonald's Filet-O-Fish. Of all of the fast-food out there in the world, no single item is responsible for a larger percentage of Fosco's excess body weight than that damned Filet-O. It's kind of the perfect sandwich, really (especially if your goal is heart disease).

So you can imagine Fosco's surprise when he read of the so-called "Filet-O-Fish for grownups" available at an Italian fish restaurant in Manhattan. In this NY Times review, Jill Santopietro describes the sandwich:

Their fried fish panini is a grown-up Filet-O-Fish: a toasted brioche roll filled with large pieces of peppery fried fish fillets, mayonnaise-y tartar sauce, a sad little tomato slice (just like at McDonald’s) and twin leaves of iceberg.

Sure, the sandwich sounds great but did you notice the clear error of fact in this description? Anyone who has ever actually eaten a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish could tell you that the sandwich has never featured "a sad little tomato slice." Part of the point of the Filet-O-Fish is that it ignores vegetables (like lettuce or tomato) entirely.

Fosco sheds a tear for the once-proud New York Times. Is a front page correction too much to ask?

N.B., In the last eight months or so, Fosco has only eaten one or two Filets-O-Fish. When you reach a certain age, fast-food starts to do outsize damage to one's health. Sigh.

From the Annals of "Say It With Pictures!"

From the current online front page at SFGate (the web version of the venereal venerable San Francisco Chronicle), an article about a new proposal for SF rent control:


I'm not really interested in the story (except that more rent control in SF is probably a good idea); rather, I'm laughing at the Chronicle's not-so-subtle photographic editorializing on the story. I mean, how seriously are we meant to take Supervisor Daly when he's being molested by a rainbow clown? Or is it a renegade Oompa Loompa?

Seriously: they couldn't find a better photo of this guy?

Let's Do the Hand Job Jive!

You've probably already seen this in some incarnation, but I have to pass it on anyway. I first saw it yesterday, courtesy of my old friend Joanna Goddard of A Cup of Jo.



Of course, the first thing you think when you watch it is that it's funny and cute. Then, after about fifteen seconds, you realize that it's going to go on for another two and a half minutes. Maybe you become slightly alarmed. Then you begin to feel impressed with the amount of practice that must have gone into it. After a while, you begin to think about the evolution of the routine: did they add one move a day? How long did it take them? And finally, if you're like me, you find yourself a bit wistful--wishing you had a coworker that you felt this much camaraderie with.

However, I do think the exemplarity of this scene implied by its YouTube title is probably overstated. I'm pretty sure that, during commercials, my local news anchors just hiss at each other like lizards.

Smells Like A Steak, Governs.

Yesterday's online NY Times reports a new rhetorical strategy by Republican governors to make their jobs sound more "rugged." Here's the summary:

Just picture Texas Governor Rick Perry saying: "I'm not just the Governor--I'm the Governero." I actually think it's a pretty good strategy.

Of course, now I have in my head the Simpson's "Canyonero" jingle. So why shouldn't you?



Sing along with me: "Govern-ero! Governero!"

From the Annals of Insult Journalism

Yesterday's online Santa Cruz Sentinel contained this article about a local show of wild cats (like tigers, cheetahs, mountain lions, &c.). This was the first sentence:

Covered with almost as many spots as some of the wildcats she'd come to see, Abby Smith walked right up and asked her question?

Let's just ignore entirely the misplaced question mark at the end and ask this question: did reporter Isaiah Guzman just rip on this poor girl? Is he making fun of her acne? Does she have a lot of moles? Birthmarks? Chicken pox? Is she dating Chris Brown?

Alas, no. Later we learn that she's just wearing a lot of leopard print. But the sentence is funnier without that knowledge.

Surfing the Times

Someone on the New York Times editorial staff has a hard-on for surfers lately. In the last week, the Times has had two online front-page feature stories on surfing. However, Fosco doesn't really blame them. After all, Fosco lives just a few blocks from one of the most famous surf spots on the West Coast and he finds the whole sport/pursuit pretty fascinating (although the physical attractiveness of most surfers has been greatly exaggerated).

Fosco's favorite surf story in the Times actually dates from 2006. It was this article on the intrepid surfers of Lake Erie. Fosco is a Midwesterner by birth, and so he finds it fascinating that surfing is possible on one of the Great Lakes. And here's an image that has stuck with Fosco for over two years:

It was the kind of day that lives mostly in Cleveland surfers’ fantasies. Pushed by the storm’s winds, water the color of chocolate milk rose 10 feet in the air before slamming onto a beach of boulders and logs. The temperature was 40 degrees and falling. One surfer, Vince Labbe, climbed onto his board only to get blown backward by 40-mile-an-hour winds.

"Water the color of chocolate milk"! I love that image. It's absolutely disgusting. But at least the waves must be nice, right? Well, not really.

The strongest winds and waves come in winter, just before Lake Erie freezes. Waves up to 10 feet have been surfed, but the largest swells are usually chest-high. Instead of curling into a vertical wall, the waves are round like haystacks, and they collapse onto the shore like soggy paper.

Wait. It gets even worse.

Surfers learn to avoid ice chunks the size of bowling balls. Some wear goggles to surf through freezing rain, which can sting their eyes like needles. That is a bad idea, Mr. Labbe said, because the goggles freeze to their faces.

Surfers watch their friends for signs of hypothermia, urging them to leave the water when their eyes glaze over and their words slur. Ear infections are a common affliction.

And you thought Pacific "surf bums" were deluded... Surfing in Cleveland is clearly an insanity on par with something out of the DSM-IV (or Mormonism).


Happily, the Times published a second article on the Great Lakes surfing scene last week, with an article on surfing Lake Superior. Believe it or not, surfing Superior is actually colder than Erie.

“It’s warmer in the water,” said Markus Barsch, 21, a tree trimmer from Ashland, Wis., and one of a dozen surfers who had shown up to shred on a 20-degree day.

Surfing in a snowstorm may sound like a direct route toward hypothermia or certain death. But on Lake Superior, where surfers ride all months of the year, thick wet suits, gloves, hoods, booties and petroleum jelly smudged on exposed skin all form a protective shell against the crushing cold encountered by wave catchers in what is one of the world’s most unlikely surfing scenes.

What do you even say about something like that? Except "jeez."

Yet if you prefer warmer waters for your surfing, there are other dangers, according to today's Times article on the surf gangs of Oahu. It seems that the famous surfing sites on Hawaii's North Shore are under the control of a surf gang called the "Wolfpak." Seriously. However, before you laugh too hard, you should know that these are guys to take seriously:

The most notorious member is the group’s enforcer, Kala Alexander, a professional surfer with muscular tattooed arms and “Wolfpak” inked across his knuckles. In 2007, Alexander starred in “The 808,” a reality television series about the Wolfpak and the North Shore, and appeared in the films “Blue Crush” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” But he has also gained fame for YouTube videos that show him pummeling surfers on the sand several years ago.

“The code is to respect other people,” Alexander, 39, said. “People come over here and don’t respect other people. You’re going to run into problems if you do that.”

That is what happened to Chris Ward, a 30-year-old professional from San Clemente, Calif., and runner-up to Kelly Slater last month at the Pipeline Masters. In November, Australian publications reported that Ward cut off a local surfer while riding a wave at Pipeline. He was banished to the beach, where a Wolfpak member smacked him in the head. Without providing details, Ward confirmed that the incident happened.

Dude, you so can't cut off another surfer. Yet while all of this may sound either a bit silly or a bit dangerous (depending on your temperament), there are those who argue for the necessity of gang control of the best surf spots as a way of keeping order:

As surfing has become increasingly popular, some say fear of violent reprisal ensures order and safety at congested and perilous surf spots like Pipeline.

“It’s a dangerous environment, and without a self-governing control pattern it would just be chaos out there,” Rarick said.

[...]

“It was crowded when I came here,” Alexander said about Pipeline. “A lot of people in the water, not much respect. Where I grew up on Kauai, you respect everybody in the water, especially your elders. Don’t step out of line. We just brought that mentality over here.”

Hey, remember the episode when Paulie said that about the Newark garbage business?

Actually, Fosco's favorite part of the article was his discovery that his (recently-married) college roommate Derek Ho was actually a surf star in Hawaii before Harvard:

At the time there was a void in the Pipeline lineup as those who regulated the waves during the 1990s, like Derek Ho, Johnny Boy Gomes and Marvin Foster, had grown older and moved on.

You know someone for fifteen years and this kind of thing still comes as a surprise.

From the Annals of Burying the Lede

You may have already seen something like this, a pictorial compilation of all of the newspaper front pages from January 21. It's a nice Obama collage and very much speaks to the relief that almost everyone feels right now.

Fosco's favorite part is the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News, seen below as surrounded by a number of other front pages from that same day:

I don't see the word "Obama" anywhere on that page. Clearly, this is independent journalism at its finest.

From the Annals of Natural Childbirth

From today's Santa Cruz Sentinel, we have this story about a baby born on the front porch of a mountain cabin near Santa Cruz. The neat(?) part of the story is that the baby was delivered by the baby's father, with help from EMTs on the phone. The Sentinel is pretty pleased with this story, especially as they are offering the recording of the 911 call on their site. Well, not the whole recording, as you can see from this screenshot:

Of course, this makes one wonder what got edited from the recording. Here's Fosco's guess:

[911 Operator]: Can you see the baby's head?
[Baby's Father]: Oh My Fucking God! There is a fucking baby coming out of her vagina! Her vagina! That head is fucking huge! Holy shit! What is happening to her vagina? Jesus Jumpin' Christ! Please, please, please, Lord... make it stop...

At least that's my understanding of how these things usually work.

From the Annals of "News"

During the last twenty-four hours,

• Israel went on the offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
  
• the military coup in Guinea consolidated its power.
  
• Kashmir continues to vie to be ground zero for the first nuclear war.
  
• and, closer to home, Satan Bush has opened the California coastline to oil drilling.

With all this important news, can you imagine what is on the front page of the (online) New York Times?


Oh. I see. Well, I guess it's this kind of insightful cultural journalism that makes the Times so respected (especially among the skating youth).