Tom Scocca
Most Recently: Nine Red Herrings Or Otherwise Extraneous Facts From 'Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective'
On I'm Going Back To Arizona (And You Should Probably Come Too)
Is this really an issue on which people want to play yet another round of the Prole-ier Than Thou Game? Those darn coastal snobs, looking down on Arizona's latest vicious, nativist, police-state temper tantrum! They're only harassing the Browns because of their FEEEEEELINGS! Put a sock in it.
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On Mouthfeel: "Everybody's Nuts" Fraud Nuts Are Disgusting, Fraudulent
CS: we should call our "eating food" columns "Mouth Feel"
TS: asdl;fjasl;dfjaf
CS: HA
such a GROSS PHRASE
TS: Isn't it one word? "Mouthfeel"?
CS: OMG IT IS
ugh so newspeak!
TS: But, see, I like the word "mouthfeel" because of that. It is scary and offensive and disgusting in exactly the way that the concept it describes is.
CS: totally!
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On It's That Very Special Time of the Year: Name of the Year!
I do. It is funnier. Sloth is funnier than lust. "Tyquan" is better-sounding than "Pamela," and the one-two combination of [unusual, sound-based name] + [actual prosaic noun] makes for good, crisp comic timing. Hammock! And once you have the image of a happy, lazy hammock in your head, "Tyquan" begins to look like "Ny-Quil" in retrospect. Layers on layers. Pamela is all cheap sensation.
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On Matt Cherette Is Going To Move To New York City
Nice try, Comrade Sicha (though I hesitate even to call you "Comrade"). But you have done nothing to address the problem here. We have a dispatch from Barcelona, where the last foothold of the Workers' government is crumbling, and it is hopelessly narrow and uncritical of the Right.
The writer describes Republican troops bleeding and dying, but never once mentions that they are bleeding and dying on behalf of the Masses the world over. The Fascists are overrunning the city's last defenses, the writer says, with no reference to the global program of Fascist and Rightist domination over the Proletariat.
This pro-Fascist enthusiasm is shocking to see in a publication such as this one. I can only conclude that the editors, who were themselves present for the fall of Valencia, came away from that battlefield with a clear love of Franco. To write about Barcelona without mentioning the Masses is a betrayal of the Socialist movement, more devastating than the mere military setback the piece so lovingly describes.
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On Matt Cherette Is Going To Move To New York City
OK, this is a familiar routine to people who've worked for the Observer. Readers are angry. They have read a profile. They are angry about the profile...on the basis...of the observations...and quotations....and facts...that the writer...supplied...in the profile...that they are angry about.
Please, dear readers: "'This is the first time we've met IRL,' she said. "
You think that is an accident? All of you, at once, in agreement, think that by publishing that quote, the writer is demonstrating the inability to see things that are obvious to you. You, the readers of the site where it was published.
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On In The Weeds With Walt Frazier, Pedro Martinez and Earl Weaver
Memorial Stadium, please. And Pat Santarone.
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On Real America: The Gunmen Among Us
Katrina, you say?
"Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply 'didn't belong.'
[...]
"Fellow militia member Wayne Janak, 60, a carpenter and contractor, is more forthcoming with me. 'Three people got shot in just one day!' he tells me, laughing. We're sitting in his home, a boxy beige-and-pink structure on a corner about five blocks from Daigle's Grocery. 'Three of them got hit right here in this intersection with a riot gun,' he says, motioning toward the streets outside his home. Janak tells me he assumed the shooting victims, who were African-American, were looters because they were carrying sneakers and baseball caps with them. He guessed that the property had been stolen from a nearby shopping mall. According to Janak, a neighbor 'unloaded a riot gun'--a shotgun--'on them. We chased them down.'"
More where that came from ("'It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it.' A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, 'I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings.' A white woman standing next to him adds, 'He understands the N-word now.'") http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090105/thompson
Maybe it all woulda gone better if everybody had even more guns. That's one way of looking at it.
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On Football: Crippling Concussions, Wacky Mascots
Also the caption at the top calls Kyle Turley a "linebacker," which he was not at all.
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On The Best Songs About New York That Don't Have 'New York' In The Title
"53rd & 3rd."