Ridiculousness

This is the cover of the current issue of Cosmo. When your magazine has basically the same content every month (SEX! DIET! STYLE!), you've got to be creative with your headlines. Maybe it's just me, but I literally burst out laughing when I saw this on the newsstand. Given that some version of this article leads nearly every issue, it almost makes you wonder if Cosmo is written by men.


This is a screengrab from the UPS tracking of a package I'm expecting. UPS is famous for its logistics, but this sequence of check-ins seems pretty odd. All the way to the west coast then back to Kentucky? Someone please explain how that gets the package to me in San Francisco faster.... Keep reading...

Fancy Food Show 2010: Awesome

Over the MLK weekend I attended the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. It may rank among the best 10 days of my life. For five hours I did my best to taste as many products as possible, leading to a bad case of what is apparently called “sample stomach.”

The scale of the show was simply jawdropping (pun intended). Over 250,000 products spread out over 10 football fields of floorspace. Hundreds of hollowed out cheesewheels, thousands of dips, spreads and sauces, and all kinds of foods that defied easy classification (like Black Garlic, which I’ll explain in a moment).

I wandered around in awe, as vendors large and small hawked their wares to potential customers and distributors. Crowds gathered around the expected booths (Colorado beers) as well as trendy newcomers (wine infused soda). Some countries had their own exhibition areas, from the sprawling cheese and pasta displays to Australia’s lone booth of surprisingly tasty breads and dipping spices.

Out of the 100+ foods and drinks I tried, my personal favorites were as follows:

Black Garlic, marketed by a Korean company, was unlike anything I’ve ever had before. After being fermented for a month, the garlic emerges soft and mild, with hardly a hint of the pungent garlic flavor we all know and love. Sold as whole bulbs or as a puree, this unique product is sure to find a niche. Check out their impressively well designed site.

Avocado Oil, sold by Alos Cuisine from my hometown of Atlanta, was also quite good. Although avocados—with their high fat content—clearly have oil to give, I’d never thought of them as an oil source. But avocado oil is pleasantly mellow, and has a higher burn point than most other cooking oils.

Sweet Potato Crackers from Polka Dot Bakeshop, available in four flavors, were the best snack food I tried. I’m a diehard sweet potato lover, and finding one of my favorite vegetables in cracker form was very exciting.

Of all the beverages I tasted, Vignette Wine Country Soda was by far the best. It was a refreshing non-alcoholic carbonated drink, infused with California grape varietals. It made me think of another drink I bought recently at Safeway called First Blush, which is 100% California grape juice, also available mixed with tea.

Other products I enjoyed were the 9-Grain Beer Bread from Wholesome Classics, Ozery Bread’s tasty flat buns (a definite trend despite the dwindling influence of the low-carb diet), and Bestaste’s various frozen Filipino finger foods. Keep reading...

San Fran Stuff

I noticed this storefront yesterday, and was amused by the choice of font for the name of the restaurant. While I agree with the choice of avoiding the obvious Chinese novelty font, using a Celtic novelty font doesn't really seem like the most appropriate choice....



Dockers has plastered the city of San Francisco with its new ad campaign, which consists of urging men to be men and "Wear the pants." When I saw this ad, however, I initially thought I was reading Vietnamese (really: "Diem" is a common Vietnamese word). I think that Dockers has realized the pun in this ad is a little too obtuse for the general public, because most of the bus posters featuring the line have disappeared. Keep reading...

Why can't we all just get along?

Living in a city exposes you to all kinds of crazy scenes and situations that can entertain, shock, or pain you, depending on your point of view.

In the past two weeks I’ve witnessed three fights at a club (all in one night), a woman having a seizure on the sidewalk, a man yelling at and attacking a metal sign outside a cafe, and an unfortunate, movie-like altercation at the post office yesterday. A woman was trying to mail a package, but the clerk said the ZIP code on the package was invalid. The woman insisted it was correct, and became increasingly agitated when the man refused to accept the parcel.

Her protests grew more shrill, as she first contended that a man would get better treatment, and then, being ignored by the clerk, wailed “What is wrong with you people!”

Yes, the clerk, and his coworker, were black.

Several people in the long line ooohed, and I knew what was coming next.

“What do you mean, you people?” the second clerk asked. But the delay of his response, as well as his tone, made this reaction sound almost perfunctory, as if he was just saying it because people (those in line, society, et al) expected it.

Fortunately it did not escalate from there, as a supervisor came out to help the woman. Still, I couldn’t help but shake my head. That line has become such a cliche, beaten into our heads in movies like Tropic Thunder, that people drag race into disputes in which it really plays no role.

This woman, living in the most liberal city in America, likely an Obama voter and one-time hippie, almost certainly was not making a statement about black people with her comment. Yet the man felt obliged to make that boilerplate retort, as if the two were playing out a scene in front of the line.

At this point it’s probably impossible to separate the “you people” expression from its racial connotations, but it’s a shame the two ever became so intertwined in the first place. Although racism is surely still a problem--especially the subtle, suspicious-of-Others kind--comments like these should not be taken as racist.

Given what came before the phrase in question, it is more likely she felt mistreated as a woman, not a white person. And given the long history of difficulties with gender relations, that is an issue that will be much harder to solve. Keep reading...

Interesting Stuff the Web Showed Me This Week

I've spent an unhealthy amount of time browsing the internet this week. These are some things that caught my eye:



I'm not the first to notice how ridiculous Facebook's suggestions are getting. But now it seems they're upping the ante even more, by showing how active your friends are on Facebook. Here, it says one of my friends is only 5% active, whatever that means. Clearly it's a bad thing, in FB's opinion. But I say good for them! I for one am not going to encourage any of my disinterested friends to give almighty Facebook more of their time. Don't start frittering your life away on social networking sites. Stay away.



When I searched for "perk" on Dictionary.com, a banner ad for a credit card appeared above. Coincidence or clever media buy? Who knows. But it's given me some ideas, either way....



Google announced the integration of real-time search this week, which can be accessed in one of two ways. Inputting your search term + "twitter" sometimes returns a dynamic twitter feed at the top of the results, but only for some search terms. The more reliable method is to click "Latest Results" in the Show Options column in your search results. Pretty cool. Keep reading...