Phood foto phun

If you were the editor who wrote captions for the photos accompanying the Los Angeles Times' restaurant reviews, wouldn't you try to learn the visual differences between - just for example - a stuffed chicken on the one hand and pierogies on a bed of sauteed cabbage on the other?

No. Apparently, you would not.


Unless Jidori is Hebrew for "cleverly disguised to look like pierogies," I think this description is a bit off.

One other quick thought: Are those of us in L.A. and New York getting to the point where a restaurant having a "Top Chef" alum on staff is sort of like having a basketball team with a "tall dude"?*

* I think we are.

SFTC Cribs: Inept bomber edition

Once in a while when I'm scanning the latest headlines on my Google home page, I'll see a link to a seemingly inane "news story" in the CNN.com feed and cringe. And I'll wonder: "What kind of idiots would waste their time reading about this nonsense?"

And then, typically, I answer my own question by clicking through to read more.

Today, that happened when I came across a Very Important News Article about the "$65,000 home equity piggy bank" belonging to Faisal Shahzad, the man being held in connection with the botched attempt to car-bomb Times Square last weekend.

I'm not sure why this seemed interesting, except perhaps that I've never seen the inside of an incompetent bomber's home, or maybe I'm the kind of guy who just likes virtual open houses. As you can see here, it's all pretty unremarkable. No telltale signs of an "aspiring terrorist bomber," as CNN so eloquently* put it. Not even any photos of Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

In fact, what I found most interesting were the cloying little blurbs accompanying the photos, which read as though they were co-written by Captain Obvious and a very dimwitted real estate agent.

For example, the master bedroom:

This is precisely the reason we turn to CNN. For analysis like this: "Green is the theme color in the Shahzads' bedroom. The curtains pick up the tone of the bed linens, and a bamboo print hung between the windows extends the botanical motif."

This is not retouched or edited. Someone really wrote that.

Walk with me to the kid's room, won't you?

The extraordinary analysis only deepens here, where we learn that the child's bedroom "appears to be slightly more cluttered than the rest of the house - a not-uncommon characteristic of a child's room."

Penetrating insights from the news organization that is quickly becoming known as the world leader in boudoir-organization reportage.

OK, let's go out back:

In case you can't quite make it out, this is a photo of an empty wooden deck. Which is empty. And has nothing on it.

CNN helpfully explains: "There's certainly no evidence that anyone barbecued or lounged on the house's deck; it seems to be entirely empty."

Yes, yes it does.

*Either eloquently or ridiculously. You decide.

Missed metaphors, part 2

(If you missed SFTC's groundbreaking Missed Metaphors, part 1, feel free to either scroll down a bit or click here.)

I realize that because of the iPad and Kindle - and, frankly, because we as a society just keep getting stupider - the good old hardback book is quickly becoming obsolete. Which probably means that book-inspired metaphors are also becoming more and more archaic. Soon, I would venture to guess, the very concepts of "judging a book by its cover" or "throwing the book at someone" will be nearly meaningless.

I think that explains why the good folks who edit Associated Press sports articles failed to catch a botched attempt at turning such a phrase. Trying to explain that the UCLA gymnastics team's two most recent championships occurred immediately before and after a string of five straight championships by the University of Georgia, an AP writer offered:

The Bruins won the title for the first time since 2004, bookmarking the Gym Dogs' five-year run.

I don't read a whole lot, but I'm pretty sure a bookmark is something you stick in the middle of a book, not on either side of one. It would have been nice for the editor to realize that UCLA's 2004 and '10 victories bookended the Georgia wins.

This sentence also reminds me of one of the main reasons I never tried out for Georgia gymnastics: the name Gym Dogs.

I think it's "i before e except after gg"

Whoever edits the Los Angeles Times website is doing such an awesome job these days. To wit, an excerpt from a police blotter item posted last night on the always-fascinating L.A. Now page:

The attacker is described as Latino, 20 to 30 years old and unshaven. He was wearing a baggie black hoodie and baggy black pants, police said.

I feel like that description is really going to help narrow the suspect list a lot. Also, nice to see that "hoodie" is now acceptable newspaper writing.

Wow, that must have been one fabulous arrest

To the growing list of Republican legislators who have consistently voted against gay rights measures despite eventual revelations that they are gay, we now add the name of California's distinguished Roy Ashburn.

You can get the details here. Mostly, though, I just want to call your attention to the strangely composed NPR.com headline, which - for a moment - led me to believe that the arrest itself had somehow changed his sexual orientation:
Calif. State Senator Says He's Gay After DUI Arrest

In which chocolate, chocolate, caramel, chocolate and cookies are "good for you"

Being lactose intolerant, it makes all the sense in the world that one of the Twitter feeds I follow is that of Baskin-Robbins.

Perhaps it's to test my will power. For example, since starting to follow BR's tweets, I have successfully avoided going to my nearby BR31 despite my deep passion for BR Rocky Road ice cream. I even managed to stay away during last month's 31 cent scoop promotion (which, as I write this, is still being promoted on the company's home page despite the fact that it was held - in case you missed it earlier in this sentence - last month).

A few minutes ago, those crazy ice cream-making geniuses actually posted this* on Twitter: Try our new Brownie a la Mode w/ layers of chocolate brownie, chewy cookie, & caramel. Good for you & your friends!

Which seems accurate. Except maybe for the, uh, second sentence. So I retweeted part of the message with a quick commentary:

I'm not saying it was necessarily in response to my tweet, but 14 minutes later - I counted - BR had deleted the original tweet and posted this version, deleting the "good for you" and replacing it with "big enough for you":

My guess is that in order to keep the promo within Twitter's 140-character limit, the writer translated "enough servings for a party of five" to "good for you." Here's the nutrition info** - you can decide for yourself whether the two are synonymous.

SFTC: Looking out for your saturated fat intake, one post at a time.

* It's possible that I'm off by a character or two - they may have had "and" instead of "&" in order to stay within the 140 chracter limit, and I couldn't access the original message once they deleted it. But the "Good for you & your friends" language is precisely what was in the original tweet.

** Worth reading, if only because this confirms that - I am not making this up - the dessert does not contain crustaceans.

Is there any other kind?

For months, I've been confused by a sign posted in a parking area near my office. It reads: "Rear and side-loading vans only."

Are you aware of any other types of vans?

Maybe they thought the movie was about long-term debt

I'm just saying: Some New York Times copyeditors apparently need to get out more. See a movie once in a while. So, like, they'd know not to lowercase the name of one of the world's best-known film characters or add periods where they don't belong.

Take, for example, this item from the news summary in the print edition of today's Gray Lady. (Everything, including capitalization and punctuation, is how it appeared in the paper.)

The reinvention of the bond film series gave the hope that the Quantum of Solace game would provide something beyond the usual movie-tie-in dreck. Alas, it does not, Seth Schiesel writes, though .007 shoots a lot. PAGE C3

In which 70% < 60%

I'm not great at math, so maybe I'm missing something here. But I was looking at Restaurant.com, about to buy myself some discount gift certificates for two local eateries, when I came to this screen:





See that blue box at the bottom right corner? That's where they break down your gift certificate options. Well, here, take a closer look:



The $10 gift certificate costs only $3. The way I run the numbers, that's 70% off. Not bad. But Restaurant.com says the "best value" is the $100 gift certificate, which costs $40. I think that comes out to right around 60% off, which... isn't that less than 70% off?

Maybe they just mean it's the best value for the people who run the web site.

While we're on the topic, if the site lists restaurants near you - the selection is OK but not great for establishments in our area - it can be kind of a handy way to save a few bucks. And they're doing some kind of holiday promotion now, so if you enter the code FROSTY at checkout, the gift certificates are even cheaper. Happy shopping.

He might need some help with how kites work

Maybe we'll still have some nice White House malapropisms to play with, even after W leaves the DC.

December 16, at the news conference announcing Arne Duncan as the nominee for Secretary of Education:

"These kids, Mr. President, are the kite strings that lift our national ambitions aloft." - VP elect Joe Biden

Why you should like Jason Bartlett

You might not care about the World Series. Or baseball. Or sports. Or anything that's good about America, for that matter.

But you should care about Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Jason Bartlett. Because during the fifth inning of last night's World Series game, he stole second base. Why does that matter to you?

Well, as a result of that stolen base, you are entitled to a free taco at Taco Bell.* (And, no, I'm not admitting that I made a lunchtime run for the border yesterday. For three crunchy tacos.**) How great must Bartlett feel? At a time when Americans could really use a pick-me-up, the guy treats the whole country to approximately 1/4 of a meal of questionable nutritional value. Awesome.


* Can someone tell TB copywriters that "90ft." should have a space in there somewhere? Or else, maybe mistakes like that are just soooo out-of-the-bun.

** This is partly why I'm eating strawberries with a little granola - barely a light dusting of granola, really - as I write this post.

Grammar school

I have a new second-favorite blog. My favorite, of course, is World's Best Burger, although sadly, the chefs have been on blogcation the last few months. As if going to law school and getting married are more important than weighing in on Mitt Romney and bubble gum TV shows. Psh.

Anyway, my new No. 2 is After Deadline, a New York Times blog that goes deep, deep, deep into grammar and usage. Favorite part is the comments from readers who try to second-guess the editor.

Want a full-on discussion of who vs. whom, or curious about the proper use of the phrase "begs the question?" (On the latter, I'd wager a buck that you've been using it wrong.) If so, After Deadline is your destination.

Best I can tell, the blog has yet to cover whether it's OK to end a sentence with "also, too."

TASTEBUDS HELD HOSTAGE UPDATE: It has now been nine painful days since I've savored the flavor of a creamy-and-sweet-and-just-slightly-spicy chai latte. It was all I could do not to look as I drove by my Starbucks this morning. Don't worry; I'm sure I'll be OK.

By dint of their stupidity

I won't get into critiquing Palin's speech, even though it made me think I was listening to an overachieving 11th grader with a Minnesohhta accent run for class president.

I'll just get right to favorite moment from last night's convention coverage. It was during the orgy of useless post-speech interviews, when Keith Olbermann struck a blow for English usage. After a reporter had just interviewed Arizona senator Jon Kyl (a very efficiently spelled name, don't you think?), and the senator said something about proving the "pundints" wrong.

When the reporter tossed it back to Olbermann, he told the viewing audience that there was something he wanted to correct, once and for all, because he was tired of hearing it mispronounced. (The other offender last night - whom Olbermann didn't mention specifically -was Palin.) With fantastically appropriate indignation, Keith said: "It's pundit, p-u-n-d-i-t, not pundint."

Somewhere, one of the Merriam brothers or that Webster guy is smiling.

Patience

Attention writers: Any time I come across "wait for it..." (as in: "Max ate an entire pizza and then... wait for it... six hamburgers!") in whatever it is I'm reading, I don't wait. I just keep moving right ahead. Maybe it's just me, but I don't find the ellipses really slow me down that much.

Just thought you'd want to know.

Recruit, redux

I promised, oh about two months ago, to keep you posted on the strange story of Kevin Hart, a 290-pound (or maybe 300-pound) high school football player from Nevada, who held a press conference to announce he was going to play football at the University of California.

The original post is here, but to make a strange story short: He made the announcement, Cal said it had never recruited him, and Hart said he must have been duped.

I'm about 10 weeks late in following up -- guess I should have checked the news coverage the day after the original story broke. That's when Hart admitted he made the whole thing up, because, as he told the AP, he wanted to play Division I football "more than anything."

Gotta give him credit for putting one over on the coaches and administrators, not to mention the media goons who showed up for the shindig without bothering to call the universities he said had been recruiting him. Sounds like young Kevin is one of those future college students who will -- to quote those annoying NCAA TV ads -- turn pro in something other than sports.

Like Delmarpa, but different

If you've read any past posts, you know I'm a big fan of The New York Times.

That's mostly because it's one of the best-written, best-edited papers there is. (And, as my college newspaper editor used to point out, it doesn't come with coupons or the funny pages, so it must be pretty serious about the news.) Usually the top-notch editing applies to the Times web site, too. But I found a funny mistake yesterday in a Q&A with the Times travel editor.

Responding to a question from a reader, the editor mentioned the Delmarva Peninsula, which he described as, "that jut of land made up of portions of three states (Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania)...."

Well, that's close. As the great Meat Loaf once sang: Two out of three ain't bad. Problem is, the "-va" in Delmarva comes from Virginia, which should have been a hint that the Old Dominion State, not Pennsylvania, is the third state that makes up the peninsula.

Being the editor pest I am, I actually emailed the Times yesterday to let them know. The mistake was fixed when I checked the page this morning.

BTW, geography errors aside, the piece is kind of an interesting read if you're looking for vacation ideas. But it sorta seems like a travel editor could check a map for that kind of thing, doesn't it?

... Or however you spell it

As if, in some small way, the folks who write CNN's Web site reports were trying to provide support for yesterday's post, this sentence appeared today in a CNN.com story about American Airlines' Great Flight Cancellation Spree of 2008:

At Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, American passengers reported frustration but complemented the carriers efforts to get them to their destinations.

Spelling? Punctuation? Whatever, dude. Haven't you seen those touchscreen election maps?!?!

Sad, but (not) true

Oh, wait. You mean those sad stories about the common folk that presidential candidates tell during their campaign speeches have to be true? Hm.

Well, that changes everything! What's Hillary going to do now?

This gaffe has to be mostly the fault of her campaign staff, for not checking it out, but maybe she oughta surround herself with people who would have thought of doing that. At this point, I think I'd be more surprised if the stories in her speech were actually based in fact.

Editor geeks, rejoice

The New York Times' director of copy desks answers readers' questions about the aracana of copyediting in a feature that'll probably seem incredibly boring to non-writers, but makes me superhappy.

Always wanted to know why a copy desk chief was called the "slot," and Merrill Perlman comes through. Just wish someone would ask her where the -30- at the end of articles came from.

Worth somewhat less than 1,000 words

MEMO

To: People who edit CNN.com
From: SFTC
Re: Your brains

Look, I was as big a fan of John Ritter's sensational sitcom acting as the next guy. Also, he was supercreepygreat in Slingblade. But I don't think "doctors being cleared" in his five-years-ago death qualifies as a top-of-the-home-page-with-a-big-photo "DEVELOPING STORY." It sucks that he died, but in the scheme of things, this is not that important to very many people, and--not to nitpick--but it's not developing. It's already developed. Get over your wacky yellow banners and just report the damn news.

Of course, I have to admit your wacky yellow banner got me to pay attention to the story. Which is sort of unfortunate, because you chose to illustrate the article with a photo of a smiling John Ritter. Take a look:





Call me crazy, but when the first two things you see are the bold headline and smilin' John, it sort of makes it look like this dead guy is elated about the jury clearing the doctors who may or may not have hastened his own death. Which he probably isn't/wasn't. (I'm just guessing.)

I understand he was a comic actor and tended to smile a lot, so you were probably limited in your Ritter photo options. And running a shot of him in his postmortem state would not have gone over well. But, maybe a shot of the courtoom scene? His relatives after hearing the news? A retro shot of Joyce DeWitt?

C'mon. Try harder next time.

Oh, but thank you for your diligent, in-depth coverage of Ashley Alexander Dupre's MySpace page. Keep up the good work there.