Category: News Stories

More From Our London Bureau

Here’s an update from John and Susan, my expat people in London. You may recall them from last year’s vacation travelogue.

“We’re all good. Had to buy a bike to get home, but Susan wanted a new one anyway. The English are pros at this sort of thing — no one is freaking out, we kinda expected it. The response was, “let’s have a cuppa [tea].” They should re-open all the tube stations tomorrow morning. Wow. I’m very impressed. The incident is being treated like a crime scene, very cool and professional. It sounds like the Americans are taking it harder than the British – wacky. You changed to orange alert from yella. Very curious.”

Reality Upgrade

“Tube Blasts: Commuters Dead” read the Evening Standard headline placards across London. I can see them at Flickr, which gives me something that the traditional news media never quite deliver: firsthand perspective. With the help of Flickr tags like “blasts,” “bombs,” and “London,” I can get an idea of what my fellow photobloggers on the street in London are seeing. They become, in effect, a worldwide network of amateur news photographers.

So far, at least one of them was on the Tube this morning, and his cameraphone pictures are now making their way up to the major media.

So this morning brings to our attention not only that the Western world is still a terrorist target (lest we get complacent in our relative lack of post-9/11 trauma), but also that we have avenues of information that we didn’t have in, say, 2001.

Cheap Beer in Crisis

From an article on declining beer sales at Slate:

Millions of consumers have in recent years become connoisseurs (that is, insufferable snobs) when it comes to coffee, cheese, chocolate, you name it.

Demanding quality should never be something that gets one tarred with the epithet “snob.” Unless of course people are demanding quality only because everyone else is doing it, and passing themselves off as faux connoisseurs. But I suspect that, given the economy, people would be less likely to pay the extra bucks for quality beer, coffe, cheese, etc., just for the sake of appearances. I’m sure it happens but I wouldn’t think it would happen often enough to affect Anheuser-Busch’s bottom line.

Anyway, life is too short for bad beer, coffee or cheese, dammit. And I’m certainly no connoisseur. Shame on Slate for assuming that Americans are drinking less beer. They’re not. They’re just drinking less bad beer. And that’s cause for celebration. Why must the media always see the pint glass as half empty…rabble-rousing bastards.

Weighty Brass

OpurtThe Penguin Returns! Berke Breathed is drawing again, and Opus will return to the funnies in November! This is the first time I’ve ever seen a cartoonist make a comeback, and I am ecstatically glad to see it. Bloom County shaped my existence in innumberable ways. It is by far my favorite comic strip of all time. Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side were the greatest of strips for this generation, but Bloom County was like a second family to me. I own every book and have read every strip multiple times. My friend Kevin and I can still quote lines from it – and my copy of Bloom County Babylon still has his phone number on it from when I met him in 6th grade. Just the other day I made a mix CD for a friend that featured the "Gene Simmons Never Had a Personal Computer When He Was a Kid" ad. The stuff is encoded in my DNA. I can’t praise it enough.

I always wondered if the success of Bloom County was fueled by the Republican administrations during which the comic flourished, now I suspect I was right. In any case, I hope the strip maintains its wit better than Outland, which, while more visually creative, lacked the clever writing of its parent strip.

Drudge Commits Poesy

“The new generation really needs to reach out for romance, because we’re spending too much time in front of screens and radiation and lights and blips and blurbs. We need romance and flowers and wind.”
– Matt Drudge

Amen, brother (I say as I stare blankly at my screen). This quote came from a great article on him by my Camille Paglia in Radar Magazine. I can’t recommend enough that everyone in the world read more Paglia. She’s a genius.