Specious trend of the day: icing

By Dan Brooks in specious trends 4 Comments

Actual trend of the day: 17 year-old girls drinking sugar liquor

Because I am very old, I read the New York Times in order to keep up with various social trends. It’s a little like reading Madeleine L’Engle to keep up with developments in contemporary physics: one encounters compelling stories, if not reports of, you know, this world. Tuesday, the Times turned the tables on its old adversary reality with this article about icing, which suggests that the trend—of which actual evidence exists, for once—may itself be artificial. It’s a Times trend piece in reverse: the people doing it believe in it, and the newspaper thinks it’s made up. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The reader not wearing flip flops and a khaki visor may ask, what is icing? To which I reply: take a knee, bro.

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The coolios of now: NYT continues its genius trend reporting

By Dan Brooks in new york times, obesity, specious trends 18 Comments
Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners, hilariously threatening to beat his wife.

Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners, hilariously threatening to beat his wife.

Due to recent financial troubles, the New York Times has been forced to sell their building in Times Square and relocate news operations to an office park on the moon. But don’t worry—they’ll keep observing us earthlings through high powered telescopes, reporting on each trend that sweeps through our surprisingly complex society. “Secrete not mucus from your eyes and nose, indicating sadness or physical discomfort,” a Times spokesman said from his hydro-suit. “Each human statistical emergence will be chronicled with the depth and up-to-the-minute [whirring sound] you have come to expect from America’s most respected newspaper.”

Making good on that promise is this piece declaring that as of this summer, it’s “hip”—a term meaning “following the latest fashion, especially in music and clothes”—to have a pot belly. Guy Trebay, whom you should Google search now before the results are swamped with re-posts of his Pulitzer acceptance speech, calls it the Ralph Kramden. The Kramden is “too pronounced to be blamed on the slouchy cut of a T-shirt, too modest in size to be termed a proper beer gut, developed too young to come under the heading of a paunch.” Basically, he’s narrowed it down to this one guy he took home from Union Pool. He should have called it the Rod Masters (Which I Looked Him Up On Facebook and That’s Totally a Fake Name.)

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Happy nondenominational winter holiday from Combat! blog

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Don't worry, kids—that's just a regular grandpa and several deer.

It’s Christmas Eve, which means I have to spend the day adjusting the harness and breathing apparatus that will allow me to hang motionless in the center of the chimney until 12:01 am. In the meantime, why don’t you enjoy the last New York Times trend piece of the year? It’s about how men who haven’t bought Christmas presents often purchase jewelry at the last minute—hint hint, boyfriend of New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford. Props to Mike Sebba for the link and for pointing out this sentence:

“Last year, for instance, more than $709 million was spent on jewelry on Dec. 23 and 24 alone, representing 10 percent of the entire month’s jewelry sales, according to SpendingPulse.”

Yeah, December 23rd and 24th are one day less than 10% of the month of December. If that sort of childlike wonder at normal distribution doesn’t put you in a festive mood, there’s also this interactive feature about dead people. And to all a good night!

Friday links! Everybody take a deep breath edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments

The end of September has brought with it the end of Deadline Week, and now the interns and I relax amid the tropical plants and exotic lizards of the Combat! blog offices. Everyone has been given coffee and donuts—except for the tiger, who is being punished—and the sound of relieved sighs fills the air. Now seems as good a time as any to step back and get a little perspective on the week that was, so terrible in its enactment and so mild in its repose. As we ease into what will surely be a shrill October with one last beautiful fall weekend (Missoula only,) let’s take a moment to calmly consider good news, responsible analysis, irrelevant fluff pieces and, okay, one harrowing story of official irresponsibility. Won’t you take a breath with me?

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Friday links! Unprovable assertions edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

One can only imagine what life is like for an engineer, or a commercial fisherman, or some other person whose survival is predicated on their assessments of things actually corresponding to the world around them. The real racket is commentary, where ontology goes out the window in favor of epistemology, and once epistemology gets comfortable it stops wearing pants and starts leaving Mountain Dew bottles full of chew spit on the coffee table, while simultaneously claiming that it cleans up “all the time.” As in fashion, the trick in commentary is not to be right so much as memorable. Even being publicly proven wrong is a moment of career advancement, providing at worst an occasion for further commentary. Frankly, we at Combat! blog are a little jealous that we’re not getting a bigger piece of the pie. We’re wrong all the time, but nobody ever pillories us for our specious claims, much less our constant use of the word “rimjob.” One suspects that we simply need a bigger megaphone.

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