Backstory
For a year and a half, I wrote Today’s Papers, Slate’s nightly summary of the major newspapers. The gig involved staying up all night, getting faxes of the front pages from bleary-eyed night clerks, and distilling the major stories. The scariest part was posting directly to the Slate site at 6am, hopped up on caffeine and so tired I could barely see, with no intervening editor or copyeditor. The best part was thinking of punny headlines. I also loved writing the ticklers, the short funny items at the end.
Here’s a selection of my favorite ticklers.
Making a blacklist, checking it twice … The Los Angeles Times reports that in North Carolina and elsewhere, conservative Christians are putting their money where their mouths are, launching campaigns to boycott stores that greet shoppers with “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” “It is apartheid in reverse—the majority is being bullied by the minority,” says the pastor who organized the boycott. “If they want the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they should acknowledge the birth of the child.” One store owner was glad to be given permission to say “Merry Christmas” again. “Christians are out of the closet,” he said.
She Stoops to Cover … The New York Times finally breaks its long silence and mentions the Pitt-Aniston breakup in its Week in Review. How do you report on the news that’s not real news? By dissecting “the narrative constructed by magazines like People, Us Weekly and In Touch.” The magazines showed Ms. Aniston shopping and Mr. Pitt holding African orphans. The message: that Mr. Pitt desperately wants a child and is interested in humanitarian causes. “One is left to assume,” writes Ginia Bellafante, “That his wife remained committed merely to herself.”
Almost Infamous … The NYT fronts word that murder defendant Robert Blake, once pursued by paparazzi, now spends his days shuffling around the courthouse alone. “Mr. Blake’s moment in the sun has been eclipsed by the supernova that is Michael Jackson,” writes Charlie LeDuff. In fact, now that rock producer Phil Spector is on trial, Blake is “not even the most famous murder defendant in Southern California.” Talk about a buzz kill.
Points of hue … The NYT and WP front big photos of the Gates, the Central Park installation made up of a million yards of fabric blossoming over 7,500 portals. But what color is it? At times, says a NYT review, “It was shiny, like gold leaf, or silvery or almost tan.” But the WP describes the color as a “slightly pinkish ‘hazard orange’ ” reminiscent of an “orange alert.” The artists call it saffron, but the WP objects to that too: ” ‘Saffron’ ought to be the color of paella at midnight in Valencia or of the robes on an Eastern divine.” The LAT explains the discrepancies: In trying to describe their reactions, it says, “Most people talked either gibberish or poetry.”
The Spammish Prisoner … The LAT reports that a New York man was arrested on suspicion of broadcasting 1.5 million porn and mortgage ads. It’s the first criminal case involving “spim,” spam sent via IM. Responding to efforts to fight unsolicited e-mail, spammers have innovated. One percent of traffic on AOL Instant Messenger is now spim. As an AOL rep put it, “We’re forcing spammers to look for other avenues to get their junk in front of members’ eyes.”
Show of force … The Washington Post teases a vivid peek inside Skywalker Ranch, where reporters were invited to tour the grounds and preview the new Star Wars movie. “The vibe,” we learn, “is boys camp”; the “hard-cores” are separated from the other reporters by trivia questions; visiting George Lucas’ ranch is like “entering the Jedi temple.” The group of reporters is driven past the Skywalker Fire Department, Francis Ford Coppola’s vineyards, the “animal facility,” the Archives, and an X-Wing fighter. Their reaction? They’re so overawed that their guide finds it necessary to remind them, “You’re allowed to talk.”
Code of honor … California’s plan to overlay a new area code in Los Angeles prompts the LAT to revisit America’s obsession with the status area code. As the paper notes, the pursuit of area code status has been explored in the culture. In the movie Swingers, characters agree that 310 is cooler than 818; on Seinfeld, Elaine gets rejected for having a 646 instead of a 212. Now, residents of posh neighborhoods are fighting the state’s plan to overlay a new 424 area code onto 310. But 310 can’t last forever. As one carrier spokeswoman put it, “The finite nature of math is catching up with us.”
Family Guy … The NYT reports on the upcoming Godfather video game, in which the player, controlling one of the minor characters from the movies, has to “join the family; earn respect; become the Godfather.” The game revisits familiar scenes, such as the one in which a film mogul wakes up to discover an au jus horse’s head as his bedfellow. The difference is that this time, it’s from a henchman’s perspective, and “maybe the player helps with the horse.” Game developers emphasize that “killing opponents is only sometimes the path to maximizing respect,” since, after all, “You can’t extort a dead man.”
Cardiac rest … The LAT spotlights the most extreme of extreme workouts: an exercise class called “Naptime,” in which students spend 30 minutes in the “corpse pose,” i.e. lying supine. The premise is that too often, rigorous workouts create stress rather than relieving it, leading people to skip the gym altogether. In this class, the instructor makes the rounds and the students enjoy head and neck massages—unless they’re asleep, in which case, they “may not notice.”
Through the looting glass… The New York Times reports on the pair of wire photos that incited the blogosphere last week. In one photo, an African-American man wading through water carrying groceries is described as “looting” in the caption, but the white couple in the other photo is described as “finding bread and soda.” Yahoo posted both photos with unedited captions, and the contrast prompted cries of racial bias. The NYT makes no conclusions, but does note that the parents and grandparents of the photographer who wrote the “finding” caption lost their homes in the disaster, quoting him as saying, “Now is no time to pass judgment on those trying to stay alive.”
Lowering the bar … Alcohol-industry watchdog groups are up in arms over “Kidsbeer,” a “lager-colored” soft drink from Japan that “foams like beer” but “tastes like cola.” But the manufacturer believes there’s a Western market for it and plans to bring it to Europe. After all, warns the cheerful slogan, “Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink.”
Counting one’s blessings … The NYT reports that Bhutan is ditching the GDP in favor of a more holistic measure of a nation’s prosperity—the GNH, or gross national happiness. The move is grounded in Buddhist doctrine, but comports with the latest psychological research, which shows that above a basic level of comfort, wealth doesn’t correlate with happiness. Elsewhere, researchers are trying to come up with indices of well-being based on factors such as mental illness, civility, access to parks, crime, volunteerism, and the division between work and leisure time. As one happiness “campaigner” summed up his mission, “Medieval peasants worked less than you do.”
Whose lion is it anyway? The LAT reports that Disney is hoping the nation’s faithful will embrace the upcoming The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, turning it into a Passion of the Christ–style blockbuster. Many see the central character, Aslan the lion, as a Christ figure, but others say the book is pure myth, not allegory. Disney is ducking the issue, preferring to adopt “the Switzerland approach.” Either way, everyone seems to be banking on a hit: HarperCollins is publishing more than 140 editions of Narnia, and McDonald’s, General Mills, Virgin Atlantic, Oral-B, and Kodak will all have Narnia-themed holiday festivities.
Original spin … The WP reports on Thank You for Smoking, currently playing at Sundance. Based on the Christopher Buckley novel, the movie is a wicked satire of big tobacco. Highlights: “Merchants of Death”—lobbyists for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms industries—brag about which of their products kills the most customers; a tobacco apologist gets kidnapped by anti-smoking terrorists who strip him naked and cover him with nicotine patches; when a boy asks what makes America great, his lobbyist father responds, “Our endless appeals process.”
Apes of Wrath … The LAT offers an evolutionary psychology explanation for road rage: the urge to defend one’s territory. We’re wired to protect not just our turf, but also our reputations. The problem is that our territorial behaviors are designed for the Pleistocene era and misfire in a world where we routinely interact with strangers. Responses that helped cavemen reproduce now just get us sued or incarcerated.
Pushing the Envelope … The NYT checks in with Jon Stewart, who, as host of the upcoming Academy Awards, is “transforming himself from class clown to head of the class.” The challenge: “to extract humor from somber, little-seen films like Munich, Crash and Capote,” and to say something fresh about the most obvious joke target, Brokeback Mountain. Asked what to expect, Daily Show producer Ben Karlin replied, “Meryl Streep has gotten a free ride for too long. She’s going down.”