The New York Times Company

Is The Fancy Cupcake Craze Finally Over?

Sometime in the past decade, cupcakes, the single-serving frosted cakes that moms lugged to classroom birthday parties, became OMGCUPCAKES!, a cultural phenomenon that had folks waiting in long lines and forking over three bucks or more for a gourmet red velvet (or carrot, mocha or gluten-free red v ... More >>

KCET's SoCal Connected Does Piece on OC's Worst-Ever Pedo-Priest, Eleuterio Ramos

KCET-TV Channel 28's SoCal Connected devoted a segment yesterday to the travesty that is the Archdiocese of Los Angeles sex-abuse scandal, specifically on their program of dumping pedo-priests in predominantly Latino parishes. But it also included a small aside to bring in the story of OC's worst-ev ... More >>

Starbucks Offers Backdoor Access To The New York Times Paywall

So here's something. The New York Times announced yesterday that Starbucks customers can get free access to 15 articles a day on NYTimes.com if they do it through the coffee store's in-house Wi-Fi network--a backdoor to the now tightened-up paywall that the paper instituted two years ago.

'Triassic Parq: The Musical' Is Dino-mighty Good

Even though the story is preposterous, the themes this Chance Theater production explores are anything but

Has Chipotle Been Ripping You Off By Rounding To The Nearest Nickle?

So the New York Times and Huffington Post picked up on a story The Star-Ledger wrote about when a Chipotle consumer noticed that his receipts were a few pennies over the actual total, rounded off to the nearest 5-cents. He said it wasn't the pennies he lost, but the principle. The original stor ... More >>

Bill Extending Rights to Third Parent Follows Senate OK with Assembly Nod--and Usual Foes

A bill approved by the California Assembly Monday would allow judges to extend parental rights to a child's third parent.Senate Bill 1476, which was co-authored by state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), would allow--for instance--a gay father raising a child with a lesbian couple to also have paren ... More >>

Freedom Fire Sale Continues as Register Owner Dumps Florida and North Carolina Papers

Fresh off a flurry of sales of newspapers in Texas and the Midwest, the Orange County Register's owner Freedom Communications reveals it has sold 20 more papers in Florida and North Carolina.

New York Times Discovers Perverts are Banned From Many Orange County Parks

The Old Gray Lady has confronted your friendly neighborhood park pervert.Chuting in from an international kerfuffle unknown, The New York Times has discovered the growing phenomenon of Orange County parks being declared off limits to convicted sex offenders.

McDonald's To Stop Using "Pink Slime" in Beef

​Jamie Oliver scored a victory last week. McDonald's has announced that they will stop using ammonium hydroxide in their beef, a substance that the crusading chef once labeled as "pink slime". The chemical is added to beef scraps to kill off bacteria such as E. Coli and is approved by the USDA. Bu ... More >>

Publisher's Weekly Names Taco USA One of Spring's Top 10 Cookbooks--Um, Yay?

​Far from me to reject any praise from Publisher's Weekly, which has always loved my books--praised ¡Ask a Mexican!, gave Orange County: A Personal History a starred review, and just called my forthcoming Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America one of spring's Top 10 Cookbooks for 2012, alon ... More >>

News Flash! Songs About Sex Sell

​Well, duh. According to the New York Times,  a study of pop song lyrics showed not only that messages about sex not only go to the top of the charts, but also sell better. In a study by the State University of New York in Albany, they found that messages of procreation in country music and t ... More >>

Cymbals Eat Guitars

Alex's Bar

South Park's Legendary Cheesy Poofs to be Available Starting at Comic-Con!

​Headed to Comic Con this week? Then snag what's sure to be one of the more sought-after pieces of swag: official Cheesy Poofs from the creators of South Park.  The New York Times reports that Comedy Central and Frito-Lay have teamed up to promote 15 years of South Park by releasing Cartman's ... More >>

Nuoc Mia Mania: Catch It This Summer!

[Hole In the Wall] Where to find the best Vietnamese sugarcane juice in Little Saigon

IDEA Act, The DREAM Act's Recently-Introduced Cousin, Would Boost Number of Green Cards

Not this green card...If a California congresswoman has her way, a lot more people will get their green cards soon. ​Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) introduced a bill on Tuesday that would amp the number of green cards for foreign students and entrepreneurs. The students have to meet a lot of c ... More >>

'The Real World': Midtown

Or 'Survivor'. Or '(Head for) The Hills.' As the industry panics, the NYT gets its own reality show

New York Times Names the Best Bánh Mìs in America--and Not One is From Little Saigon

Flickr user svensk​The New York Times' coverage of Vietnamese food has always been laughable--who can ever forget its decade-late feature on Sriracha or it declaring 2009 the "year of the bánh mì" (while neglecting to mention Little Saigon among the nation's Vietnamese enclaves) about seven year ... More >>

Washington Post Thinks Higher-End Pho Is a Revelation--HAHAHAHA!

Photo by Das Ubergeek​What is it about the national media that gets Vietnamese-food trends laughably late and wrong? If it's not The New York Times "discovering" Sriracha and bánh mì, it's the Washington Post devoting way too many words to some D.C.-area chefs who, as the headline puts it, "put ... More >>

Preview Review Revue

A look at what STAGES, Theater Out, Monkey Wrench Collective and other great OC theater companies will stage in 2011

WikiLeaks Expose Questionable Details From Dana Rohrabacher's Visit to Honduras

​R. Scott Moxley told you in October about Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) having inserted himself in the violent 2009 coup that toppled the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. Was Dana Rohrabacher Playing Kingmaker in Central America?To refresh your memory, th ... More >>

Ten Most WTF Music Stories of 2010

​We twittered, shared and reposted all these stories ad nauseum in 2010--for a good reason. This year, trashy viral videos made more of an impact than the Grammys, and Antoine Dodson was more memorable than Beatles songs finally getting on iTunes. So the line  blurring of talent and fame is m ... More >>

New York Times Data: OC Elections Aren't Really Contests

Ed Royce: Shoo-in elections are fun.​Do we have real congressional election contests in the Orange County/Long Beach area or, despite all the hullabaloo, is the whole affair preordained?Data from The New York Times, based on FiveThirtyEight Forecasts, shows the answer isn't necessarily uplifting. ... More >>

No Cowbell Required For This Fever

​Nothing of critical import opens this weekend in the OC area, but a lot of shows are approaching the end of their runs, including critically acclaimed productions of Measure for Pleasure at the Garage Theatre in Long Beach (closes Saturday),  Pool (No Water) at the Monkey Wrench Collective i ... More >>

The Humane Society and Big Agriculture Slug It Out Over Animal Rights

Show of the Day: Girls at Detroit Bar, Costa Mesa

Few acts have created as much buzz in recent months as San Francisco's Girls. Their debut disc, simply titled Album, has garnered rave reviews in publications ranging from Pitchfork (a whopping 9.1) to New York Times ("Album is one of the year's most bracing pop releases, and one of the best..") to ... More >>

Five Easily-Fixed Service Failures

dieselbug2007 @ flickr.com CC BY-NC 2.0​Some weeks ago, there was a two-part list of service sins published (here and here) by Bruce Buschel in a blog for the New York Times. To call the list picky doesn't do it justice; don't play brass music? Seriously?The post inspired a lot of snarky comments ... More >>

New York Times Accused of "Journalistic Sleight-of-Hand" in Citing Local Fallen Navy Hero

U.S. NavyThe late Petty Officer Second Class (SEAL) Michael Mansoor of Long Beach.​Conservatives accuse a New York Times reporter of employing "a journalistic sleight-of-hand" when it came to including a dead Catholic Navy hero who grew up in Garden Grove in a piece about complications facing Musl ... More >>

Kim Chi From Garden Grove Makes It To The New York Times

Photo by Edwin Goei​It's a long, long way from Garden Grove to New York's Lower East Side, but Young Ja Chun's kim chi had made the trip and was featured by The New York Times in a short but sweet article.

CAIR, Speaker, Student Say Muslim Screenwriting Seminar "a Success"

​Despite Clockwork's attempt to jest while previewing the Council on American-Islamic Relations' "Writing for Hollywood" seminar and pat its own back for getting inserted into the New York Times' coverage of the event for aspiring Muslim screenwriters (as well as some unkind reader comments to our ... More >>

Reg Reporter Heads To New York Times. Sort Of.

twenty_questions / Flickr / Creative CommonsAlright! Orange County journalist can move up in the newspaper world! Check it out: Veteran Register reporter Greg Hardesty is in the pages of the New York Times.I mean, ok, he's not writing for the Gray Lady. He's just a source in one of those horrible tr ... More >>

This Week In Food

This week in SAFII:There was plenty of good news, in terms of appointments (Craig Strong as Executive Chef of Studio, at the Montage Laguna Beach), openings (a froyo shop--natch--a gelato shop attached to a Thai restaurant (of course!!) and a sparkly Vietnamese) and resurrections (Carl's Jr's Portob ... More >>

Latest Hits, Misses and Curveballs From Odd Man Out

UPDATED WITH FORBES' CORRECT RELATIONSHIP TO THE BOOK.   As I've blogged here incessantly, Matt McCarthy wrote Odd Man Out, a Viking Press tell-all I adored about his lone year as a lefty pitcher in the Angels minor league baseball system. Articles doubting the veracity of many salaci ... More >>

Because You're Ugly: Orange County Puts Vanity on Hold

Orange County? Postponing implants and Botox? The New York Times is reporting that in Orange County, "where plastic surgery is a part of [our] culture" (sigh), business is down 30 to 40 percent.  The story chalks it up to both financial constraints and, surprisingly, even a "Botox backlash"--men ... More >>

Read All About It!

This morning I went to my local LA Times news stand to put in a couple of quarters and obtain a 'lil slice of history for my scrap book. To my surprise, I discovered that I wasn't the only person in Long Beach with this brilliant plan. There were no papers left! So I went to a stand up the street on ... More >>

Barbara Coe's Thoughts on the Obama New Yorker Cover

Seemingly everybody and their political consultant has opined on this week's New Yorker cover that mockingly shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim imam giving a fist rap to wife Michelle, who's dressed a Hezbollah warrior princess. Even old, wretched Barbara Coe, h ... More >>

¡Ask a Mexican! As Extinct as Kudzu

To paraphrase a paraphrase of Mark Twain, reports of my deportation have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, I know I announced last Thursday that I was ending my ¡Ask a Mexican! column, but few people seemingly bothered to read the line where I stated my self-deportation was "effective the feast day o ... More >>

The Times and Me

Pick up the Los Angeles Times today and read my essay on the boneheaded Huntington Beach Fourth of July parade committee that decided to dick with Sylvia Mendez of Mendez vs. Westminster fame. Then browse through the Times' archives and find their June 17 best-seller list, in which my ¡Ask a Mexica ... More >>

Good News from Iraq (Fake news edition)

Somehow it's fitting that the only good news to come out of Iraq recently is the fake news. The New York Times reports on a satirical news show that debuted on the Iraqi sattelite station Al Sharqiya at the beginning of Ramadan. This being Iraq, the show's title is somewhat darker than "The Daily ... More >>

A Postmortem on the Heat Wave

A story in this morning's New York Times on last month's heat wave makes for grim reading. According to the paper's examination of records, approximately 140 Californians died from the heat during the month of July, "a death toll unlike any the state had seen from high temperatures since 1955, state ... More >>

Hold the Pickle, Load the Hummer

The online environmental Grist Magazine points to a New York Times story with this: Words Fail Us Hummer propaganda aimed at kids through McDonald's Happy Meals Sometimes a story comes along that so perfectly captures a culture's pathologies that it should be put in a time capsule, so future genera ... More >>

Standard Operating Procedures

There are those who say that the Department of Homeland Security, which the Bush administration frankensteined into existence in 2002, is a dysfunctional government agency, but this morning's New York Times brings evidence that DHS is clearly following in the steps of such well established and widel ... More >>

Requiescat in Pace, IVth Amendment

FOURTH AMENDMENT: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to b ... More >>

Art On the Street

Sali Heraldez of SolArt Gallery Cafe

Once Is Enough

Ginia Bellafante

Punchin' Judy

NY Times First Amendment 'martyr' Miller comes to town

This Week in The Old Guard

Repetition in Politics, News, Big Business and Human Suffering

Terminator Genes

Shock and Awe and Shuck and Jaw

The Partially Informed Alarmist

NEW COLUMN!

If You Believe They Put Mine on the Moon