Bryan's Food Shack
Chicken Wings: Hyde Park Vs Evanston
Bryan Chang
Issue date: 3/3/05 Section: Admit Weekend
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One thing I love about the Wall Street Journal is the sprinkling of idiosyncratic articles alongside the more arcane pieces on core inflation and technology exports to Iran. There is, of course, the traditional "middle column" on the front page, but offbeat stories and angles seem to be sprouting everywhere within the paper: a column about the dread people feel on Sunday nights before the start of the work week; a piece about counterfactual historians, academics who take the theory behind Marvel's old "What If?" comics and apply it to real history; a story with anecdotes about how long commutes really are better for you.
This furthers my case: a recent WSJ.com search of "Snoop Dogg" revealed four references in the last 30 days. He pops up in items about MBA internships, car marketing at Chrysler and a music executive charged with $1 million money-laundering. My favorite recent mention is in relation to gizoogle.com, a web site that translates web pages into Snoop-pioneered "shizzle"-speak. But seriously, are you kidding me? Who would have thought that, in this sense, Snoop Dogg would be more prolific than Kevin Murphy? You'd think the Journal hired all the caption writers from the The Economist or something.
I make this observation because a recent article about dodge ball and children caught my eye. While adults are hopping on the dodge ball trend, an increasing number of school districts are banning the game and replacing its role in gym class with "lifetime activities like rock climbing, weight training and in-line skating". The feeling is that the children who need exercise the most are the ones most rapidly eliminated from the game, and thus left standing around on the sidelines getting more and more out of shape. Fair enough, but where else will children learn the cruelly empowering nature of competition? Writers far more sophisticated than I have already tackled how the touchy-feely nature of post-modern phys-ed is weakening American resolve and resilience, but I'm too tired this week to dig up the research for you. Maybe you could gizoogle it.
This furthers my case: a recent WSJ.com search of "Snoop Dogg" revealed four references in the last 30 days. He pops up in items about MBA internships, car marketing at Chrysler and a music executive charged with $1 million money-laundering. My favorite recent mention is in relation to gizoogle.com, a web site that translates web pages into Snoop-pioneered "shizzle"-speak. But seriously, are you kidding me? Who would have thought that, in this sense, Snoop Dogg would be more prolific than Kevin Murphy? You'd think the Journal hired all the caption writers from the The Economist or something.
I make this observation because a recent article about dodge ball and children caught my eye. While adults are hopping on the dodge ball trend, an increasing number of school districts are banning the game and replacing its role in gym class with "lifetime activities like rock climbing, weight training and in-line skating". The feeling is that the children who need exercise the most are the ones most rapidly eliminated from the game, and thus left standing around on the sidelines getting more and more out of shape. Fair enough, but where else will children learn the cruelly empowering nature of competition? Writers far more sophisticated than I have already tackled how the touchy-feely nature of post-modern phys-ed is weakening American resolve and resilience, but I'm too tired this week to dig up the research for you. Maybe you could gizoogle it.