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This is a guest post from Slate's Timothy Noah.
A staffer for the Republican National Committee named Allison Meyers was fired after the Daily Caller (Tucker Carlson's Web site) reported that the RNC approved a $1,946.25 reimbursement to a direct-mail consultant named Erik Brown for a visit by young GOP donors to an S&M club in Los Angeles. The club is called Voyeur. "We cater to a high-end, A-list clientele with live art installations with a voyeuristic theme," Sarah Waldman, the club's director of special events, explained to the New York Times.
The Times was playing catch-up to the Daily Caller, but its reporter failed to mention that in a way it got there first. I quote from Voyeur's Web site:
Upon arrival, guests will immediately feel as if they've entered an underground sanctuary, with a noir backdrop and an understated atmosphere. Once through the exposed brick entrance hallway they will encounter massive metal sphere chandeliers with spiked lighting, black leather drapery with brass rings, green leather chesterfield sofas and reupholstered antique chairs with brass and bronze accents. Lining the inner walls are 1920's glass casement windows from the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street, photography filmstrips from an erotic photo shoot are exposed as wallpaper in one room, while an old-fashioned photo booth allows uninhibited guests to create their own stills. [Italics mine.]
To those who say newspapers have no future, I submit the foregoing as evidence that the New York Times offers an enduring erotic appeal to the GOP. If you're a Republican, apparently, you crave that which is most forbidden: sharp spikes, black leather, simulated girl-on-girl cunnilingus, and glass panes that may once have been touched by Flora Lewis. What a naughty, naughty bunch!
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On Monday, I wrote a post about the New York Times Netflix map, identifying ZIP codes with bizarre rental tendencies and inviting Slate readers to find their own examples. You answered the call, locating a handful of idiosyncratic ZIPs with no interest in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Rachel Getting Married, or the other recent Oscar contenders that dominate the rest of the map.
Some of your discoveries fit into the categories I wrote about on Monday. A number of you noticed, for instance, that ZIP code 55450 is home to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Like LaGuardia and O'Hare, it has a unique list:
1. Battlestar Galactica: Season 3: Disc 3
2. Battlestar Galactica: Season 3: Disc 2
3. Battlestar Galactica: Season 3: Disc 1
That's it; there are only three movies listed on its Top 10, suggesting a single account, and a new one at that.
I had also pointed out the collegiate—some might say sophomoric—taste of ZIP code 80208, which is home to the University of Denver. Slate readers found a handful of other college campuses, all of them with preferences outside the mainstream. Among them are California State University Long Beach (90840; No. 2: Berserk: Vol. 1: War Cry), University of Maryland College Park (20742; No. 5: Sex Drive), and University of Washington (98195; No. 9: Pineapple Express). My favorite college campus, though, is that of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. (20064), which several readers came across on the map. Its Top 10 would seem to reflect the interests of a budding journalist, or perhaps the syllabus of a media-studies course:
1. The Truman Show
2. Citizen Kane
3. Broadcast News
4. Control Room
5. Talk to Me
6. Being There
7. Good Night, and Good Luck
8. All the President's Men
9. Talk Radio
10. The War Tapes
Many readers noticed that race seems to play a role in the preferences of some ZIP codes. The work of Tyler Perry (The Family That Preys; Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail), for example, makes a strong showing in several ZIP codes in Greater Atlanta and in the 75237 ZIP in Dallas. Other readers pointed out that military installations were less likely to be enamored of Oscar bait. In Greater Boston, there is Hanscom Air Force Base (01731; No. 3: New in Town); in Maryland, there is Andrews Air Force Base (20762, No. 1: Yes Man).
For sheer wackiness, there's no beating federal employees. See, for instance, 90073, in Los Angeles, home to the Veterans Administration (No. 1: Swimming With Sharks; No. 2: The Big Lebowski). Reader Tony Drollinger e-mailed to flag Minnesota ZIP 55111, which is just east of the aforementioned Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. "I'm an employee of the US Fish & Wildlife Service at Fort Snelling," writes Tony. "This area is comprised of my large federal building (which also houses people from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, and several branches of the military). Next door to us is an Air Force base, and other parts of the ZIP Code house a MN DOT building, the VA hospital, a state park, a public golf course, a private tennis club, and a bar/restaurant." In other words, not many residents, and presumably only a few Netflix accounts:
1. Weeds: Season 4: Disc 3
2. The Notebook
3. Do Not Adjust Your Set: Disc 2
4. Star Trek
5. Touch the Sound
6. 27 Dresses
7. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
8. The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice
9. Highlander
10. Righteous Kill
Thanks to all the readers who wrote in with strange ZIPs. Email me at dvdextras@gmail.com if you find a great one that I left out. In the meantime, I will be adding The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice to my own Brooklyn-based Netflix queue. It features an all-star cast of Noah Wyle, Bob Newhart, Jane Curtin, and is directed by Star Trek: The Next Generation's Jonathan Frakes. How can you go wrong?
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On Saturday, the New York Times posted an interactive map of Netflix rental patterns in 12 U.S. cities, broken down by ZIP code. The map is smartly designed and great fun to explore, yet what strikes you almost immediately is the lack of regional variation. The most-popular movies across each urban area are films that contended in last year's Oscars—The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Doubt, Milk, Vicky Christina Barcelona, The Wrestler, Rachel Getting Married—plus a handful of less heady titles: Paul Blart, Eagle Eye, Twilight.
But not all of the ZIPs are so boring. Perusing the New York map over the weekend, Slate contributor Mike Shollar came across 11371, in Flushing, Queens, N.Y. Its Top 10:
1. Wall-E
2. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
3. Oz: Season 3: Disc 1
4. Watchmen
5. The Midnight Meat Train
6. Man, Woman, and the Wall
7. Traffic
8. Romancing the Stone
9. Crocodile Dundee 2
10. Godzilla's Revenge
Why such an idiosyncratic list? According to Zipcode.com, 11371 has a population of zero—it's LaGuardia Airport. Presumably, this list represents the taste of a small number of people (a single person?) who registered a Netflix account to a mailstop at LGA. Mike noticed a similar phenomenon in Chicago, where O'Hare has its own zip. The top titles in 60666:
1. Year of the Dragon
2. Transporter 3
3. Somewhere in Time
4. Videodrome
5. A Prayer for the Dying
6. Sixteen Candles
7. Orlando
8. Pale Rider
9. The Breakfast Club
10. Raising Arizona
It's not just airports that have more eclectic lists. College campuses often have their own ZIPs as well. The University of Denver, which resides in 80208, would seem to have particularly collegiate taste:
1. Flight of the Conchords: Season 1: Disc 2
2. W.
3. Volver
4. Weeds: Season 2: Disc 2
5. Appaloosa
6. Weeds: Season 2: Disc 1
7. Defiance
8. Eastern Promises
9. The Visitor
10. The Duchess
Other pockets of resistance to Oscar dominance include, interestingly, the ZIP codes in which some of the major studios reside. Universal City, home to Universal Studios, is in ZIP code 91608. Its Top 10:
1. Twilight
2. Vicky Christina Barcelona
3. Taken
4. I Love You, Man
5. RocknRolla
6. Cloverfield
7. Changeling
8. Body of Lies
9. Sicko
10. True Blood: Season 1, Disc 1
One final zip-code category that produces entertaining Top 10s: areas largely taken up by federal or state government. For example, 80225, home to the Denver Federal Center. Get the sense this list reflects the taste of a single Netflix subscriber?
1. Entourage: Season 1: Disc 1
2. Patton Oswalt: No Reason to Complain: Uncensored
3. Richard Jeni: A Big Steaming Pile of Me
4. Psych: Season 1: Disc 1
5. Heckler
6. Robot Chicken: Season 1: Disc 1
7. Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong
8. Psych: Season 1: Disc 2
9. Patton Oswalt: Werewolves and Lollipops
10. Psych: Season 1: Disc 3
This is hardly a comprehensive list of ZIP codes with unique taste in cinema. Brow Beat readers: Have you noticed a strange ZIP on the Times's Netflix map? E-mail me at dvdextras@gmail.com, and be sure to send along your best guess at what's afoot in that ZIP. And if you're a skycap with a fondness for the adventure movies of the 1980s or a federal employee with a deep appreciation for Patton Oswalt, we'd love to hear from you as well.
Update, Jan. 13, 8:13a.m.: Click here for more weird Netflix zip codes, discovered by Slate readers.
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Sunday's New York Times cover story on the hamburger patty that paralyzed a young woman in Ohio awakened even the least neurotic eaters to the hazards of ground meat. But to those who—OK, those of us who—have long been wary of E. coli and "trimmings," the piece offered an extreme (and extremely well-reported) version of the kind of thing we terrify ourselves with all the time. Such stories are the bread-and-butter of food-safety blogs.
Food-safety blogs will not appeal to foodies: In order to appreciate them, you can't be too much of a snob to order a hamburger well-done. Or, more precisely, to ask that your burger be cooked to 160 degrees. To verify that your burger has reached that temperature, you'll need a thermometer—specifically, a "tip-sensitive digital thermometer" of the kind Barf Blog publisher Douglas Powell has with him at all times. (His favorite refrain is "Stick it in.") Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University, presides over a team of "barf bloggers." The blog's name accurately reflects the sometimes lighthearted tone: This week, for example, one post features a fan's photo of a place in Budapest called "Fatal Restaurant." Scroll down for the more serious mission: a proposal for food-safety stickers on takeout (finish your Pad Thai within two days) and Powell's rant about what he believes is an exorbitant speaking fee collected by Michael Pollan. One of Powell's major themes is that being a locavore won't protect you from food poisoning. Knowing that a tomato came from your neighbor's backyard doesn't change the fact that your neighbor's dog likes to poop right next to the tomato plot.
Powell frequently links to Marler Blog, which is run by Bill Marler, the country's best-known food-borne-illness lawyer. Since representing a 10-year-old girl sickened by a Jack in the Box hamburger in the early '90s, Marler has gone up against Odwalla (apple juice), KFC (coleslaw), Dole (bagged spinach), and others. On his blog, Marler offers medical horror stories (which are both gruesome and extremely sad), weighs in on politics (USDA, here's what you should do), and links to his miscellaneous tweets (watch this video before drinking raw milk). There are so many pathogens in Marler's world that he has sub-blogs for each of them: Listeria Blog, Shigella Blog, Enterobacter Sakazakii Blog, etc.
What did Marler make of the Times piece? He posted reactions from Cargill, which made the burger, and from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. He told the story of an 11-year-old girl also sickened by a Cargill patty. But as far as a solution goes, he warned in a tweet: "Grinding your own hamburger is NOT any safer that buying hamburger—it is an E. coli fairy tale."
Why do I keep returning to these blogs if there's never a happy ending? The best way to explain it is that years ago, I collected little stories like these in a file labeled, Proof that things like this do happen. Acquiring the proof makes you feel less crazy and also, irrationally, protected. And against E. coli, perhaps magical thinking is the best defense.
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If we are what we Google, then Google Hot Trends—an hourly rundown of search terms "that experience sudden surges in popularity"—is the Web's best cultural barometer. Here's a sampling of today's top searches. (Rankings on Hot Trends list current as of 10 a.m.)
No. 1: "Obama Looking at Girl"; No. 2: "Obama Checking out girl"; No. 3: "Mayra Tavares"; and No. 7: "Tail to the chief." You wouldn't think a wire photo of world leaders at the G8 summit would own the top three Google Trends spots. But the Drudge Report, TMZ, and other sites yesterday picked up on a Reuters shot in which President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy appear to be ... appreciating certain assets of Mayra Tavares, a 17-year-old Brazilian delegate to the summit. Since then, the photo has been making the rounds across the web. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times claims, after video review, that it was Sarkozy, not Obama, who was doing the real ogling.
No. 20: "Edgar Martins"; No. 21: "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age." The New York Times on Wednesday removed photos from its Web site after it was revealed that the photos had been digitally manipulated. Metafilter commenters were the first to uncover the manipulation, and the animated simulation of the alteration is striking. The work of Edgar Martins, the photographer responsible for the images, is now being rigorously examined for other instances of manipulation. The Times's "Lens" blog promises Martin will tell his side of the story soon.
No. 45: "Nikola Tesla Inventions"; No. 53 "Nikola Tesla Death Ray." Google has decided to go all out in celebration of the 153rd birthday of the pioneer scientist whose experiments formed the basis for modern electric power. The Google logo today features purple sparks and electricity leaping from the letter G, which is drawn in the shape of his Tesla coil transformer. This follows the April celebration of Samuel Morse's birthday with a Morse code Google logo.
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Have you heard? It's rough going in the newspaper business these days. Which makes it a special pleasure to open the New York Times and find, tucked at the bottom of the editorial page, the latest in Verlyn Klinkenborg's occasional series "The Rural Life." That the paper still reserves a few inches for Klinkenborg's short dispatches from his farm upstate is somehow comforting. These items aren't hard news, and they aren't "A Night Out With: Judissa Bermudez." They're lyrical meditations on subjects like the relationship between man and fox and the perspicacity of horses. Monday's was a particularly wonderful edition, a playful attempt to find words to describe the afternoon thunderstorms that have been buffeting Klinkenborg's farm:
Soon the tuberous blunderheads trundle over the horizon; they begin to "wampum, wampum, wampum" until at last they're vrooming nearby, just down the valley. Or perhaps they're harrumphing and oomphing, from the very omphalos of the storm. Onomatopoeia is such a delicate thing.
"Suddenly the air is grackling," he writes as the storm arrives overhead. "Dark and furious in its plumage." It's a lovely image, evoking both the sudden, menacing darkness of a summer storm but also its beautiful iridescence, as the sun plays off the clouds. Monday's essay reminded me of the prologue to The Last Fine Time, Klinkenborg's book about Buffalo, N.Y., which introduces the city by describing how it reacts to word of inclement weather—"Snow begins as a rumor in Buffalo" reads the opening line—and then to the snow itself, falling out of a sky "as black as the pupil of an owl's eye." (You can read the prologue here.) Klinkenborg is now officially my favorite chronicler of upstate weather. Here's hoping the Times continues to publish "The Rural Life," despite the stormy climate.