Nothing To Write Home About

Hello World, And so here is January, the first month of the bright and shiny New Year, already marching along relentlessly to the tireless beat of implacable Father Time, showing no favor or partiality to the prepared or the woefully unprepared alike, alas. Now that Epiphany (also known as "Little Christmas") is already behind us, bit by bit, you see the wonderful holiday decorations coming down and packed away for another year, like a dispiriting mirror image of the yuletide classic, "It's beginning to look a lot NOT like Christmas, everywhere you go," indeed. Ahead of us, winter stretches out forlornly, and Valentine's Day is no match for it, I dare say - while Chinese New Year and Mardi Gras offer only vicarious thrills for most of us. The rest of us will have to console ourselves with Super Bowl L on February 7, which they tell me will be played at the state-of-the-art Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, and blue jeans are definitely not optional. (There's a joke in here somewhere about tackling a new adventure "by the seat of your pants," so please feel free to fill one in entirely on your own initiative, and thanks ever so.) Actually, the NFL brain-trust apparently feels that Super Bowl L would be too confusing for the average schmo in the general public, so they're taking a one-year break from Roman numerals for this game, and calling it Super Bowl 50 instead - although why they think that Super Bowl LI the following year would be any less confusing, is a mystery to me, I'm sure. Unlike the world-wide phenomenon of Christmas, Super Bowl is about the biggest holiday that Americans can claim as uniquely their own in this great nation, considering that it doesn't have its own wrapping paper and greeting cards. (Yet.) Fortunately, next month also brings us the three most beautiful words in the English language, "Pitchers and Catchers" for most teams with spring training facilities in Florida or Arizona, and a sure-fire cure for the winter blahs that come on the heels of the post-holiday let-down. Tell them Levi Strauss sent you. Speaking of sports, it reminds me of the long-suffering Casey Stengel of baseball lore and legend, who once famously despaired of his hapless players reaching new heights (or perhaps depths) of ineptitude by wailing, "Can't anybody here play this game?" Lately it seems that every day, on every side, I am bombarded with wretched examples of English gone horribly wrong, sometimes amazingly so, to the extent that I can't help but wonder, "Can't anybody here speak this language?" It all started on the local scene with our friends at Mendiola's restaurant, who wanted to make sure that we knew exactly where to find them, so they put their street address on the awning over their front door. Right now, they are handily located in the heart of the bustling Union Avenue on the west side of town, and they are occupying number 231B at that location. (Why don't you hurry right on over there - tell them Levi Strauss sent you.) However, because of how the awning maker had the wording printed on the fabric, it looks for all the world like it says 231 BUNION instead - and which does not exactly paint the most appetizing picture in your mind for a food establishment, believe me. Then last week, the USA Today section of our local newspaper actually had the following headline, and apparently without irony - Istanbul Bombing May Hurt Tourism [Ya think?] Personally, I'm guessing that even the hard-working minions at the Turkish Tourism Board would have trouble putting more of a positive spin on that event, as far as encouraging tourists. ("Hurry to Istanbul for all the incendiary munitions that you could possibly want!") In the explosives business, this is what we call a non-starter. They followed that up later in the week with a story about lack of diversity in the Academy Awards nominations, quoting Erik Davis at Fandango as saying: "There are some great performances and films out there that are just being underlooked." Excuse me??? Does anybody else think that "underlooked" is an actual word??? I mean, here in this solar system, on this planet, in the English language as it is spoken nowadays??? I've long since been aware of "underwhelmed" used as a humorous counterpoint to "overwhelmed," but "underlooked" is certainly a new one on me, and I don't mind saying, no sort of improvement on "overlooked," which is what he should have said in the first place. Then there was a front page story in the Life & Style section about genealogy, and some instructions on how to apply for acceptance into the venerable Daughters of the American Revolution organization. They went on to describe it thusly: "To enter the DAR, you must prove you're a direct (via your grandparents) lineal decadence from someone who was a patriot of the Revolution." [Please insert elaborate eye-rolling here, or you may substitute wailing and gnashing of teeth, if you prefer.] I will freely admit that I am not in the DAR, and don't even play one on television, and I won't claim to know everything about their policies and procedures. But just taking a wild stab at it, I'm pretty sure that they meant "lineal descendant" and not "lineal decadence," which frankly, casts a rather depraved reflection upon the grandparents in question, that they most likely would have been mortified by, I shouldn't wonder. The Life & Style section struck again with their review of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier in the month. The sub-head referring to self-driving cars actually said: Detroit and Silicone Valley companies want to show their new car tech is ready for prime time Honestly, sometimes you just don't know whether to laugh or cry, and don't bother to bang your head against a brick wall, because I already found out that doesn't work. Taking this at face value, I would hazard a guess that Silicone Valley is where the high tech wizards get their breast implants - which may sound like a cliche, but to be blunt, I really don't know what else silicone is used for, although I'm sure it must have plenty of other (less well-known) uses. Here I'm thinking, if the person filing the story doesn't even understand the difference between the renowned Silicon Valley (home of the technology epicenter) and the purely fictitious Silicone Valley (home of the Valley of the Dolls, perhaps) then one can't help but wonder if they didn't send the wrong person out to Las Vegas to begin with. In fact, it reminds me of a recent story about high school girls basketball in the Sports pages, where the under-sized home team was trounced by visitors from upstate. When it was suggested that a lack of experience might have been a factor, the beleaguered coach merely shrugged, and trotted out the old sports adage, "You can't teach height." Apparently, between bunions and bombs, underlooked, decadence, and silicone, there's a whole lot of other things you can't teach either, and I ought to know. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, or my name isn't - Levi Strauss