The Ski-Mask Way

Diesel's Market Street store raised eyebrows earlier this year for its homoerotic window display (well, it raised tourists' eyebrows at least). Now they have a display that would seem to be inspired by the Palestinian youth protest movement.





It's hard to say whether this is an endorsement, since their current ad campaign is "Be Stupid."



I didn't have time to see if they actually sell the ski mask.

Are New Licenses More 'Gangsta'?

Apparently the new redesigned California licenses, which add features to prevent counterfeiting, are causing computer glitches at DMV offices.



But the real development is that under-21 licenses will now be vertical, to make it easier to tell if someone is underage. That means teens will have to hold them differently.

If we've learned anything from pistol grips, holding things sideways only makes them more badassed.



Do our youths really need this kind of encouragement?

San Francisco Giants, Actual Giants Both Poorly Represented

A Google image search for "Giants" yields 41 pictures on the first screen.



Thirty-six of them depict the New York Giants.



Two are of the San Francisco Giants.



Two are of actual giants.

Haverford Gets Shout-Out in Keats Film

Last night we watched "Bright Star," a Jane Campion-directed biopic of John Keats that came out last year. I noticed that Haverford (my alma mater) got mentioned in the credits. It turns out the film uses a Keats letter from Haverford's collection.

Nice to get the mention, but I wish Haverford researchers could also have helped with some of the film's many anachronisms and inaccuracies.

For instance:
1. No one in 1818 would use "hello" is a polite greeting. They would say, "Good morning," "Good day," etc. The word "hullo" did exist as an expression of surprise or maybe to get someone's attention, but "hello" didn't come into popular use until the telephone.
2. Keats' lover, Fanny Brawne, wouldn't have been able to capture tropical butterflies in the English countryside — then or now.
3. Fanny appears to use a steel-ribbed umbrella that didn't exist until the 1850s.
4. It's unlikely that Charles Armitage Brown would be able to do a spot-on impression of a gorilla, since they were unknown in Western culture until the 1860s.

With that said, I enjoyed the film — though it was slow in spots. I'm also not sure Campion quite conveyed the excitement of poetry on screen, but that may just be a limitation of the medium.

Brown, who was a close friend of Keats, is presented as a boorish cad. He spends much of the first act of the movie insulting Fanny. That's only weird because the setting of the film puts you into a Jane Austen state of mind. And if this story were one of hers, Fanny would have wound up with Brown, not Keats.

BuboBlog Rating: 3 asterisks (out of 4).

Infant Social Networking: Is It Wrong?

A study found that 92 percent of American babies have a social-networking presence. I guess this isn't too big a shock (in fact, it makes you wonder who the parents of the other 8 percent are). But it does give one pause.

I blogged during Elliot's birth and posted his first video of him throwing up within seven weeks. (Looking back now, I'm surprised it took me that long.)



But clearly I'm not alone. The other day I was looking at the computer and Elliot crawled into my lap demanding to see "BABIES." (With his sister on the way, he's become increasingly interested in them.)

I told him, "You're in luck, Elliot. There's a website devoted to pictures of babies. It's called Facebook."

A Thing to Make You Go Hmm...

The symbol of San Francisco is a phoenix.





And yet the symbol of Phoenix, Arizona, isn't St. Francis.



What gives?

This Park May Be a Little Too Scenic

As loyal readers know, I've extolled the Walk Score website for years. It lets you plug in any address and provides a walkability rating — a great source of bragging rights for those of us in densely populated areas.

Our neighborhood scores a 95, making it a "Walker's Paradise." Sadly, I'm now beginning to wonder about the accuracy.

According to Walk Score, our nearest park is the "Market Street theater" and it points to the location of a well-known burlesque.



The neighborhood's actual park — located just a block away from our address — isn't recognized at all.





Was this an editorial judgment? I'm afraid to alert them to the mistake, in case it lowers our score.