If you buy a can of pinto beans with a bird's head in it, just be sure to eat it up within one year, OK?

Big-ass Nalgene water bottles, decorated with all kinds of stuff, are the latest in personal branding; sort of like tattoos without the bodily disfiguation. Kids these days.....(oy). They're displaying identity, everywhere but within.

George Herbert Walker Bush; Casanova cribbing from the Dukakis playbook, no less. Here's a frankly terrifying excerpt from an article about a book on amorous notes and letters between U.S. presidents and their first ladies. Bush 41 to putative wife, Barbara.......

"Sweetsie,'' he began. "Please look at how Mike and Kitty do it. Try to be closer in more — well er romantic — on camera. I am practicing the loving look, and the creeping hand. Yours for better TV and more demonstrable affection. Your sweetie pie coo coo."

Eeeeeee-yeeeccchhh. But she wasn't entirely to blame for the chilly place they were at - right? Pro-forma dismissals of the Jennifer Fitzgerald story aside, was not "Millie's" pantyhose find somewhat telling? Course, mebbe sweetie pie coo coo was just somewhat driven to it to begin with, but cha' know what? Let's really, really not go there.

Moving ON......members of The Compact, a Bay Area consortium of 50 pseudo-devout non-materialists, have pledged not to buy anything new in 2006, except food, health and safety items. And underwear. Um, scuzi: what's with the new underwear? Don't they all have enough to just wash, for '06? Suppose their new drawers aren't union-made? A consumerist quagmire lurks. And what qualifies as an essential new "safety" purchase anyway? A bio-hazard mask, or cases of bottled water? 'Tain't EZ bein' PC.

The quite ethically challenged California State Senator Carole Migden now wants to make Zinfandel the state wine of California. Every dog has its day. It might truly be that the "Sonoma guys got to her," but still - she's got a point. The San Jose Mercury News wants a public vote on the question. I'm feeling munificent today, so that's OK with me, too. I hear big sighs of relief from down the Left Coast.

NASCAR wants to continue growing beyond its "southern redneck heritage," but it still wants the southern rednecks, and their Confederate flags. Do you take South Carolina yellow mustard sauce or that thin, vinegar-y North Carolina red sauce on your BBQ? Ah've tried both, in situ. I'll take what's behind Door #2, and some outside brown, thanks.

If at all possible, your baggage should be carry-on.

Chocolate-imbued gnocchi with porcini mushrooms and strands of roasted wild boar: just one more reason to eat out in NYC; capiche?

The San Francisco Zoo - natch - offers a special tour imparting WAY more than you probably wanted to know about hermaphrodite ostriches, well-endowed tapirs and chimps with rubber boot fetishes.

TECHNORATI TAGS: PINTO BEANS, BIRDS HEAD, LA PREFERIDA, CHICAGO, NALGENE, SEATTLE, GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, JENNIFER FITZGERALD, MILLIE, BARBARA BUSH, THE COMPACT, CAROLE MIGDEN, ZINFANDEL, CALIFORNIA STATE WINE, NASCAR, REDNECK, CHOCOLATE GNOCCHI, SAN FRANCISCO ZOO, ANIMAL SEX TOUR

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 18, 2006 12:08 AM