Karma the Magnificent

The 19 Minutes staff has been thinking about Karma lately. Primarily, that's because we caught the premiere of "My Name is Earl" on NBC Tuesday night. We were a little leery of watching it, mainly because we were worried about all the glowing reviews of it in Public Radioland. In our mind, this associated it too closely with "Arrested Development", "Sex and the City" and "The Sopranos", all shows that apparently sail right over our heads in terms of understanding what the appeal is. Nevertheless, we caught "Earl" last night and found it to be about the most refreshing half-hour of TV we've caught since the "Odd Couple" episode when Felix tries to cure Howard Cosell's nasal congestion. But I digress. Anyway, the aforementioned "Earl" revolves around a class-less guy (Earl), who becomes a convert to Karma (though he believes it to have originated in the mind of Carson Daly) and sets about righting all his past wrongs. Best of all, no laugh track.

But we've also been thinking about Karma because we feel a little bad about using the Washington Post's website to get hits on our blog. The Post has a feature on many of its articles called "Who's Blogging?", which lists all the blogs that supposedly comment on those particular articles. I've linked to a variety of Post articles when making gratuitous pop culture references - basically, because I have no independent knowledge of Britney Spears's baby. And therefore, I get all sorts of hits from random web surfers looking for actual "information" about Britney Spears's baby.

So as noted, we feel a little bad, because the Post describes this feature as "Read what bloggers are saying about this article," and well, we're not really saying anything about the article, but merely linking to it.

So today, we'll actually say some things about articles in the Washington Post:

Let's start with the Post's exposé on spaghetti sauce, in which we learn that whole grain pasta is having a hard time catching on with some people - especially school kids:

When the Montgomery County school system tried whole-wheat spaghetti on its students, officials struck out. "It's not that they were turned off by the color of the pasta, or even the flavor," says Kathleen C. Lazor, director of the schools' division of food and nutrition services. "It was the texture that really bothered them."

Writing as a proud graduate of the Montgomery County school system, I can assure Lazor that in the 1980s, texture was one of several key problems with the food originating the in the cafeteria at Glenallan Elementary School. "Shape" was another, especially when linked to the "pizza" served on Fridays. Humans are simply not used to pizza shaped like rectangles, with the tensile strength of a wet paper bag. And we won't even begin to discuss the texture of the "sausage" that topped these pizza slices.

Onward now to the news that the New Orleans Hornets basketball team will play 35 of its "home" games in Oklahoma City as a result of Hurricane Katrina and its water damage to the New Orleans Arena: The New Orleans Hornets? Also, we fear the impact the NBA could have on the fan base for Oklahoma City's other major sports franchise, by which we naturally mean the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz, who finished 2nd in the Arena Football 2 league.

Finally, the 19 Minutes staff is happy to comment on the, um, flap over men wearing underwear (too skimpy) and women wearing chadors (not skimpy enough) at the beach in Istanbul. It seems that both traditions have offended the delicate sensibilities of some Turks, who think everyone ought to just wear normal swimsuits - to the extent that the city actually sold normal swimsuits at a discount price. Frankly, we'd like to see similar rules posted on the beaches in San Diego. But to quote a classic song, we tend to think this is nobody's business but the Turks.

Thanks, and we now promise not to mention Britney Spears's baby, or Pamela Anderson, or Trent Lott, faulty levees, Barry Bonds any more than absolutely necessary.