Ethnicity is a Vegetable, Part One: The Vegetable Part of It

Ed is havin' a young 'un. This is now how posts on this blog start, I see. And instead of investigating/whining about some part of society that bugs us for inscrutable reasons, we now have the noble duty to warn Ed's young foetus about parts of society that bug us for inscrutable reasons. Warning is much nobler than whining, right?

So, let's begin, shall we? Why don't you hop up on Uncle Joe's lap, young foetus, and listen to a tale filled with dread, wonder, and, ultimately, actually, neither of those two.

Today's exercise in edification will attempt to answer this question: What is ethnicity? As an analogy/delay tactic, I will put off that question, and ask another: What is a vegetable? By way of contrast, and in order to completely lose my entire audience before the end of the third paragraph, I will first ask one more question: What is a fruit?

What Is a Fruit?

This one's the easy one. A fruit, saith Merriam-Webster, is a ripened ovary of a seed plant and its contents. Done. QED. Cogito ergo sum. We all know dozens of examples: apples, oranges, bananas. Weirder ones like kiwifruit, pomegranates, and starfruit are nonetheless easily recognizable as fruit: hard outside, fleshy/juicy inside, and seeds. So, there you go - that's fruit.

Next, we move on to....wait, what's that, little foetus? Isn't a tomato really a fruit? Oh, little one - you have so much to learn about this wonderful world! A tomato's a vegetable, of course. Which leads me to my next question:

What Is a.....hmm? little one? You say a tomato is hard outside, juicy inside, with seeds? Well, sure, but it's still a vegetable, which as you might have guessed was my next ques.... Say what? You brought your personal botanist over? My, but you are an impertinent little foetus! And your botanist says that a tomato is a ripened ovary of the tomato plant? Well, if that's true, then that would make a tomato a fruit, and....what's that botanist? It is? Well, if you go by that definition, then so are cucumbers, green peppers, green peas, and...and...wow. Okay. So lots of things we call vegetables are biologically fruits. Interesting. That now leads me, much more tentatively than before, to my next question:

What Is a Vegetable?

This one, it turns out, is actually easier to answer. A vegetable is something green that we eat as a side dish at dinner. Ha ha, right? But not really - that is almost exactly what our dictionary friends say. M-W calls it a usually herbaceous plant grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal.

But that's just the dictionary; let's see what our botanist friend has to say. Oh, dear botanist friend, can you tell me what a vegetable is? You know, scientifically? Now, don't be shy - I may not be a trained scientist, but I'm sure you can put it in layman's terms, right? So, go ahead. Please. I'm not....hey! Where are you going? Little foetus, your friend just ran away! I guess it's up to me. And I say that in the end, a vegetable is a plant that people call, or use as, a vegetable. So a tomato is a vegetable after all. And a cucumber. And lettuce, and carrots, and mushrooms. That makes me feel much better.

Now we can move on to the actual question of the blog, which is....now what? Mushrooms aren't plants, they're funguses? So what? Oh - I said that vegetables were plants. Fine. Vegetables are plants and funguses that we call veg....yes? Yes, I've had sushi wrapped in seaweed. Yes, I'd call seaweed a vegetable. But seaweed isn't a plant, it's algae? Wonderful. Next you'll tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too! Ha! (please don't tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too....)

Oh boy, I'm feeling a little woozy. I think I have to make this a two-part post. Off my lap, tiny proto-half-Ed, and back in utero for you!

My New Least Favorite Commercial

So I watch a lot of MLB Network, which is a new channel that doesn't have a ton of viewership. Therefore, they only have about three commercial sponsors on the whole station, and the same three ads cycle endlessly.

Unfortunately, one of the sponsors is Pizza Hut, whose latest attempt to kill people with pizza is one with a crust made of cheese, or something. I'm not exactly clear on it, because I literally have to turn away in horror every time the commercial comes on. It involves the ex-comedian Jim Breuer saying "Jackpot!" over and over again, in increasingly annoying ways. It's a nakedly obvious attempt to start a catchphrase, but fails spectacularly.

It also serves to kill Jim Breuer for me -- if you don't know who he is, he's a sleepy-eyed guy who was on "Saturday Night Live" for a while, best known for his Joe Pesci impression. He was always sort of a frat-boy comedian, a la Dane Cook, but I dunno, I guess I still thought he was OK. No more. He's dead to me. And hopefully, soon, to everyone else.

One quick digression: Have there actually been any nationwide catchphrases lately? Is that a lost art? I remember when every other ad featured a catchphrase that was a nationwide phenomenon. From "Bo Knows Baseball," to "Wassssaaaaap," our young nation was bound in common bond, inviolable and sacrosanct, by the catchphrases that gave voice to our deep and fundamental need to collectively beat jokes into the ground. I was reminded of this recently as I overheard a coworker -- a well-meaning and sociable fellow, I should disclaim -- say "Wassssappp! Remember that ad?" to someone else in the office. It wasn't as annoying as you might think -- it was more of a painfully sad spectacle of desperate, deeply ruined whimsy, like watching a grungy, grinning clown make balloon animals for spare change in a crackhouse.

Admittedly, I'm so ensconsed in my own little world of my wife, fantasy baseball, and whatever's in our Netflix queue, that I probably remain completely ignorant of nationwide catchphrases and suchlike. But it would be interesting if catchphrases were dead. And they say we're going through a tough time in this country! C'mon America, we kicked our catchphrase habit! Turn that frown upside down!

But back to annoying ads: I also remember a time when I had a list of companies whose ads were very annoying. I vowed to boycott those companies until their ads became less excrutiating (which is kinda pointless, actually, because they were all companies whose products I didn't buy anyway, that or I'd just forget). But this Pizza Hut is the first in ages that has brought out that level of revulsion in me. Why is that? Have I mellowed? (Not bloody likely -- recently I cursed out some people at Enterprise Rent-A-Car -- long story.) Or have commercials just gotten better? It might be that plus the fact that I watch fewer commercials, what with Netflix and a DVR. And hey, America, yet another reason to c'mon and get happy: Look at yourself now. Now think back to about eight years ago. Aren't you watching fewer TV ads than you did then? Doesn't that put a smile on your face?

I'm adding this to my list of The Good News (Referring to Problems That Have Been Solved in America and Thus Contrast with Bad News -- Not Referring to Jesus, Who's Good and All, but Let's Be Frank, He's Not Exactly "News"):

1. Acid rain (solved, from what I hear)
2. Hole in the ozone (not exactly solved, from what I hear, but much less of a problem, all due to smart government regulation of the offending chemicals -- all in all, good reason to think the government can have a positive influence on global warming)
3. Serial killers (As I pointed out in an earlier post, when was the last time you heard about a serial killer? But in the '90s, the country was lousy with them.)
4. Violent crime (obviously not solved, but down dramatically since the mid-'90s)
5. Annoying TV ads (not abolished, but down to a trickle, in my view)

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. I think it's important to review these Good News items so we don't get too discouraged. Anyone got others?

Weather You Like It or Not

San Diego has weather. San Diego has seasons. Of course, the fact that I actually have to spell that out for people means that most folks think we don't. Even the people who live here will sometimes find themselves repeating the myths: every day is 72 and sunny; it never rains; and so on.

Now, I have to admit, obviously, that it does not rain a lot here; it's a semiarid Mediterranean climate, after all. And every day does have the potential to be 72 (or even 80) and sunny, which you can't say about most of the country.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't distinct, noticeable seasons. Right now, we're just hitting the peak of summer - temperatures in the low 80s, a little humid, and you can see the afternoon thunderclouds up in the mountains and deserts. This kind of weather is only possible now - between July and September. To me, that means it's a season.

Pretty soon, we'll be getting into Santa Ana season - hot, dry winds that come sweeping over the mountains to the coast. Each Santa Ana lasts about three or four days, and on the first day, the skies can be incredibly clear. Even the city lights seem to sparkle and twinkle at night. On the downside, they can act like bellows on wildfires, and a lot of people get headaches when they happen. Some people love Santa Anas, mainly because they make it warm in the fall and winter. "Gosh, it's 75 in December!", they'll say. To which I jauntily retort, "Ouch! My head aches!" Man, I hate Santa Anas.

Towards the end of Santa Ana season, you start getting into the Season of Actual Weather. From November through March, it really does rain here. Some years more than others (El Niño years are especially wet), but this is when it happens. And it cools down. A typical day in January is maybe 59-63 during the day and 46-51 at night. Not freezing, obviously, but not exactly shorts weather, either.

After the rain starts to peter out in late March, we get to probably the best time of year: real Frasier weather. April is about the nicest month we have. No rain, no clouds, warmer and longer days. Just nice.

Which is good, because the next two months bring the lousiest weather of the year: June Gloom. Starting in May, we get low clouds that come in off the ocean in the afternoon, and stay until 10 or 11 the next morning before burning off for a few hours (if they burn off at all). No rain or anything, but just cloudy, gloomy days. This is the only time of year when San Diego's weather is demonstrably worse than where you're from (wherever that is). (Although, to be honest, I kinda like the muffled softness of cloudy June days. But I'm weird that way.)

So that, in a nutshell, is what San Diego seasons look like. There's even a folksy rhyme that succinctly describes the climate in San Diego: "The spring comes in the summer, the summer comes in the fall; the fall comes in the winter. And the winter doesn't come at all."

Now, maybe the change from one to the next can be a little more subtle than in Minnesota. I mean, any idiot can look around at brilliantly colored trees and feel the cool wind blow and tell you that's it's fall. And winter clearly slaps you in the face and yells (icily), "Hey - it's winter!! I can freeze off your nose in ten minutes if you don't believe me!" But it takes a refined, sophisticated atmospheric sensibility to get plopped down in 72 and sunny and be able to tell whether it's July or November.

And to all those folks who come out here and say stuff like, "Oh, I miss thunderstorms! I miss snow! I miss the leaves changing colors! How I miss all these seasonal manifestations that I grew accustomed to in my former place of residence! Oh!", all I can say is, hey, I like them, too. Snow is neat. Nothing wrong with some snow. There's also nothing wrong with no snow, however.

Anyhow, I'm glad that I've dispelled, once and for all, the notion that San Diego's weather is boring. It's not in the least like watching Frasier every day. It's like watching Frasier maybe 150 days a year. And let's be honest: who among us doesn't already do that? I mean, it's syndicated.