{"id":71,"date":"2008-03-27T16:09:32","date_gmt":"2008-03-28T00:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=71"},"modified":"2021-11-27T05:05:55","modified_gmt":"2021-11-27T13:05:55","slug":"semper-fi-meep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"<q>Semper Fi, Meep<\/q>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yester-day I received an old Haldeman-Julius catalogue that contains a picture of David Oliver Cauldwell.  He looked like some cross between a stereotypical <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usmc.mil\/marinelink\/mcn2000.nsf\/homepage?readform\">Marine<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/muppet.wikia.com\/wiki\/Beaker\">Beaker<\/a>.<\/p> <p>The mail to-day brought four tickets from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.televisionpreview.com\/\">Television Preview<\/a>:<\/p> <blockquote style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"><strong>You<\/strong> have been selected to participate in a survey whose findings will <strong>directly influence<\/strong> what you see on television in the future.<\/blockquote> <p>The thing is written to make it seem that the audience will be evaluating a show or shows (and my gut re\u00e4ction was to be appalled that any of us in <abbr title=\"southern California\">SoCal<\/abbr> should be asked, it being <em>bad enough<\/em> that the thinking in Los Angeles has such a disproportionate and otherwise perverse effect).  But I did a quick check on the <abbr title=\"World-Wide\">WW<\/abbr>Web, and what I've learned is that the audience will <em>really<\/em> be used to test <em>commercials<\/em>, and otherwise be surveyed for their re\u00e4ctions to consumer products.  The shows presented will be old-and-probably-failed pilots or series.<\/p> <p>I stopped at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lavacheandco.com\/\">La Vache<\/a> for lunch, and ate too much food.  I entered planning to eat a salmon sandwich, and found carrot soup on the menu.  I ordered a bowl (rather than a cup), and this in itself was a good choice; but I should then have forgone the sandwich (and its side of mashed potatoes), in spite of the anti-depressant virtues of salmon.  I am now parked at David's Coffee Place, attempting to remain relatively inert.<\/p> <p>Speaking \u2014 well, writing \u2014 of David's Coffee Place, my understanding is that the new owners are going to change the name to <q>Babycakes<\/q>.  I think that this new name is a generally bad idea.  First, David's Coffee Place (<abbr title=\"also known as\" style=\"font-size: smaller\">AKA<\/abbr> just <q>David's Place<\/q>) is something of a neighborhood institution \u2014 a well-regarded institution \u2014 and a wholesale name-change will make people feel as if that institution is <em>gone<\/em>.  Second, I see the particular name <q>Babycakes<\/q> as the sort of thing associated with something at best <em>briefly fashionable<\/em>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yester-day I received an old Haldeman-Julius catalogue that contains a picture of David Oliver Cauldwell. He looked like some cross between a stereotypical Marine and Beaker. The mail to-day brought four tickets from Television Preview: You have been selected to participate in a survey whose findings will directly influence what you see on television in [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,4,100],"tags":[216,101,85,113,102,84,114,1332],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-personal","category-public","category-sexology","tag-babycakes","tag-cauldwell","tag-davids-coffee-place","tag-food","tag-haldeman-julius","tag-hillcrest","tag-scams","tag-sexology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11898,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/11898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}