Stay Moist

I grew up in a great beach town in Southern California, and anyone that knows me (or has been to my home or office) knows that I am very nostalgic for stuff back home. Luckily, a woman at my firm's L.A. office lives in the town next to mine, which is part of the South Bay (south Santa Monica Bay, that is).

The significance of that is that like me, this woman loves to read our local weekly paper, The Beach Reporter. And with the advent of interoffice mail, I get it the Beach Reporter on my desk once a week, and can keep up with whatever's going on back home. It's like any local paper -- pictures of high school sports, ads for movies, real estate, etc. One of my favorite things about the Beach Reporter is the weekly "Crime Report." Luckily, the South Bay is super safe (to the point where our local police are what the Big Lebowski would refer to as "fascist" [stay out of my nice beach community], but that's a Blogtari for another day all in itself.). So the Crime Report is hilarious to read. Sure there are robberies and even a murder every few years, but usually it is something like "The wind blew over a tree branch, which hit a car parked on the street and set off a car alarm. The alarm, in turn, was loud and frightened an elderly man nearby who was walking his dog."

Anyway, the recent cover of the Beach Reporter is the best I've ever seen. I will have to finagle technology to post a pic, but my description will do for now. The cover of the 1/15/09 Beach Reporter plasters a huge picture of three girls on the highs school water polo team sitting by the pool. They are each around 14-15 years old, and kind of smiling. And the huge headline you can't help but see half a mile away?

"WAITING TO GET WET"

I love local newspapers. No one at the Beach Reporter caught that? "Hey let's throw up a pic of three pubescent girls with the headline 'Waiting to Get Wet.' And then distribute that paper to those girls' parents, friends, and teachers."

Rad.