A Michigan judge today ruled that two former waitresses who filed a weight discrimination case against the Hooters restaurant chain could proceed with their cases.

Cassandra Marie Smith, one of the plaintiffs, alleges in her complaint that she began working at a Hooters in 2008. At the time, she weighed 145 pounds. In a performance evaluation this earlier year, she claims in her complaint, a restaurant manager advised her “to join a gym in order to lose weight and improve her looks so that she would fit better into the extra small-sized uniform.” She alleged she was put on a 30-day “weight probation” and resigned.

The official uniform for Hooters waitresses, she claims, comes in 3 sizes: extra extra small, extra small, or small. Attorney Richard Bernstein, counsel to Smith, called the suit a “benchmark case” that will establish the proposition that physical appearance should not be a component of an employee keeping his or her job, according to the Grand Rapids Press. [I believe that the use of "benchmark" in this case should not be understood as a double entendre.]

To understand the case in all its FULL complexities, please CLICK HERE.

Cutting-edge Scandinavian researchers Ingrid Wikstrand, Jarl Torgerson, & Kristina Bengtsson Boström published a peer-reviewed article in the
Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care
June 2010, Vol. 28, No. 2, Pages 89-94 , DOI 10.3109/02813431003778540.

Yes, for once, they discovered something that even Mammy did not know. It seems that people who are put on VLCD [Scandinavian code word for "very low calorie diet"] lose weight. It was an extremely scientific study and all the usual precautions
to test for reliability and validity were taken. Plenty of statistical analysis that would have befuddled Mammy is included.

Ingrid and her companions in wisdom and truth also wanted to know if wearing corsets for a year would be helpful in keeping weight off. Unfortunately, too many subjects dropped out of their corsets for Ingrid to come to any conclusion. [This writer cannot help wondering how Ingrid looks in a corset.]

The study was sponsored by the Department of Health Care, Regional Secretariat and Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Institute of Medicine, the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg and conducted in better dining rooms everywhere.

Buried somewhere in the body of the paper, our authors make the intriguing claim that obesity is a worldwide problem and associated with risk of cardiovascular disease. They also make the usual, linguistically incompetent observation that obesity is associated with “increased cardiovascular risk.” You do not know what that means and you should not try to understand it, presuming, as I do, that this is something independent of the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

God bless the Swedes and we should all thank them for their devotion to Telegaleria, the best of corset companies. Here is a splendid link I found for corset wear. CLICK HERE.

From medicinenet.com

June 18, 2010 — People who drink a lot of tea or drink coffee in moderation are less likely to die of heart disease than coffee and tea abstainers, new research suggests.

The finding adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that coffee and tea help protect against heart disease, but not stroke.

Researchers followed more than 37,000 people in The Netherlands for 13 years in one of the largest and longest studies ever to examine the impact of coffee and tea drinking on heart health.

They found that:

People who drank three to six cups of tea per day had a 45% lower risk of death from heart disease than people who drank less than one cup of tea a day.
Drinking more than six cups of tea a day was associated with a 36% lower risk of heart disease, compared to drinking less than one cup.
People who drank more than two, but no more than four, cups of coffee a day had about a 20% lower risk of heart disease than people who drank more or less coffee or no coffee at all.
Moderate coffee consumption was associated with a slight, but not statistically significant, reduction in death from heart disease, but neither coffee nor tea affected stroke risk. The association was seen even though the researchers considered other lifestyle factors associated with heart disease, including smoking and exercise level.

Several earlier studies have also found that drinking coffee or tea lowers the risk for heart disease. In one, reported in 2008, women who drank four to five cups of coffee a day had a 34% lower risk of dying from heart disease while men who drank more than five cups had a 44% lower risk.

[SG: Informal study by one regular reader of this Journal indicates that coffee is almost as healthful a brew as vodka.]

The study appears in the latest issue of the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.

Answer: When it is a Hershey chocolate bar, of course, the iconic chocolate bar of chocolate bars. So says the Hershey Chocolate Company in getting its injunction to force the vile intruder, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. to quit making baking pans that look like Hershey bars. This suit threatens to take its place among the heroically long suits made famous in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, possibly smashing the world record set by the very estimable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce that dominated the Court of Chancery for generations. Here are the astonishing facts of Hershey vs. the audacious, insolent, presumptuous, disrespectful and, (dare I say it?), the chutzpah-laden Williams-Sonoma johnny-come-lately, uppity pan handlers.

When the folks at Williams-Sonoma Inc. started to market a brownie pan in the shape of a chocolate bar, Hershey’s lawyers went to court seeking an injunction to block any further sales. In a Lanham Act suit filed in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa., Hershey claims that the Williams-Sonoma brownie pan “unlawfully trades on the goodwill and reputation Hershey has established through its use and promotion of that product configuration trademark.”

The Hershey bar design is more than just a rectangle. It is “a chocolate bar that consists of, inter alia, a rectangle containing 12 equally sized rectangular panels arranged in a 4×3 format, with each panel having its own raised borders,” the suit says. The Williams-Sonoma brownie pan “embodies and mimics” the Hershey bar design, the suit says. [SG: Yes, indeed, "inter alia" is quite the right, well-chosen word because there is so, so so much more to a Hershey bar than rectangular panels.] And get this: the packaging used to sell the pan, uses a font very similar to that used on a Hershey bar wrapper. My god, how much is Hershey expected to endure?

All across our land, consumers are being intentionally deceived by Williams and Sonoma. Among the instances of dastardly deeds is Exhibit A: In a gushing tribute to the pan, Charli Penn writing for CelebrityWeddingBuzz.com on the subject of actress Zooey Deschanel’s wedding registry, said “I went nuts over this chocolate bar brownie pan. It bakes one giant brownie that snaps into 12 easily sharable chunks like a Hershey’s bar.” Exhibit B: BakingBites.com refers to the Hershey bar design as a “classic confectionery icon: a flat, rectangular bar divided up into bite-sized pieces that are easy to snap off.”

I promise to follow the exciting adventure to the end of time, if I have to. If need be, I will even try to learn who Zooey Deschanel is.

As I tiptoed through the bedroom that belongs to me Thursdays through Sundays, around 4 A.M., on my way to the shower, I was very glad the TV set was still on. It lighted my way and I was spared breaking my bones, which would have been the consequence of tripping over dolls and toys by the dozens.  I stopped to listen to a commercial.   The model was pushing a brand of fish oil pills and she declared, “They say that if you have your health, you have everything.”   She was right; “they” do say that.  I have heard that a million times.  There must be a grain of truth in it or why would it be said by so many people so many times?    On the surface, it seems to encapsulate as much wisdom as “They say that if you break your bones twice a year, you will be very glad.”   No one says that, so why do they say the former?

Maybe it is because, if you are very unhealthy, you can’t do any of the things you would like to do.  Maybe it is because, if you are even moderately unhealthy, you will be too stuck on yourself and will not do the many things you ought to do. Maybe it is because people are just plain dumb and say all sorts of things they haven’t carefully considered.  Maybe it is because, if you don’t say anything, people will think you are just plain dumb and, saying that, is a nifty substitute for “Nice weather today.”

I find myself stuck on wondering about things I am not sure others ever wonder about.  Yesterday, I pestered my wife to the point where she said, “Are you plain dumb?” I used to live on Oakwood Street before I got married.  There were sidewalks and houses on each side.  On each side of what?  Down the center of the whole kit and kaboodle was the part on which autos drove and/or parked.  As a kid, I used to call that “the gutter.”  It is what all my friends called it.  Well, we were wrong.   My wife explained to me that a gutter is something else and that what I called “the gutter” was more properly called “the street.”     Well, then, was I wrong to call that whole conglomerate, “Oakwood Street” a street?  Which was the street?

I got no satisfaction from dialoguing with the good woman.  She insisted “street” applied equally well to the kit and the kaboodle as well as to the portion that was for autos, trucks, bikes, motorcycles, pushcarts and stickball players.   “What about punchball players?” I asked.   “Them, too,” came the response.  I pondered.  “Is ‘them, too’ grammatical?”   She ignored me for at least 30 seconds so I pressed on.   “Waiting for the answer.”  “To what?”   “I want to know if ‘them too’ is grammatical.”

“Yes, it is grammatical.  Think of it as short for, ‘The street is for them, too.’   You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”   I told her that I don’t have a problem with anything because I have my health and therefore I have everything.

She told me I was being just plain dumb.  That sounded right, so I dropped the matter and went back to whatever I was doing.  Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what that was because I am just too damn dumb.  But wait!   Is being “just too damn dumb” different from being “just plain dumb”? As soon as I can safely raise this question – that is, not get hit with a baseball bat or a brick – I think I will ask that woman.  You know the woman I mean.  The one who shares a bed with the little girl who schemes to break my bones.

What does it mean to be honored as one of the 729 best restaurants in North America?  Perhaps because he walks by night, The Whistler knows.  I don’t.    Giovanni’s Ristorante in Detroit is privileged to be listed among the 729 best.   What if the list had been the exclusive 728?  Surely, Giovanni’s would have been omitted and would have been consigned to the Contemptible.   Perhap it would have been mistaken for a hash-slinging joint and only true cognoscenti would have known how great it is.   Already, I am unhappy with Giovanni’s because it uses a woppish spelling of “Restaurant.”   Why isn’t it the joint called “Giovanni’s Gaststatte?  [Sorry about the missing umlaut.] There is a certain euphonius ring to that which compensates for its Nazi connotations.

So I took a trip to Detroit to see what it was all about.   Giovanni offers you an antipasto.  This is difficult to translate but I suppose it is the guinea equivalent of vorspeiss.  I always enjoyed chopped liver as my first course – the vorspeiss – but haven’t had it in 35 years when I was told that eating the bits and pieces of cow corpses is not a nice thing to do.   I confine myself to headless chickens and boneless sardines.  That still makes me a cannibal because, as deep ecologists keep telling us, we are first cousins to all living things.  We are also second cousins twice removed from mineral deposits — except for the international  tennis star Li Na who, despite playing an elemental game, is the salt of the earth and a full-blooded lithium Indian, to boot.  [Of course, you cannot really give her the boot or she will unlovingly trounce you 6-0 for the rest of your miserable tennis life.]

Immediately after the vorspeiss, the waitstaff, formerly waitresses and waiters, bring on the Suppe. Your guess as to what this means is surely better than mine.  I can tell you only that you get to choose from among these: brodo con cappelletti, brodo con gallina, and the frighteningly named pasta faglioli.  I imagine this is a dish especially designed for gay people and since fully 25% of my best loved friends in the world are gay, I have at times sampled this porridge-like concoction.  Don’t even think of trying the minestrone soup because you will make a fool of yourself if you don’t know whether to call it minestroné or minestrone (the latter somewhat rhymes with methadone, which unfortunately is not on the menu).

You are now ready for – yes, you guessed it – insalata.  However, you are in for a surprise.  This word is one of those terms classified by Noam Chomsky as a false cognate.   You think you know what it means but here is the proof that you don’t.  The waitperson proudly brings to your table, “Pecan Encrusted Boneless Breast of Chicken Rested Atop Baby Spinach with Mandarin Orange, Sundried Cherries, Pecans & Gorgonzola Cheese Served with a Wildberry Vinaigrette.”   Did I tell you right or what?

At last you are in no mood to fool around so the waitperson, wearing a tie, the knot of which does not quite reach his/her neck,  to make his/her sex undeterminable, bewitches, bothers and bewilders you by arriving with a new menu forcing you to choose from among fifteen mouth-watering dishes while he/she sings an intriguing excerpt from Pal Joey.  (You know which one.)    The trouble is that you have been reduced to silent incomprehension because you don’t know Dago.    Dare you order Cappelletti Verde Pesto?   I wouldn’t, if I were you.  If you had the nerve, you would ask the waitperson if it is possible for him/her to bring you hot pastrami on club bread but you are glad you are gutless since you are a vegan, and have a certificate suitable for lamination to prove it.  [I've got one.]  The kind-hearted waitperson, sensing your consternation, suggests a very nice Gnocchi de Patate Verde.  [Please don’t drive me crazy by asking me to translate.}   The most wonderful thing about Giovanni’s is that, in the audition process to become part of the staff, management screens carefully for arrogance.  Waitpersons in many of the 729 best ristorantes in North America are often pompous, self-important, bumptious, imperious and downright mother-fuckers.  Giovanni will never hire such creatures.

Of course, for your main dish, Giovanni calls it the entree, you can have something other than pasta, if you wish.  These are the grotesque remnants of the carcasses of the unliving.  Giovanni thinks to make them savoring by labeling them piati della casa but by now you know Dago so well that you can’t be fooled.   In any case, you are quite confused because once upon a time you were taught that the word “entree” means “entry” and it cannot possibly be the case, now that you are stuffed to the gills, that the meal is just beginning.

Care for some dessert?  Just skip it unless you are good at washing dishes.   However,  Giovanni does accept Diners Club and American Express cards readily but looks closely if you present a Masters or Visa card.  Who can blame him?    A “gratuity” is added on to your bill.  In plain words, a baksheesh.

After my visit, I compiled my own list of the 444 best restaurants in the whole world and, lo, Giovanni’s name led all the rest.  May his tribe increase.

I think it was 2002.  I was in Florida, teaching a class at the University of Miami, making a couple of new friends and enjoying the weather.   One day I picked up a newspaper and read about a basketball game between two high school girls’ basketball teams.    Let’s call them Team A (for awful) and Team E (for excellent).   The game result was less interesting than the aftermath.

After the game, the principal of School E called in the coach and raked him over the coals.  ”Why did you inflict such humiliation on the other team?  Why didn’t you stop the massacre?  You have forced me to apologize to the principal of A.”

The final result just happened to be 100-2.  The coach had the perfect response.  ”Would you feel better had we won 90-4?”   At what point does humiliation descend to mere devastation?    The coach could have told his best players to stay home and then early in the game put in substitutes for his substitutes.  One thing he could not have done is to instruct the substitutes’ substitutes to play badly.  ”Miss your shots, fumble your passes, run sluggishly up and down the court.”   He could not have demanded his own girls humiliate themselves.  Moreover, Team A would not have appreciated such condescension.

Democracy has wreaked havoc on the high school sports scene.  Once upon a time, girls were content to sit on the sidelines, watching boys play, and dreaming of dates with the most handsome among them.  Now, they want action, and want the boys sitting on the sidelines, cheering for them.  Something called Title IX, a provision of federal law, requires that school funding be split fairly equably between teams for boys and girls.

While some girls are dedicated athletes, preparing themselves for athletic scholarships when they get to college, other girls are going through the motions as if in a daze.  In boys’ basketball, everyone is good.  Dozens of youngsters , who have been playing for years, try out for the school team and only the best are selected.  The disparity in talent among girls is astonishing.  In some schools, such as that of School A, coaches prowl the school corridors and find chubby girls who they inveigle to come out for the school teams with promises of post-game chocolate eclairs filled with luscious custard.  Irresistible. The coach, after only two weeks of such bribery, succeeds in rounding up eight hungry girls who will make fools of themselves on the court for the sake of the eclairs.

As for the game I read about, I learned that the losers had not won a game in over two years and usually lost by 20 or more points.  Team E had won all its games and usually by 15 or more points.  One might wonder why the principal of School E had not called the principal of A and serenaded him with the classic Gershwin song, “Let’s call the whole thing off.”   I think I know the answer.   School A had already contracted from a local bakery 240 eclairs for the season.  (3 per girl per each of 10 games.)

Let the devouring begin!

Okay, so you are fat and stupid.  But the good news is that it is not your fault.   You are meant to be that way.  This cheery news comes from medicine.com.

“European scientists report that a genetic variation seems to virtually guarantee that a person will become obese.

The genetic variation in question robs people of about 30 genes and appears to be found in seven of every 1,000 severely obese people, the researchers report. The same variation also may be linked to mental retardation and learning disabilities.

“Obesity is definitively a genetic trait, and it is very likely that additional small chromosomal abnormalities exist that may dramatically increase the risk of obesity and may also be linked to brain developmental problems,” said Dr. Philippe Froguel, co-author of a study published in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Nature and head of genomic medicine at Imperial College London.”

This news gives me all the justification I need to sit down by my fireplace and burn all the books in my library I was never going to read anyway.  While this goes on, I will be devouring a double cheeseburger washed down with a chocolate malted.  Got a dessert suggestion?

There is nothing anyone can say good about 98.32% of all the beverages on earth but to make it official, I will say what is wrong with each them.   As I have said in the past, there is no such thing as marching to the beat of a different drummer; when you are not in step with me then you are out of step.      In a later review, I will discuss chewables.

1.  Let’s begin with beer.   Plainly, no beer tastes good.  You can train yourself to like some of them, but what for?  We can grade beers from downright awful to moderately distasteful.  After a hard workout, my Brownsville buddies and I would drink our sodas.  What was right for us should be right for you.

2.  Water. After a 10 mile run in extremely hot, humid conditions, you can put away 5 quarts of the stuff immediately, as I used to do.  If you don’t run, you should stay away from this junk.   Members of the water brigades always drink it cold, if they can.  They even put ice cubes in the godawful stuff.  Fans of water have been drinking the stuff for over 2 million years.  The result?  It plays a role in keeping the human race alive.  As a negative utilitarian, I can assure you this is a mistake.

3.  Coffee.  Lunatics (over 1 billion of them) drink 400 billion cups per year.  All the loonies are in search of a way to make it palatable.  They drink it con leché, or as latté, or with tons of sugar while the hard-boiled hold out for black and unflavored.  In belligerent defiance of common sense, they descend in droves upon Starbucks, Caribou cafes, and Seattle Best dirt corners.  They deserve the insomnia they seemingly crave.

4. Soda.    In the midwest and other retreats from civilization, this brew is called pop or soft drinks.  Nevertheless. no one ever goes up to the bartender and says, “I’ll have a scotch and pop, please.”    Once upon a time, there were only a dozen or so flavors, but in desperation for finding something potable, we now have over 100 “flavors.”  We have abandoned the search for names and now call them by their colors – such as Red Pop.  Only the certifiably insane and teenagers drink this undrinkable.

5. Wine.  Strictly for those snobs who have worked hard  to be snobs.  Natural-born snobs know better.    Wines breathe, they have balance, their flavors are harmonious, they have structure, body, complexity, bouquet, depth, and fullness.   Wines can be generous and/or have good breeding.   They can be plush or velvety.   They are delicate or hearty, sophisticated, amusing.  They may be round, soft, perfumed, and the best of them have “long finishes.”  Ad nauseum.  They get graded by so-called connoisseurs who assign numbers to them.   Manischewitz Extra Heavy Malaga costs about 4 bucks a bottle and is mainly liquid sugar.  Therefore it alone is palatable but only if you are a kike.

6. Tea.  The inscrutable Chinks are to blame for this garbage.   They’ve been drinking this vomitable concoction since 2737 B.C.  Americans have discovered something they call herbal tea but tea by any other name is still pure garbage.   When Sammy Adams, Jack Hancock and Paul Revere dumped 342 cases of the stuff into a harbor back in 1776, they aroused the temper of the Brits.  Can you imagine?  It was the only good deed this trio ever did in their lives.  The Brits should have bestowed medals on them.

7. Hard liquor.   And hard it is.  Hard on your mouth, throat and stomach.  Pure fire water even when disguised one way or the other.  Suitable for drunken red-skinned scalp takers.  In fact, it puts them in the mood.  Imbeciles choose between gin and vodka.  Morons select from rye whiskey or scotch.   Bourbon addicts drink mint juleps and are content to watch horses zoom by at the Kentucky Derby as they down the godawful stuff.   Low grade morons try to distinguish between single malt scotch and something else.  There is no point to this, of course, but it is not for nothing that low grade morons are low grade morons.  Making cocktails with this junk won’t help.

8. Lemonade.  A drink 9-year old white kids sell on steps outside their homes.  It used to be 5 cents a cup but probably is about 10 times that, nowadays.  Their blonde, fortyish mothers egg them on, teaching them the value of capitalist swinery.  Compared to bourbon or a wine with a long finish, it is pretty good.

9. Lime Rickeys.   Be glad you are not from New York.  Kids in New York are trained to like this stuff but once they move away, they are glad.    You can’t buy them and you don’t know how to make them.  You are lucky.

10.  Egg Creams.   Chocolate soda with milk in it.  What can I say?  It is vile but early in life I was brainwashed into liking it.  Fortunately for you, you are probably not from New York.  Stay away from this childish trash.

11. Milk.  If high in fat content it is no good for you.  With the fat skimmed off, it is abominable.  Best when drunk from your mother’s breast.   If, now that you are 70 years old, she refuses to play along with you, fuhgeddabout it.

12. Coconut whip a lá Jungle Jim style.  The only drink ever invented that deserves commendation.   You never passed the corner of Strauss and Pitkin Avenues in Brooklyn?  In that case, Reader, I feel sorry for you.

************************

I neglected to say something about juices, of which many people are unjustifiably fond. Of course, orange juice, apple juice, grapefruit juice and pineapple juice are unspeakably terrible – quite beyond the pale.  If you are anorexic, then 3 months of drowning yourself in these concoctions four times a day will turn you into an obese dribbler.  Tomato juice and its clones, V8 and vegetable juice are liquid containers of salt and I guarantee that 4 full glasses of this monster will bring on a stroke in under 3 months.

My advice, then, is this: if it goes down without chewing, have no truck with it.