ASIAN MAYORS DUEL OVER NEW BAY BRIDGE

imageYerba Buena Island, San Francisco – As crews from Caltrans battle against time to ensure the timely opening of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge the day after Labor Day, the Asian mayors of San Francisco and Oakland are engaged in a rhetorical duel over the name of the new structure.

Oakland mayor Jean Quan wants the new span to be named the Oakland Bay Bridge while San Francisco mayor Ed Lee insists it should be called the San Francisco Bay Bridge.  Quan argues that the new span sits on the eastern side of the Oakland City and Alameda County line, but Lee says that the  tower of the new bridge casts its shadow over the western side, right by Yerba Buena Island  which is part of the City and County of San Francisco.

Quan said that Oakland needs a landmark to help its tourism image. “San Francisco already has the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, ” Quan said , ” so I hope Lee would not be so greedy to claim the new Bay Bridge span as well.”

To settle the issue, two “Browns” are mediating.  California Governor Jerry Brown proposed a public debate between the two Asian Mayors and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown has volunteered to be the judge.

Both mayors have tentatively agreed to the debate.

“TWIT” OR ‘TWERK” NO LONGER THE QUESTION

photoSan Francisco, California –  Ah, the power of television!  Just a couple of days after that much-talked about performance by former Disney singing star Miley Cyrus at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA), the word, “twerk” has gotten everyone to go berzerk. The performance featured Cyrus stripping down to flesh-colored bikinis and doing the twerk moves, best described as “the rhythmic gyrating of the lower fleshy extremities in a lascivious manner with the intent to elicit sexual arousal or laughter.”

The word has just been added by Britain’s Oxford Dictionary, lending legitimacy to this urban lexicon.  Although “twerk” has been around for years, Oxford Dictionary didn’t decide to add the word until Miley “twerked” all over singer Robin Thicke’s man muscle at the VMAs.

In another unintended consequence of Miley’s performance, Twitter, the San Francisco-based online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, has decided on changing its name to “Twerker.” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told The Adobo Chronicles that the company has been rethinking its name for quite some time now.  “People get confused on when to use “tweet” and “twit,” as they do when referring to the company name – “Twitter” or “Tweeter,” Costolo said.

Costolo said that seeing Cyrus perform at the VMAs, and the millions of tweets that followed her controversial performance helped convince Twitter to change  its name. “From hereon, there will be no more confusion among twitters, I mean tweeters,” Costolo pointed out. “Everybody will now be using one and the same term, “Twerk.”

ANOTHER U.S. MEDIA MERGER

onion-cnn-300x300Atlanta, Georgia – The bleeding in the country’s newsrooms never seems to stop.  All around the country, newsrooms are laying off personnel. Newspapers are paring down their circulation.  Television news networks are moving more and more towards entertainment content.  Above all, mergers between and among media companies are becoming a weekly occurrence.

The latest announced merger is between Cable News Network (CNN), the pioneer in 24-hour broadcast news, and  The Onion, the pioneer in organized news satire. Many in the journalism profession saw it coming, especially after CNN.com’s managing editor Meredith Artley appeared as a guest columnist in the latest issue of The Onion.  Artley’s column delved on why CNN.com made Miley Cyrus’ almost pornographic performance at the last Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards its top story on Monday.

CNN CEO Jeff Zucker, in making the announcement at the network’s headquarters in Atlanta, said that the merger of the two media outlets cannot be more perfect. “It’s a partnership made in heaven,” Zucker said.  “Time and again, consumers of news have seen the parallelism between the CNN and The Onion styles of reporting. Both outlets excel in entertainment, sensationalism, and fakery,” he added.

The Adobo Chronicles interviewed people on the street to get their reaction to the merger.  One avid news consumer was ecstatic, saying that “finally, I do not have to decide which news is true and which is fake.  Now I know to consider this one (merged) news source as totally fake.”

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