DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

John McManus, former journalist and journalism professor, runs Grade the News:

Grade the News is a media research project focusing on the quality of the news media in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are affiliated with and based at Stanford University’s Graduate Program in Journalism.

We aim to provide timely critiques and in-depth, systematic analyses that allow the public to compare newspapers and local television news broadcasts on equal footing. Think of us as a kind of Consumer Reports for news.

Our signature service is a periodic survey of thousands of local print and broadcast stories. For each story, we determine the newsworthiness, number and expertise of sources, thematic approach, number of people affected, fairness and other traits. The end product is a letter grade for the newsroom — anywhere from A to F.

In a brief Q-and-A in the Chronicle Magazine, McManus revealed something shocking, in his answer to the second question below:

So what’s the report card?
The most recent grades are The Chronicle, the Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times all got A’s. For television evening news, they all got C’s. Newsworthiness is probably the biggest difference…
What can the consumer deduce from this?
If anyone thinks they can cancel their subscription to the newspaper and just get their news from television, they’re dreaming.

Me: “Did you know that Wal-Mart is the nation’s biggest grocery chain?”

Spouse: “I buy paint at Wal-Mart.”

Pictured is a particular modest starfish, groin area tactfully covered by a small shred of seaweed.

Meanwhile, the rest of this lonely specimen’s family was enjoying an orgy across the reef.

My buddy Chuck forwarded a link to this amazing whole-body alien tattoo. I’m not sure how he found it; I wonder if maybe he was looking for something a bit more exciting than napkin rings to add to his wedding gift registry.

Also check out the animated view of the alien head tattoo. Crazy!

I changed to Aquarian drum heads about five years ago, after growing up with Remo. I was swayed by Aquarian’s geek-appeal advertising, which explains how the hoops are constructed and why Aquarian’s approach is superior. I’ve had great success with these heads.

Recently I was re-heading my entire kit. As an experiment I installed the Performance II model, which is designed to be tuned low, but I had an unexpected difficulty — one of the new heads refused to tune up. This is an incredibly frustrating problem; it goes like this: tighten each lug evenly, moving around the head in the prescribed pattern. At a medium tension level, tap the head near each lug to listen for gross differences in pitch. Locale a high spot. Loosen the nearest tension rod to drop the pitch. Oops, the tension rod comes completely free, but the head is still higher in pitch at that spot.

How the heck can the head be tightest at the spot where there’s no tension?

This could be caused by out-of-round shells, trashed bearing edges, or defective heads. I’d just had my shells’ bearing edges reground, so I was confident the shells were not at fault. Against all odds, the problem must have been the head.

I took the head off completely, rotated it about 30°, and tried again. Same results.

Ultimately I was able to get an even tuning out of the head, by cranking it down tight, resulting in a usable but lifeless tone. So I sent an email to Aquarian asking if the head could have been defective. The response I got was a surprise: an email back from Roy Burns, drummer extraordinaire, founder and president of the company.

I called him with some hesitation. Surely he has better things to do than handle customer complaints. “Oh, I handle all the complaints,” he assured me. And then he offered to replace the defective head. On my say-so, he’d ship me a new one.

After a moment’s thought, I declined. I explained that I’d managed to make the head work, but decided that I didn’t like the Performance II model. Roy asked about my band and my playing style, recommended a lighter, livelier head (the Response 2), and asked what sizes of toms I play. I told him, wondering why it mattered. He surprised me a third time: He offered to send me a whole set of new heads.

My band has a gig in the town square in a couple weeks. I am so tempted to hang a sign reading “Endorsed by Aquarian Drumheads!” But I’m afraid Roy wouldn’t appreciate it. Deep down, though, I know it’s true, even if only for this one show.