Loving the MSM

Dear friends at the Examiner: First, kudos to you for giving me so many good reasons to pick up the Examinerday after day. Catchy features like your regal and severe eagle logo, your easy-to-turn pages (minus the typical daily's cumbersome length and horizontal fold), and your giveaway status certainly merit weighty circulation numbers in my book. But although I think the paper is mostly the bee's knees, I feel it's my duty to give you a little medicine. You see, I must admit that your headlines confuse me sometimes: For example, "Tame crowd celebrates Halloween in the Castro" (Nov. 1) was followed with articles such as "At least 10 shot at massive Halloween street party in Castro" and "5 Shot at San Francisco Halloween Party." What's more — and, again, I mean this in the most productive way — covering an imperative front-page headline like "Christmas tree makes way to Union Square" (Nov. 9) with a full-page ad for what I'm sure was a wonderful Retail Management and Sales Career Fair struck me as a bit, well, strange.

Because I love you so much, I want to help you avoid such reactions by giving you some headlines to use if you ever feel perplexed again:

"POSSIBLY FIGHT- AND BULLET-FREE HALLOWEEN IN CASTRO"

"ACTUALLY WE MEAN SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 8 AND 80 REVELERS SHOT AND/OR KILLED AT CASTRO HALLOWEEN"

"LOTS AND LOTS OF MURDERS OCCURING OUTSIDE RICHMOND, OAKLAND, BAYVIEW"

Bloodbaths aside, you could use these offerings (inspired by other publications) for profiles:

"SCISSOR SISTERS' JAKE SHEARS: 'BEING GAY IS THE LEAST INTERESTING THING ABOUT ME'"

"PHARRELL: 'BEING BLACK IS THE LEAST INTERESTING THING ABOUT ME'"

"MAYOR NEWSOM: 'BEING INSANELY ATTRACTIVE IS THE LEAST INTERESTING THING ABOUT ME'"

Or to really grab your reader in that way only you know how to do:

"OH DEAR GOD! DUNGENESS CRABS ARE COMING!"

"49ERS MAKE MOVE TO ARMPIT OF CALIFORNIA"

"S.F. BABY SEAL ON THE ATTACK?"*

*Oh wait, that's actually one of your front-page headlines. But you get the idea.

Love, Brock