Don't let the smooth taste FOOL YOU
January 21, 2011 9:23 AM   Subscribe

 
As Bill Cosby impersonations go, it's good but not great.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:31 AM on January 21, 2011


God those people in Atlanta whine a lot... they don't KNOW what snow and cold is...

now, get off my Michigan lawn!
posted by HuronBob at 9:41 AM on January 21, 2011 [4 favorites]


Best of web whinyness?
posted by Xurando at 9:44 AM on January 21, 2011


Oh Atlanta, 'what do you have???'

I need to go back and visit, been like 4 years.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:44 AM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


I wish she'd elaborate about that party, the one where she's expected to take off her clothes?
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:47 AM on January 21, 2011


It just snowed 8 inches today in Massachusetts, after we've already gotten like 28 inches in a week. No sympathy. No sympathy at all.

This is still hilarious.
posted by fremen at 9:48 AM on January 21, 2011


As a former resident of Atlanta now living in Vermont this is hilarious.

I still wouldn't drive in Atlanta after 1/2" of snow, people are batshit insane when it snows there.
posted by ChrisHartley at 9:57 AM on January 21, 2011


Raised in Atlanta and now living in Minnesota (where it was a gorgeous -21F or so this morning), that video had my crying with laughter. I miss the South sometimes. I do like the idea of not going outside till Easter though.
posted by jmd82 at 10:00 AM on January 21, 2011


This week I had to walk 2 miles in the snow to my step-brother's house and spend the night because my car could not physically navigate the hills and roads of Lawrence Kansas (and k-10, which is risky when conditions are nice) with 5 inches of snow. My disconnect with this woman is so great I'm wondering if it's actually satire.
posted by hellojed at 10:01 AM on January 21, 2011


Last week in Atlanta was dismal. My neighborhood never saw a city vehicle (except for one stray recycling truck - I have to think it was lost). In fact, the city suspended trash pickup for 2 weeks; it's only restarting today, when we've been thawed a week. The main problem was the freezing rain that formed a couple of inches of ice on top of the snow, and that nobody keeps salt/sand/shovels on hand.

I lived in Boston for many years. It's hard to understand how a major city can be completely, totally, nobody-thought-we-needed-an-emergency-plan unprepared for a storm that had been predicted for a week.
posted by catlet at 10:02 AM on January 21, 2011


It's the South. We're supposed to get half an inch of snow which magically makes all the milk, bread, eggs, and beer in the grocery store vanish; results in a day off from school or work; and melts the next morning. More than a day or two of snow and freezing temperatures and we freak the fuck out.

On the other hand, tornados roaring overhead don't even cause us to spill our cocktails.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:03 AM on January 21, 2011 [10 favorites]


As an Atlantan (well, Decatur-ite really) I gotta say that I believe the city has a self-awareness about how whiny we were about the snow and ice and getting a week off work. Our free weekly, Creative Loafing weighed in on that.

That being said, I think this woman is pretty funny as a caricature of the prevailing attitude toward OMGWEATHER. You'll probably get a more accurate representation of what Atlanta was thinking by searching for #hothlanta on Twitter.

I grew up in Michigan, but I didn't learn to drive there, so I was pretty content to stay off the roads and go sledding down my steep, iced-over driveway instead. Oh, and drink a lot. Always that.

On preview: Hey catlet! When did you start getting mail again? We saw one city vehicle on Wednesday, I think. They dumped that crappy gray sand all over our street that didn't help at all and moved on.
posted by Maaik at 10:06 AM on January 21, 2011


I think I might love this woman.
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 10:06 AM on January 21, 2011 [3 favorites]


It ain't cold until you can see your breath, hun.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:07 AM on January 21, 2011


My disconnect with this woman is so great I'm wondering if it's actually satire.

Nope.

On the other hand, tornados roaring overhead don't even cause us to spill our cocktails.

Heh, I remember the Atlanta tornadoes of maybe 1999 or 2000? Was up late watching Jay Leno with a friend while the 80th tornado warning of the season was scrolling across the screen. Chilling, and all of a sudden BOOM!!!! Power goes out, and we're more pissed we're just sitting in the dark more annoyed that we can't watch TV than we are worried about the tornadoes. Parents come running in, "GET DOWNSTAIRS YOU IDIOTS!!! 2 Hours later, we finally make it outside to find out that BOOM was a tree from somewhere, hitting the house about 1/2 a foot from the window we were sitting at and narrowly avoid impaling us both. I still tend to ignore tornado warnings.
posted by jmd82 at 10:10 AM on January 21, 2011


The #hothlanta stuff ended up being pretty funny.

Maaik, we started getting mail on Thursday. The sorting facility was iced up and they couldn't get mail trucks in from the airport, so there wasn't much to deliver. We never got sand in the residential areas except for major roads, but I was in Decatur yesterday and y'all have sand drifts along College.
posted by catlet at 10:11 AM on January 21, 2011


I'd watch more of this, but I gotta go out and clear another 8 inches of snow from my driveway.
posted by briank at 10:12 AM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


Her attitude seems to be moral outrage toward the weather. "How dare it snow here!" Hilarious.
posted by adamrice at 10:19 AM on January 21, 2011


We don't do snow here! Laugh all you want, it was fucking horrible here that week. I've been places with 6 foot deep drifts before, but snow in Atlanta is MISERABLE because we don't build for it, we don't have the gear to deal with it, and our government is incompetent.

Case in point: yesterday I saw city workers trying to remove gravel and sand from a road down town - with leaf blowers.
posted by strixus at 10:27 AM on January 21, 2011 [2 favorites]



It ain't cold until you can see your breath, hun.


That's not cold. Cold is when the inside of your nose freezes. That was the best Boy Scout camping trip ever.
posted by drezdn at 10:27 AM on January 21, 2011


Yeah, walking down Auburn Ave. last week felt like walking on a beach after a rainstorm. All crunching underfoot, sticking to your shoes.

And yeah, tornadoes ain't no thing, apparently. The one that hit downtown back in '08 nearly destroyed a rock club--air conditioning system got lifted from the roof and dropped into the parking lot...I played a show there two days later like nothing ever happened.
posted by Maaik at 10:27 AM on January 21, 2011


I keep hearing Bill Cosby when she talks. Is it just me?
posted by davebush at 10:29 AM on January 21, 2011


Sorry, I missed the first comment.
posted by davebush at 10:30 AM on January 21, 2011


I remember some years back when we were driving home to Michigan from Christmas in Florida, and Atlanta got one inch of snow. The news was full of "Under no circumstances go outside!" and there were runs on canned food.

The roads were gloriously clear.
posted by klangklangston at 10:34 AM on January 21, 2011


On the other hand, tornados roaring overhead don't even cause us to spill our cocktails.

Does AL have a superimposed map of counties in the corner of the screen during severe weather? Sometimes watching squall lines progress across KS, and the subsequent cuts to area weathermen/storm watchers was more thrilling than anything on TV that night.
posted by hellojed at 10:48 AM on January 21, 2011


When I was in my mid-teens, we drove one winter to visit my grandmother at her retirement community in South Florida. This was probably '87 or thereabouts. We were living in northern Ontario at the time, took the I-90 most of the way.

We hit a snowstorm in South Carolina. An inch or two had accumulated in total, maybe a quarter of that sticking to the highway. What we Canadians call another winter day. With each passing mile the shoulders filled more and more with spun-out cars as my dad slalomed past with snow-tired ease.

They'd closed the I-90 near Savannah, Georgia, so we had no choice but to pull off into an interstate motel strip that was rapidly turning into a sort of refugee scene. There was a Ponderosa that'd given up on regular service and was just handing out like $10 meal vouchers all down the 2-hour lineup. People were getting quite distraught, making loud pronouncements to each other about this unprecedented January "blizzard."

I was just old enough to understand what was going on and just young enough to not be able to really grasp the full diversity of human experience, by which I mean that I understood people were wigging out but couldn't for the life of me fathom why. I'd lived, until 2 yrs before, on a military base in northern Alberta where we checked the radio each morning in January before leaving for school to find out how quickly exposed flesh would freeze that day, because this was the variable that determined whether we'd have to walk or they'd send a school bus.

So, yeah, Georgia? Not too good with the whole winter weather thing.
posted by gompa at 10:59 AM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


No, Georgia is great with winter weather but winter weather in Georgia is typically 65F and sunny. When I was growing up there was a 50% chance that we'd have either a dusting of snow or t-shirt weather. I got a canoe for Christmas and was disappointed I had to wait 2 days before it was warm enough to go out on the river.
posted by ChrisHartley at 11:04 AM on January 21, 2011


On the other hand, tornados roaring overhead don't even cause us to spill our cocktails.

Yes, I've been continually mystified since I moved here how blasé everyone is about tornadoes but how completely catastrophic a small dusting of powdery snow is. It took me two freaking hours to get home last night because everybody sat paralyzed behind their steering wheels at the sight of a few snowflakes.
posted by blucevalo at 11:10 AM on January 21, 2011


She's not even wearing a fucking hat!

True cold is experienced thusly: Walking to school in Canada, forgetting your toque, and having a classmate flick your earlobes.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 11:12 AM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


Atlanta simply doesn't have the infrastructure to deal with any kind of significant winter weather. We get a winter storm like this maybe once every 10 or 15 years, so it doesn't make much sense to invest millions of dollars on equipment that is going to sit idle more often than not. For example, I think this year was the first white Christmas in Atlanta since 1882.

The city and the state could have done a better job, but hindsight is 20/20. I saw something online during the storm that rang very true: "Atlanta - population 5 million, snow plows - 10. You do the math". That pretty much sums it up. I'm not sure if the county I live in (Rockdale) even has snow removal equipment. Our road was frozen over until Wednesday afternoon, and even then 4x4 trucks were having a hard time getting down our street.

What I always enjoy is hearing all the transplanted Yankees tell me how badass they are because they aren't afraid of driving on snow, but they seem to forget that we don't have the salt trucks and snow plows to clear the roads like they do up north. So they end up in the same ditch as everyone else when they hit that patch of black ice, and eventually learn to stay home and off the roads like the rest of us when it starts to snow.
posted by ralan at 11:14 AM on January 21, 2011 [2 favorites]


a). I totally love this woman.

b). I still wouldn't drive in Atlanta after 1/2" of snow, people are batshit insane when it snows there.

Here in Memphis we got some snow yesterday, not very much, probably not even 1/4" in actual accumulation. But it was wet and it froze, and all night I heard tires spinning outside my apartment building. So far today I've seen two rear-ending accidents in the space of about 3 hours at the stoplight outside my window. My meeting was canceled because the university closed today, but I was otherwise planning on taking the bus, because seriously, why should I risk getting plowed into by people who can't remember to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN when there's ice on the roads.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 11:24 AM on January 21, 2011


"Colder than a midget in the fridgerator"? That's a new one for me.
posted by Runes at 11:34 AM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure if the county I live in (Rockdale) even has snow removal equipment.

Hey! My parents live there! (And no, Rockdale has no plows)

Sorry, I'm still new here. Just excited to see neighbors online.
posted by Maaik at 11:37 AM on January 21, 2011


Oh, Southerners, you crack me up. I recall visiting Nortel's building in RTP one February and seeing a set of barricades around something on the sidewalk leading to the front door. As I got closer I saw what it was: a patch of ice.
posted by tommasz at 12:15 PM on January 21, 2011


I just wanna say to all y'all up north dealing with all that snow y'all got, specifically all y'all laughing at us Atlantans, "Well bless your little hearts. :)" and "I'll be prayin' for ya! ;)"
posted by goHermGO at 1:05 PM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


Oh, Southerners, you crack me up. I recall visiting Nortel's building in RTP one February and seeing a set of barricades around something on the sidewalk leading to the front door. As I got closer I saw what it was: a patch of ice.

Point out to me how cordoning off a patch of ice to prevent people from slipping and injuring themselves (and opening the business in question up to a lawsuit) is a basis for pointing and laughing at Southerners.
posted by Maaik at 1:06 PM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


Minneapolis this AM: -15 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. That's all.
posted by mygoditsbob at 1:12 PM on January 21, 2011


Ralan is spot on - southern cities don't have the infrastructure to deal with snow, and given how rarely snow happens, this isn't entirely unreasonable of them, given the rarity of such events. Additionally, the limited snow-driving abilities that many of us have are not due to personal moral failings, but because these skills do take some practice, and we haven't been doing it several months out of every year since aged 16 like you have. Also, most of us don't have closets of long underwear and down coats and the like. I remember getting the L.L. Bean catalog as a child in Alabama and being mystified/fascinated by much of the content, e.g. me at 9: "Mama, what's a 'spring jacket'? Why would anyone need to wear a jacket in the spring?"

I live in the frozen north now, so I'm not oblivious to how little snow that really is in the video, but damn, some of you yankees are smug.
posted by naoko at 1:31 PM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


It would've been better had at least a majority of the roads had been gritted within at least a couple of days of the snow and freezing rain falling. Driving twenty miles to work was an adventure when the highways along my commute hadn't been gritted and at least half the people I shared the roads with were slamming on their brakes every time they saw or encountered a patch of ice or were slowing down so much that they suddenly couldn't make it over the hill and then slid back down the way they'd presumably come. That said, it doesn't do that enough here to fully justify the expense of owning, operating and maintaining enough of a fleet to handle the entire city, but I, for one, really wish they'd say screw it and get the equipment anyway.

I have to say, though, that it wasn't that damn cold, but this woman was fairly justified to think it was when we don't normally see such temperatures except at night.

Anyway, the cold didn't shut down the city, the ice on the roads and a city full of terrified drivers lacking any sense shut down the city.

Also, when the temperatures are usually rather warm in the winter compared to the rest of the country, we're a little justified in complaining when temperatures are in the teens and twenties for a week straight. My mother, a south-Floridian, has a major problem when the temperatures hit forty and below and that makes sense in an area that doesn't usually see such weather.

The largest problem I had with all that was the continuous, "there's still ice on the roads out there, and it's still cold, and by the way there's ice on the roads, look at the stranded trucks and idiot drivers, don't get on the roads there's ice out there" coverage that preempted a lot of television programs. You'd have thought absolutely nothing else was happening in Atlanta or the rest of the country, and the rest of the world simply didn't exist. By the way, there was ice on the roads in Atlanta for the better part of the week. Gosh. Really?
posted by neewom at 1:41 PM on January 21, 2011


Point out to me how cordoning off a patch of ice to prevent people from slipping and injuring themselves (and opening the business in question up to a lawsuit) is a basis for pointing and laughing at Southerners.

Because apparently they don't know about rock salt or gravel or shovels. It's like cordoning off a puddle of vomit instead of mopping it up.
posted by El Mariachi at 1:44 PM on January 21, 2011 [2 favorites]


Ah yes, how stupid for an office building in the South not to have a bag of rock salt or a shovel on-hand.

Also: what naoko said.
posted by Maaik at 2:01 PM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


drezdn: "That's not cold. Cold is when the inside of your nose freezes. That was the best Boy Scout camping trip ever."

Cold is when your eyes start to freeze. Probably not the viscous fluid, but definitely the exteriors. It's a weird prickly sort of pain where you start seeing a lot of floaters and you know it's time to seek shelter right now.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:44 PM on January 21, 2011


Look. It's not that this lady is from the south. It's that, like me, she was born with the crankiness of someone half-a-dozen decades her senior. And god bless her for it.

(Snow blew into my apartment earlier today, and it's supposed to drop to the single digits this weekend. Winter: I am over it.)
posted by evidenceofabsence at 3:36 PM on January 21, 2011 [2 favorites]


Growing up in Michigan, one of the highlights of the winter was the one snowfall of the year that would inevitably hit a major southern city. Reporters would chime in from Dallas, or Atlanta, or wherever, bundled heavily against the raging 33 degree cold, bearing brave witness to the savagery of cruel mother nature. Footage would reveal the absolute lack of driving-in-hazardous-conditions skills among local drivers. Car after car would slowly skate through intersections on that half-inch of snow.

But keep at it, wonderful people of the south. Your panic and helplessness in the face of mildly inclement weather brings us so much joy and warmth every year.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:45 PM on January 21, 2011 [2 favorites]


she had me at "colder than a midget in a refrigerator" :D
posted by liza at 5:42 PM on January 21, 2011


~GiGGle~notreally is whining like a baby because tomorrow's hi is predicted to be only 66~GiGGle~
posted by notreally at 6:23 PM on January 21, 2011


Love seeing my (current) city on the front page! My co-worker was talking about this weather report all day today, and I was cracking up just listening to her recitations. I can testify that it IS an infrastructure thing; we got five inches of snow on Sunday and the salt trucks showed up the following Thursday. Parts of the city were like ghost towns, the buses were canceled, the kids got FIVE days off school, and (as a non-driver) I can tell you that even walking down the sidewalks was treacherous and scary - people don't own snow shovels here. The messed up part was the people that HAD to go to work, they tried to tough it out and it resulted in hundreds of cars abandoned on streets and highways. It was a tough week, and a lot of it could have been alleviated with the typical snow gear and city response that people in the Northeast depend on.

As someone said upthread: this winter, I. AM. OVER. IT.
posted by polly_dactyl at 6:34 PM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]


America, You funny.
posted by srboisvert at 7:43 AM on January 22, 2011


She can take over Olbermann's show.
posted by Harry at 8:01 AM on January 22, 2011


Disclaimer: Californian, NOT living in the part where one can be wearing shorts and flip-flops all the time (though people are dumb enough to do so), but not living where it snows in the state either.

I know very little about Atlanta weather, but from what I have heard, it's not usually snowing there. Those of us who don't live in places where it snows regularly probably do that for a reason. Which is to say, we don't like snow (or at least don't want to deal with it for longer than a couple of hours spent in Tahoe). Frankly, if it snowed and stuck and lasted for weeks where I live, I'd probably be acting like this chick too, totally pissed to have to deal with the same stuff when normally I live somewhere where I shouldn't have to deal with it. Especially when the area I live in is totally NOT equipped to deal with it.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:59 PM on January 23, 2011


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