Zagat Guides will help you find places where you can go to Eat, Drink, Stay and Play, but what about to Picket?
Today, another spoof in the grand Zagat tradition has appeared online over at Nikki Finke's DeadlineHollywoodDaily (which remains the place to go
for strike-related information). The "Strikers Guide to Los Angeles
Studios," written by Jonahtan Schmock, offers picketing writers an
entertaining take on the daily scenes at the various backlots, from Fox
Studios (Rupert Murdoch serves up "no easy sneak out routes" and keeps
"residual-philes" "hanging in till three") to NBC Burbank
("Enthusiastic die-hards" stand in "long lines" to "stand in a long
line").
The new Striker's Guide joins a long and illustrious line of Zagat spoofs. This year alone has seen a "Zagat Guide to Life" in TIME Magazine and a "Zagat Guide to the New Congress 2007" in February's GQ
(not online). And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Since the Guide
first appeared, its iconic style has been parodied all over, from the Daily Show to the novel Absurdistan (one of the 10 Best Books of 2006 according to The New York Times). And some of them are actually pretty good. One of the Buzz's personal favorites was Noah Baumbach's "Zagat History of My Last Relationship," which appeared in The New Yorker in September 2002.