The Red Pencil Diaries return this week with five more reviews culled from the primordial grammatical muck that is Yelp Orange County. It's truly amazing what people will write and then attach their names to. You'd think that they'd realize that Yelp is social media like any other, that Yelp reviews sometimes show up in social media background checks for employment, and that proofreading is a valuable use of time when putting your public face out there. Read on... More »

First of all, let's provide this paper's coverage of the much-maligned Reviewer Card, which you can hand to restaurant staff in order to inform them that they are under review by DouchebagNoshingDeliciously.blogspot.com or whatever your 7-pageviews-a-day food blog is called:

If you get one of these cards and intend to use it, please contact us before you do, so we can send a photographer to cover the ass-kicking you so richly deserve. Thanks.

Now, onto this week's Red Pencil Diaries.

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Once, in a fit of creative madness while writing for this august publication, I wrote a review of the Viking Truck as a filk of the Völuspá, the Icelandic heroic saga. Our beleaguered editorial staff kindly let it through, and now when I read it, I feel like an adult looking back at a goofy candid picture from 9th grade chorus... what the hell were you thinking, Dave?

This was all I could think of as I combed through the Yelp reviews of Haven Gastropub, the Orange Circle's most beloved and, um, be-hated restaurant.

First, it seems like writing a review of Haven is a requirement of becoming a Yelp Elite, in the guidelines right next to "must give up anonymity and put picture of face up" and "must act like the Royal Family of Food Writing".

Second, Yelp attracts some really bizarre reviews. Not necessarily bad, just strange. They run the gamut from people who are obviously bored writing reviews to people who are clearly living in an alternate universe, unsullied by human reality.

So welcome, fair readers, to this week's all-Haven Gastropub edition of the Red Pencil Diaries.  More »

Happy New Year! Won't you make a resolution this year to suck less in your Yelp reviews?

Luckily for Yelpers, Christmas and New Year's Day fell on Tuesdays this year; the blithering goons who infest that corner of the Internet had two whole weeks to abuse good sense and the English language.

Now that we're a week into 2013, though, the Red Pencil Diaries are back with a vengeance. This week we've got self-declared experts, people who write bizarre updates to reviews, people who cadge invitations into the much-ballyhooed Yelp Elite, people who sound like shills (whether they are or not), and much more.

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Oh, Yelpers. You get your knickers in a twist over the dumbest, pettiest things. Maybe it would be better if Yelp offered a 0-to-100 scale, like in school, or a 0.000-1.000 scale, like in baseball; then you could ding restaurants to your heart's content and not have such an immense impact on their ratings. (Really? 20 percent of your experience was tainted because you had to wait two extra minutes for an iced tea refill?)

Then there are those of you who make the Red Pencil Diaries not because you don't know anything about food, but because you don't self-edit. If you contradict yourself halfway through a paragraph, you have defeated the purpose of writing anything more than, "Decent experience. 3 stars."

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It was a good week for the Red Pencil Diaries. We got a new professional comrade over at the Orange County Register, someone who knows a great deal about food (though Neapolitans, like all Italians, eat pizza with a knife and fork and don't have to worry about droopy slice tips); I was excited for the future of food writing in Orange County, right up until it was time to drill into the festering bum of dining reviews.

It's truly amazing how little self-editing goes into Yelp reviews, and truly horrifying how many people think of Yelp as some kind of deals site where they get "paid" in free food for publishing their mental spack.

Welcome to OC, Brad A. Johnson; you've got nothing to fear from your Yelp competition.

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Today in the Red Pencil Diaries: people who actually manage to stuff relevant content into a few sentences! Yes, there are actually succinct Yelp reviews that don't totally suck! (Shocking, isn't it?)

Sadly, they are far outweighed by people who change their minds without telling anyone why, and the dread fake Yelp reviews, which come in two flavors: "I didn't eat here but I hate it anyway," and "I'm reviewing before it even opens."

Keep Yelping, Yelpers. You give me an inexhaustible source of writing material.

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This week's Red Pencil Diaries feature a Yelper who can't find a good alternative even when surrounded by them; a Yelper who doesn't understand the physics of too much food in a finite stomach; someone who is confused as to what a Korean barbecue restaurant is; a jilted Japanese food lover who's angry at her soulmate; and the stoic, terse Yelper who can't count.

You'll have to forgive the lack of positive reviews of Yelp reviews this week: my algorithm for finding Yelp reviews didn't send me anything worthy of cheering, and I'm in a cranky mood anyway. Read on!

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Yelpers who blame liquor stores for their bad childhood memories of dense Ashkenazi Jewish cookies; Yelpers who expect fast-food employees to actually care about their jobs or the food they make; Yelpers to whom large festival signs are Greek. Yes, it's time for another round of analyzing what passes for food criticism in OC's little corner of the Yelp monster.

Isn't it amazing that people have absolutely no sense of self-editing? Yelp can be useful or entertaining. Usually, though, it's an untamed gusher of raw mental dithering, like reading James Joyce bitching about six minutes without an iced tea refill. Read on!

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Welcome once again to the den of poor writing, poor taste, and poor judgment known as Yelp Orange County. This week's edition runs the gamut from reviews obviously written by stringing together CAPTCHA challenges, inside information on those seedy Vietnamese bars, and people who accidentally happen upon great cocktails.

As always, if you read a particularly worthy Yelp review, send it to me, either in the comments, or via e-mail--just click on my name in the byline above and then the "E-mail author" link. Tell me in the e-mail, too, if you want a hat tip should I use your suggestion.

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