Photo via Twitter.com/FashionIsland

One day after Halloween, still spooked from the sugar shock of a high-calorie haunting, SoCal shoppers were asked Thursday to digest a 92-foot Christmas tree, and all the gift-wrapped casseroles it implies.

The OC Register reports that 10 workers spent three hours unloading a half-century old white fir for a mall holiday display at Newport Beach's Fashion Island.

The towering tree trekked from Mount Shasta early on Nov. 1 and began the transformation from carbon dioxide-eating conifer into ornamented showpiece.

The OC tree, one of the tallest installations in the country, officially goes up mid-month and will be used for firewood and mulch when it comes down in January.

The 100 foot Christmas tree just arrived this morning all the way from Mount Shasta! Let th @ Fashion Island instagr.am/p/Rf96BmF_Qb/

— Fashion Island (@FashionIsland) November 1, 2012

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Photo credit: futureexbanker.wordpress.com

A heated casserole of caustic comments bubbled up around the edges of the internet yesterday.  A restaurant receipt, showing a $1.33 tip on a charge of $133.54 and a scrawled note to the server that read "get a real job," was passed with outrage around the online table like a 30-person bill at a birthday dinner.

Not surprisingly, the "1% tipper" was a hoax.

The receipt, from the Newport Beach establishment, True Food Kitchen, was posted on a blog called Future Ex-Banker, by an anonymous blogger who claimed to work in a corporate office of a major bank for a boss who supposedly does leave 1% tips and handwritten, unsolicited advice to waitstaff deemed subpar.

Wrote the blogger, "I’ve created this blog as a confessional of sorts. It won’t entirely clear my conscience, but hopefully it’ll help. I’m sure I’ll get fired eventually. Until then, enjoy."

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