Intriguing referrer of the day: are you searching for information about live bootlegs of Osama Bin Laden’s famed “Boat Song”? If so, you’re at the right place, at least according to Google. This site comes up #1 on a search for “bin laden boat song live.”
To answer your next question: yes, I have some great Bin Laden bootlegs, including the ultrarare 1985 Madison Square Garden show and the 1977 gig opening for Cat Stevens at CBGB. I’m willing to trade for any rare Idi Amin solo stuff or early Pol Pot singles.
30 September 2001 |
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Fifteen seconds after the Saints lose a heartbreaker, I walk upstairs and look in my closet. What do I see on the floor, lonely and scared? My Saints jersey, which is normally on my back at times like this.
It all makes sense now: I cost my team the game by not wearing the colors proudly. Sorry, Saints.
30 September 2001 |
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For those who didn’t check out the fainting goat link below, there’s a Quicktime movie of, well, a fainting goat. I highly recommend it. Should you not want the 1.3MB download, a summary:
(Note: I just looked at that on a PC for the first time — sorry it’s terribly dark. Looks fine on my Mac.)
Went out for a birthday party last night — tapas at Cafe Madrid, drinks at the Meridian Room, booty shaking at Seven. And after watching the Saints whoop up on the Giants and Bonds hit No. 70 this afternoon, it’s Polyphonic Spree and Built to Spill tonight, with Matt and Amanda. Could life get any better?
30 September 2001 |
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Argh…I feel all woozy. I’ve been taking malaria pills for the last 10 weeks (I went to a malarial part of China on vacation a couple of months ago, and you have to keep taking the drugs long after you get back). Larium, the drug, has one nasty side effect: extreme sun sensitivity. So playing football this morning out in the sun for three hours made me feel like I’d been out baking for a whole day.
(The only plus: I got an actual tan in China, for the first time in my life.)
The worse thing: I took a shower after football, then hopped in bed for a nap, which has made my hair look as Flock-of-Seagulls-esque as the bassist for The Faint (see below). We’ll see if that can be contained before tonight’s festivities.
(By the way, while searching for a photo of The Faint’s bassist in full Seagulls regalia, I found this exciting piece of news: Goats Faint When Frightened. “According to the American Tennessee Fainting Goat Association [real link, really], the goats were orginally used to protect sheep. If the sheep was threatened, the goat would fall over providing the predator with a meal as a distraction.” For too long, the story of the Tennessee Fainting Goat has gone untold in our culture.)
29 September 2001 |
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I regret to inform you that this week’s Saturday football game did not turn out as well as last week’s — one lonely catch, no TDs. The fix was in, I tell you.
29 September 2001 |
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Anyone in the Dallas area should catch the 7 p.m. rebroadcast tonight of This American Life on KERA. It’s a great episode on life in wartime: excerpts from letters sent home to girlfriends from the front lines of World War II, some very touching interviews with Native Americans about the Current Situation, and other great stuff. They do amazing work there — I’d thought I was done crying for a while, but they ripped a few more tears out of me. (It’ll also be available for listening on TAL’s web site early next week.)
29 September 2001 |
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Spotted at dfwblogs’s moreover feed:
Someday, I hope my vacation schedule is important enough to be the most important breaking news across the Metroplex.
28 September 2001 |
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Saw my new favorite billboard on Harry Hines, driving back at 1 a.m. last night: a big photo of Ricki Lake, with the caption, “So Real. So Ricki. So UPN.”
I mean, we’re all for reality, no? And I can even see how Ricki Lake might have a substantial fan base out there that would make “So Ricki” seem like a compliment, not an insult. But “So UPN”? Since when is that anything other than the lowest dig conceivable? How did “So UPN” become the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in somebody’s mind?
28 September 2001 |
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Went with my friend Dena to Denton last night to see The Faint, which — I’ll go out on a limb and say it — I believe to be the finest band in all of Omaha. (Actually, considering I’m seeing Built to Spill on Sunday, that means I’ll be taking in Boise and Omaha’s finest in one week’s time. That’s coordination, my friend.)
Anyway, they were amazing. In a way, they sound like a cool K-Tel 80s compilation: the singer sounds like a cross between Dave Gahan and the guy from Gene Loves Jezebel, the bass player has that modified Flock of Seagulls haircut, and they play one song that sounds exactly like Soft Cell circa 1982. But they’ve got a nicely menacing edge, and their drummer is a mad man, so they get a little punk/industrial energy to go with all the New Waviness. (The only problem was the intense heat, which was remarkable considering it was actually quite cool outside. At one point, the band complained their keyboards had been pushed out of tune from “this fucking heat,” prompting a 10-minute delay.)
They played at Rubber Gloves, which gets a lot of interesting indie acts, but whose crowd is generally pretty dance-phobic in the standard indie kid way — lots of staring meaningfully at the floor, perhaps with an occasional head bob. But The Faint had even the most supercool kids shakin’ some ass on the dance floor. Before their final song, the lead singer reasoned “I know you’re all sweating out there, so you might as well dance.” I think that’s my new life slogan.
28 September 2001 |
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Last night was terrific fun — even if all that Maredsous 8 had more than the intended effect. Among the people I met there, in alphabetical order by middle name: Lyn, Trent, Cheri, the other Josh, Karen, Erica, Mark, Jeremy, Jessica, Billy, Matt, Charles, Denise, Dave, Andy, Anna Beth, and of course Leia the Czarina herself.
My favorite part of the evening was definitely the campfire singalong around 9:30 — to hear so many voices belting out “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” at once was deeply touching.
27 September 2001 |
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John McCain’s moving eulogy for Mark Bingham, one of the passengers who stormed the cockpit on United Flight 93.
26 September 2001 |
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Ripped from The Morning News: the winning entry in this year’s Air Guitar World Championships.
26 September 2001 |
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To any Mac users out there: If you use System 9.2.1, please email me or comment on this message. I installed the Apple firmware update for G4s today, and my audio no longer works. It appears, from discussions around the web, that this is a fairly common problem for System 9.1 users with this (irreversible!) firmware update, and it’s only solvable by installing a small part of the 9.2.1 software. Unfortunately, that small part is only available online as part of the whole 82MB download, and I’d like to some day get married and have children, not spend the rest of my life tethered to a 56K modem. So please, help out if you can.
Oh, yeah: To any Mac users out there: If you’re NOT using System 9.2.1, avoid the firmware update Apple released today.
Update: The impossibly nice folks at xlr8yourmac have hooked me up. They rock. Please consider naming your first-born child something like John Xlr8yourmac Smith.
25 September 2001 |
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Spotted at the 7-Eleven on Lemmon, after a very unsatisfying Indian buffet at Taj Express next door: “New! Werther’s Originals Chewy!” So, if they’re new and chewy, how can they be the originals?
25 September 2001 |
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Now this is intriguing: Josh Marshall points out a few reports on one of W’s biggest investors in his old failed oil company, Arbusto: none other than Salem Bin Laden, Osama’s older brother. Quoth the India Times:
The [Daily Mail in the U.K.] said that Salem, who died in a plane crash in 1983, became Bush’s business partner through James Bath, a close friend of the future American president. Salem, says the paper, appointed Bath as his representative in Houston, Texas. It was Bath who invested 50,000 dollars in Bush’s company and also bought Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of Osama’s elder brother.
More details here. Certainly, there’s nothing untoward about this: Osama has upwards of 50 brothers and sisters, and you probably can’t swing a dead cat in the oil industry without hitting a bin Laden. (Sorry for that image.) Hell, he’s got dozens of family members in the U.S. alone — although they’re all skedaddling as quickly as their bank accounts allow. But still — quite an amazing coincidence, no?
25 September 2001 |
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In stressful times like these, don’t we all crave stability? Well, if we can’t get it in our geopolitics, at least we can get it in our operating system. Mac OS X 10.1 was released today — I think I’ll finally upgrade, if only to prevent the bizarre random crashes I’ve been getting in recent days.
25 September 2001 |
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News flash: Garland Fifth Grader Predicted Attacks on Sept. 10! (And if you’re doubting anything at a site called cosmiverse.com quoting something called the “Dallas Chronicle,” the story is legit, although it ran in the Houston Chronicle.)
Of course it’s true. I have no doubt that when Osama was planning the attacks, he only told his closest confidants: Allah, Mulla Mohammad Omar, and the Metroplex winner of his annual “What the Taliban Means to Me” essay contest.
25 September 2001 |
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For anyone who’s read any books by Calvin Trillin — and if you haven’t, you’re just wasting time — there was another reason September 11 was a horrible day. On that day, his wife Alice (the one in the title of “Travels With Alice”) passed away. (There’s a piece in next week’s New Yorker, which for many years has been Calvin’s home base, and which published a piece of Alice’s own earlier this year.)
I never met Alice, but anyone who’s heard her voice in her husband’s columns would recognize her mix of fierce intelligence, kindness of spirit, and common sense.
24 September 2001 |
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From the Self-Promotion Dept.: Two more of my stories have hit print. Today was a piece on how Catholic schools are going through a serious teacher shortage, primarily because they don’t pay nearly as much as public schools. (If you think public school teachers make too little, Catholic school teachers get $10K or $12K less.) This story’s been finished for a couple of weeks, but it’s just getting in the paper now because of the Current Situation’s understandable monopoly on newsprint of late.
And speaking of the Current Situation, my interview with Afghanistan expert David Lesch ran Sunday.
24 September 2001 |
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As Matt points out, Dallas is the #1 city to start a business in. (And the number one city in which to end sentences with prepositions.)
I’d like to state for the record that I never considered starting dallasstories.com anywhere else.
24 September 2001 |
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From the Yeah, That’d Be A Tip Off Dept.: “[Suspected terrorist hanger-on Zacarias] Moussaoui apparently had raised suspicions because he sought training in flying commercial jets at flights schools in Oklahoma and Minnesota but showed no interest in learning about takeoffs or landings.” - CNN.
24 September 2001 |
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A review of the State of My Body over the last three days, since my first football game of the year:
Saturday: Oh, this is nothing! All parts reporting ready for duty, sir. A little hungover, but that’s okay.
Sunday: Well, it’s awful nice of my body to alert me to the existence of so many small muscles I otherwise wouldn’t notice. Like that two-square-inch patch of muscle in my middle back that feels like a rubber band being snapped whenever I move, or that place that used to be the back of my right knee and is now an 80-year-old rusty door hinge. At least the pains are isolated.
Monday: Sweet heavenly grace, make it stop! I swear I had functioning limbs once. Just a couple of days ago, I think.
24 September 2001 |
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I am proud to report that, just like the last game of last season, today’s Media Football League opener ended with a touchdown by yours truly. Please see the contact page to see where to send congratulatory flowers.
But halfway through our game, the Park Nazis paid us a visit. See, we play at Northaven Park in North Dallas, and some of the neighbors evidently don’t like it when people use their park for strange things like recreation. They got parks officials to ban soccer in much of the park earlier this year; some say it was for nasty racial reasons, since most of the soccer players were Hispanic and it’s a white neighborhood. Anyway, when 10 of us showed up at 9:30 a.m. to play football, two different neighbors called to complain! I have no idea why — we certainly weren’t being noisy or obnoxious; there was no one else in the park at that early hour; the homes are quite some distance away from where we were. So this parks official shows up and says he’s gotten these complaints, but “now that he’s seen” us, “it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” What’s that supposed to mean, that because 7 of the 10 of us were Anglo, everything is okay? It left us all (or me, at least) quite angry: since when do our tax dollars go to harrass Dallas residents using public parks to the detriment of absolutely no one?
22 September 2001 |
3 comments
Went to the Gypsy Tea Room last night to see Wilco for the third time. At one point on stage, Jeff Tweedy said something about how this was a historic night in the band’s existence, and I suppose it was: it was the first time the new lineup (sadly, sans Jay Bennett) played live, and it was the world premiere of most of the songs from their new, as-yet-unreleased album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
(Wilco was summarily bounced from their silly label, Reprise, a couple of months ago because higher-ups deemed the new album “too uncommercial.” While it won’t be out through the normal channels until early 2002, you can find it online in the usual illegal places, and it’s streaming at the band’s web site.)
While it was a dumb move on Reprise’s part, I have no trouble understanding why a scared label exec might not get the new stuff; it’s much more shambolic and found-sound-y than earlier Wilco. Several of the songs devolve into quiet, collapsing structures. (The closest analog I can think of is some of Big Star’s third record, like “Kanga Roo.”) It was a much more subdued Wilco show than the others I’ve gone to; instead of the usual rave-up on “Casino Queen,” the last half of the show was quiet stuff like “Sunken Treasure.” But I’m more than willing to follow Tweedy on whatever path he takes the band down. He’s got a touch of artistry about him not many folks do.
22 September 2001 |
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One other story from Thursday’s paper: the local school district is announcing a new initiative to get area residents to serve as mentors to at-risk ninth-graders. Sounds like a good idea.
21 September 2001 |
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There’s currently a debate going on at dfwblogs about the patriotic color scheme on the group’s web site. (If you can’t see what I’m talking about at that link, it’s probably because the site is scheduled to be redesigned today.) Some members of the group have expressed dismay at the idea of having a neutral community site take on a partisan air.
I tend to agree, although in the end it’s not my site and the owner should have final say. But the whole incident did call to mind one of my fears during times like this: that refusing to give over one’s life entirely to all things patriotic ends up being accused of being a Fifth Columnist or anti-American or whatever epithet someone can come up with. (It used to be “Communist,” of course.)
On Tuesday, I interviewed Pat Snuffer, owner of Snuffer’s, a two-restaurant chain here in Dallas. He has a longstanding policy at his restaurants that employees can’t wear ribbons, buttons, or any other sort of adornment on their uniforms. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Korn button or an American flag ribbon — no dice. Some people are mad and say he’s somehow being un-American. He’s gotten emails saying “Snuffer’s supports Bin Laden.” Whatever you think about the man’s actions (he willingly labels himself “controlling”), it says something that uniform policy at a restaurant best know for its cheese fries has become a point of patriotic argument. (Snuffer says he’s having small American flag sewn onto all employee aprons in response to last week’s events.)
21 September 2001 |
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Well, I’ll be damned: both my wishes came true. Bush did a hell of a job, sounding more confident than any other time I’ve heard him, even if he did look to be on the brink of tears throughout the whole thing. I don’t know who’s writing the speeches for him nowadays, but he’s got a winner.
Asides: Rumsfeld looks like a minor Dick Tracy character — what, is that jaw soldered on? Hillary needs to understand the camera is going to go to her at least a few times there’s a speech at the Capitol, and that if she’s clapping lackadaisically and looking sour, it’s not helping her image. There was a moment early on in the speech when Bush looked like he was imitating Bill Clinton: that upturned clinched fist, combined with the lean-in, is sooo Bill. And poor Bob Byrd, he looked like he was about to collapse from having to stand so long at Cheney’s seat.
And Bonds went deep. (Okay, just once, not four times, but one is plenty. I think he’s gonna do it.)
20 September 2001 |
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If, like me, you get tired of hitting reload on CNN.com, take a look at the San Jose Mercury News’ weblog on the ongoing crisis. Here’s hoping Bush knocks one out of the park tonight. (And actually, here’s hoping Barry Bonds knocks four out of the park tonight.)
20 September 2001 |
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Probably my favorite song on Stephen Malkmus’ recent album is “Pink India,” a sad, strangely adult-sounding song set in the first time the West was interested in Afghanistan: the battle for colonial control then termed, in a show of arrogance strangely appropriate for colonialism, “The Great Game.” Some lyrics: As the news comes across the air today: / “Tension grows in Afghanistan / Carbine bullets could settle the score” / I had a crap gin tonic, it wounded me.
19 September 2001 |
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I’m certainly not nearly important to have a window view at the office, but I do at least have a view of the people who have a window view. On a normal day, the flag outside is too high up for it to be visible to those of us on the third floor. But when it’s at half-staff, it’s right there in your face.
19 September 2001 |
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Just got off the phone with Dr. David Lesch, professor of Middle East history at Trinity University in San Antonio. He wrote 1979: The Year that Shaped the Modern Middle East, a book about, among other things, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Certainly, the Soviet example is not particularly encouraging, even though our goals (grabbing Bin Laden) are less difficult to achieve than the Soviets’ (propping up a puppet regime, control of the countryside, etc.) But his explanation of the myriad coalitions, connections, and confusions among the region’s countries did make it clear that any involvement in the region will be neither brief or without risk of rapid escalation. (Look for a story in Sunday’s DMN. Until then, David Plotz’s piece at Slate does a good job of outlining the regional issues.)
19 September 2001 |
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In other news, the storm outside is looking mighty threatening: the sky’s all bruise-purple and the lightning’s spiking down quick. A couple of weeks ago, the word “apocalyptic” might have been appropriate; less so now.
18 September 2001 |
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After yesterday’s item, I’ve gotten thousands — nay, millions — of emails requesting what follows, a brief history of my lifelong love-hate relationship with change:
Very young age: Enjoyed putting pennies in my mouth; tasted good.
Junior high: Was allotted four quarters daily by my loving grandmother; kept them in a little rubbery football-shaped container that had the LSU football schedule on it; still a slight jingle when I walked.
High school: No relationship with change whatsoever, except for occasional mocking comments about the failed Susan B. Anthony dollar.
College: A near-clinical obsession with quarters, which I determined to have an actual worth of 32.4 cents because of their utility in campus laundry machines. (There must have been a New England-wide quarter shortage in the mid-1990s; that’s the only way I can explain my alarming lack of clothes laundering in those days.)
First job after college: Anal qualities begin to show. One large cup holds all my useless pennies. Another, smaller, squarer cup holds nickels and dimes, useful for the vending machine on the ninth floor of my building. An Altoids tin holds the quarters necessary for laundry, which must be done more in the professional world than in the collegiate one, evidently. In many ways, a perfect system.
(Its one flaw: Leo, owner of Leo’s, the newsstand/porn shop I frequented on my block [for magazines, not porn, silly]. Leo is an older fellow, and for what ever reason, he decided long ago that giving someone a half-dollar coin as change would make his or her day. He was wrong, of course — getting a half-dollar would only make me scowl. What use is it? Not good for laundry, not good for candy bars, not good for anything. By default, the half-dollars ended up in the dime-and-nickel container, but trust me when I say I wasn’t happy about it.)
Today: My apartment building here in Dallas has laundry machines operated by credit cards, not coins. There’s something oddly Dallas-y about that. But quarters, while still desired, have much less of an impact on my life than before. I’d say I miss them, but that’s hard to do when you have 173 quarters all neatly stacked on your desk in front of you.
18 September 2001 |
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Oh, right: $65.55, not counting the pennies. (Even I have standards on how I’ll waste my time.) It’s kind of odd to think I’ve had $100+ sitting in my car for several years now.
17 September 2001 |
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As long as I’ve had my car — four years now — I’ve been throwing change into the armrest container between the two front seats. I stopped carrying around change a while back, annoyed by the jingle and the sheer size of any significant amount of coinage. (I could have told the U.S. Mint long ago that the Sacagawea coin would be a flop — who needs coins of significant value, anyway?)
Anyway, I have a lot of work to do: three stories to write this week, a major freelance assignment hovering over my head, some web work. So what do I do this evening? I decide that now is the time to count all the change in my car. (Or at least the roughly 50% of it I could carry into my apartment in an old Wendy’s bag.) The result: an hour gone, and hands with that sweet, metallic smell that can’t be washed off. I’m pathetic.
17 September 2001 |
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I am happy to report that, like the NFL, our newsroom football game will return this weekend. Of course, our season wasn’t interrupted — we’re just now getting back from our lengthy off-season. (This is Dallas, after all: heat makes the playable football season here slightly different from the equivalent in, say, Green Bay.) If anyone’s interested in joining the fun, email me.
17 September 2001 |
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I suppose not enough people decided buying one share of Cisco was an obligatory patriotic act today.
FYI, had another story in today’s paper.
17 September 2001 |
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Alas, for those of us in the news business, “getting back to normal” isn’t much of an option: I’m off to work to write about the attacks again in a few minutes.
16 September 2001 |
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So I’ve been listening to some pretty somber music today — Red House Painters, Scud Mountain Boys, Tindersticks. But I decided to put on something a little peppier and threw on R.E.M.’s Eponymous. Fine, until track 12 hits:
That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplane…world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs…wire in a fire representing seven games…a government for hire and a combat site…
With the furies breathing down your neck…team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped…save yourself, serve yourself, world serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed…you vitriolic patriotic slam fight bright light feeling pretty psyched…
Six o’clock TV hour, don’t get caught in foreign towers…slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn…locking in uniform, book-burning, blood-letting, every motive escalate, automotive incinerate…light a candle, light a votive…uh oh, this means no fear…A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies…offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline…The other night I dreamt of knives…You symbiotic patriotic slam…
It’s the end of the world as we know it — and I feel fine.
Strange — it never sounded quite so menacing on previous listens. Maybe Stipe is the real Nostradamus?
15 September 2001 |
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Since I write for a living, I’m probably more sensitive to attacks on the media than most. But I’m amazed at the degree to which some people believe the press purposefully distorts, withholds information, and outright lies. For instance, the idiotic rumor that spread across the Internet yesterday that CNN had passed off archival footage of Palestinians celebrating in 1990 as being filmed Tuesday. Of course, it’s truly dopey to believe that. But plenty of people did.
Sure, things get distorted or misinterpreted or reported inaccurately by the media. Happens all the time. But to say it’s part of some sort of conspiracy hatched in a backroom by Walter Isaacson, David Broder, and the ghost of Kay Graham is just silly.
If anyone’s interested, here’s some of what I’ve written on the attack so far: a piece on the response of international students at North Dallas High School, an article on the difficulty of getting back to normal Wednesday, and a piece on how schools are using the attacks as a teaching tool. (I only contributed to that last one, which was written by Dan Barber and Katie Menzer.)
15 September 2001 |
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You can always count on Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to turn tragedy into bigotry (from “The 700 Club”).
15 September 2001 |
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This isn’t the ideal time to revive a blog, I suppose, what with the world collapsing all around us and all. But I forge ahead nonetheless. Official first link: check out my employer’s coverage of the crisis. And of course, we should all be giving, giving, giving.
15 September 2001 |
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