Today I became a reverse stereotype. Instead of Japanese tourists taking pictures of uninteresting things in America — a street sign, say — there I was this morning, standing at Tokyo Station, taking a photo of a train. (Like I’d never seen a train before.)

Anyway, that bullet train took us past Mt. Fuji and to Osaka, where we toured Sharp Corporation’s research and development facility. Learned more than I ever wanted to know about LCD manufacture. Also learned that Sharp was founded by the inventor of the mechanical pencil. (Hence the name.) Also learned from a company display that “The dream of a wall-mounted TV is now a reality.” I hadn’t realized that was one of the dreams, alongside a lasting global peace, that united all mankind. (In case you can’t tell, I’m actually [more than] a little cranky. For no good reason, really, other than irregular sleep.)

By the way, I think my Halloween costume — a traveling journalist tired of figuring out bizarre Japanese keyboards — turned out swimmingly.

31 October 2001 | 6 comments

On the front page of today’s Daily Yomiuri newspaper is a photo of a fan holding up a sign at Game 2 of the World Series, which Arizona pitcher Randy Johnson dominated over the Yankees: “It’ll take more than nine Yanks to beat our Johnson.” Apparently, the photo editors of Japan aren’t as keyed in to sexual double entendres as their American counterparts.

More meetings with important people today, one of whom I immediately fell in love with: Sakurako Tsuchiya, who is perhaps the only woman in Japan to own a sake brewing company, traditionally a very male dominated field. (Woman are not actually allowed to enter the brewing area of most breweries; they’re considered a “distraction.”) Anyway, she’s wonderfully headstrong, seems to be an excellent businesswoman — and cute and single! I’ve only got another week or so in this country, so I leave it to the men of Japan to find someone worthy of her…

It’s been interesting to meet with these VIPs; they all speak through interpreters, but you still find yourself nodding and smiling and gesturing in response to the things they say, even though you don’t have any idea what they’re saying. Don’t they say that communication is 90% nonverbal? This week has been proof.

29 October 2001 | 1 comment

Hitting the wall…jetlag kicking in…feeling sleepy…lengthy dinner party awaits…must not fall asleep during appetizers…

29 October 2001 | No comments

Some very quick thoughts before the 30 minutes of Internet access I’m paying for runs out:

- Business class was all I’d hoped it to be, although I still couldn’t sleep on the plane. (I’m a finicky sleeper, and no matter how many degrees of incline you get, sleeping on your side is still uncomfortable.) The only problem: too much food. I think I ate 9 meals in a 36-hour period. (Mmmm…Dove bars.)

- There is no less flattering light than the light in an airplane’s bathroom. I looked like an extra from some never-before-aired Star Trek episode. (More so than usual.)

- Watched “Vertigo” on the plane and was strangely disappointed. I like Hitchcock, and I’d always heard “Vertigo” held up as one of his peaks. But it seemed a bit too hamfisted, Kim Novak was awful, and even the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack was only so-so. It did help me better understand the Harvey Danger song “Carlotta Valdez,” however. (P.S. A.J. Hammer, ex-VJ on VH1, now has the job of introducing movies on Northwest flights. Not sure if that’s a promotion or not.)

- Good music to listen to on a 12-hour plane ride: Roni Size/Reprazent, New Forms; A Tribe Callled Quest, Anthology, Dismemberment Plan, Change. Not as good for plane rides, although still a great album: Tindersticks, Tindersticks (too whispery for all the plane noise).

- People who keep opening a window shade during the sleep portion of a lengthy plane ride should be immediately thrown off the flight. Hint: it still looks like a bunch of clouds out there. You don’t have to look to confirm it.

- Naturally, my laptop broke the first time I tried to use it. Gotta love toting around 15 pounds of dead weight for the next 12 days.

- Japan seems…well, I haven’t seen enough of it to say yet. I’ll get back to you on that.

28 October 2001 | 1 comment

Reason #3,672,102 why I love my grandmother: She just called me in Japan to tell me the Saints beat the Rams. We have a tradition every week after the game: I call her and explain what happened. (She has a vague idea when something good or bad happens, based on how the crowd reacts, but beyond that, she’s a bit fuzzy.) But this week, she knew enough to know that beating a 6-0 team on the road is a big deal.

28 October 2001 | No comments

Service truly is Job #1 at crabwalk.com! Here I am, enjoying the ambiance of Minneapolis/St. Paul, and I still find time to post for my beloved readers. Since being in an airport invariably means being surrounded by copies of USA Today, I’ve decided to write this entry in the dot-dot-dot style of Larry King’s late, lamented column for that fine McPaper.

John Stamos is on the cover of Biography Magazine. Alert my good friend Jerry Falwell, because the end times are a-comin’…First-class airline tickets are overrated. When I ask for a pillow, damn it, I want a pillow, not some namby-pamby excuse about being all out. This is first-class, baby! Shouldn’t they have a seamstress on duty, ready to make a new pillow from the stewardesses’ locks of hair if necessary?…If there are a better people than the Hmong minority of the Upper Midwest, friend, I haven’t met them…Jonathan Winters is such a talent — and you wouldn’t believe the work that man does for charity, unnoticed…Minneapolis and St. Paul have to rank up there with the great Twin Cities of all time. But for my money, the Schenectady-Albany-Troy tri-cities area is still the tops, baby…Surprising news: it’s cold in Minnesota in late October!…Marlon Brando is a surprisingly good kisser…

27 October 2001 | 1 comment

(And for those of you who haven’t yet seen me in person, Mr. Stock Photo above is not me. The short sleeves with tie look — also known as The Burger King Assistant Manager — has never been my thing.)

27 October 2001 | No comments

Thanks to increased security, I leave for the airport in less than two hours: 4:40 a.m., to be precise. I finished packing a few minutes ago, only to realize that I forgot to pack any socks. (Socks aren’t essential, per se, but they’re a valued part of my wardrobe.) So now it’s time for the traditional pre-trip panic of what-did-I-forget. As long as I’ve got my passport and my tickets, I suppose I’m okay.

I’m staying up all night, primarily because I’ve had lots of last-minute things to do, secondarily because I hope it’ll get my body clock on Japan time. The downside: I might be asleep when one or more of the famous first-class/business-class perks comes rolling down the aisle. “Godiva chocolates, sir?” “Would you like your left or right foot massaged first?” “To whom should I make the check out to, sir?” Wouldn’t want to miss any of those. Hopefully, I’ll be bloggin’ atcha again in 24 hours or so.

27 October 2001 | 1 comment

I’ve got a scoop for you all: Dallas has been eliminated from the race for the 2012 Olympics. crabwalk.com is proud to be the first web site to report this breaking news. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

26 October 2001 | 1 comment

Two quick links before I get back to work. I don’t know how I missed this guy’s Bert-as-Osama’s-signal-to-start-the-anthrax-assault conspiracy theory. It’s, as they say on ESPN, an instant classic: one of his major pieces of evidence is that the man in this drawing “appears to be dressed in the manner of an airline pilot with his coat off. The man’s hair is trimmed in the manner of an airline pilot.” Hmmm.

Finally, a good pro-rap, anti-Tupac piece in the New Republic this week. (And if you’re looking to kill a few hours, try the New Yorker’s collection of all its 9/11 and terrorism-related coverage. Some excellent stuff in there.)

26 October 2001 | No comments

It’s highly odd to think that in less than 24 hours I’ll be on my way to the Land of True Sushi. I haven’t really had time to even think about it, to be honest, but it’ll be real soon enough. My pre-Japan to-do list has 22 items on it; I’ve got about 19 hours before heading to DFW. Sleep probably not an option — although I really want to experience the fabulous business-class lifestyle awake, not asleep. I’ll try to blog intermittently, assuming my Internet access works out as I hope it to. (And I’ll be able to get at my email — my personal email for sure, work email maybe.)

26 October 2001 | No comments

Mike Antonucci, who normally writes about teacher unions, is tracking the Arab press’s response to recent events in his terrorism email newsletter, plaintext. Today’s cluelessness award goes to Hafez Al-Barghouthi, editor of the Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, who has a problem with NYC’s mayor going by Rudy instead of his full name.

“He hides his first name, chosen for him by his Italian father,” wrote Al-Barghouthi of the mayor, “so as not to remind the Jewish voters of the infamous Rudolph Hitler (sic).”

26 October 2001 | No comments

What follows is the story of my life.

I have lots of un-fun things to do: collating lists of mailing addresses, researching boring interviews, filling out forms, buying shoes, etc.

I have just discovered one fun thing to do: playing around with Movable Type to create an archive of every article I’ve ever written.

Which one do you think is getting done? (And how much of a geek am I when “modifying perl scripts and creating category-specific cascading stylesheets” is on the “fun” list?)

25 October 2001 | 3 comments

Another fine wingding thrown by Leia last night — DFWblogs Happy Hour III: The Wrath of Khan. Thanks to Leia’s skill at manipulating falling doubloons, I am the proud owner of four Chinese finger handcuffs, which will no doubt come in handy for those times I perform citizen’s arrests and some perp is threatening to use his free fingers to escape. Thanks to Erica’s mouthing off, I know now that the mothers of singing waiters have only the highest of dreams for their offspring. Thanks to Matt, I now fear men with samurai swords and two-tone shoes in corporate parking lots.

Just like last month, the singalong was a highlight, although I think the absences from the choir hurt us on the more arpeggiated numbers. “Down By the Riverside” and “Goodnight Irene” were particularly strong, I thought, as were the “Bring Tha Noize”/”Theme from The Greatest American Hero”/”Oops…I Did It Again” medleys and the human beatbox rendition of “Head Like a Hole.”

25 October 2001 | No comments

Mad props to Lyn for being the first to correctly identify the contents of the boxes at left: it’s a closeup of the nose of this guy. When I was designing the site, it was just filler to be replaced as soon as I thought of something better to put there, but I suppose I haven’t thought of anything better. (Actually, my initial plan was to use some of the photos from this amazing Library of Congress exhibit of color photos from Czarist Russia — if you haven’t looked at them yet, you should. Maybe they’ll pop up here in some form or another someday.)

But Lyn’s not the only winner! Part 2 of our little contest — best absurd incorrect answer — is still a hot and heavy race. Leave your answer in the comments of yesterday’s entry. Good luck!

25 October 2001 | No comments

A few months ago, I helped out frykitty on her Greenshoes Project. Her idea is sort of a snail-mail Napster: people burn mixes of music they like on a CD, send it to her, and in exchange get a CD mix someone else made. The catch: you’re not allowed to know what’s on the CD until you get it. So you can discover new music you otherwise wouldn’t hear. (The nice folks at South to the Future used to offer something similar, but now I see they’ve taken it down.)

Anyway, I’ve got a mix available for trading (#4). I don’t remember what I put on it — there was some power poppy stuff, and some Tricky, I remember that — but feel free to swap away.

25 October 2001 | No comments

Let’s have a contest: What’s in those gray and purple squares in the column on the left? Leave your guess as a comment. First one to guess correctly gets a prize TBA; best inaccurate guess gets something, too. Everybody can play!

24 October 2001 | 16 comments

“Forget the fucking Dalai Lama. It’s a fucking joke. The Dalai Lama is all about, supposedly, peace. Now, I love the idea of that. We all would love to have peace. I have contributed to things that the Dalai Lama has been involved with, like there’s Trudie Styler, my friend, Sting’s wife, who does this Tibetan Peace Garden in London, which is a great idea. But you know, in times of war and times of aggravation, where is this peacemaking man when you need him? Fucking nowhere to be seen. And that says it all. Fucking asshole.” — Elton John, hopefully being sedated as we speak, via the superfine brandhast.

24 October 2001 | No comments

Just found out that a friend of mine from my college paper (now at the Boston Globe) is getting shipped off to Central Asia to cover the war. Wish her well.

We reporters have a weird job: at some level, we wish for bad things to happen so we’ll have interesting things to cover. Maybe not bad things, but certainly big things. It’s my not-so-secret hope that come November 8, when I’m supposed to be heading back to Dallas from Tokyo, things are still troubling enough in Afghanistan that my employers will tell me to head for Peshawar and do some reporting. (Hey, while I’m in Asia, I might as well swing by, no?) It’s doubtful it’ll happen, but if it does, it’ll be nice to know someone else already there.

24 October 2001 | No comments

It has been a remarkably great season for new CDs. October (Rocktober?) has seen the release of new discs from three of my very favorite bands, and they’ve all met my high expectations. First came Death Cab for Cutie’s The Photo Album, which is better than their excellent We Have the Facts And We’re Voting Yes. Then came Sloan’s Pretty Together, which is better than their excellent Between the Bridges. And Tuesday brought the Dismemberment Plan’s Change, which is better than their excellent Emergency & I. I usually hold back on blanket recommendations, because one man’s meat is another man’s poison, but I think any right-thinking individual would find much to enjoy in any of these fine releases. (The D-Plan disc, in particular, is currently blowing my mind: who else pairs couplets like “A sunny Sunday watching John McLaughlan / And having sex again and again”?)

As a result, I am hereby giving them all the crabwalk.com Seal of Approval. Fame and fortune will no doubt now follow them.

24 October 2001 | No comments

I’m still young enough that I’ve spent the majority of my years enrolled in school: the usual K-12 and four years of college (lots of napping, interspersed with a few classes). But I haven’t been a student for four years, and I realized last night that’s enough time for sitting in a classroom to seem weird. (Well, not sitting in a classroom per se; I write about education for a living, so sitting in a classroom is something I still do from time to time. I mean as a student.)

I started taking Spanish at SMU last night with my friend Juliet, and we got to sit at those little desks with the little teardrop-shaped desktop and watch a teacher write things on a chalkboard while we furiously took notes. It was like a time warp — I felt like passing notes and doodling “Pink Floyd!” on my notebook. (A big junior high activity of mine.) I now know that “h” is silent in Spanish if it’s not part of “ch,” “v” and “b” sound too close for comfort, and that “romantico” sounds really cool. I’m sure I’ll be fluent in a week or two.

Bonus link: a highly perceptive Onion headline: Downtown McDonald’s Perpetually A Hairsbreadth From Complete Anarchy.

24 October 2001 | No comments

Well, that was relatively painless. My four minutes (four! they thought three and a half wasn’t enough torture!) of local TV fame went by pretty quickly. My only moment of horror came when I was told I’d be sitting in a big (comfy) chair on the set — I had thought I would be behind a desk — and two terrifying issues came to mind. First, posture started to matter — not my strong suit. Second, I wore crappy, scuffed-up shoes because I thought they’d be hidden to the world, but now they would be exposed to the 19 million people watching Channel 8 at 9:24 a.m.

But it went okay, I thought, except for a single throat-clearing cough about two minutes in. (What kind of superhero medicine do these on-air types take to avoid coughing for hours at a time?) I rambled a bit too much, as I usually do in real life, and I probably looked goofy, but I didn’t make any major gaffes, like saying Eastern Europe is not under Soviet domination or anything. But then again, I didn’t see what TV viewers saw, so maybe there was a big booger hanging out of my nose or something. (Feel free to forward your honest reviews. The only feedback I’ve gotten so far was my boss telling me I looked “poised,” which I think is code for “At least you didn’t break down and sob uncontrollably.”)

Anyway, got to hang out in the green room (which, oddly enough, was off-white) with Mark Cuban, who was on just before me. Think about it: between the two of us, that green room held a net worth of more than $1,400,000,020. (The $20 is mine.) He seems like a nice guy; we even chatted for a bit about the subject of my story today, school fundraising. I’ve always heard lots of second-hand Cuban stories — one of my best friends writes about the Mavs a lot for sports, and the guy who cuts my hair also cuts Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki — but it’s always nice to schmooze with the local basketball power structure. (Part of my grand dallasstories.com plan is to get Cuban to write for me.)

24 October 2001 | 1 comment

Never let it be said I’m hard to shop for. And, just so you all know, Miss Manners says that lots of people chipping in for a gift is perfectly appropriate for, say, an upcoming 26th birthday.

23 October 2001 | 4 comments

Well, tomorrow is shaping up to be Josh Media Day. Barring any big news — say, coordinated attacks on symbols of our nation’s financial and military might — I’ll have a story on the front page. And, more threateningly, I’ll be interviewed on Channel 8 at precisely 9:24 a.m.

This is scary stuff, for several reasons. First, 9:24 a.m. is smack dab in the middle of the “look like crap” phase of my day. (Some would argue any time is, but that’s for another day’s blog.) Second, I’ve done a few TV appearances before on TXCN, our sister cable network, and they’ve gone fine, but that’s always by remote camera here in the newsroom. This’ll be sitting next to the anchor at WFAA, swapping tales for three and a half minutes. (By the way, isn’t that an eternity in TV time? Won’t I be aging before the audience’s eyes?) Plus, I sweat under the hot lights, and I know I’ll end up looking like Nixon in the 1960 presidential debates. I am so screwed.

So if I completely tank, no one will admit to having watched it, right? After all, the DFWblogger happy hour is tomorrow night, and I’ll no doubt be prime ribbing material. Please be gentle, amateur media critics.

23 October 2001 | 3 comments

Saturday was, unbeknownst to me, Sweetest Day, among the most annoying, Hallmark-created holidays known to man. But in a way, you’ve got to love a holiday that, according to the link above, is much more popular in Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo than anywhere else. You figure the good people of the Rust Belt have to be onto something. (Although as a three-year resident of Toledo, Ohio — motto: “Easy access to Detroit, Cleveland, and Fort Wayne!” — I don’t remember this faux V-Day getting much attention.)

23 October 2001 | No comments

Depressing quote of the day, from the WashPost, via Mickey Kaus:

“This is a different kind of conflict,” Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon yesterday. “The closest analogy would be the drug war.”

Well, that’s optimistic, isn’t it? ‘Cause we’ve done such a bang-up job of completely eliminating drugs from America, right? I’m having visions of Nancy Reagan on the set of Friends, telling Joey Tribbiani to “just say no to Wahhabist Islamic fundamentalism!” (For is not Friends the Diff’rent Strokes [see episode #120] of our day, and Joey our Arnold?)

I hate it when I have Nancy Reagan visions.

23 October 2001 | No comments

Went to see The Strokes last night at the Gypsy Tea Room with Karen — fun show. The lead singer, the magnificently named Julian Casablancas, had all the charisma of a doorstop, and they didn’t play very long. But then again, that’s to be expected when they’ve got only one 35-minute-long album out.

They played just about everything off Is This It?, along with “NYC Cops,” the song that appears on the vinyl issue but got pulled off the CD after 9/11. (I suppose the timing wasn’t right for a song whose chorus goes “New York City cops / they ain’t too smart.”) The whole band is 22 or younger (damn I feel old), and their songs have a sort of youthful exuberance that works well with their world-weary, Lou Reed posing. And every song has a point of ignition, a moment when the guitars reach back and unleash a little hell. Much fun was had by all.

Talk about a charisma contrast: the Moldy Peaches opened, and I can say with confidence that, of all bands I’ve seen whose female lead singer wears cat makeup, they’re the best. With lyrics like “postmodernist throwing darts / hit a bullseye cut a fart,” how can you go wrong? (Not to mention Carrottop sitting in on lead guitar and a bassist in Spiderman Underoos.) It’s Ween-meets-Sonic Youth, and lots of fun, at least in small doses.

23 October 2001 | 5 comments

I just checked on the availability of sad-eyed-orphans.com (don’t ask — and don’t go out and grab it now, either!). My registrar of choice then recommended a few other domain names I might want:

sad-one-eyed-orphans.com (I’d be sad, too!)

sad-blue-eyed-orphans.com

saddest-eyed-orphans.com (mine are sadder than yours)

sad-eyed-orphanage.com

4sadeyedorphans.com

mysadeyedorphans.com (kind of a contradiction, no?)

sadeyedorphans4kids.com

sadeyedorphansonline.com

allsadeyedorphans.com

freesadeyedorphans.com (what a deal!)

funsadeyedorphans.com

sad-eyed-orphans-direct.com (eliminate the middleman)

sadeyedorphansworld.com

unhappinesseyedorphans.com

22 October 2001 | 2 comments

Today’s A.Word.A.Day was no doubt inspired by this very site:

crabwise (KRAB-wyz), adjective. 1. Sideways. 2. In a cautious or roundabout manner. [From the sideways movement of crabs.] “John Smith is still moving crabwise towards modernity.” John Major’s Last Year?, The Economist (London), May 15, 1993.

I must say it was not my intention when naming this site to promote caution or roundaboutedness (?). (If you don’t know where the name comes from, you obviously haven’t fully explored the site.) My vision of crabwalking was more connected to the elementary school P.E. version of the term. But as the site mentions, “If we were to look up the term `humanwise’ in a crab’s dictionary, chances are it would mean ‘sideways.’” (Thanks, Karen!)

22 October 2001 | No comments

This site was down for a while last night during a system upgrade; all should be well now, but if you run into any odd problems, please email me.

22 October 2001 | No comments

Remember that Berkeley city council anti-war resolution? Well, some folks have begun an economic boycott of the city as a result.

(Link ripped from Glenn Reynolds at the very useful InstaPundit. He’s also links to Drudge reporting that U.S. officials are planning to remove women from the front lines of combat, not long after some Clinton policies put them there. He points out, probably wisely, that it’s a bad idea, and not only for gender-bias reasons: can you imagine how the Taliban would react if they realized they were getting beaten by a bunch of girls? It might be the kind of humiliation Islamic fundamentalism could never recover from. “I think we should be saturating the Mideast with television footage of female soldiers and pilots,” Glenn writes.)

21 October 2001 | No comments

I found a bouncy rubber ball on the football field yesterday. I am now a very dangerous man. (Not that I wasn’t before.) My day has been divided into four basic parts: bounce-off-the-wall, bounce-off-the-ceiling, bounce-off-the-floor, and (most thrillingly) bounce-off-the-point-where-two-walls-meet-to-try-to-get-it-to-bounce back-directly-at-me. If I had a pet, it’d be injured by now.

Congrats to Erica on her new look. (Both the new look of her blog and, if one can believe this photo, the haircut she got sometime after age 17 — a nice improvement. :) )

(Has there ever been an official declaration of proper parenthesis use when a clause ends in a smilie? Is that “:) )” double usage correct? Where’s the W3C when you need them?)

I start Spanish class Tuesday night. Today, I went to the SMU bookstore to buy the textbook and had to ask someone with a straight face, “Excuse me, but do you have ‘Spanish Is Fun’?” I felt like a second grader.

21 October 2001 | 3 comments

Congratulations to whoever’s behind the keyboard at 216.192.91.26, a.k.a. as.wcom.net. At 8:32 p.m. last night, he or she became the 1,000th unique visitor to crabwalk.com. And to think, only about 873 of those are me hitting reload.

Football today wasn’t pretty at all. Just one lonely TD (although another one, off a pickoff, did get called back on a crappy call). A few nice defensive plays, including a key fourth-down goal line-stand deflection, but nothing to write home about. Not the way I wanted to enter my three-week Japanese layoff from the sport.

Saw Mulholland Drive last night with my friend Natacha — odd movie. (Somehow, I’d never seen a David Lynch film before, so I’m happy to have that gap in my cultural resume filled.) If anyone has any theories about what it all meant — in particular the cowboy and the inch-tall old people — please forward them along. My favorite scene, early on in the movie, featured the truly great Dan Hedaya, the former Nick Tortelli of Cheers fame.

Finally, I had another story in today’s paper.

20 October 2001 | No comments

More music news: the Dismemberment Plan, one of my very favorite bands, is coming out with a new album, Change, on Tuesday. And the band is streaming the album via RealAudio. They’re also coming to Rubber Gloves on Dec. 1 and I sadly will be in Boston that weekend. But party on without me — I saw them there earlier this year and it was a great show.

19 October 2001 | No comments

It appears our anthrax scare was just crushed aspirin in an envelope, sent by someone who thought it would be amusing to drive a workplace into panic. Dear whoever sent it: Thanks for screwing up our day! Really, we appreciate it. Jackass.

19 October 2001 | No comments

Well, that was exactly what I didn’t want to see on my way out the door to lunch: three firemen, in full protective regalia, wearing gas masks. I tried holding my breath all the way down from the third floor; I nearly made it, but ended up taking a few breaths near the front door.

I just got back and thought everything was clear, but I just noticed the entire business department’s been evacuated and cordoned off with “hazardous materials” police tape. (Could that have been the phantom brownie smell from this morning? Anybody know if anthrax smells like brownies?) Evidently we got a letter with a white powdery substance. Lucky us! I’m sure it’s just another hoax, but I’ll be taking shallow breaths just in case. (If you don’t remember, my employer has been the subject of protests in the past over its reporting on local Muslim groups and their alleged connections to terrorist activity.)

19 October 2001 | No comments

Two thoughts, before I crank out a lot of work today (and thus have little time to blog): I have to walk through the business department every morning to get to work. About halfway through, for the last week, there has been the unmistakable smell of brownies — really gooey, fudgy brownies. But when I look around, no brownies. It seems like a cruel joke. Is it the legacy smell of brownies past? There’s nothing worse than phantom brownies.

Finally, this Halloween decorations story in today’s DMN is promoted on the front page with this sentence: “Build a cave in your living room for an unforgettable party setting.” Am I the only one who immediately thought: Wow, I can’t believe the paper is promoting an Osama-themed Halloween!

19 October 2001 | No comments

It’s interesting to see what exactly the leaflets we’re dropping on Afghanistan say:

“Attention Taliban! You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death. The Armed Forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead. Highly trained soldiers are coming to shut down once and for all Usama bin Laden’s ring of terrorism, and the Taliban that supports them and their actions.

“Our forces are armed with state of the art military equipment. What are you using, obsolete and ineffective weaponry? Our helicopters will rain fire down upon your camps before you detect them on your radar. Our bombs are so accurate we can drop them right through your windows. Our infantry is trained for any climate and terrain on earth. United States soldiers fire with superior marksmanship and are armed with superior weapons.

“You have only one choice … Surrender now and we will give you a second chance. We will let you live. If you surrender no harm will come to you. When you decide to surrender, approach United States forces with your hands in the air. Sling your weapon across your back muzzle towards the ground. Remove your magazine and expel any rounds. Doing this is your only chance of survival.”

Is this refreshingly blunt, or does it sound like outtakes from some bad John Carpenter movie? Gotta love the mocking tone: “What are you using, obsolete and ineffective weaponry?” My car’s so much nicer than your car. My daddy’s so much richer than your daddy. My jeans are so much cooler than yours.

18 October 2001 | No comments

I’ve just been handed two tickets to an advance screening of K-Pax, the new Kevin Spacey movie. It’s at 7:30 tonight at Loews Cityplace (Haskell and Central). Anybody interested in going? Email me if you wanna go.

18 October 2001 | 2 comments

Just picked up the new album by The Strokes, who, like the White Stripes, are currently being deified by the British music press as saviors of rock and roll.

Honestly, do British music mags ever think a band’s just, you know, okay? It’s always “there is no excuse to not be listening to this CD at all hours, even while asleep,” or “let’s start a religion with this band at the center.” It’s like it’s a nation of 13-year-olds suddenly realizing that, you know, “Stairway to Heaven” is, like, really deep and stuff. Nothing wrong with that, of course — when you’re 13. (Actually, I’m as guilty of that as anyone. In my previous life as a Professional Rock Critic, I slobbered way too much over CDs that ended up being just, you know, okay. My apologies to any bands that became too drunk on their own power after reading one of my reviews.)

Anyway, surprise! The hype (some measure of it, at least) appears to be deserved. Sure, the vocalist is a Velvet Underground-era Lou Reed ripoff — hell, the whole band is a Velvet Underground ripoff, with little smidges of Television, Iggy Pop, and Blondie. But since when is that a bad thing? They’re coming to Dallas next Monday; anybody want to come with?

(I’m also rooting for a long and productive career for these guys, because that increases the likelihood there’ll someday be a cover band called the Diff’rent Strokes.)

18 October 2001 | 2 comments

Two links to close the day: first, the Berkeley city council has officially called for an end to the bombing of Afghanistan. No matter what happens to this country, it’s nice to know some things will never change: leftist enclaves will continue to make haughty, self-important declarations of Truth to the rest of the (less civilized) world. As council member Ying Lee Kelley put it, the body will “continue to honor Berkeley’s tradition of opposition to brute force to solve profoundly difficult social problems.” I was unaware Berkeley City Council had an official constitutional role in determining our foreign policy.

Highlight of the council meeting: only six of the nine council members were willing to support a resolution to “condemn the mass murder of thousands of people on September 11, 2001, and express our profound grief at the atrocities last month that killed thousands of innocent people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, and acknowledge, honor, and support the heroic rescue efforts on the part of dedicated police and fire departments, and the city, state, and federal governments.” And actually, that language was a compromise; the original resolution expressed deepest sympathies for Afghan civilians, but not for those in the WTC.

It reminds me of what has always been the most absurd public body in America, the Cambridge Commission on Nuclear Disarmament and Peace Education, an official department of city government in Cambridge, Mass., Berkeley’s East Coast equivalent. I was visiting a friend at Harvard last year and saw a public notice of a special election they’d called — at significant public expense — to get Cambridge officially on the record against nuclear war. That’s what I look for in my local government: trash collection, pothole repair, and plans for ballistic missile reduction.

Oh, and the second link (a much happier one): pretty birds.

17 October 2001 | 1 comment

It’s amazing how a web site can bring back childhood memories long thought buried. (Or long hoped buried.) When I was growing up, we took a grand total of four vacations. We went to the Alabama coast once. We went to Washington, D.C., once. And twice we went to see the many splendors of the tourist traps of Tennessee.

Said tourist traps are mainly clustered in two places: Gatlinburg/Pigeon Falls, in the Smoky Mountains, and greater Chattanooga. In Pigeon Falls, they had, among other things:

- the Dolly Parton statue (not far from Dollywood, which we never could afford)

- the Elvis Presley Museum, featuring the King’s nasal spray applicator (and don’t forget Lou Vuto’s famed Elvis impersonation at the Memories Theatre)

- the Police Museum, featuring the life story of McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser, who was shot eight times and knifed seven more (I have a very strong childhood memory of the sign at the entrance: “We Have Buford Pusser’s Death Car”)

- a Ripley’s museum (which had a very freaky photo of the guy with the two irises in each eye — come on, you know the guy I’m talking about)

The Chattanooga metroplex offers less kitschy variety, perhaps, but plenty of weirdness. There’s Lookout Mountain (“See Seven States!” I’ve always dreamed of seeing Alabama and Mississippi at the same time), Ruby Falls, and the super-bizarre Rock City, which had enough freaky LSD-influenced gnome-like figurines to haunt a kid’s dreams for a year.

Actually, I think I’ll go rebury those childhood memories right now.

17 October 2001 | No comments

If you’ve ever wondered what America’s real national pastime is, consider this: the meaningless, awful Monday night football game between the Cowboys and Redskins — who were 0-8 going into the game — got higher ratings than the fifth and decisive game of the Yankees-A’s playoff series, featuring two of the best pitchers in the game. Clearly — and a bit sadly — football is king.

In unrelated news, I’m probably less worries about anthrax than your average American. (This despite the fact that I work in a newsroom. A newsroom that, for several months earlier this year, was the subject of weekly protests by local Muslim groups because of our reporting on their alleged links to terrorist activity. In the medical business, I believe those things would be known as “risk factors.”) When I went to China this summer, my doc prescribed me Cipro, and I took a few over there. Little did I know there’d be a shortage of the drug a few months later, since it’s the only drug approved for anthrax treatment. So I’ve got to have some resistance built up, right? And I’ve still got a few pills left, so if any of you end up handling suspicious white powders (and you’re not just a cokehead), I can hook you up.

17 October 2001 | No comments

Want to give Osama a piece of your mind? According to this article, his satellite phone number is 00873 682505331. (In the U.S., you’d preface that with an 011. The number was revealed during the New York trial of the previous WTC bombers.) Calling it currently gets you a message that Osama “is not logged on.” (That’s one way of putting it.)

That’s one of the many ironies of all this mess: this guy wants us all to devolve to the Middle Ages, right? In his speeches, he obsesses about historical wrongs done to Islam centuries ago, like the conquest of Andalusia in the 1490s. But he’s a techie gadget hound who has an Inmarsat sat-phone. As Maureen Dowd put it after Osama broadcast his appeal last week, “It’s utterly ridiculous, like being at war with the Flintstones.”

This Seymour Hersh piece in next week’s New Yorker has been getting a lot of advance buzz for a couple of weeks. It’s all about the connections between the Saudi royal family and Osama. Haven’t read it yet, but will soon.

The reason I haven’t read it yet is that I’m too busy reading up on the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, which injured more than 5,000 people. It’s one of the closest precursors to the WTC attacks I can think of — I’m hoping to write about it when I’m in Japan in a couple of weeks. But at the moment, I’m hiding this fact from my dear grandmother, who just about has a heart attack everytime I go overseas, even when it’s not on the heels of a major terrorist attack. I’ve made it clear that not many Islamic fundamentalists live in Japan, and I think she’s generally okay with my going. But she really doesn’t need to know about nerve gas attacks injuring thousands in the subways I’ll soon be riding on.

16 October 2001 | 1 comment

Got my Texas driver’s license this morning — 13 months after I moved to Dallas and mere days before my Ohio license expires. (That license would be the one that had my eye color listed as “unknown,” like I’m some sort of shapeshifter or something.)

Anyway, I went through what’s become a regular ritual: fudging on the vision test. I have great, borderline supernatural vision when both my eyes are open. But my left eye on its own is farsighted. Luckily, driving with both eyes open is legal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and as long as I’m not suddenly blinded in my right eye by a passing motorist, I’m fine. So everytime I get a vision test, there’s this moment of tension when I wait to see if the DMV employee is willing to give me, say, 30 attempts to read Line 5. “Let’s see…it says 534271. No, 846202. Actually, it must be 832027. Maybe 934605?”

Thankfully, my DMV patron was very cool. When I started Attempt #7 with an 8, she quickly said, “Yes! 8 is the first number!” And the best news of all: my new Texas license is good until 2007, by which point I’ll probably just break down and get glasses, anyway. Unfortunately, that also means I’ll have this shaggy half-ass hairdo and pathetic facial hair on my official record for six years.

16 October 2001 | No comments

Making up stories is fun! I’m walking around the office with an Ace bandage on my damaged left wrist, and admitting I wiped out in my parking lot on my bike is no fun at all. You tell me which storyline I should use:

1. “I broke it during a ritual gang initiation Saturday night. I’d advise you no longer wear the color red in my presence.”

2. “It’s the ancient Chinese tradition of hand binding. It’s a lot like foot binding, except, um, with your hand.”

3. “I heard Cate Blanchett digs guys with Ace bandages.”

4. “I heard Ashley Judd digs guys with Ace bandages.”

5. “I heard Natalie Portman digs guys with Ace bandages.”

6. “Oh, that? Just an old Yahtzee injury.”

15 October 2001 | 6 comments

Found while searching online for experts on curriculum reform movements within the Japanese Ministry of Education (damn, do I have fun weekends or what?): “Enzymic Method for the Spectrophotometric Determination of Benzoic Acid in Soy Sauce and Pickles.” I had no idea that the upset stomach I got gorging on sushi Saturday night was actually important scientific research

14 October 2001 | No comments

When there’s actual dust collecting on your bike, you know it’s been a while since it’s seen any use. So today I decided to head to the Katy Trail and bike 10 or 15 miles. I hopped on, headed out the door, and proceeded to wipe out in my parking lot within 15 seconds of leaving.

I must have been distracted by something, because when I looked up there was a parked car right in front of me — right in a parking spot, where parked cars are supposed to be, that sneaky devil — and my efforts to dodge it ended with much flesh-cement contact.

Usually, I have only my memories to remind me that I’m less than perfectly graceful; it’s nice to have the road burns and partially-functional left wrist to keep that thought front and center.

14 October 2001 | No comments

Memo to Cate Blanchett, after seeing (the otherwise unremarkable) Bandits last night: Marry me. Please?

14 October 2001 | No comments

Rock climbing followed by football means soreness upon soreness. Maybe I should go running and complete a wussy personal triathalon. But at least I had a good game: four (!) touchdowns, two interceptions, several nice defensive plays. I think I’ll be able to try out for the Cowboys soon.

When we were done playing after about three hours, a group of us were sitting on the sideline, drinking water, enjoying the pain (and in the case of two players, smoking). Then this group of guys came over and asked us if we’d be willing to play against them for a while. It seems they’re practicing for this big touch football championship coming up in November, and they needed people to defend them for a while. Dog-tired but never ones to reject a challenge, we played. These guys clearly took thing much more seriously than we do — they had a playbook! With more than a dozen plays! They had a coach! When a route wasn’t run crisply enough, they’d talk about being two feet farther left or right, a degree of precision we don’t even have when we’re parking our cars, much less running pass patterns. Anyway, they smoked us good. But I did get a few nice views of the backs of their shirts as they ran past, at least.

13 October 2001 | No comments

Just got back from rock climbing in Carrollton. For those who haven’t been there, they’ve converted a bunch of old grain silos into climbing walls. (You can climb up the inside or the outside; as it was raining, we stayed inside.) They claim it’s the tallest indoor climbing gym in the world.

I fared okay, considering the last climbing I did was in college, and that was of buildings, not rocks. A great guy named Lukas lived across the hall from me freshman year — probably the most brilliant guy I’ve ever met. (He took fourth-year graduate-level theoretical physics as a freshman.) Among his (non-marijuana) interests was rock climbing; on a whim he entered a contest and won the Connecticut state rock climbing championship. But he did most of his climbing on the Gothic spires of our campus: they were convenient and fun to conquer. During spring semester, he lost his dorm room keys; instead of getting new ones, he just left a window open on the third floor and climbed in every day. I’ll never forget the look of horror on this one poor freshwoman’s face when Lukas appeared outside her fourth-floor window one night…

13 October 2001 | No comments

More greedy self-promotion: I’m supposed to have a story on the front page tomorrow, on a new rush by high school dropouts to take the GED before it gets tougher on Jan. 1. Of course, it was supposed to be on the front page of last Monday’s paper, but a few nasty little bombing raids scuttled that pretty quickly, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see a random anthrax attack push it back another couple of days again.

12 October 2001 | No comments

Today’s signal that the world truly has changed post-9/11: Last night was the debut of Survivor 3, and none of us at work even noticed. (This after it dominated huge swaths of every working Friday last year.)

12 October 2001 | 1 comment

I was sick yesterday morning, then spent yesterday afternoon wrestling with my hard drive. (Around 1 p.m., it decided that installing a new operating system was far too much stress. As the afternoon went on, I could actually see files disintegrating, one by one: old email, a web page from 1996, my resume, etc. I’d like to publicly pledge my first-born child to the very nice people who make Disk Warrior, which officially saved my ass.) And of course, Wednesday brought news of some of my coworkers getting laid off.

So there was a heavy burden on last night’s trip to the state fair with my friend Natacha to lift me out of the doldrums. Luckily, it worked. Observations:

- I was very disappointed to learn that, according to the lady in the coupon booth, there was no butter sculpture at the fair this year because “they couldn’t finish it in time.” I have this horrible vision of an aged butter artisan — probably a Swedish grandpa from Wausaukee, Wisconsin — crouched over some half-human form, burying his head in his hands, bawling his eyes out over his inability to finish carving in time for the fair.

- I feel sorry for the people who run fair events with an international theme. The Moroccan horsemen have started putting American flags everywhere during their act for fear that the small-minded will start making the Moroccans = Arabs = terrorists equation and start making glue of their horses. Even the Belgian waffle stand made a few changes; on a sign that says autocratically “Waffles only!” they’ve put a small American flag. (I had no idea the Belgians were linked to terrorism.)

- I wonder how the Flying Men of Veracruz get insurance.

- Growing up in Louisiana, corn dogs appeared pretty regularly on our school lunch menus. They were uniformly awful: a bland, doughy breading, a lukewarm frankfurter, etc. So I was skeptical when I heard of the glories of the state fair corn dog. I was wrong. They truly are a glorious foodstuff.

12 October 2001 | 2 comments

On a day when my employer announces layoffs and wage freezes, I didn’t expect to be laughing out loud. But I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen something this funny.

Look at the posters of Osama Bin Laden in these photos of anti-American protests: here, here, here, and here (same as #3).

Now go back and look over Osama’s left ear. (It’s clearest in the first one. In case it’s removed from the site, I’ve archived it here.)

If you can’t believe your eyes, check out here, here, and here. Muppet power! Fight the evil Bert!

10 October 2001 | No comments

Bad news from my employer. Cross your fingers for me.

10 October 2001 | No comments

I know, humanitarian aid is not a very funny concept, and bombing is even less of one. But I love this Post story on the food drops the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan.

First off, these pouches are being dropped from very high altitudes, with no parachutes. Is this safe? Why am I reminded of the famous turkey drop episode of WKRP in Cincinnati? (See episode #40.)

Anyway, from the story:

“‘This is a food gift from the people of the United States of America,’ the label on the pouch reads…The text is in English, Spanish and French.” (Oh yeah, lots of starving Afghan peasants read English. Great education system they’ve got there.)

“Someone tearing into one of the food pouches would find…a shortbread cookie, a biscuit, a fruit bar, fruit pastry, peanut butter, strawberry jam, and a condiment package that includes salt, pepper and sugar.” (Win them over with condiments! It’s worked in every other theater of war!)

And, my favorite line: “A moist towelette is included.” I’m sure the Afghans appreciate it.

09 October 2001 | 2 comments

I was really intrigued by Ev’s latest blog entry: “sdfasdf.” So profound, so penetrating, so…je ne sais quoi.

I had to find more, so I turned to Google, and it did not let me down: 1,770 pages on the wisdom of sdfasdf. Irish bloggers, California consultants, Hoosier chemists: they all know the secret of the sdfasdf.

But then I learned a devastating truth: sdfasdf was not nearly as popular as its rival, asdfasdf. (Just as “amoral” means the opposite of “moral,” “asdfasdf” must be the diametric opposite to “sdfasdf.”) The asdfasdf school of thought has made no fewer than 5,100 converts online, including the city of Fife, Washington, a Maryland golf course, and a distributed computing company. Where will asdfasdf’s vile influence finally end? (And don’t even get me started on asdf, its lean, cruel cousin.)

09 October 2001 | No comments

Some of the Google search terms used to find this site so far this month: “barry bonds download gone in 70 seconds,” “rem nostradamus end of the towers,” “osama 7-eleven,” “osama and a goat,” “dayo song,” “scared to be in afghanistan song,” and, naturally, “limited edition nikes.”

09 October 2001 | No comments

I love this time of year, and not just because I finally get to break out the jackets and coats I accumulated in seven years up North and never get to use in Texas. It’s Nobel Prize season, and there are few things that do a better job of reminding us all that humanity truly kicks ass. I mean, today the physics prize was awarded to three guys who discovered a new state of matter. Seriously, how bad-ass is that? New states of matter don’t exactly pop up every day, in between mouthfuls of Cheetos during commercial breaks of Survivor.

Plus, I’m in favor of anything that keeps the Swedes busy — you don’t want a bunch of troublemaking Swedes with too much time on their hands.

And, in my continued quest for self-promotion, there was a story in today’s DMN on how schools responded to Sunday’s attacks.

09 October 2001 | No comments

I don’t know if it was Erica’s link to a dream interpretation site that did it, but I had the most vivid dreams last night. One involved a girl I had an unrequited high school crush on and shall not be discussed further. Then there was one involving some sort of video game-like torture chamber involving the Taliban: Osama was at the top of a cliff, we were at the bottom, and he kept throwing boulders down at us, Tetris-like, which we had to dodge. Then, just before the alarm this morning, I dreamed I was riding in a bullet train that plunged through tunnel after tunnel, vibrating and pulsing with energy, only to stop in a Parisian square filled with fountains spurting foamy water while Charo played a guitar nearby, until the train left again, plunging into tunnels and through valleys surrounded by high-peaked twin mountains, until I awoke crying, “Oh God! Oh God!”

Okay, just kidding about that last one.

09 October 2001 | 1 comment

Rush Limbaugh has gone deaf. And I don’t mean that metaphorically — he’s actually lost his ability to comprehend the voices of others. The man’s brought a lot of hate into the world, and I’ve never been able to stand his preening faux-underdogism, but that doesn’t make it any less unfortunate.

08 October 2001 | 2 comments

“Mooruddin Aki’s arms were chopped off by the Taliban after authorities caught him smoking opium in an Afghan school. At 18, he begs on the streets and people who take pity on him place bills in his mouth.”

— from today’s New York Times, via Talking Points.

08 October 2001 | No comments

A disappointing sports Saturday (just one touchdown down at Glencoe Park — although it was an impressive 40-yard over-the-shoulder grab, if I do say so myself) has given way to a terrific sports Sunday. Barry Bonds hit No. 73 this afternoon, and still has a chance for more. As a longtime Giants fan (and that rarest of birds, a longtime Bonds fan), I hope this isn’t his last game in a San Francisco uniform. Meanwhile, the Saints staved off a dangerous Vikings squad that has had our number for several years now.

On most fall Sunday afternoons, you can find me in Plano at the Austin Avenue Grill & Sports Bar, where local Saints fans congregate to either (most years) commiserate about our team’s sorry state or (for the last two seasons) grin the silly grins of children given an unexpected lollipop. It’s such great fun when fans of the other team are there, particularly if they start the day in a taunting mood. Today, there were about a dozen Vikings fans there, all decked out in purple Randy Moss jerseys and yelling out “Go Vikings!” and “Saints suck!” in their Marge Gunderson accents. They were pretty quiet by the end of the day.

In local sports news, the Rangers fired GM Doug Melvin, whose idea of a quality pitching staff involved ERAs higher than a valedictorian’s GPA.

This has been the crabwalk.com Sunday sports report — thanks for listening. We now return you to your regularly scheduled war.

07 October 2001 | No comments

”I really like the idea that if you’re an artist, then you should double up the amount of work that you would normally have, because you’re being handed a dream. I’ve worked on houses and built new plumbing and had really bad jobs. If I’m going to be a musician, that’s a pretty big responsibility. That means that I get excluded from the working class — I better have something to show for it.”

— Ryan Adams, impossibly prolific rock wunderkind (whose new album, Gold, shows every sign of justifying the astounding hype that’s surrounded it, by the way), in The Boston Globe. Ryan just released his third album of the last 12 months, and he’s got two more in the can.

07 October 2001 | 2 comments

Just to be clear: I certainly wasn’t dissing Honchie and the Gobos by walking past Club Dada last night. I hadn’t planned on going, but ended up having dinner with a friend at Deep Sushi. Walking past the club, I heard the band, realized who it was, and peered inside to see if I recognized anyone. I didn’t, but even if I did, I’d have kept moving on — I’m not quite ready to explain the whole blogging concept to a coworker yet. (Ah, blogshame.)

Anyway, I’m off to hang out with a bunch of septuagenarians singing Boola Boola. In other words, a typical Friday night for me.

05 October 2001 | 2 comments

Almost every night, before I go to bed, I set my alarm for 6 a.m. or so and tell myself I’ll get up early. I’ve got a lot of work to do now, between my job and some freelance stuff, and I need all the spare hours I can get.

And almost every morning, at 6 a.m., I reset the alarm for 7 a.m. Then 8 a.m. Then 9 a.m. Then a snooze (9:09), another (9:18), then usually another (9:27). Sometimes, there’s one or two more. I drag my sorry self out of bed, head for work, and thank heavens that my job starts at 10 a.m., a sane, humane hour.

But today was an exception: I got up at 6, went to work — and promptly wasted three hours surfing the web, reading blogs, and writing silly email. That was so much more productive.

04 October 2001 | No comments

As Pink perceptively points out, it’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A good friend of mine is organizing the first DFW edition of the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day. It’s a three-day, 60-mile walk from Fort Worth to Dallas, April 26-28, 2002. Walks like this around the country raised $43 million in 2000. Consider signing up.

03 October 2001 | 1 comment

Well, hot damn! Just found out today I’m going to Japan later this month. I’ve been accepted into a journalism fellowship sponsored by the Foreign Press Center of Japan. Twelve days of roaming around the country, asking questions and writing stories. I can think of worse ways to spend my birthday. (And the best part: they’re flying me over business class. I’ve lived a completely coach life. What have I done to deserve this luxury?)

03 October 2001 | 5 comments

Attention Death Cab For Cutie fans: You can order their new album, The Photo Album, online instead of waiting a couple of weeks for it to hit stores. Plus, if you order online, you get a limited edition three-song EP (including a Bjork cover). Mine’s on its way.

Two tracks from the new album are available online too, A Movie Script Ending and I Was a Kaleidoscope. Both a bit more rockin’ than their excellent last album, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes. (My two favorite tracks from that album, For What Reason and Company Calls are also online.)

And hell, while we’re linking Death Cab stuff, the 4/14/00 concert available for download here is quite good. And Ben Gibbard’s side project, All-Time Quarterback, has five tracks online here.

If you’re unfamiliar with Death Cab, suffice it to say they’re the finest band in the Pacific Northwest today. (Ha! Take that, Built to Spill — that’s what you get for starting a show at 12:45 a.m. on a school night!) And they’ll be playing at the Gypsy Tea Room here on Nov. 11 — at eight bucks, it’ll be the bang-for-your-concert-buck deal of the year.

03 October 2001 | No comments

More shameless self-promotion: that was me on the front page yesterday, writing about the decreasing attention Texas schools are paying to the earth sciences.

03 October 2001 | 1 comment

FYI, that This American Life episode I wrote about earlier is now online in RealAudio. (The first 10 minutes aren’t as good as the remainder, so hang in there.) Also online (and referenced during the show) is Lee Sandlin’s 1997 piece on the psychology of life in war time, from the always logorrheic (but usually worth it) Chicago Reader. (I like parentheses a lot.)

02 October 2001 | No comments

Calling all deprogrammers: I just spent eight hours in a white-walled room where, under the guise of a “time management seminar,” I was indoctrinated into the cult of Franklin Covey.

Shortly after being handed a copy of the cult’s holiest scripture — the “What Matters Most”(TM) Starter Kit Franklin Planner — I was told I needed to forget everything about my existence before today. “Use only one personal management system!” I was told. (Thou shalt not worship false gods!) “Carry The Planner with you at all times!”

There was talk of The Wall of Total Control and its demonic, Satan-like doppelganger, The Wall of No Control. There were videos asking us eternal questions (“What makes life worth living? Where is your fire within?”) and telling us the answers can only be found in The Planner. There was the promise that “appropriate event control leads to inner peace.” There was a demand that we all “commit to teach today’s key concepts to someone else within 48 hours.” There were lots of pictures of calm rivers and peaceful sunsets, each presumably achieved through proper use of the ABC Prioritized Daily Task List, the Daily Record of Events, and (most ominously) the Values Clarification Worksheet.

This isn’t an organizational tool — this is a cult. A way of life. An icky mix of the Tony Robbins school of self-actualization and the Frederick Winslow Taylor school of corporate efficiency.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy some black Nikes.

02 October 2001 | No comments

Speaking of bursitis: When I was 12 or 13, I bought a second-hand copy of Woody Allen’s “Without Feathers,” one of his compilations of New Yorker pieces [along with “Getting Even” and “Side Effects”]. My favorite highlight was “God (A Play),” a sort of po-mo/Borscht Belt parody of Greek theater. The characters include Bursitis, Diabetes, Hepatitis, and Trichinosis. To a young, impressionable mind, its mix of deontological philosophy and slapstick (sample joke: “Did you hear about Cyclops? He got a middle eye infection”) was life-changing.

01 October 2001 | No comments

I know I’m getting older and all, but is it honestly asking too much to have a band go on before 12:45 a.m. on a Sunday night?

Went to see Built to Spill last night, under the mistaken impression that I might get to see them before men walk on Mars. The opening band was Polyphonic Spree, those 22-piece local heroes, who were bedecked in choir robes and had that sort of Burt-Bacharach-conducting-a-band-of-Hare-Krishnas-singing-outtakes-from-Magical-Mystery-Tour thing going on. I had thought they were the second of three bands to go on and would be followed by Idaho’s finest, but alas, they were followed by the execrable Brett Netson, who had the sort of bar-band self-indulgence that makes me ill. No, really, we all want to hear your atonal, “bluesy” yelping over your sloppy, uninteresting guitar work! And, if possible, could you please make all your songs 15 minutes long? Thanks, man! (He also looked like he last bathed on the same day he had an original musical thought, which was likely around 1972.)

When he finally shut up, on came another unexpected band, which initially caused more anger, but The Delusions were actually fine. Unremarkable, and their drummer winced in pain every time he used his left arm (bursitis?), but fine.

Built to Spill finally came on shortly before 1 a.m. and were quite good; the sound mix was a little uneven at first, but that evened out as the show went on. A couple members of the Spree went up to sing backup on a few songs, and it was clear it was the highlight of their young lives. It was the last show of their tour, so they broke out a few odd covers (Ben Folds Five, a great version of George Harrison’s “What Is Life,” and an oddly deferential version of “Free Bird”). They made the best of what had been an otherwise frustrating night.

I was supposed to meet Matt and Amanda for drinks afterward, but we were all up way past our bed times, so it was just a quick hello. Hopefully I’ll see them again on some occasion when sleep is less of a priority.

01 October 2001 | 1 comment