We’ve all heard of a dying boy asking for one final wish. So what do you do when his one wish is to have sex with a woman?
In Australia, the answer apparently is: hire a prostitute. “He did engage in the act and it was everything he wished it to be,” the boy’s psychologist reports. “He was very, very happy and only slightly disappointed that it was over quickly.”
News release of the day: “An open house and demonstration of Esperanto, the international language, will be held January 3, 2002, at 7:00 pm, at the Arts Council of Northeast Tarrant County, Bedford Boys Ranch, in Bedford, Texas. All are invited to attend and learn more about Esperanto, a politically and culturally neutral language that is intended to be a common second language without replacing anyone’s national language. Classes are scheduled to begin Thursday, January 10, 2002, and will meet weekly through May. Registration for classes may be made at the open house or by contacting Phil Dorcas at 817/858-0689 or by email at pdorcas@airmail.net.”
Received in the mail yesterday:
“Dear AT&T Digital Phone Service Customer: We missed the date for mailing your November bill!…We’re continuing to fine-tune our new billing system and have delayed mailing your November bill in order to prepare an accurate bill. Your November bill that you should have received in November will now arrive in mid-December. Don’t worry!” It’s always good to get a letter like that on Dec. 28.
Things You Learn From Your Referer Logs: I’m #19 in the grand list of “Famous Toledoans.” Surely behind Jamie Farr, though, right? (Surprisingly, no mention of Katie Holmes, certainly Toledo’s most famous at the moment, in the top 20.)
New census data released today. (And yes, we are devolving into a AJ Hammer-and-census-based blog. Not what you signed up for, eh?) My sorry home state of Louisiana is one of only four states to have lost people from April 2000 to June 2001. (The other winners in that number: Iowa, West Virginia, and North Dakota. Some fine company.) Texas, in contrast, gained 336,811 people.
(I love the fake precision of census estimates. It’s not like the feds stationed themselves at every state line, counting U-Hauls as they rolled past. They’re guessing. But they don’t say “about 335,000 or so people.” They say 336,811, exactly, precisely. In related news, I will be getting exactly 7 hours, 42 minutes, and 14 seconds of sleep tonight, will consume exactly 512.4 calories at lunch, and am now boring 97.3 percent of my readers.)
Back in October, shortly after I’d arrived in Japan, I made a throwaway reference to A.J. Hammer, former video introducer to the world. (The complete reference: “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.”)
For the last two months, I’ve been surprised how many people have found this site by searching for “aj hammer” at Google or elsewhere. I had no idea the man was so, um, popular.
Anyway, someone left a snippy comment on that months-old entry today:
FYI, AJ Hammer is the personality used by Northwest to introduce their features (it is not “his job”). Mr. Hammer has been on FOX TV for the past 18 months as well as “Hollywood at Large” on Court TV and NBC. Northwest is a side project much as American Airlines in-flight is a side project for the members of Good Morning America. Northwest Airlines is an industry award-winner for its in-flight entertainment.
Jon Mycka, @In Flight
Thanks, Jon Mycka, for clearing that up. I was under the mistaken impression that someone paid money to perform a task could be described as “having the job” to do so. I see now that I was mistaken: clearly he is introducing The Score to an audience of disgruntled passengers as an act of charity, his small way of contributing to the larger, grail-like cause that is Northwest In-Flight Entertainment. Perhaps a better way of phrasing it might be: “A.J. Hammer, ex-VJ on VH1, now has the honor of introducing movies on Northwest flights.”
And it was clearly inaccurate of me to suggest, however subtly, that the career of “Mr. Hammer” might have taken the proverbial eight-foot dive in a five-foot pool. You are right, Jon Mycka: he does work for Fox and Court TV.
Sure, the Fox job might not be a network job — it’s a job at WNYW, the New York Fox affiliate. And sure, his job there (if one may call it “a job”) is host of the “A.J.’s Beat” segment on WNYW’s morning show, “Good Day New York,” a job apparently so insignificant it doesn’t merit a mention on the show’s “personalities” page, or anywhere else on its site.
And yes, his Court TV gig may just be as Hollywood at Large’s “contributing host.” Which would mean he’s not quite as big a star as the show’s “celebrity/host” Wendy L. Walsh, whoever she is. I’m sure she doesn’t even get out of bed for less than $10,000; it’s natural for Mr. Hammer to accept second billing on this unwatched show behind such a tsunami-force celeb. (Ms. Walsh is apparently such a convincing ringer for a legitimate journalist that she’s played one in the movies at least five times. Who could forget her stunning turn as “Reporter Outside Courtroom” in The Cable Guy?)
I’m sure that, in sum, those are all steps up, careerwise, from hosting a bunch of big shows on a popular cable network. And you even skipped many of most noteworthy post-VH1 accomplishments, such as his role as “celebrity spokesperson for the nationwide media tour of Milton Bradley’s new Planet Hollywood: The Game.” And when I learned, from his Court TV bio, that Mr. Hammer’s “picture is featured in the coffee table book Heartthrob, A Hundred Years of Beautiful Men,” I knew that this was not a man to be trifled with. Please accept my heartfelt apologies, Jon Mycka, if I have impugned your airline, your sterling history of in-flight entertainment, or your liege, Mr. Hammer.
(Oh, and by the way: your airline sucks. Worst in America, by a fairly wide margin.)
Interesting AJ Hammer factoid: until he achieved stardom at a NYC radio station, he was known on the radio as AJ Goldberg (presumably his real name). He made the switch in October 1990. MC Hammer’s Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em was released in Feburary 1990. This likely means that AJ Hammer chose his name because he thought there was some magic in the two-initials-plus-“hammer” motif. Why he has not gone the route of his namesake (namely, bankruptcy and a name reduction to just “Hammer”) is unclear.
If, like me, you’re a fan of Mark Kozelek and his on-again, off-again band the Red House Painters, check out the limited edition web-only live album Sub Pop’s selling. Mark typically makes drowsy, sad, gorgeous music (think Low, Spain, or American Music Club); he’s also made a specialty of covering bad songs in radically altered ways. (This live album includes his version of AC/DC’s “Rock and Roll Singer,” which is transcendent. RHP’s 1996 album, Songs for a Blue Guitar, had great covers of Long Distance Runaround [Yes], Silly Love Songs [Wings], and All Mixed Up [the Cars, which made its way into a Gap holiday commercial last year, probably because of its “Little Drummer Boy” backbeat]).
Sub Pop also wins the prize for e-commerce’s best way of warning people their holiday shipment may be late: “NOTICE: Due to the unfortunate birth of our lord jesus christ…”
AmazonScan tracks how a book, movie, or other item is ranked in Amazon’s sales lists. The lowest of the low being tracked at the moment is the page-turner The Brachiopod Antiquatonia Coloradoensis (Girty) from the Upper Morrowan and Atokan (Lower Middle Pennsylvanian) of the United States, a Thomas W. Henry classic from his difficult “blue” period.
When so few people purchase a book, it must be awfully difficult for Amazon to do all the wonderful number crunching it does, like figuring out what people who bought that book also bought. As a result, the #1 entry under “customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items” is The Little Book Of Crap Excuses, which, while similar in theme, likely doesn’t share many readers with Henry’s brachiopod epic.
I’ve been meaning to post this story for, oh, about three months and 16 days now.
I graduated from college (barely) in 1997, and went to work for the Toledo Blade, a newspaper in Ohio. My first assignment there was covering the night cops beat, which mainly entailed sitting in the office long hours at night — Tuesday through Saturday, 6 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. (Makes a social life tons of fun, let me tell you.)
Their vacation rules meant that I couldn’t take any time off until I’d been there for a year, so when the fall of 1998 came around and I had a week off, I figured I’d earned the right to do something special. I went online and found a $200 ticket to Paris, scouted out a cheap hotel (the Hotel Printemps, $22 a night in a great neighborhood — spartan but highly recommended), and headed off to France.
I love traveling alone. I spent my days wandering unhurriedly from museum to museum, not a stress or care in the world. There were days I didn’t speak 50 words, and the little I did say usually consisted of ordering more bread at a cafe.
On one of my last afternoons in Paris, shortly after visiting Rousseau’s tomb at Le Pantheon, I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch. But I wasn’t famished, so I stopped at a sandwich shop on a surprisingly empty street. The owner, an Algerian, was friendly, and I reasoned it would be one of my last chances to practice my French, so we started talking.
He asked what I did, and I told him I was a reporter for an American newspaper. He perked up and ran behind a curtain to the back of his store to fetch his brother. His smiling, cheery brother said he was a freelance reporter and wanted to know how American newspapers work. We settled into a conversation I’ve had many times before — yes, sometimes I come up with my own stories, yes, sometimes editors assign things, etc. — when he suddenly, non-chalantly, said: “Would you like to interview Osama bin Laden?”
This was September, 1998. The original World Trade Center bombing had been a few months earlier. Americans were hearing of bin Laden for the first time. The man told me he had connections within bin Laden’s organization and that he had interviewed bin Laden himself for an Middle East publication some time ago. And he’d helped a British reporter get in touch with bin Laden not long before. Would I like to talk with him?
In retrospect, I wish I could I say I was frightened at the prospect of being on an empty European street with a man with links to al-Qaida, but I was actually just in ambitious journalist mode: “Hell yeah, I want to chat with Osama!” After all, bin Laden had been giving interviews to Western reporters throughout 1998. Sure, the Toledo Blade wasn’t the New York Times, but maybe the sickle-and-scythe imagery of its name would appeal to a mujahedeen.
I gave my business card to the brother, and he gave me his. He said he would forward my information to Osama’s people and that I should get in touch with him in a month or two. He said it was doubtful an interview would be granted, but he said he liked me (and, perhaps, my sandwich selection) and he’d try.
This probably seems like the oddest part of my story: I didn’t think much about it for a while. Back in Toledo a month or two later, I found the brother’s business card. I reasoned that I was still a peon at the paper and there was roughly zero chance I’d ever be allowed to hike to Afghanistan to interview a terrorist. (The Blade also had and has a pretty strict policy about protecting its reporters from too-dangerous situations, which while admirably paternalistic, always made my inner reporter daredevil a little mad.) I figured I’d have more to gain at the paper by giving the guy’s card to our managing editor, a guy named Lew, and letting him do with it whatever he wanted. I did just that; Lew looked confused, said he didn’t think The Blade would be interested in an interview, and put me on my way.
Ironically, I’d later become The Blade’s ad hoc foreign correspondent, going to six countries on the company’s dime. But I never got my audience with Osama. I suppose, in retrospect, that’s not a bad thing: if i had, I’d be awfully tired from all the TV interviews I’d have given in the last three months. And I’m anxiously awaiting a call from an FBI operative asking me why my business card was discovered in a Tora Bora cave.
Man, it must be hard to work on your tan when you’re hiding in a cave and all. Probably makes your beard a bit whiter, too.
And in the category of “Things seemed to change after 9/11, but they really didn’t”: a headline on the front page of today’s paper — about a guy who applied for a loan through new city program — reads: “He’s not just a potential sub shop owner, he’s a hero.” Whatever happened to all that talk about how we’d only call “real” heroes heroes? (In the online edition, the headline’s been changed to read “he’s their hero” — maybe others noticed, too.
I’ve added a new page dedicated to our little CD Mix of the Month club (linked at right). Check it out for more details on the project. And if you’re one of the traders listed and we still haven’t swapped discs (and you know who you are!), drop me a line.
If someone buys me this office chair, I will pay them at least $10. “This user-friendly chair promotes active seating” — a nice way to say “This chair is so uncomfortable that you’ll be constantly moving and thus unable to stay long enough in one position to get carpal tunnel.” (ripped from the always entertaining mister pants)
My sources within the Rock Community tell me that all DFWers (that’s pronounced duh-phew-ers, by the way) should clear their calendars of inessential appointments on the evening of March 5. On that night, the Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth will host two of the finest collections of musical performers known to man: the Dismemberment Plan and Death Cab for Cutie. (One hopes they have the sense to call it the Death and Dismemberment Tour.) Trust me when I tell you that, should you choose to attend, your $10 would not be spent unwisely. Be there, or be, um, rhomboid.
Ah, nothing better than holiday work shifts when your boss is on vacation. Come in 20 minutes late? No problem! Now that I’ve got a laser printer, I’ve rededicated myself to a more organized life, starting out with the massive printed To Do list I’ve got sitting at my right side.
Belated Lord of the Rings thought: Was I the only one who found it a tad unconvincing that this merry band of nine warriors kept running into armies of 10,000 orcs — and I mean nasty, ill-tempered orcs, not the kind of orc you’d invite over for Christmas dinner — but always seemed to emerge unscathed? That the body count was always 10,000 dead orcs in one corner vs. a couple of scratches, boo-boos, and owies in the other? Even the shrimpy little hobbits, whose asses I could no doubt have soundly kicked, managed to fend off constant waves of orcishness?
Yesterday was our family’s Christmas gathering. They’re much more fun now than they were five or ten years ago because there’s a new generation of kiddies running around. (I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but I’ve got five first cousins that lived within a few blocks of me growing up, so they’ve historically served as demi-siblings. And they’ve been spouting out kids like a water fountain the last few years.)
It’s nice to see all my old toys — the Star Wars stormtrooper, the giraffe stuck in a tiny little cage (PETA Alert!), the Tonka jeep — getting some use again. If you guys are lucky (I mean, really lucky), I might post some pictures of my cousin’s kid Cody, who a recent Rand Corp. study determined to be the Cutest Kid in the Western World. (Reports of a slightly cuter kid in rural Mongolia could not be confirmed by researchers; personally I give them little credence.) Cody also has impeccable taste; when it came time for him to invent an imaginary friend, he sensibly named him Josh. A wise, wise boy.
My grandmother, as much as I love her, showed questionable gift taste: an ironing board. She told me she’d been meaning to get me one for a while because I needed one. My first thought: what kind of an insult is this? I look so damned wrinkly that I obviously need holiday help? My second thought: I have an ironing board. Sometimes I even use it. Did she know this? Was my ironing board somehow inadequate? Was the symbolic import of the gift so critical that it made my sudden two-ironing-board setup acceptable?
Anyway, today she sheepishly asked: “Wait, you already have an ironing board, don’t you?” I admitted that, yes, I did. Maybe I could try ironing in stereo or something.
Man, I am pissed. Time picked its Man of the Year today, and it’s Rudy Giuliani. Not to take anything away from Rudy, but is there any conceivable argument that it’s not Osama bin Laden? Who influenced the course of world events more this year, Osama or Rudy? It’s not even close.
If the people who run Time were even remotely honest with themselves, they’d admit as much. But they knew that naming bin Laden would have gotten lots of folks mad, so they chickened out. That kind of cowardly behavior has no place in journalism — you report the news no matter who it’s going to piss off. (I guess there goes my chance at a good AOL Time Warner job.)
Update: Josh Marshall agrees. “Time’s decision to make Giuliani its Person of the Year represents a colossal failure of nerve and honesty. And it may even be a small sign of the baleful effects of media industry conglomeration.” (An interesting idea I hadn’t thought of. If Time was just Time, withstanding a public backlash would be easier. Now that it’s CNN/AOL/Time/WB/etc., (a) a backlash could be much more broadly based, and (b) the journalistic ethic is more diluted within the megacorporation.)
My two pretty-long Sunday stories became one really-quite-long Sunday story, which I think was an improvement. Feel free to judge for yourself.
Am I the only one frightened by the prospect of John Turturro playing Howard Cosell? When a classic overactor plays, well, a classic overactor, isn’t there some sort of black-hole-creating infinite loop?
From the link above, winner of the Golden Globe for Most Overheated Rhetoric In Promotion of a Television Movie (Cable): “The chemistry between Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and Frank Gifford was a key ingredient, as they brought even the most lackluster football game to life. They were the voice of a generation of journalists who were not afraid to ‘tell it like it is’” (italics and smirking mine).
This morning, my mother came into my room at about 8:30 a.m. This being a Saturday, I was fast asleep. She said she and a friend were going to see Lord of the Rings this afternoon at the nearest movie theater (which is in the next town over, Crowley) and wanted to know if I wanted to come. I said okay; she said she was planning to show up an hour early at the theater and camp out for tickets.
As I said, I was essentially still asleep, but I was conscious enough to think: “Huh? Camping out for movie tickets for a matinee in Crowley? Crowley, city of maybe 13,000 people? That little four-screen movie theater, which probably didn’t sell out a single screen for Titanic or Harry Potter or Star Wars?” I don’t there’s ever been an hour-long line for anything in Crowley — not for boudin at the Rice Festival, not for diplomas at Crowley High graduation, and certainly not for a movie.
I somehow through the haze negotiated her down to showing up at 1:30 for a 2:00 show. Of course, we were the first people there and looked pretty damned silly standing in our little three-person line waiting for the ticket window to open. Only 12 or 15 people showed up for the movie at all. I’d say I told you so, but I’m above that, of course. (So I just blog it instead.)
It’s 11 a.m. and I’ve already blogged 800 words — can you tell that my Sunday stories are now finished?
Anyway, I leave this afternoon for Louisiana, where my grandmother’s house and my childhood bed await. I get to spend the weekend trying to revitalize my decrepit, six-year-old Power Mac 7200 (90mhz! 500MB hard drive! 16MB RAM!) for my grandmother’s email use. Basically, it’ll be a test to see how large I can make icons without giggling. I’ll blog from there (assuming I can get the 7200 to work), but in any event, I wish all my readers a merry Christmas and a happy holiday. Doing this site has been great fun, and it’s all (sniff) because of (sniff) you guys. (must…not…cry…)
Oh, and Erica, if you didn’t believe me when I told you I was from the Frog Capital of the World, eat your words.
Hypothetical question: let’s say a major sports figure — one with with debatably anti-Semitic and racist tendencies in his past — steps up to the mike at a banquet and tells the following two jokes. “What’s the difference between a Jew and a canoe? A canoe tips!” And “A black, a Puerto Rican, and a Mexican are in a car. Who’s driving? The police!”
For most people, the uproar would be instant. People get fired for that sort of thing. So why, when Muhammed Ali told those jokes Monday, was there essentially no reaction?
I’m not asking to make some sort of political point; I’m genuinely interested. Earlier this month, Denver Nuggets coach Dan Issel got into a heap of trouble for yelling at a drunken heckler, “Go drink another beer, you Mexican [expletive],” which to my mind is at least debatably not worse than what Ali said. (The guy in question evidently was quite drunk and belligerent, and I’d consider simply using the word “Mexican” to describe someone Hispanic less offensive than perpetuating stereotypes about an ethnic group.)
Ali is, of course, now a culturally beloved figure nowadays, but it wasn’t too long ago he was talking about “white devils” and towing the Nation of Islam/Farrakhan line on the evils of Jews, so one might think the slightest misstep in that direction would be grabbed onto immediately. Is it the Parkinson’s that makes his inviolate to criticism? (If so, can we expect Michael J. Fox to start mouthing off soon?)
I’m interested in how different people get treated differently for saying the same things. If Bill Clinton had said half of the things George W. Bush has said in the last year, he’d have been pilloried by conservatives, because the storyline of Clinton-bashing had already been ingrained into the media and the punditocracy. In Ali’s case, I think it matters that he has no boss: if someone who says something bad can be fired by someone, the urge for columnists et al to make a big fuss about it is greater. Any ideas?
Maybe they finally figured out what “Winkerbean” really means: Funky Winkerbean, world’s most annoying comic strip, deemed too “controversial” for Albuquerque newspaper.
My journalistic hero, Malcolm Gladwell, has an interesting piece in this week’s New Yorker on Stanley Kaplan, the man who beat the SAT.
And from the Self-Promotion Dept.: feel free to pick up Sunday’s paper; there should (hopefully) be two okay stories of mine on the front page.
An extended, clearheaded excerpt from this week’s Plaintext (not on the web site yet), from Mike Antonucci:
So much ink has been spilled about Western efforts to understand why Islamic extremists might feel and act the way they do, but no one yet has suggested ignorance. America is an open society, with a free press, freedom of speech, and more information about everything than one person can reasonably assimilate. Most of the Middle East is a closed society, with controlled press and institutions, and extraordinarily limited information, particularly about America.
Read the words of Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid, an Al Qaeda leader who was interviewed this month by Al Jazeera television. “In our opinion, America has entered the phase of the beginning of the end,” he said. “America is talking about wanting to uproot terrorism in Afghanistan, but the truth is that those in Afghanistan have succeeded in uprooting America from its fortresses and bases and have dragged it, humiliated and shame-faced, to Afghanistan, where their hands, bayonets, and weapons can reach her.”
Another Al Qaeda member, Abu-Al-Hasan Al-Masri, also challenged America on Al Jazeera. “If you are true men, come down here and face us,” he said. The legless sheik on the bin Laden tape said: “Thank Allah America came out of its caves.” He also interprets the news reports from America on September 11 this way: “They were terrified, thinking there was a coup.”
These are guys who are dramatically misinformed about America. And no wonder. Much of their conversation revolves around ex post facto dream interpretation, as if they had just gotten off the phone with Miss Cleo (say, that turban looks familiar…)
Normally, Arizona Cardinals football doesn’t get a rise out of me. (Or anyone, for that matter.) But check out this story on Cardinals receiver David Boston. His dad’s a referee in the NFL. You’d think it wouldn’t be hard to avoid dad being a ref in son’s games — but evidently the league has no problem with it. “He finally officiated one of my games last year,” David says in the article.
Why in the world is that allowed? There was controversy when the elder Boston ref’d a game that just involved a division rival of the Cardinals; doesn’t the appearance of impropriety kick in somewhere? It’s not as if there aren’t dozens of other games to work every Sunday. (I pledge to keep further sports-related blogging to a minimum for a while, don’t worry.)
News from Northwest Ohio, Land of Enchantment: Surgeon uses scalpel to open eyelids Super Glued shut in fraternity “prank.”
Aaron Laser, a junior majoring in political science at the University of Toledo, said yesterday a doctor removed most of his eyelashes, but no stitches were needed. ‘It looks pretty gross,’ he said.
Mr. Laser was at the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house visiting friends when he fell asleep on a sofa because he was tired from working at a local car wash. While asleep, someone wrote on his face with a marker and glued a receipt from the Student Union bookstore to his head. One of his friends tried to remove the receipt, but couldn’t.
Mr. Laser could not open his left eye. About 8 a.m., he left the house, but realized he couldn’t drive because of the vision problems. Emergency room doctors were able to cut the receipt from his hair, but they did not part the upper and lower left eye lids. The doctors were concerned about the chemicals in his eyes and referred him to a doctor the next day.
Most assuring quote: “We don’t run into this on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis,” UT police Chief John Dauer said yesterday. “It’s unusual and not very intelligent.”
A random recommendation: if you get a chance, take a listen to the last Starlight Mints record, The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of. It’s quite good, and they show up here in Dallas fairly regularly (they’re from Oklahoma).
This random recommendation was brought to you by a chance glance at the web site of their label, Seethru Broadcasting (also home to the marvelous Enon, also a semi-regular Dallas/Denton visitor and whose track Come Into is currently my writing soundtrack). It was there that I noticed that the version of the album that I have is clearly inferior to the alternate cover, which appears to depict a boozy Muppet Joe Cocker.
A new study has tracked what people of different demographics find funny. Their findings (as interpreted by me): people like dumb jokes.
One of the top jokes in Germany: “Why is television called a medium? Because it is neither rare nor well-done.” (Har-dee-har-har.)
Belgians preferred: “Well, you see, there are basically three kinds of people in the world. Those who can count and those that can’t.”
The Swedish fave: “A guy phones the local hospital and yells, `you’ve gotta send help! My wife’s in labour!” The nurse says, `calm down. Is this her first child?’ He replies, `no! This is her husband!”’ (Okay, that’s one’s not awful.)
Women preferred: “A man walks into a bar with a piece of Tarmac under his arm. He says to the barman: `A pint for me, and one for the road’.” (Sad, really.)
Voted dumbest joke in an accompanying Internet survey: “Why are chickens considered good employees? Because they work around the cluck.”
Ah, cost cutting: Until a couple of weeks ago, my work laptop was a nice Dell Latitude. (Nice when it worked, that is, which was roughly half the time.) Today, I got my new work laptop: a Toshiba Satellite 115CS. (That link is to an eBay auction; the opening bid is $99. No one’s bid on it yet, and that’s likely because it’s not worth it. My Toshiba has its little eraser-nub mini-joystick ripped off, a b&w screen, no CD-ROM — it’s an ancient piece of crap. Oh, and it won’t boot up.)
Which is why today I bought an iBook. (On sale — only $894! That’s a hell of a deal, people.) Color me happy. (And in debt.)
I have an idea for an experiment, and I’d like your help. A lot of you no doubt know about the Blogdex, an MIT grad student’s excellent attempt to quantify the link relationships among blogs and between blogs and other sites. It’s really a nice service.
One of the most useful functions on the site is its list of the 25 most popular links among all the blogs it tracks. Reading the list is a good way to see what everybody else is talking about. I want to see if a little collective action can shove an uninteresting web page into the top 25.
The plan: a bunch of people add their blogs to the list of sites the Blogdex checks, if they haven’t already. Then, on one day, we all link to one exquisitely boring site, with no indication that it’s anything other than a normal blog link. Then, we watch it climb the list.
At the moment, #25 (a Winona Ryder/shoplifting story) is linked from only 12 blogs. So if we can get 12 people in on the project, we’ll have a good chance of getting on the list. (#15 is linked 23 times; #5 is only 20, which must mean that freshness of the link or some other metric must be taken into account somehow.)
I think it’d be an interesting experiment in watching a meme take hold. Will other people start linking to the site? How much will that site’s stats be affected? Let me know if you’re interested in helping test this out. (And I promise, this power will be used for good, not evil.)
On an unrelated note: I hope all my local readers will be making it out to tonight’s DFWblogs dinner. (I initially typed “making out to tonight’s DFWblogs dinner,” which I suppose is a fine option, too.) Important note: I’ll be bringing the mix CDs for the Mix CD Of The Month project, so if you want to trade, bring yours too.
Last minute Christmas shopping left to do? Well, if your friends and/or family like to look raffishly faux-rough hewn while tooling around town in their SUV, eddiebauer.com has a pretty silly deal going on: $20 off orders of $20 or more. (You just need to enter the coupon code 6033059 upon checkout.)
Well, it’s not quite as perfect as that, since their silly policies throw about $10 onto any cheap item there (at least $4.95 shipping, $3.00 “handling,” and tax, at least in Texas). But it does end up cutting the price of anything about $10. Search for something that costs $21 or so and you’ll come out paying only about $12. And there’s evidently no limit on how many times to use it.
Crabwalk.com: I work for you!
Tom Banse (BAHN-see), one of my fellow fellows in Japan last month, has been putting his stories for Seattle-area public radio stories on the web, in both audio and text. Tom is a much harder worker than I am, which is why he produced six stories from the trip and I but one…
The perfect gift for the Potter-obsessed: the Invisibility Cloak Harry Action Figure. Um, but you can see it.
The wonderfully named (and talented) writer Dahlia Lithwick usually reports on the Supreme Court for Slate, but this week she’s turned to a far more pressing subject: taste-testing fake meat.
“I chose to serve up a whole cornucopia of fake meat products to friends at one sitting. As one would at a wine tasting, we served up three ‘flights’ of food groups—the brownish ‘pig’ products, the beige ‘beef’ products, and the beiger ‘poultry’ products—and asked five friends, foodies all, to participate…”
“Less than a third of the way through the fake pig course it became evident that one should never serve fake meats to real friends. Never was a salad more cherished or appreciated than our ‘between flight’ side salad was. People actually fought over the last cherry tomatoes in the vain hope of filling up on something not made of twisted, colored gluten. What is wheat gluten, and did it ever know love?”
Among the comments on the various fake fleshes: “Generally positive, somewhat like real meat”; “”Not much nice was said”; “Universally deemed tasteless”; “Most testers enjoyed the accompanying barbecue sauce”; “Tastes like real boots though”; “Yummy but creepy consistency.”
Her final judgment: “Plunging neck deep into the world of meat alternatives made it clear that the good Lord may have put cows and soybeans on different ends of his great classification system for good reason. Pigs rarely aspire to be asparagus. And wheat should not strive to be meat.”
Not long ago, Kelly linked to a great, great story in the Washington Post in which its author searched for the worst place in America. (The official title of Armpit of America was at stake.) He settled on Battle Mountain, Nevada, which sounds downright awful. (The author tries to make it salvage something good about the place at the end of the piece, but it doesn’t convince this reader, at least.)
Anyway, one of the people quoted in the story, the local newspaper editor, has evidently been fired for saying the Armpit of America title “sounds about right” for Battle Mountain. Sheesh.
You know how there are times when you have an enormous amount of work to do, a nearly epic amount, really, enough work to choke a ox, or maybe just a cow, but probably an ox, yeah, an ox, and it’s all piled up and deadlines are climbing up to you like, um, things that climb up to you, I don’t know, maybe ferrets or something, and still you can’t get anything done?
This is one of those times.
I’m looking for some advice. Thanks to a new corporate policy, I have to get a cell phone of my own (as opposed to the company-owned cell I’ve had for the last year or so). I’m getting the phone in a couple of weeks, but now I’m considering canceling my home phone service altogether. My cell will have free nights and weekends, and that’s the only time I’m home anyway. The only thing I’d need a land line for is Internet access, but I could probably afford to get DSL or a cable modem if I cancelled my regular phone service.
Has anyone gone the cell-phone-only route? Any advice, pitfalls, experiences, etc.?
Somebody didn’t follow his own ’80s advice (“In a big country dreams stay with you / Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside / Stay alive”): Big Country vocalist found dead.
Saints-Rams tonight! Today’s Times-Picayune sees something bigger than just football happening: “It’s not just a game. It’s a collision of ideologies, a clash of beliefs, mentalities and playing styles.”
The Monday Night Football site has lots of info up, along with their standard weekly Q&A with Melissa Stark. For the non-football fans out there, she’s the sideline reporter for MNF. She’s perfectly fine at the job — not great, but perfectly fine — but there’s a sneaking suspicion out there that her main qualification for the job is that she’s really, really cute.
Now, if I’m her employers at ABC, I’d be doing my best to get across the idea that she’s really very qualified, has a great football mind, etc. So why is the first question she gets in her Q&A “Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?” I doubt Al Michaels would get the same questions, or if he did, I doubt his editors would let him answer it.
Check out today’s metro section for another one of my stories.
Saw Amelie last night — terrific movie, highly recommended. To anyone who enjoyed it, I’d highly recommend Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s earlier film The City of Lost Children, which is infinitely more dark and twisted but has his same marvelous visual style.
How super-secret are America’s vaunted Special Forces troops if a New York Times reporter can determine where they’ve been by “a tell-tail trail of piles of plastic Poland Spring mineral water bottles in the mountains”?
Someone found this site earlier today by searching for “belgians famous uninteresting.” Not my intention, but I’ll take the hits however I can get them.
This site attempts to catalog the “242 Famous Belgians.” Although I doubt that some of them pass famous-person muster. On the list: “Samson, famous Belgian TV-dog,” “Jo Röpcke, respected film critic - nobody in Belgium has seen more films than him,” and “John Massis, the man with the strongest teeth in the world.”
Actually, the Belgians must extremely strong teeth, because another of the 242 is Walter Arfeuille, allegedly holder of a Guinness record for having “lifted 281.5kg a distance of 17cm off the ground with his teeth in 1990.”
Just had a business lunch at Palomino in the Crescent. (Alaskan sea scallops — mmmmmmm.) When they bring the check at Palomino, evidently, they give you a little card with a saying on it — a fortune cookie without the cookie. Mine: “A status symbol is anything you can’t afford, but did.” Sheesh. I think I’d rather get something boring like “Today is your lucky day,” with “Learn Chinese!” on the flip side.
Warning: sports entry ahead. Non-sports fans: nothing to see here, keep moving on.
Monday night will likely be the highlight of the sports year for me: my beloved New Orleans Saints take on their hated (recent) rival, the St. Louis Rams. Some background: Last year, the Rams were the defending Super Bowl champion and looked unstoppable. The Saints were coming off a 3-13 season and weren’t expected to go anywhere. The week before the two teams played for the first time, the Saints’ starting quarterback, Jeff Blake, was injured and lost for the season. His backup, Aaron Brooks, had never started a game in the NFL before.
Anyway, the Saints went into St. Louis and whooped ‘em, 31-24. They ended up beating the Rams for the division title, then beat the Rams again in the first round of the playoffs in an amazing game, 31-28. (The Saints almost blew a 31-7 lead with 11 minutes left to play; it was the first win in Saints playoff history and the last time I cried with joy. There, I admitted it.)
This year, the Rams were again supposed to be much better than the Saints — and, in fact, they are: they’re the best football team in the world. But in October, when the Rams were 6-0 and on top of the world, the Saints whooped ‘em again, 34-31, coming back from being down 24-6 in the second half and winning on a field goal with one second left.
The Saints host the Rams for the last time this year on Monday Night Football. The Saints are switching divisions next year, so it’ll be the last critical game of this rivalry for a while. As you can tell by scores like 31-24, 31-28, and 34-31, it’s always a great game when these guys play. The Rams are a very precise, amazing passing team; their specialty is the 80-yard touchdown pass. The Saints are a sloppy, smashmouth football team that’s aggressive, quick, and brutal. Plus, they hate each other. The war of words has already begun:
Saints WR Joe Horn: “The Rams know what time it is. We have their number.”
Rams DL Tyoka Jackson: “I know exactly what time it is. And we’re going to see if we have a nice clock to clean when we get down there.”
Rams DE Chidi Ahanotu: “It’s time to shut these guys up. It’s like this is the only game they live for, for some reason. And all the rest of the games they lay eggs.”
Horn: “We’ve won three out of the last four so Anakakoonachoo or whatever his name is, I don’t know why he would say something like that. Who’s Ananookagoo?”
If anybody wants to come over and cheer my boys on to victory Monday night, lemme know.
I’m volunteering for the Dallas school district’s ninth-grade mentoring program, which is run by Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Last week, I had my interview to determine if I was fit to be a mentor. Lots of detailed, embarassing questions: Do you possess any child pornography? Have you, as an adult, ever physically beaten a child? How did your last significant relationship end? Have you ever worshipped Satan? What are your views on the use of illegal drugs? Have you ever been drunk?
The guy two desks away from me at work is volunteering, too, so when I heard he was going to have his interview yesterday, I warned him to get ready for these sorts of questions. After his interview, though, he tells me he didn’t get any of those questions. Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that, to my interviewer, I just looked like a kiddie-porn-loving, Satan-worshipping, child-abusing drunken druggie. I’m not taking it as a compliment.
Winona Ryder arrested for shoplifting. A thousand male hearts, stunted emotionally the moment they saw Heathers, are now breaking. (Luckily, I’m not one of them — never got the appeal. Bonus fact: her real name is Winona Horowitz.)
Talk about your busy news day! The bin Laden tape. The end of the ABM treaty. Somebody shoots up India’s parliament. Israel formally cuts off Arafat. (And let’s not even talk about the really big story, CSI’s rising ratings.) That’d be a busy news week most times, not just a busy news day.
Reminds me of Dec. 19, 1998, the day when Clinton was impeached, the ascendant Speaker of the House resigned, and the U.S. bombed Iraq. (Speaking of resignation, this site has the resignation letters of a bunch of 20th century politicos. Oh, and Ginger Spice.)
Seen somewhere lately (sorry, whoever linked it originally): Important French phrases for the traveller. Highlights: “Tu as grossi” (“You’ve put on weight”); “Je vous aurais bien aide, mais je ne vous aime pas” (“I’d help you, but I don’t like you”); “Vos enfants sont très beaux. Ils sont adoptes?” (“Your children are very attractive. Are they adopted?”); “Je pense que ce vin a déjà ete bu” (“I think this wine has been drunk before”); “Je préfére l’Espagne” (“I like Spain better”).
As if troops if Afghanistan don’t have enough to worry about, now they have to be on the lookout for kamikaze camels.
BBC: “Throughout their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s the Soviets had to contend with the threat of camels wired to explode being sent towards their positions. The Afghan mujahideen fighters would strap dynamite to a camel and send it towards a Russian base. Then, as the animal wandered near troops or equipment, they would set it off with a remote detonator, to deadly effect.”
There’s been a piece of paper on my to-blog pile at home for a while, and I’d like to throw it away, so here goes. These were some of the menu items at the restaurant I ate dinner at on my last night in Tokyo last month: Fried cartilage. Hormone stew. Liver sashimi (that is, sliced raw liver). And my favorite, whale bacon.
At about 8:20 tonight, I got to see the Olympic torch pass outside work. (Why I was at work is beyond me.) Anyway, as the torchbearer ran by, one of my coworkers yelled out, “Wait! That guy with the torch! Is that Nate Newton?”
Odd dream while in Rochester: I’m in someone’s house, which is hosting a big party — maybe it’s a frat house or something similar. I walk into a back room, and 80s-icons Bauhaus are playing to an audience of two or three people. For some reason, Robert Downey, Jr. is their lead singer.
This is an odd dream for several reasons, not least because I could not name a single Bauhaus song, have never been much of a fan, and have no idea why Robert Downey, Jr. would be associated with them, even subliminally.
Remember the crabwalk.com quiz a few days back? “What two things do these people have in common? Thomas Edison! Grover Cleveland! John Fenwick! Joyce Kilmer! Clara Barton! Vince Lombardi! Walt Whitman.”
Well, props to Kim for knowing one of them: they’re all New Jerseyans famous enough to have service areas on the Jersey Turnpike named for them. (They’re name-checked in Slate this week.) And their names are yelled out, in that order, in the closing seconds of “Big Road” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, on their excellent 1993 release Extra Width.
Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer is the twin sister of Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips. And Esther’s daughter is named Margo Howard.
Of course, they’re all best known by other names. Esther is best known as Ann Landers. And Pauline’s best known as Dear Abby. That they’re sisters in real life is fairly common knowledge. But the fact that Margo Howard is the writer of Dear Prudence, Slate’s advice column, would seem to indicate that nepotism goes a bit too far in the advice industry. (Particularly since Prudence, well, isn’t all that good.)
We’re all going to the dogs. (Gotta love any story that includes the phrases “fundamental paradigm shift,” “reflection of social commentary,” and “dog fancier.”)
From The Onion: Yalie Strikes Harvard Lad Sharply About The Face And Neck / NEW HAVEN, CT— A heated dispute over the relative merits of Harvard and Yale erupted into fisticuffs Monday, when Yalie William Vanderploeg, 20, struck Randolph Stephenson, a strapping Harvard lad of 19, about the face and neck in a most brutish manner. “The vainglorious braggart dared suggest that his Crimson squad could out-row us nine times of ten,” said Vanderploeg, captain of the Yale crew team. “I knew they raised them as barbarians over Harvard way, but the very gall.” Stephenson, his hair mussed from the attack, vowed that the dispute is far from settled.
Kelly (whose blog is developing nicely, by the way) just emailed me with an “Are you OK?” message. A multi-day non-blogathon is unlike me — I suppose I was so entranced by the wonders of Rochester, New York, to blog. (Or, more accurately, my friend Kim’s 9” monitor and watch-the-gears-turn slow computer made blogging a chore, not the burst of joy it’s supposed to be.)
Anyway, I’m back in town. Rochester was nicer than I’d expected (e.g., it had running water) and Kim’s cat Scoop (great journalism cat name, no?) wasn’t as evil as I’d expected (or she’d led me to suspect). Got to see the Buffalo Bills (1-10) beat the Carolina Panthers (1-11) in the Battle of The Two Worst Teams in Professional Football. I’d expected/hoped for a scoreless tie, but instead it was actually an entertaining 25-24 game. (Q: How can you tell when a sports team is really crappy? A: Look at their web site. If the biggest headline is given over to the company Christmas party, and if prominent placement is given to the fact that “the Panthers have allowed the fewest first downs by penalty in the NFL,” chances are your team sucks.)
Anyway, my only complaint is that there wasn’t a blizzard, which I thought was mandatory for games in Buffalo in December.
Did some other fun things in Rochester, including seeing The Man Who Wasn’t There, but the clear highlight was going to Nick Tahou Hots, a local dive restaurant of some (ill) repute, primarily because of its invention, the Garbage Plate. Such an item reads like an eight-year-old boy’s culinary wet dream: first, take a heap of french fries. Then, top it with a bunch of macaroni salad. Then, add a cheeseburger and a sliced hot dog. Then, cover it all with mustard and onions. Finally, coat it all with meat sauce. (It is also possible to sub out the macaroni for beans. Frightening.)
It was as delicious and/or repulsive as that description suggests. Bonus points were awarded for the Ms. Pac-Man game in the back of the restaurant and the last-cleaned-in-the-Ford-administration ambiance. (There’s also a candy machine in the back, near where we were seated. To give you an idea of its age, the Big Red pack of gum in the display was faded to a pale yellow. Big Pale Yellow doesn’t sound as appetizing, does it?)
Anyway, it was terrific fun (thanks Kim!), I’m back at work, and there’s tons to do, so my blogging may be sporadic the next few days.
Is there anything worse than showing up late to your own birthday party? I had to deal with some late-breaking news at work — which is in today’s paper — so I couldn’t make it to my friend Abby’s birthday dinner and I was late for my own last night. (Careful readers of this site may remember that my birthday was actually Nov. 6. They are advised to stop reading so carefully. Delays and machinations have turned a planned birthday bash a month ago into a smaller joint coworker dinner for three reporters.) Anyway, we went to the Samba Room, which was nice, then to Casbah, which has been closed down, which wasn’t nice, then to the Old Monk.
Got in around 2:30, napped for an hour and a half, and now I’m back up to pack and leave for Rochester. See you on the flip side.
It’s the same old story we’ve all heard a million times: Japanese woman sees Fargo, thinks it’s real, flies to North Dakota, goes on hunt for the movie’s buried treasure, dies mysterious death. (via brandhast)
Another reason to love Henry Kissinger (besides his dashing good lucks, his reserve around women, and his immense charm): “President Gerald R. Ford and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger gave Indonesian President Suharto the go-ahead for Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor that left at least 200,000 dead, newly declassified documents show.”
For about a year in college, I appended the following signature to all my emails. In today’s crabwalk.com quiz, see if you can identify the two things these people have in common:
Thomas Edison! Grover Cleveland! John Fenwick! Joyce Kilmer! Clara Barton! Vince Lombardi! Walt Whitman.
(Of course, Google makes finding one of these answers a lot easier than it used to be.)
On the road again tomorrow, to Rochester to visit my friend Kim. She tells me that the buildings in the postcard above still stand, so I might try to do a modern day recreation. (Or not.) I’m tremendously excited, in part because it’s supposed to get down to 26 degrees there this weekend — woo hoo! And we even get to go watch the Buffalo Bills play the Carolina Panthers on the frozen Astroturf tundra of Ralph Wilson Stadium, one of the few NFL parks where frostbite is a more serious public health concern than drunkenness. (And considering the Bills and Panthers are probably the worst two teams in the league — combined record 2-21 — I’m sure watching someone’s nose slowly blacken and fall off will be the most entertaining thing about the day.)
In other news, Doug Bedell, author of the blog story linked below, was happy to be informed about dfwblogs, so perhaps there might be much exposure coming sometime in the future via a DMN story. (As long as he doesn’t mention me!)
When I get my college’s alumni magazine each month, the first thing I turn to is the class notes in the back. First I read the news from my classmates from ‘97, then check out the ’96s and ’98s to see who I might recognize. But then I flip back to the front and read the news from the oldest classes, from the early days of the century. This is this month’s entry from the “corresponding secretary” of the class of 1926 (which would put him at about age 97):
“Oranges and lemons / Say the bells of St. Clements. / You owe me five farthings, / Say the bells of St. Martins. When will you pay me? / Say the bells of old Bailey. / Which I get rich, / Say the bells of Shoreditch.”
Thus the morning bells of jolly old London ring out each day to ye somnolent Brits that’s time to arise, dress, breakfast, seize derby hats, and hie away for another workaday. But hey! From all ye Christendom world ring gladdest tydings to all of Yuletide joys and festivities.
Belatedly we announce your Scribe’s successful venture into ye decorative gourd derby and his deepest pleasure with’s first returns: a fat man of solid green; an extra large donut sans central hole; a slim Jim, half-yellow and half-green; and to crown all, two beauteous sisters, Chastity and Serenity, each sporting gracious yellow halves above solid green bottoms below, with a fine green ring surrounding Serenity’s graceful neck.
And so your Scribe joins in wishing good cheer and long life to all ye stout members of our good Club 90, all of whom we cherish and covet like a miser-turned-gambler his dwindling cache of gold as it slowly passes away.
I have no idea how to react to that — the third graf reads like a senior citizen’s LSD trip. But that imagery! Gorgeous stuff.
I’m sure that all of you, as regular readers of the Dallas Morning News, have already seen the big story on blogs and blogging software in today’s paper. (Doug Bedell, the writer, has a stillborn blog of his own.)
Great newspaper names, past and present, via email: the Anniston (Ala.) Star and Hot Blast (now just the Star); the Playground Daily News (Fort Walton Beach, Fla.); the Herald-Telephone (Bloomington, Ind.); the South Fork (Colo.) Tines (not a typo); the Waterford (Mich.) Spinal Column; the Clinton (Wis.) Topper; the Mount Vernon (Texas) Herald-Optic; The East Greenwich (R.I.) Pendulum; the (Lexington, Ky.) Cat’s Pause; the (Larned, Kan.) Tiller and Toiler; the Lawrence (Neb.) Locomotive; the Santa Fe (N.M.) Gringo and Greaser; the Murdo (S.D.) Coyote; the Alpine (Texas) Avalanche; the Basin (Wyo.) Republican-Rustler.
Who the hell gets killed by pirates any more? Were they flying the Jolly Roger?
What is this world coming to, if Ornette Coleman, one of the most brilliant saxophonists in the history of jazz, can’t get a record contract?
Says Alice: “I’d totally forgotten about the time my parents accidentally sent me to a summer camp. For mentally retarded children. I wish there was more to that story, but I was so young, about all I remember is the sound of my mom’s voice: ‘So that’s why it was so cheap.’ I think what happened was, one of the counselors approached her and started talking about how ‘bright’ and ‘quick’ I was, which naturally aroused my mom’s suspicions, which led to a Three’s Company-esque resolution of tenuous comedic merit. How long was I there before anybody realized the mistake? I’m afraid to ask.”
Speaking of Paul Harvey, that link below has a great excerpt from a Garrison Keillor story some years back. Seems Keillor met Harvey at some formal dinner somewhere:
“When the salad plates were whisked away and the entree brought in, he leaned over toward me and said, ‘Page … 2,’ just like he does on the radio. In fact, Mr. Harvey was exactly as he is on the radio. He read me a number of stories from a script in his pocket, most of them about ordinary Americans and their struggle to deregulate industry and give large corporations the freedom to do good in the world, and during all of this, he sold me a tin of liver pills and a utensil that dices, slices, chops, minces and prunes.”
When I was in high school and college, I had a reflexive distrust of people who planned to become a doctor. It seemed to me to be the first refuge of anyone who wanted to make lots of money and be guaranteed a prominent place in society. A lot of them didn’t really want to be doctors; their parents had just pressured them into it as a prestigious, reliable career. Part of me still feels that way. (Exceptions are made for people who want to go rid Africa of ebola or do some such good work. So stop typing that email right now, Fiona!)
Anyway, every once in a while something comes along to counterbalance that bias. I just got off the phone with the father of a 37-year-old woman with a hole in her heart, and the surgeon who just completed a triple-organ-transplant to give her a new heart and new lungs. After years of fainting, oxygen tanks, and life forever on the edge of physical collapse, she’s going to be able to live a normal life. The doc said how odd it is to do one of these heart-lung transplants — once they take out the old organs, there’s just an empty cavity where they used to be. I can’t imagine what that must look like. <Paul Harvey voice> For the rest of the story, </Paul Harvey voice> look in tomorrow’s paper, probably deep inside the metro section.
A contrarian view, from the Washington Post: Young and old — we all love Harry Potter. All that magic! All that imagination! Whee!
Enough. Here is a warning flare that is long overdue: America, your kids have become major dweebs. (Thanks, Kelly.)
For new readers: Everybody is welcome to participate in our upcoming CD Mix of the Month trade. The deal: you burn a CD mix of a bunch of music you like. I do the same. We swap CDs; joy ensues. If people are interested, we can also start swapping amongst ourselves (e.g., Person A and Person B don’t just trade mixes with me — they also trade with each other.) Let me know if you’re interested, via the contact page or in the comments below. And to be clear, you don’t have to be in Texas to play.
For those of you who have already emailed me about participating, email me again to let me know if you’d be interested in doing the broader swap mentioned above, which would mean you burn a few extra copies of the disc and get a few extra mixes in return.
The guy who sits next to me said he suddenly realized, after months, who I looked like. See, his kid watches a lot of Cartoon Network, and he said he finally realized this morning that I look just like Shaggy of Scooby Doo fame.
I’m not buying it for an instant — for one thing, my arms don’t dangle down to my knees, australopithecine-like, and I’m not even a vegetarian — but it’s more flattering than the time a “friend” in college said I looked like Boris Yeltsin.
(And Casey Kasem does provide my voice, but I think that’s just a coincidence. Zoinks!)
The prez is on the TV right now, talking about the Holy Land Foundation. Their assets have been frozen because of their suspected links to Hamas. If any Dallas residents were upset we were generally missing out on all the terrorism fun, the HLF is based in Richardson. Members of the HLF were among those protesting in front of my employer every week for months because of our reporting on their group. (I could see them from the office window when I was interviewing here — made me wonder what I was getting into.)
Great piece by the estimable Ron Rosenbaum on the latest crackpot Hitler theory: he was gay! That rather unconvincing theory (at least unconvincing to me — the incest charges stick a little more in my mind) is being advanced in a new book. (Out just in time for Christmas! My shopping just go much, much easier.)
Aside #1: Have all the good ideas for Hitler book covers been taken? Compare this one from 1998 to this one from 2001.
Aside #2: Rosenbaum’s own book Explaining Hitler — which is a look at how different historians have brought their own biases and perspectives to explaining why Hitler was such a bastard — is quite good.
Aside #3: How does the this new theory correlate with the much more widespread Hitler-had-one-testicle theory? (A guy I know likes to refer to bad or evil things as “one-ball,” in homage to said theory.)
Aside #4: The best headline award goes to whoever decided to put “Queer as Volk?” on top of Slate’s story.
At last, America’s most insignificant war is finally getting the recognition it deserves. The Toledo War pitted Ohio against Michigan for control of the border town that would eventually become Toledo. One mule (or horse, depending on the storyteller) was the lone casualty. The war was finally settled with Ohio being granted Toledo, in exchange for Michigan getting the Upper Peninsula. In retrospect, it’s hard to call that a clear-cut Ohio victory.
In a piece not long ago in Slate, Mickey Kaus mused about about the cinematic possibilities of 9/11. What would be the key storytelling moments that could be turned into a movie (or, for that matter, a novel)? Well, I think we have the clear winner: John Walker, the idealistic 20-year-old from D.C. who decided to go to Afghanistan, join up with the Taliban, and fight against his American countrymen. “Bill Jones, a family friend in San Rafael, California, described Walker as a ‘very sweet, unassuming, very spiritual young man — rather frail, not an All-American football player or anything like that, certainly not a fighter.’” (Attention, Ethan Hawke — your agent is calling.) Be sure to check out the chilling video of Walker on that link.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but there has been real news to report in recent months, no? Which makes one question why, if you watch most local TV news around the country, November sweeps brought you the following hard-hitting reports: “Toxic tampons!” “Baby hoochies: pre-teen girls wearing clothes you’d expect to see on strippers!” “How to wear a thong!” “Expose! Germs in movie theaters!” “High heels may be the height of fashion, but your body may be paying a hefty price!” “Male prostitution!” “Real-life witches!” “The secret side to the circus!” “Is there arsenic in your yard?” “Could your hot tub be making you sick?”
Remember Ben Greenman, the guy from my college newspaper I blogged about who had the girl he had a crush on in high school grow up to make a movie about his crush? Well, his new book is finally out, and I regret to say I missed the epic Ben Greenman Week at McSweeney’s.
Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer on 9/11: “This is all wonderful news. It is time to finish off the US once and for all. I was happy and could not believe what was happening. All the crimes the US has committed in the world. This just shows, what goes around comes around, even to the US. I applaud the act. The US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years. Now it is coming back at the US.”
To think this guy was once considered an American hero nonpareil. Too bad he ended up being such a raging nutcase.
The original TV commercial for The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo. Instant classic. (via boing boing.)
For those of us who wondered about Dean Kamen’s “It” (a.k.a. Ginger), the mystery machine that created two tons of hype earlier this year: “It“‘s what everyone expected, a scooter. A kick-ass scooter, but a scooter nonetheless. “Kamen said the two-wheeled scooterlike vehicle [now called the Segway HT] is ‘like a pair of magic sneakers’ because the passenger moves by thinking forward or backward — as if walking — without falling. ‘It does what a human does — it has gyros and sensors that act like your inner ear; it has a computer that does what your brain does for you. It’s got motors that do what your muscles do for you. It’s got those tires that do what your feet do for you.’”
Congrats to Time, who had the scoop yesterday. “Developed at a cost of more than $100 million, Kamen’s vehicle is a complex bundle of hardware and software that mimics the human body’s ability to maintain its balance. Not only does it have no brakes, it also has no engine, no throttle, no gearshift and no steering wheel. And it can carry the average rider for a full day, nonstop, on only five cents’ worth of electricity.”
Check out the videos on the site; the maneuverability seems extremely impressive. If I had $3,000 lying around collecting dust, I might scoop one up. But um, I don’t.
Back in Dallas, after a great time in Boston. I’ll post more boring stuff about the speakers tomorrow, don’t worry.
In the meantime, my Japan story on the educational reforms is finally running in Monday’s paper (front page, I hope/think, barring big breaking news).
P.S. Before I left Boston, Fiona said indignantly, “So what, I just get a little tiny mention in your blog? Is that all I’m worth, one little mention?” So, to salve your wounded spirit: Fiona Fiona Fiona Fiona. Fiona? Fiona! Fiona. (Important note: Fiona has just informed me via telephone that the quotation above is in fact merely a paraphrasing of what she said, and not a literal quotation. [She was very upset by this and said this between sobs and angry wails of “Why me? Why me?”] I hereby retract the literal quotation, although its spirit remains true to the fact.)
Not much time to update, but today was pretty damned amazing. The sessions at today’s conference were with, in turn, Gay Talese, Rick Bragg, Jon Franklin, Tom French, and Ira Glass. As a journalism geek, those names probably mean a lot more to me than to most of you, so I’ll introduce them: (1) the man who basically invented modern magazine journalism, the man who wrote “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” maybe the best piece of narrative journalism ever, and a Joe DiMaggio piece that was not long ago called the greatest piece of sports journalism written in the last century, (2) New York Times correspondent, Pulitzer winner, best selling author (and, as Kim knows, someone I have a few problems with, but a very talented writer nonetheless), (3) two-time Pulitzer winner, the man who perfected the adaptation of the three-act structure of film to narrative writing, (4) a terrific writer of serial narratives from the St. Petersburg Times, a Pulitzer winner, and a great, great, great writer, and (5) the host and majordomo of This American Life, a genius at turning the lives of everyday people into beautiful drama.
That’s quite a lineup. They were collectively amazing — there are things I might nitpick with each, but they were terrific. Ira and Tom were particularly amazing, but they all had their strengths. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, the last day of this conference.
Important side note: Does anyone out there read W, the fashion magazine? I’m not sure how much the W demographic and the crabwalk.com demographic overlap, but I’ve been told that in the current issue (with Rene Zellweger (sp?) on the cover), my college roommate is listed as one of 10 people “to watch” in the future of Hollywood and/or America. I can’t find the magazine here in Boston, but I’d like to see it if someone out there reads it. (This roommate is now an agent in L.A. I lived with him for three years, years marked primarily by the fact that any girl I was interested in would invariably be more interested him than in me. Tom’s handsome, well dressed, charming, and — get this — French. I had no chance. If anybody has the article, I’d love to see it.)
More to come later.
Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Digital Journalism Project at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)
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