As Katie pointed out, the folks behind M&Ms are auditioning new colors — pink, purple, and aqua. This may seem like a simple publicity ploy, an attempt to draw attention to a candy some would say has passed its prime. I say: no. This is a sinister plot, nothing less.

You may remember the last time a new color was added to the M&M menagerie, 1995, when purple, pink, and blue were candidates for entry. The “competition” got all sorts of attention from lemming-like media types. But two salient facts usually go unmentioned:

1. The contest was a fix! Purple and pink are far too close together on the color wheel for voters to successfully differentiate them. The pro-purple/pink axis had its votes split, while blue was allowed to run with the support of a united party. Just as Nader cost Gore the election by splitting the liberal vote, pink cost purple the vote by siphoning off its support, leaving blue to romp to an easy victory. I hate to be cynical, but I wouldn’t be surprised if M&M had already bought huge vats of blue dye when the voting began — the fix was in from the very start.

(One could, I imagine, argue that purple cost pink the election, not the other way around. Highly doubtful to these eyes — I’m not sure America is gay-friendly enough yet to go pink.)

Notice that this time around pink and purple are back in the voting, which will no doubt lead to more Florida-style allegations of vote fraud. But at least blue was a legitimate, strong candidate — aqua is such a spectacularly poor color choice that it’s possible purple could pull it out, despite M&M’s best efforts to keep it down.

2. At NO point during the 1995 election was it made clear that the addition of a new color would come at the expense of one of the old ones. While the charade of a fair election was being forcefed to the American public, M&M executives were secretly plotting the demise of that most noble of M&M colors, tan. Had the question been phrased fairly — “Would you, the American public, prefer that we keep the noble tan in our M&Ms, or would you rather it be summarily replaced with the usurper color of your choice, blue, purple, or pink (even though those last two are awfully similar)?” — the groundswell of tan support would have been earthshattering.

Instead, the public was hoodwinked into thinking they were voting for the addition of a color, not the elimination of an old favorite. It’s as if your mom asked you one day, “Honey, would you like a little brother or sister?” You think about it and say, “Yeah! That’d be great — a new little kid to play with! I wonder which one I’d prefer, a boy or a girl?” Then, a year or so later, along comes your new little baby brother — and next thing you know, Mom’s put you up for adoption, ‘cuz she just don’t need you any more. “Oh, sorry, honey — didn’t I tell you that we were just going to swap you out?”

What isn’t the American public being told this time around? If aqua edges in to the pack, who gets cut out? Who’s next on the chopping block, yellow? It’s sort of tannish, a “boring” color that probably doesn’t have the highest Q rating. Or could it be green? Orange? Brown? I bet blue’s feeling pretty good about itself, but the tide could turn quickly — M&Ms could kill off its young starlet awful quick if it wanted to.

Once Congress is done digging through the corpse of Enron, I demand a full investigation. True, some would call it a fishing expedition, and it could touch on other hot-button issues, like the peanut-butter M&M debacle, the E.T Reese’s Pieces scandal, or perhaps even the Good & Plenty money laundering cases of the early 1980s. But justice must be done. Justice must be done.

31 January 2002 | 7 comments

Best headline ever (in the right frame of this video pop-up): Reno: “I was hot.”

31 January 2002 | 1 comment

Another busy day at work. One quick note: my ISP is down because of weather-related power outages back in Toledo, so if you need to get something urgent to me today, you might try my jbenton at dallasnews dot com address.

31 January 2002 | 1 comment

I haven’t yet posted about the other highlight of my weekend back home in Rayne. On Mazie’s birthday, a bunch of family came over, and conversation turned for some reason to the family vacations we took in the late 1970s. At the time, my aunts and uncles were starting to pop out babies (I’m an only child, so my first cousins are the closest sibling equivalents I’ve got), and we took a couple summer trips across the south. (I’ve mentioned these trips before, although I got the chronology wrong in the previous post — three of the four trips I described were actually combined in one 1978 jaunt.)

Anyway, someone mentioned that my uncle Alton had taken an old 8mm film camera along on these trips. These films hadn’t been watched in at least 15 years, probably longer. Upon learning of these films, I immediately dispatched a search team to Alton’s attic; they returned with four canisters of film and a non-functioning, dust-encrusted projector.

Another uncle managed to get the projector working (through the careful use of a rubber band, I kid you not — try that with a Pentium), and soon enough I was watching the 1- and 2-year-old versions of Josh, enjoying life at some of the region’s great tourist traps. Some observations:

- My grandmother, as much as I love her, should have been punished at some point for the things she made me wear. There’s a sailor suit I wish could be forever stricken from my permanent record. Alas, Super 8 does not lie.

- I had forgotten that I had a thing against going down playground slides the standard, butt-down way. For some reason, I convinced myself at an early age that going stomach-down was much more fun. Inevitably, this led to tummy-burn.

- All of us cousins (there were four born at this time, with three more to come along in the next few years) were cursed with parents dedicated to the forcing the knee-high-brown-socks-with-shorts look upon us.

- A cabbie named Irving Schaeffer showed us around Washington, D.C. one day. I know this because his name was emblazoned on the side of his cab. I also know that he was very, very nice, because his legend has survived among my aunts and uncles to this day, 24 years later.

- Uncle Alton evidently believed that filming endless miles of interstate highway through rural Alabama was a good way to use his precious Super 8 resources.

- My family had a habit of setting down the camera in front of an important building — say, the Capitol — standing shoulder-to-shoulder in line, then walking slowly toward the camera. In other words, my family invented the opening shot of Reservoir Dogs.

- Speaking of legends that have survived for decades: we tried to go to Graceland in 1978. Family legend has it that we waited in line to enter Elvis’ home, but the sky turned a horrific black and we were chased away in fear of approaching rain. Film evidence, however, clearly refutes that notion: the 1978 Memphis sky is as blue as can be.

- Seeing Roy Acuff’s house and the Country Music Wax Museum were clearly formative events in my family’s life.

- When eating cake, my cousin T-Ron had a habit at age 2 of grabbing some icing, looking at it, and smearing it on his right knee.

I’m hoping to get these reels (and others I haven’t yet seen) transfered to VHS so they can be preserved for posterity (and future T-Ron biographers). If anybody’s got a company to recommend to do the job, let me know.

30 January 2002 | 1 comment

Busy day…little time to post. Today’s highlight: holding the resumes of eight bright young people in my hand, knowing I have full and total control over which one gets hired for a brief stint at the DMN. [insert evil cackle here] Power…

30 January 2002 | 1 comment

Best Unitarian/Universalist joke of the day, courtesy Post Bohemian Artifact: You know how you get a UUist out of your neighborhood? Burn a question mark on their front lawn.

My nominee for best non-haiku blogpoem of the day: Jonah Goldberg’s Dictionary, from the excellent Unremitting Verse. Perfect for certain bloggers in denial about their creations.

29 January 2002 | 1 comment

For those of you who read my Pitcairn Island stories (linked a couple of entries below), you may have noticed my reference to the island’s honey. Since the few bees on the island have been segregated from other populations for so long, they haven’t developed a couple of diseases that, evidently, have afflicted just about every other bee in the world in the last century. Plus, all the fruit that grows on Pitcairn (which all tastes absolutely amazing) has always been pesticide-free, so the bees have only top-notch stuff to pollinate.

The result is that Pitcairn honey is probably the best honey in the world. I brought some back from the island (I had to sneak it through customs at LAX, since it was an unacceptable agricultural product from overseas). A coworker of mine who loves honey — he buys the imported French stuff for beaucoup bucks — said it was far and away better than the honey he pays top dollar for.

I mention all this because you can now buy the honey for a very reasonable price, $5 a jar. If you’re a honey lover, it’ll be worth it, I can assure you.

29 January 2002 | 7 comments

It’s a new look for my employer’s web site. Critiques? I’m mixed: I think the bolder type on the front isn’t bad (if a little too MSNBC, down to the typeface), but the color scheme makes grey a little too dominant, and the yellow story boxes beneath the main header (and all over pages like this) look a little amateurish. Actually, that yellow looks awful in bulk, sort of jaundicey. And there are uneven-white-space-around-text-box issues all over the site.

Okay, maybe my feelings aren’t all that mixed at all, but really, it’s not so bad. (Anyway, TXCN needs a facelift much more than dallasnews.com or wfaa.com did.)

29 January 2002 | 3 comments

Want to email a dangerous Islamic militant? Well, according to the New York Times, you can send your missive to kidnapperguy@hotmail.com — that’s the email address used for hostage negotiation by the militants who’ve kidnapped a Wall Street Journal reporter.

It’d be great if someone could hack into that account — aren’t there enough holes in Hotmail security for someone to get in? Or maybe someone should just start trying passwords, like “iloveosama” or “unveiledgirls” or “diegreatsatan.” (Or “d1egre@ts@t@n”?)

28 January 2002 | 1 comment

New Yorker readers: I direct your attention to the piece on page 46 of the Jan. 28 issue. It’s a funny bit by my hero Calvin Trillin on the hunt for the best boudin in south Louisiana. (Boudin, if you don’t know, is a delicious Cajun sausage made of rice, pork, liver, and seasoning. Calvin’s been writing about the wonders of Cajun food at least since The Tummy Trilogy in the ’70s.)

The main character in the tale is James Edmunds, one of Calvin’s friends in New Iberia, former head honcho of the once-great Times of Acadiana weekly newspaper, and (oh by the way) a blogger his own bad self.

I was once lucky enough to eat a seven-course meal of nutria rat with Calvin and James, which remains one of the highlights of my life. But that’s a story for another day.

My favorite quote from the story: “When I am daydreaming of boudin, it sometimes occurs to me that of all the indignities the Acadians of Louisiana have had visited upon them — being booted out of Nova Scotia, being ridiculed as rubes and swamp rats by neighboring Anglophones for a couple of centuries, being punished for speaking their own language in the schoolyard — nothing has been as deeply insulting as what restaurants outside South Louisiana present as Cajun food.” Too true.

In related news, Calvin’s got a new novel out.

28 January 2002 | 2 comments

I’m sure all my millions of British readers will be happy to learn I was quoted in The Independent (UK) newspaper last week.

The story’s about one of the few topics I can claim any degree of expertise on, Pitcairn Island. Depending on your definition, it’s the most remote inhabited place on earth, a mile-wide speck of volcanic rock in the South Pacific, many miles from anywhere else. Its inhabitants are not natives in the traditional sense; they’re the descendents of Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers on the HMS Bounty, who crash landed onto Pitcairn in 1790 after famously shipping off the tyrannical Captain Bligh. The mutiny on the Bounty has, of course, become a famous tale in Western culture; Fletcher’s been portrayed in movie versions of the story by Mel Gibson, Marlon Brando, Clark Gable, and Errol Flynn.

About 40 Pitcairners live alone on the rock their forefathers settled. There’s no airstrip, no harbor, no regular transportation to the rest of the world. They rely on the generosity of passing freighters and yachtsmen to get supplies or people in and out. It’s a thoroughly bizarre place, impossible to get to and impossible to understand once you do.

I managed to go there in 1999, for a week. I wrote a bunch of stories about it (the main story: part one and part two). Since only a handful of writers have been allowed onto the island in the last few decades, I occasionally get calls from other reporters working on Pitcairn stories.

Lately, the stories haven’t been very positive. As Kathy Marks writes in The Independent, there’s a huge, awful, nasty, disgusting child abuse scandal there. The island might be empty in another year or two, since a significant portion of the island’s male population stands accused of sex crimes. It’s a sad, sad story.

28 January 2002 | 7 comments

I finally updated the Mazie Project page. Total cards received: 47. (That’s as of Saturday, which was her birthday; I’m sure more will trickle in over the next week or so. I would get an update on today’s arriving cards, but Mazie’s getting a colonoscopy today — fun! — so I won’t be hearing from her for at least a few more hours.)

28 January 2002 | 1 comment

Conclusive proof that being an Ivy Leaguer does not require intelligence: Yale senior arrested for asking police to test purity of his heroin.

Tippy was arrested at 5 a.m. on Jan. 17 after he allegedly brought a small bag containing white powder to the Yale Police substation at Phelps Gate. “He said that he had just purchased what he thought were drugs and wanted to test their purity,” Yale Police Lt. Michael Patten said. Police administered a field test to the substance and discovered that it tested positive for narcotics. Tippy was charged with drug possession and arrested at the scene.

28 January 2002 | 1 comment

I’m back in Dallas — more to come on the now 70-year-old Mazie, newly discovered childhood home movies, and other weekend topics. For now, a simple link to the Red Stick Ramblers, the band I was supposed to see this weekend.

See, the Ramblers — a self-described “authentic Cajun gypsy swing” band — feature an old high school friend of mine on mandolin. (There was a period of time in our youth when there seemed to be a doppelganger thing going on between us — both named Josh, both going to the same small school, both blond and with mothers named Debbie, even both having at the time one tooth oddly out of sort with the others. At at least one point, we also had a crush on the same girl, although that’s a battle he won. Now all we share is ill-advised facial hair.)

My friend Lauren and I were supposed to go to see them play Friday night, but alas there was a miscommunication and I was under the impression the show was Saturday. (We could play a little edition of the blame game, but who would gain from that? Harrumph.) So all I could do was read up on them a bit more, listen to one of their MP3s, and make plans to buy their new CD.

One final note: the Ramblers will always have an edge as long as Josh’s mom continues to let them use her amazing photos as their album art. The new CD’s cover uses one of my absolute favorite photos of hers. (Which I’d love to get on my walls if it didn’t cost, um, $2,000.)

27 January 2002 | 4 comments

Just talked to Mazie, who got card No. 30 today. I’m leaving in a couple of hours to drive down to see her, but she doesn’t know it — I felt so bad saying things like, “Oh, sorry I can’t make it down for the weekend, I’m so busy, blah blah blah.”

24 January 2002 | No comments

Former NBA player A.C. Green is getting married. Normally not big news, but A.C. gained a certain amount of fame in his playing days for being the NBA’s most vocal virgin, saying he would wait until marriage to do the deed.

So to A.C., noble warrior of many great ’80s Lakers teams, I say: enjoy!

24 January 2002 | No comments

Dave Barry in North Dakota update: Barry had a sewage lift station named after him and a potluck dinner thrown in his honor Wednesday…”I’m honored,” he said at the lift station dedication. “It’s not every day that your work is compared to human waste.”

To those huddled around him in the bitter cold after the dedication ceremony, asking questions, Barry said: “Do you people have nothing to do?” And as for the magnitude of the honor: “I’ll remember this for as long as … I’m in North Dakota.”

24 January 2002 | 2 comments

In this week’s edition of Dodged Bullet Theater, Business Week in December, 2000:

Facing shaky markets, antsy consumers, and political turmoil, Bush is shopping for a powerhouse Treasury Secretary who projects wisdom and calm—and understands global markets. In short, confesses one Bushie, ”we need someone like Bob Rubin,” the ultrasmooth Wall Street veteran who was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary before Lawrence H. Summers. But whom to pick? Transition scouts are said to be eyeing heavyweights such as retired Chase Manhattan Chairman Walter V. Shipley and businessmen like Enron CEO Kenneth Lay.

23 January 2002 | No comments

Oddest headline vocab of the day: Grandma not allowed to see child of harlot, last top cop.

23 January 2002 | 1 comment

So good to see that my all-time favorite political candidate, Ed Emery, is running for Congress again. This would be the same Ed Emery whose listed profession is “unemployed sociologist” — aren’t we all? — and who was arrested on election day in 1998 for stalking and resisting arrest after continually slipping threatening messages into his neighbor’s newspapers. (He was the endorsed Republican in the race, which shows how much of a non-factor the G.O.P. is in Toledo politics.) Ed was again convicted last August of puncturing a tire on the neighbor’s car and, according to the complaint against him, “scattering dog feces in her yard.”

He was last spotted “advising” the Toledo mayoral campaign of famed local looney Opal Covey, best known for her animal cruelty convictions (stemming from the 400-plus animals she kept in her disgusting home) and her listed profession: “former thrift shop owner and self-proclaimed minister.”

Now, journalists covering an election have an enormous responsibility to be fair and balanced in the way they do their work. So when, for example, Opal was running for mayor, reporters covering something one of the legitimate candidates in the race did would always have to include her in their stories. You know, things like: “Candidate Jack Ford wants to increase police salaries 15 percent over the next three years. Candidate Opal Covey, in contrast, wants police officers to all learn how to play flute, sousaphone, or triangle and form a department marching band, available to frighten children at birthday parties.”

Okay, I made that one up, but she did say her method for revitalizing Toledo’s dismal downtown was building a huge amusement park in the middle of all the pretty tall buildings. And she did say Toledo doesn’t need any public transit, because “I like riding in my own vehicle.”

Luckily, I’m no longer a journalist covering Toledo politics, so I can come out and say it: Crazy!

23 January 2002 | No comments

Met this morning with my Little Brother (not my little brother, but my Little Brother). I shouldn’t use his real name, so we’ll call him, um, Bocephus. He’s a good kid, albeit a highly unorganized one who failed half his classes last semester. We’re still feeling each other out, but he’s starting to trust me a bit. If I can just get him to stop falling asleep in class and start paying attention when he needs to, he’ll turn out okay.

Also just got handed my Olympic credential for next month. I suppose it’s finally hitting me that in two weeks I’ll be in Salt Lake City; alas, it’s borderline astounding how much work I have to do between now and then.

Having lunch with a colleague today has gotten me thinking about buying a house. I don’t know why.

23 January 2002 | 4 comments

Vacant corporate aphorisms of the day: There’s no traffic jam when you’re going the extra mile. We need a check-up from the neck up.

23 January 2002 | No comments

David Gardner has quite a scoop: his new book profiles Hitler’s descendents, the branch of the family tree descended from William Patrick Hitler, Adolf’s nephew, who moved to the United States and settled in Long Island under a different name. Other people have gotten close to their story — most particularly Timothy Ryback, who had a great, great piece in The New Yorker in summer 2000 about his hunt for the Hitlers — but Gardner appears to have had in depth interviews with at least a couple of them.

22 January 2002 | 1 comment

I was chagrined today to learn that one of my very first web sites, from the summer of 1995, still looks exactly as it did back then. It wasn’t a particularly attractive site at the time, so you can imagine how old-skool it looks now. Please forgive me for my design sins. (One thing that has changed is the backend; at the time, most of the meat of the site was still on gopher.)

22 January 2002 | No comments

The Mazie card count is up to 28, with only four days left to go. It makes her so happy to get these cards; she calls me like clockwork every day around 3:00, right after the mailman passes, to give me the update. (She was particularly excited about one from Japan today.)

One odd thing: the Mazie Project page doesn’t make any reference to my gender, and I suppose loving your grandmother is construed by some to be a female characteristic. As a result, she’s now gotten three cards saying something to the effect of “I saw your granddaughter’s web page…”

I’m surprising her by taking a day off this weekend and driving down to see her for her birthday on Saturday. The only potential problem: I normally leave Dallas after work when I drive home, which means I get to Rayne around one in the morning. That’s fine when she’s expecting me, but I hope I don’t give her a heart attack by walking in at that hour.

22 January 2002 | 1 comment

I just can’t get enough of The Strokes today. I work in constant fear of suddenly seeing a dozen stares in my direction and realizing I’ve been playing air rhythm guitar and yelling out “Why won’t you wear my new trenchcoat?”

22 January 2002 | 2 comments

A man who has never, ever had sex, I can assure you. (via Gary)

22 January 2002 | 2 comments

For Katie: For the Somalis, a Manhunt Movie to Muse Over.

22 January 2002 | 1 comment

Say you’re the president’s press secretary, and you’re getting too many tough questions on Enron — what do you do? Easy: use the Goyal Foil.

22 January 2002 | No comments

SXSW attendees: I think I’m planning on booking a room at the Wellesley Inn in Austin sometime in the next few days. (More info here.) The price quoted is $83/night, which seems to be about as cheap as it comes in the vaguely-near-the-convention-center world, and the price is the same whether it’s a single, double, triple, or quad. So I’m looking for 1-3 roomies. Any takers?

21 January 2002 | 3 comments

Feeling existential and angsty today, for no apparent reason.

Of course, if should be a glorious day, since it’s a day off. Much better than my last place of employment, where our MLK holiday was exactly one half-hour long. Seriously: they told us all to take a 90-minute lunch instead of an hour.

After all, isn’t Dr. King’s greatest legacy a less-rushed return trip from your restaurant of choice?

21 January 2002 | 6 comments

Someone’s assembled a compilation of the most embarrassing corrections run by the New York Times over the last 20 years. Some excerpts:

A review about “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,” by Kiran Desai, misspelled the name of the novel’s hero. It is Sampath, not Sanpath. The same review incorrectly identified the character who falls into a vat of broth; it is a spy from an atheist organization, not a monkey or Sampath in the form of a guava.

In yesterday’s issue, The New York Times did not report on riots in Milan and the subsequent murder of the lay religious reformer Erlembald. These events took place in 1075, the year given in the dateline under the nameplate on Page 1. The Times regrets both incidents.

But personally, I’ll wait for the Guardian’s equivalent book, due out in March. They seem to have more fun with the form:

We spelt Morecambe, the town in Lancashire, wrong on Page 2, G2, yesterday. We often do.

A caption in Guardian Weekend, page 102, 13 November, read, “Binch of crappy travel mags.” That should, of course, have been “bunch.” But more to the point it should not have been there at all. It was a dummy [placeholder] which we failed to replace with the real caption. It was not meant to be a comment on perfectly good travel brochures. Apologies.

21 January 2002 | 1 comment

It’s official (sorta): Miller and Dunning in a runoff, Dallas school bond issue passes easily.

19 January 2002 | No comments

Never let it be said that you want to volunteer and be a good person, but you can’t figure out how or where to help: Network for Good.

Maybe the DFWbloggers should take on some kind of community service project one weekend.

19 January 2002 | 1 comment

And to think, all this time I thought it was an angry rodent.

19 January 2002 | No comments

The polls close in 15 minutes: check out dallasnews.com for all the latest election news, courtesy yours truly.

19 January 2002 | No comments

Media junkies, prepare for an onslaught of “I told you sos”: Talk Magazine folds. Oh no! Where will I get my updates on Tina Brown’s day-to-day life, not to mention the Hilton sisters or Lara Flynn Boyle? Thank heavens Vanity Fair is still propping up the corpse of Dominick Dunne long enough for him to bang out another edition of his “Diary” from the Great Party Beyond.

18 January 2002 | No comments

Also, a brief Mazie Project update.

18 January 2002 | 2 comments

Argh. Sickness has descended upon me — and not the full-blown sickness that would get me out of work: the sinus-dripping, woozy-headed, headachy, general crappiness kind of sick. (I also sound like I’m doing a Tom Waits impression anytime I open my mouth.) I went to bed last night at 8 p.m. and got up at 9:30 this morning. A variety of other things, including word of a couple friends’ suddenly failed relationships, have put me in a fairly sour mood.

Anyway, tomorrow’s election day here in Dallas, and if you stay tuned to dallasnews.com, I’ll be writing the main stories on the mayor’s race and the bond election all night. Assuming I haven’t coughed both lungs up on my keyboard by then.

Four bonus MP3s from up-and-coming NYC band the French Kicks (who sound at times like carbon copies of Jonathan Fire*Eater, a lamented NYC band that self-destructed after one CD not long ago — lots of VU/Stones influence): Young Lawyer (great track, that), The 88, White, So Many Cakes.

Finally, if you like that newfangled rock music and plan to attend the Dismemberment Plan/Death Cab For Cutie global happening at the Ridglea in Fort Worth March 5, tickets are on sale online now at $11.50 a pop. Worth every penny, I assure you. I know several blog-types are going; it might even qualify as a microevent.

18 January 2002 | No comments

What does it say about Dell Computer that #3 on their Amazon Purchase Circles best seller list is a book called Cheap Psychological Tricks: What to Do When Hard Work, Honesty, and Perseverance Fail?

17 January 2002 | 1 comment

After seven years in the Rayne, La., public schools — not the most nurturing environment — I got lucky and got a full scholarship to this great private school (whose site has been down for most of the last few months). It’s a great school out in the middle of nowhere on the grounds of an abandoned sugar cane plantation, and credit for whatever I’ve been able to do since 1987 largely goes to it.

But there was one, shall we say, issue: most of the kids who went to ESA were quite rich, or at least pleasantly upper middle class. I was poor. This created a variety of complications in my life over the years and helped create the slightly silly class-warrior mentality I had for a long time (and still have every once in a while). But one of the biggest benefits is that I got to tag along on the rich-kid senior trip to the U.K. and France. There were only 43 of us in the senior class, so the trip wasn’t too crowded.

It was a wonderful trip, and one of the highlights was going to Easter services at Canterbury Cathedral. Since ESA was an Episcopal school, visiting the center of all things Anglican was a big deal (even though I, like most of south Louisiana, was raised Catholic). The ceremony was beautiful, and afterward we all gathered with the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey for a picture.

By chance, I ended up standing next to the Archbish himself for the photo. (My friend Anthony had taken to saying “Bish better have my money” whenever we saw the local Episcopal bishop back home, in homage to and parody of this 1992 rap quasi-classic. So the Archbishop naturally became the Archbish.) After the group shots were taken, one of my classmates asked for the Archbish’s autograph. He was happy to oblige, but there was one problem: one of his hands was full. He was holding the big six-foot-tall bejeweled scepter that all Archbishi get to hold on to, the symbol of his authority within the church. So, logically, he turned to me and asked:

“Could you hold this for me for a minute?”

Um, sure I could. I took the scepter from his hands and briefly considered using my power to issue edicts, or fiats, or bulls, or whatever Anglican top-down orders were called. After all, who could question me — I had the scepter! But instead, I turned to everyone holding a camera near me and asked: “Could someone please take a picture of me with this thing?”

Earlier this week, George Carey announced his retirement as Archbish. I quickly remembered my brush with religious power. But in a moment, the thought shifted to: None of those losers ever sent me a copy of those photos.

17 January 2002 | 1 comment

As always, a pleasure seeing everyone last night, as always, even if we were derailed at first by a TV crew trying to document the near-death experience of the Inwood Lounge. And any evening that starts with people handing me many CDs and ends with a medio white chocolate/creme caramel gelato can’t be all bad.

If you’re interested, the CD Mix of the Month club is still taking entries for January; get in touch with me asap if you still want in. And for those of you who got a copy of my mix last night, I’d really like to hear your thoughts — what you liked, what you didn’t. (Use the comments link.)

17 January 2002 | 5 comments

Irony of ironies: Remember my rant a couple of days ago about the obnoxious new denizen of the Dallas radio dial, 93.3 The Bone? Well, thanks to Google wisely deciding that this site deserves more regular checks than the station’s breast-and-babe-based site, anyone searching for “93.3 the bone” gets this site, not The Bone’s. Since it’s a new station, lots of people are searching for it: I’ve gotten almost 100 Bone-based search requests in the last couple of days.

As one of their cretinous DJs might say: no bones about it!

16 January 2002 | 3 comments

Quote of the day, from the (non-dallas) morning news: “Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.” — James Baldwin.

16 January 2002 | No comments

Let’s say you’re organizing a Martin Luther King Day celebration. What kind of Freudian slip would it take to accidentally make a plaque that says, “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive”?

16 January 2002 | 2 comments

Dallasites, it’s survey time. A couple of us here at my employer were talking yesterday about how few young people actually read the newspaper. It’s a longstanding demographic trend — actually, it’s less of a problem at the DMN than at most other papers across the country, but it’s still a concern to those of us in the business. I also have to give a little talk to a bunch of reporters and editors here next month on appealing to younger readers (say, adults under 35).

So here’s my question: If you read the paper regularly, what do you like about it? If you don’t, why not? And what could be changed to make you want to read it?

(I know many people have traded in subscriptions for regular trips to the paper’s web site, which is understandable. But I’m primarily looking for things that would make you want to actually plop down your 50 cents or pay for a subscription.)

16 January 2002 | 12 comments

Dave Barry takes North Dakota (and the local press eagerly awaits).

Best thing about the visit: a city-wide potluck dinner. “People living north of DeMers Avenue should bring jello salad; those living south of DeMers should bring hotdish. Those living east of the Red River should bring bars.”

16 January 2002 | 5 comments

Keep an eye on this story. I have a feeling it’s going to blow up big in the next few weeks.

Today’s poll: Which Dairy Queen dish most reminds you of Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban? (An explanation.)

16 January 2002 | No comments

The revenge of Pete Maravich: it looks like my home state may be getting an NBA team again. Louisiana’s had a bit of a self-esteem problem since 1979, when the New Orleans Jazz up and moved to…Utah? The Utah Jazz, the most ludicrous moniker in all of sports?

Unfortunately, if the Hornets do move to Nawlins, we’d get stuck with George Shinn, who shows up in anybody’s top five of worst team owners (worst both in sports terms and as a human being). But at least we’d also get my favorite basketball player of all time, (the currently injured) George Lynch.

16 January 2002 | No comments

An engaging story in Sunday’s Washington Post about 12-year-old prodigy-turned-peace-activist Greg Smith. (He’s about to start work on a PhD.) A much more nuanced look at the trials and tumult of young genius than you often see, with Q&As with the writer and the kid himself.

The author remarks, with a bit of shame, that whenever she talked with Greg, she found herself searching for some flaw in his intellect, “for reasons I can only assume to be some primal survival instinct.” I know what she means; when I read his Q&A, I felt a shameful little burst of glee when I saw he misspelled “oppurtunity.”

15 January 2002 | No comments

Saw The Royal Tenenbaums last night with my friend Juliet — better than I’d expected. I only say better than expected because the reviews had been fairly lukewarm (as opposed to lukewilson). Wes Anderson is quite a stylist, although I can see why critics dinged him for keeping too much emotional distance between the characters and the audience. (That said, that was somewhat the point.) And, alas, the talents (and facial hair) of Bill Murray were essentially wasted, and Gene Hackman’s emotional turnaround stretched the film’s credibility. But still very fun. And the movie may have singlehandedly saved Futura from the ashbin of typographic history.

A question for female movie fans (or gay male movie fans, for that matter): who’s more crushworthy, Luke Wilson or his brother/co-star Owen Wilson? Luke’s certainly better looking objectively, but Owen’s got that sneaky smart thing going on. Plus, he co-writes all of Wes Anderson’s movies (Rushmore, Bottle Rocket), and we all know how sexy writers are. (I ask because Juliet expressed her pro-Owen feelings last night. Repeatedly.)

Put the finishing touches on the new CD Mix of the Month last night. It’s a good one, I think — a little more eclectic than the last one. Get in touch with me ASAP if you want in; the first trades will take place at tomorrow night’s DFWblogs happy hour.

Dallasites: today’s the last day for early voting in Saturday’s mayor’s race. The buzz I hear is that the race is going to be a lot closer than what some people think. (Of course, you’ll have to read the DMN for all the details. But you already knew that.)

15 January 2002 | 7 comments

Pitchfork has a great, literate tour diary from Travis Morrison of the Dismemberment Plan. Phrases to watch for: “looked like Biggie Smalls in drag,” “the pilot wore rainbow suspenders,” “women with sleep apnea.” Plus look for a major shout-out to Rubber Gloves in Denton.

14 January 2002 | No comments

Site news: There’s a brief Mazie Project update today. (She’s up to 13 cards received.) And I had another (vaguely crappy) story in today’s paper. A reminder to Dallasites: don’t forget to vote this Saturday. Two pretty big items on the ballot: the $1.37 billion bond issue for Dallas schools I’ve been writing about ad infinitum lately and the mayor’s race, which has been entertaining so far. Early voting continues through tomorrow.

14 January 2002 | No comments

Hey, Austin readers: anybody feel like letting a fellow blogger sleep on your floor during SXSW? (I figured I might as well ask.) I’d be happy to, um, buy you dinner several times.

Hey, Utah readers (and/or Mormon readers, and/or Olympic junkies): As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be in Salt Lake City for most of next month to write about the Winter Olympics for my employer. My job description is roughly to be the Olympics writer who doesn’t write about sports. I’ll mostly be doing features about SLC and Utah and scene stories from the events. I’ve got to come up with 20-25 stories, so consider this an open call for ideas: anything unusual or interesting about the state, the city, or the church that won’t otherwise be reported 36,312 times by the descending media horde? Muchos gracias.

14 January 2002 | 4 comments

I write to you today from the Land of On-Hold Music, where I’ve been for the better part of an hour while trying to understand why my car insurance premiums have suddenly doubled, despite last getting a speeding ticket in 1999 and last being at fault in an accident in 1992. (Are Texas rates really that much more obscene than the rest of the world’s?) It’s always good to know that age and sex discrimination is still alive at least one place in the world, in the insurance industry, where being a 26-year-old male means I must be constantly teetering on the edge of automotive death and dismemberment.

Note to bands everywhere: You should not include cell-phone ring-tones on your albums. It is not nice to people with CD players in their cars and cell phones in their pockets.

I just dropped Kelly at the airport, bringing a sad close to a very enjoyable weekend. We saw a bunch of bloggers Friday night at the Inwood, which meant Kelly had a good opportunity to share embarassing stories about my life circa 1997-2000. Other weekend highlights (sorry, my connection is too slow to dig up links): a trip to Fort Worth for the Stockyards and the Amon Carter Museum, seeing Sexy Beast at the newly opened Magnolia Theater on Lemmon, heading to the Meridian Room, the wonders of weekend brunch (at the Dream Cafe and Nuevo Leon), and too much gelato.

13 January 2002 | 4 comments

To those of you interested in meeting up tonight: Kelly and I will be at the Inwood Lounge (the one inside the Inwood Theater on Lovers Lane) shortly before 9 p.m. tonight. We’d love to see you there. We may move on to other locales as the night progresses, so if you want to catch up with us later, you might call me on my cell phone. Hope to see you all tonight.

11 January 2002 | 3 comments

Today’s must read: Go here and scroll down to the Harvard Magazine obituary for one Erik Humphrey Gordon, who died “from complications of injuries sustained in a ballooning accident outside Brussels,” leaving behind, among others, “a beloved pet monkey, Cher.”

Then check out this explanation from the (very alive) Mr. Gordon. (This has been making the email rounds, but it’s too good not to share with whole world.)

10 January 2002 | No comments

My friend and fellow blogger Kelly is coming to visit tomorrow and she’s expressed interest in meeting some of the dfwbloggers who she keeps hearing about and/or reading in my comments. So: who’s up for a mini-blogger dinner/movie/something Friday night? Lemme know. (It could be a rare chance to get some pre-Dallas Josh dish.)

In other site news, the CD Mix of the Month project continues. If you want in for this cycle — and you know you do — get your mix done by Jan. 16, the night of the happy hour. Bring your mixes there if you can make it; drop them in the mail otherwise. For full details, check the project page.

In music news, blowhard-for-the-ages Cornel West had released a CD (!) and shown his usual self-deprecation: “In all modesty, this project constitutes a watershed moment in musical history.”

10 January 2002 | 4 comments

You know, I really don’t think I can blame the Arizona Republic for not running this editorial cartoon about Dave Thomas. Very poor taste. (Particularly since the man died of liver cancer, not choking on a spicy chicken sandwich.)

10 January 2002 | No comments

It’s that time of year again: You have until Sunday to make your Bloggies nominations. Be sure to find room for DFWblogs as Best Weblog Directory. My nods for Weblog of the Year go to The Morning News (whose server appears to have melted), BoingBoing, World New York, and Looka.

09 January 2002 | 1 comment

Male anchors react to the “Is Paula Zahn Sexy?” crisis sweeping the nation:

Bob Schieffer of CBS: “I’ve always wanted to be a sex symbol, but I never seem to get very far with it.”

Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “If somebody called me sexy, I would say, ‘You made my day.’ I would also find it odd.”

Dan Rather of CBS: “I’d feel good about it, but I’d also say that stuff’s all right as long as you don’t inhale. Right behind that, I’d say: ‘If I’m really sexy, how come no one has called me to play James Bond? I’m available.’ “

09 January 2002 | 1 comment

Am I the only one who think the “rink rage” hockey-dad killer should be sent to prison just for naming his kid Quinlan Junta? Sounds like a military coup launched by a former resident of the NYT op-ed page.

09 January 2002 | No comments

Oh, and here’s my story in today’s paper. (My TXCN appearance went okay; twice got caught up in blabbering on, but nothing too outrageous, at least by my low standards.)

09 January 2002 | 1 comment

When I moved to Dallas in 2000, I was mightily disappointed with what the radio dial offered up. Crap, crap, crap, leavened only occasionally with lesser crap. The only station that seemed bearable was Merge Radio 93.3, which played the usual radio-ready adult-alternative dreck (yeah, Creed, I’m looking at you), but mixed in some older stuff (early R.E.M., Replacements) often enough to make it work on those occasions that public radio becomes too dull for words.

So yesterday, during a Krys Villasenor snorefest asking listeners to call in with their favorite local community theater troupes (zzzzz), I flipped over to 93.3. And I heard Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” perhaps the most mawkishly mockable power ballad of the 1980s. I thought: “Heh — I guess some DJ has a sense of humor.” But then came an AC/DC song. Then “Purple Haze.” I started to get the idea something serious was going wrong here.

Then came the station promo: I realized I was no longer listening to “Merge Radio.” I was listening to “The New 93.3, The Bone.” The Bone. I doubt they’re trying to target the paleontologist niche market; I’m sure the bone in question is more pants-based. Every third word out of the DJ’s mouth was “bone” — “Coming soon, the Bone-a-thon! We’ll rock you to the bone! No bones about it! Tell your friends, so you don’t bone alone!” The web site prominently features the “Bone Babes.” (Their official tagline, seemingly designed for the slow learners in the audience, is “rock that rocks.”)

I haven’t checked lately, but was there a shortage of Aerosmith on the radio dial? Were there people sitting in traffic, fondling their gun racks, saying, “Man, I sure could use a little Whitesnake right about now, but damn it, there are no radio stations that will cater to my interests! If only there were a 17th classic rock station in the market!” Don’t get me wrong: I hold no grudge against Robert Plant. But come on, help me out here: any of you DFW types know of a good station I’m missing?

09 January 2002 | 12 comments

If any of you faithful readers tune in to TXCN (cable channel 38 in Dallas, I think) tonight, you might catch a glimpse of me talking about education reform. I should be on at either :20 or :50 after the hour, starting at 7:20 or 7:50 and continuing through the night. (I look hungover, as usual, even though I’m not.) You can also check tomorrow’s paper for my story (front page, I think).

08 January 2002 | 1 comment

Update: Some time ago, I wrote about how I was trying to become a Big Brother for a ninth-grader here in Dallas, and how I was worried because my interviewer asked me all sorts of kiddie porn/drug use/Satan worship questions that a friend of mine going through the same process didn’t get. Well, today, weeks later, I finally got the okay: evidently my past is uncheckered enough for them to let me in the door. I meet my “little” (as they’re known in the Big Bro biz) Thursday. Woo hoo: one more young life to scar!

08 January 2002 | 3 comments

Why should you watch CNN in the morning? Well, according to ads the network ran this weekend, it’s because anchordrone Paula Zahn is “provocative, super-smart, oh yeah, and just a little sexy.”

No word yet on whether CBS will start running counter spots touting Morley Safer’s rock-hard abs.

08 January 2002 | 3 comments

For some reason, I popped in Husker Du’s Flip Your Wig last night for the first time in a year or more. Then came the lyrics of the opening track:

Sunday section gave us a mention

Grandma’s freaking out over the attention

…which I figured was strangely appropriate considering the attention the Mazie Project has gotten. (Except substitute Metafilter for the Sunday section. And she’s not freaking out — she’s just confused.)

As I mentioned on the project’s page, Mazie’s gotten three cards so far, and she’s very grateful. She sounded like she had a huge smile on her face when we talked about it earlier today.

Another thought I had when listening to Husker Du: for 1985, they had some prescient predictions about the future. “We’ll invent some new computers / Link up the global village / And get AP, UPI, and Reuters / To tell everybody the news.” Maybe Bob Mould got in on the ground floor of AOL. Maybe Bob Mould was alongside Vint Cerf in the Arpanet days. Maybe Bob Mould invented the Internet, not Al Gore. (And you have to admire anyone who rhymes “computers” with “Reuters.”)

A final thought I had while listening to Husker Du: I’m surprised Bob Mould has any vocal cords left at all. Mine wouldn’t survive a karaoke trip through Side 1. (Then again, neither would the eardrums of whoever was listening to me. Do they have Husker Du karaoke? They should.)

07 January 2002 | 2 comments

If The New York Times had a Middle Earth bureau: HOBBIT-LED STRIKE FORCE NEARS MOUNT DOOM, WIZARD CLAIMS.

07 January 2002 | No comments

Anyone who doubts the ferocity of Mac loyalty should have tried to access a Mac news site during today’s Apple keynote. (Or, for that matter, take a look at Daypop’s most popular links of the day.) The new iMac looks very cool, and I bet it’ll be a big success, but come on — it doesn’t match the apocalyptic hype Apple’s been dishing out the last week.

07 January 2002 | 2 comments

The most obvious long-term impact 9/11 had on my place of work is that employees now have to enter through a different door than we always had. The new entry has security cameras, a keycard ID system, and a narrow, fast-closing door so a rogue Al-Qaeda member would have a tougher time skating in behind someone legitimate.

The only problem is that this new employees-only door was once a loading area on the back dock, so there’s a big industrial-size scale embedded in the floor. It’s covered with a scrap of carpet and usually put in some sort of locked position so it doesn’t register weight. But every once in a while, someone unlocks it, and every employee walking into work gets weighed. It’s like we’re walking into a heavyweight fight or something.

Even worse, the scale is way off, so people appear to be 30 to 50 pounds heavier than they really are. (At least I hope so — if not, that bagel I eat on the drive over has many more calories than I thought it did.) It’s great fun to watch people walk in, catch the soaring needle out of the corner of an eye, then depressingly watch it settle at some Shallow-Hal-in-reverse version of reality. Really gets people in the right frame of mind for a productive workday.

07 January 2002 | 4 comments

Observations from the weekend:

- When you get on your bike for the first time in months and ride it 18 miles, your hindquarters grow numb quickly. Tomorrow, they will no longer be numb, but numbness will sound like a more pleasant alternative than soreness.

- Short story writing contests that (a) limit you to 1,000 words, (b) require your story to start with the phrase “These were perilous times,” and (c) require it to end with “So, you see it all worked out” are (a) dumb, (b) dumb, and (c) dumb.

- My favorite discs of 2001:

The Magnificent Seven: Spoon, Girls Can Tell and Clem Snide, The Ghost of Fashion (TIE for crabwalk.com Album of the Year); The Dismemberment Plan, Change; Death Cab for Cutie, The Photo Album; The Strokes, Is This It; The Flashing Lights, Sweet Release; Pernice Brothers, The World Won’t End.

Honorable Mention, in alphabetical order: Mark Eitzel, The Invisible Man; The Faint, Danse Macabre; Luna, Live; Stephen Malkmus, Stephen Malkmus; Owls, Owls; Radiohead, Amnesiac; Red House Painters, Old Ramon; Sloan, Pretty Together; White Stripes, White Blood Cells.

Disappointments (none of them bad albums, but less than they should have been; alternately, discs I liked at first that quickly grew stale): Travis, The Invisible Band; Weezer, Weezer; Tindersticks, Can Our Love; R.E.M., Reveal; Champale, Simple Days; Ryan Adams, Gold.

06 January 2002 | 3 comments

A personal side note: as of today, my old cell phone number no longer works. If you want or need the new one — like, say, if you’re one of the hundreds of people I deal crack cocaine to (oops!) — email me.

This new cell phone is too small. I fear I might wonder where it is one day and realize I’ve accidentally swallowed it.

04 January 2002 | No comments

Burger brouhaha: An irate customer at a Burger King restaurant in Perkins Township threw a Whopper at a restaurant manager Monday, police said yesterday. The customer’s complaint? The sandwich wasn’t the same as the one depicted on a Burger King billboard, he said. Daniel Faggionato, Jr., 60, of Sandusky, called police to complain that the restaurant at 3911 Milan Rd. had not served him a proper product.

“He said it didn’t look anything like the billboard,” police Sgt. Al Matthews said. “I can find some other things to be upset about.” According to police, Mr. Faggionato complained about the sandwich to Elizabeth Drake, a manager at the restaurant. She made him another, but Mr. Faggionato refused to accept the replacement Whopper, either. “He stated that it still wasn’t like the one in the picture and demanded a refund and threw it at her,” Sergeant Matthews said. The airborne sandwich missed its target, he said.

04 January 2002 | 7 comments

Interesting things you learn from referrer logs: http://i.am.a.notalentassclown.org/ points to Metafilter. At first, I thought this was some sort of anti-Matt Haughey snub, but then I checked the domain registry:

Registrant:

   US

The man has a sense of humor. Reminded me of the Harvard jokesters who registered www.safetyschool.org.

03 January 2002 | 1 comment

Holy hit count! I’ve somehow been Metafiltered (thanks, Matt!), which means that there are, um, a lot more of you here than there normally are. Welcome to the neighborhood. And again, my sincere thanks if you are participating in the Mazie Project 2002.

Unrelated: News of Eric Clapton’s sudden marriage to a 25-year-old woman inspired this link to groupiecentral.com.

03 January 2002 | 3 comments

Make a grandma happy: Mazie Project 2002!

And make a mix while you’re at it.

02 January 2002 | No comments

We’re all gonna die, thanks to “mysterious dark energy.”

“Distant galaxies will eventually be moving apart so quickly that they cannot communicate with one another. In effect, it would be like living in the middle of a black hole that kept getting emptier and colder.” I’ve had relationships like that.

02 January 2002 | No comments

A brilliant new all-haiku blog from my coworker Katie. Among the gems:

New Year’s tradition

God bless A&E

Inconsolable

Dawson’s a repeat

Now that I have blogged her site, perhaps Katie will screw up the courage to comment here. (And her blog-reading friends, whom she has heretofore banned from leaving comments on crabwalk.com, are hereby invited to do the same.)

In other news, it’s snowing in downtown Dallas. w00t!

02 January 2002 | 2 comments

I need your help! My dear, sainted grandmother turns 70 on Jan. 26 and I’m trying to think of ways to mark the occasion. You can help two ways: (1) giving me any great ideas you have, and (2) participating in the Mazie Project 2002.

Mazie (that’s her name, Mazie) Project 2002 is an attempt to get as many people as possible to send her birthday cards. She sometimes gets a little lonely down in Louisiana, and while I drive down there as often as I can, it’d be great for her to know that lots of people are thinking about her. (Even if they don’t know her.)

So, if you woke up this morning thinking, “I am a good person! How can I show this to the world and improve my karma?”, here’s your chance. Her address is Mazie Benton, 803 W. Branche St., Rayne, LA 70578. And if you want to feel extra good about yourself, ask someone else to send a card, too. Why should you do this? Well, Mazie’s really, really cool. There’s your reason.

02 January 2002 | 6 comments

And so begins another year. Went to Benihana with a group of friends from work on New Year’s Eve, then finished up the evening at Lakewood Landing, where, coincidentally, I spent last New Year’s. Very different feel this time around, though. Last year, I’d been in Dallas only a few months, and the city still had that new-car smell of possibilities. This year — well, settling in has its pros and cons, I suppose.

2001 was actually pretty great for me, professionally and personally. We’ll see about 2002.

Anyway, I’m back at work, chugging away, sifting through press releases, deleting emails, and admiring the new 2002 Scooby Doo calendar on my cubicle wall.

02 January 2002 | 1 comment