Things I learned from hanging with my Little Brother this morning: Tupac Shakur isn’t really dead. He’s hiding in Jamaica, where he’s waiting for the statute of limitations to end for the faking of his own death. Then he’ll return, triumphant, to rule to hip-hop world. “He’s like Jesus,” my little bro said, “he’ll come back to life.” According to his impeccable Internet sources, Tupac’s autopsy photos were faked because they’re missing some of his tattoos, “plus the fake body they used was made of clay and you could tell in the photos.” (More Christian imagery!) If you could just trace the wire payments of Tupac’s mom around the world, you could figure out where Tupac is waiting. His “murder” in Vegas was faked in league with the local police, because if it was real, the police would have sent a helicopter out into the desert to follow the white Cadillac Tupac’s assailants were driving. Suge Knight was in on it all. Oh, and one more thing I learned: if you’re a Biggie Smalls fan, you suck.

(I still remember seeing some comic do standup on TV a few years ago, making fun of his mom trying to keep up with all things hip: “Dear, it was so sad when that Biggie Fries was killed.”)

30 April 2002 | 4 comments

Forgot to link to my story on Sunday’s front page, on a possible turnaround in the worst school district in Texas.

29 April 2002 | 2 comments

Jesus Christ, it gets hot in my apartment when its 90 degrees outside and I turn off my AC all day. Jesus Christ!

My friend Kim from Rochester has been visiting for the last few days, so please excuse the lack of posts. Some highlights of the weekend: a rare Rangers victory, a quick trip to Austin, my nineteenth visit to the Sixth Floor Museum, watching the unreasonably praised movie Croupier, and the ass-whoopin’ Kim put on me in darts in a Fort Worth bar.

And Kim has even offered to provide a service to long-time crabwalk.com readers. “Do you have questions about Josh’s apartment and/or lifestyle? Would you like them answered by a first-hand observer?” Leave your questions in the comments, and Kim will get right back to you all with the answers you’ve been dying to hear.

(One final note: I’m hoping Kim will post a stirring defense of the burritos at Chipotle, which were so unfairly maligned in this space not long ago. To quote Kim earlier this weekend: “This is really good!”)

28 April 2002 | 8 comments

Writing about Mark Eitzel yesterday got me thinking about my intense love for his band American Music Club from around 1994 to 1997. I first heard them play an acoustic set on World Cafe in the summer of ‘93. When I got to college that fall, I searched out what were then their two latest albums, Everclear and Mercury. (They’re also AMC’s two best albums, and any record collection would improve with their addition.)

Critics absolutely adored them, more than even most critical darlings. (For instance, I remember Rolling Stone naming Eitzel the world’s best songwriter at one point and AMC their “Hot Band” the next year.)But their albums never sold worth a damn, likely because they could be so damned depressing.

AMC was the background music to much of college, occasionally and incongruously through happy times, more appropriately through sad ones. (Fiona, my college ex, can vouch for how many times she’d call my dorm room, hear AMC playing in the background, and know immediately it’d been a bad day for some reason.)

Eitzel was a problematic object for my fandom. He was indeed a brilliant songwriter; his lyrics could turn from unspeakably sad to knife-to-the-kidney bitter to darkly hilarious in the span of a verse. In interviews, he came across as self-effacing and intelligent. And he made gorgeous, impassioned records.

At the same time, he could be nasty as hell. He was also a drunk. And enormously depressed (as might be expected from a gay man living in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS crisis). He swayed between self-loathing for his band’s not being more popular than it was and hating the audience for not buying into his music.

After graduating, I moved on to other music. American Music Club broke up in 1995 (not long after this tremendously bitter interview I remember reading online when it came out). Eitzel’s produced five solo albums, all good, none great. His last album is all covers, which doesn’t play on his songwriting strength. But I still wear my fandom proudly.

A few great, bitter Eitzel interview excerpts from around the web:

from 1994:

A: Well, I take showers and, I don’t know, I like to spray things on my face. I like the little misting things. And then, of course, there’s cocaine and speed. No, I’m kidding. I don’t really plan to stay fresh. I guess I’m going to be like every other white male in America — just repeat myself until I drop.

I’ve met Mark two times. Once was at a great CMJ show in NYC (Soul Coughing, Grant Lee Buffalo, American Music Club, and Saint Etienne!). AMC was on second-to-last, and Mark came out to be in the crowd for Saint Etienne. Like a slavering fanboy, I went up to him and said (I was 19, remember): “I just wanted to say you’re awesome.” His response, typically: “Yeah, awesome at being lame.”

Then, he played a (surprisingly great) solo show at the Gypsy Tea Room last June. After the show, he was hawking a (surprisingly good) disc of demos. I stood in line to pay the man. When I got to the front, I told him I had a web site and I’d named it crabwalk.com in honor of AMC’s song “Crabwalk.” (This was when this site looked roughly like this.) His response: “Huh, I’ll check it out. That’ll be $10.”

25 April 2002 | 2 comments

It’s a damned shame how many online radio stations have gone under in the last few months. I’m doing some writing today, and I need background music, so I went through my old list of stations. Half of them were gone. Sad.

I wrote the first edition of this story, so if you’re reading the paper in Houston or El Paso, you’re reading my story. I only helped out on the final edition.

25 April 2002 | 2 comments

It’s a veritable cornucopia of music this month! Yesterday saw new releases from three of my all-time favorite artists: Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Luna’s Romantica, and Mark Eitzel’s Music for Courage & Confidence.

I, like thousands of others, had heard the Wilco disc online a few months ago, when they were streaming it from their site after a label dispute. It’s brilliant. It’s the icy, disoriented brilliance of something like Big Star’s Third, but brilliant nonetheless. The Luna (which I’m listening to now for the first time) seems pleasantly lively, if not particularly distinguished; it strikes me as a middling addition to their catalog, which still ranks it as a 7.5 or 8 in the Grand Scheme of Music. Haven’t listened to the Mark Eitzel yet, but it’s gotten mixed reviews. Mark’s music has been stuck in second gear for a few years, but my devotion to him (for his stellar work leading American Music Club) is such that I couldn’t possibly not lay down my $15. (Careful readers will remember that this web site is named for an American Music Club song.)

24 April 2002 | 9 comments

Bob Mould: punk innovator, rock god, professional wrestling auteur?

I don’t know how I missed this a couple of months ago, but Bob (ex-Husker Du, ex-Sugar) was until recently a writer for World Championship Wrestling. (Other verifications of the same story.)

Is this real? Could Bob just be pulling our leg? I don’t think so. Check this 1996 interview with the man: “Q: Bob, if the music industry were to disappear tomorrow for some reason, what other career/interest would you pursue? A: Maybe something in graphics, teaching, pro wrestling, I don’t know.”

I know at least one Mould devotee reads this site — I welcome all interpretations of this turn of events. I have a feeling there’s a PhD in there somewhere.

24 April 2002 | 3 comments

(Warning: link shamefully stolen from Charles.) This list is great, but #1 is just brilliant.

24 April 2002 | 2 comments

There are few things more depressing than going to your weekly meeting with your Little Brother and finding out you can’t see him because he’s been suspended from school. Particularly when he’s teetering near the failure point in several of his classes and a day’s missed work can really hurt him.

The reason: he’d accumulated seven tardies this year, and that generates an automatic one-day suspension. What genius came up with the idea of suspension from school as a punishment? It’s a day off — what sort of incentive for good behavior is that? “Gee, I better shape up — if I screw up one more time, I get a day off from school.”

I can understand if a kid’s bringing a knife to school or something that you might want him out of the school environment for a while. But his punishment for not showing up to school on time — is not showing up to school at all? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

24 April 2002 | 3 comments

This, my friends, is classic journalism. Girl finds two-headed toad, and newspaper decides to write about it. “The two amphibians are conjoined, un-identical twins,” the paper claims.

Then, three days later, it runs a correction: Oh, sorry, those toads were just having sex, that’s all.

23 April 2002 | 5 comments

Really, could there be a better time for my CD burner to crap out than a time when I have a couple dozen mixes to burn? I sent out a big batch today, but there may be a momentary delay in shipping out more. (Ordered a new burner last night, but it won’t be in for a few days. I’ll keep trying to get my current one to keep working — it seems to function, but keeps pumping out screwed-up discs — but if I keep failing, it could be a couple of days before I can start on the next batch. My apologies.)

23 April 2002 | No comments

Interesting profile of Kwame Brown, the 20-year-old who just finished his first year in the NBA. It’s been a rough adjustment.

A plate of strangely shaped fried seafood arrives at the table.

“You should have just let him eat it,” Ferrell says with a laugh.

22 April 2002 | No comments

May I make a musical recommendation? The new Imperial Teen album On is such great fun. Sure, it sounds just like their two previous albums, but is that such a bad thing?

Also enjoying the new Gomez (as would be expected), the new N.E.R.D. (perhaps more than I should be), and the new Mooney Suzuki (although less than I was hoping to).

22 April 2002 | 1 comment

My story in today’s paper: New state exam to get a test run.

It’s not online, but the story ran with a little math quiz showing sample questions from each of the four standardized tests Texas has had over the last two decades (the tongue-twister TABS, TEAMS, TAAS, and TAKS). The tests have gotten harder over time, and the increasing difficulty of the questions illustrates the point. The downside, unfortunately, is that all morning I’ve been taking calls from people who claim we got #4 wrong. (Trust me: we didn’t.) The question:

The student council sponsor is planning to make a circle graph showing the number of votes for each of the candidates for student council president. The table below indicates the name and vote count for each candidate.

Bridget - 240

Hakeem - 420

Maria - 180

Viera - 300

Tony - 60

What central angle should the sponsor use for the section representing the votes for the student who finished in third place?

A. 54 degrees

B. 72 degrees

C. 90 degrees

D. 126 degrees

Your answer? (No cheating by looking in today’s paper.)

22 April 2002 | 12 comments

“When you try to channel some of that southern friendliness up here, somehow it comes off as slutty.” - Canadian Katherine (though she’s evidently just quoting Joots)

19 April 2002 | No comments

Matt Update: He’s out of surgery, minus one gall bladder, and in the recovery room. No word yet on whether he’s asked doctors to save the gall bladder for use as a cell phone holder.

19 April 2002 | No comments

Everybody send good vibes in the direction of North Dallas, where Matt is scheduled to be suddenly short a gall bladder in a few hours. As he puts it, he’s just helping evolution along by having surgeons remove such an unnecessary organ.

19 April 2002 | No comments

I was up late last night making the April mix, which features a track by Geek Love, a band a few of my friends were in during college. (One of them was named Josh Beaton, which is just one letter from my last name and thus caused endless mistaken identity hijinks, including a drunken woman stumbling into my room sophomore year who had to be convinced I wasn’t the other Josh.) Geek Love, to my knowledge, produced only a single 7” (“Ariadne”/”Cost,” if you’re planning on running through the used 7” bins of the East Coast), which I bought but had never listened to because I have no record player. Finally, a friend with the proper equipment burned it onto CD for me, and now this years-dead band will finally be shared with the world. Or at least the 50 or so people who signed up for the April trade.

Anyway, I mention this because the two ex-Geek Lovers I knew best, I-Huei and Greg, are in another great band that you indie rockers will be hearing more from soon, Sea Ray. (Their new single is getting radio play in all the right places, XFM in London and on Morning Becomes Eclectic out in L.A.) And they’ve finally put up a web site with MP3s (although they appear to download like molasses in winter) and a very nice streamed live show. If you’re in NYC, check them out.

19 April 2002 | No comments

I’m thisclose to using Keyser Soze in the lead of one of my stories. I’ll probably chicken out, though. (Isn’t it so exciting to see journalism being born?)

18 April 2002 | 2 comments

Yeah, I know it’s been on MetaFilter already, but these phone calls are righteous.

17 April 2002 | No comments

Here’s my storm story from yesterday (although they’re already updating it today, so it’s not all mine anymore). And here’s another, shorter story of mine from today’s paper.

This site’s readers may be interested in seeing the lame volleys Katie is launching my way in a pathetic attempt at a flame war. So far, her most stinging criticism is that I don’t have enough up-close familiarity with rats. Ouchie.

17 April 2002 | 10 comments

Unexpected Turn of Events Dept.: I’m still at work, pushing midnight, because I had to write the main story on the tornadoes that hit Fort Worth tonight. A little deadline adrenaline never hurt anybody, right? The only downer is that I wrote just about the whole damn thing, all 1,500 words, but I can’t have my name on it because of an obscure newspaper rule. Oh, well — at least my faithful crabwalk readers will know it’s me. (I probably shouldn’t argue with getting no credit, because it didn’t turn out particularly sparkling.)

16 April 2002 | 1 comment

“I’m not saying it’s safe for humans. I’m not saying its unsafe for humans. All I’m saying is it that it makes hermaphrodites of frogs.”

16 April 2002 | No comments

One of the funniest Onion pieces I’ve seen in a while: 37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster.

…Also believed to be among the missing are seven freelance rock critics, five vinyl junkies, two ‘zine publishers, an art-school dropout, and a college-radio DJ. [How they forgot the four bloggers I’ll never know. -ed.]

“I just had to help,” said Andy Ringler, an assistant manager at Wuxtry Records, listed in stable condition at a nearby hospital. “I saw all these people coming out bleeding and dazed. I gave up my vintage Galaxie 500 shirt just to help some guy bandage his arm. It was horrible.”

“I haven’t seen this much senseless hipster carnage since the Great Sebadoh Fire Of ‘93,” said rescue worker Larry Kolterman, finding a green-and-gold suede Puma sneaker in the rubble. “It’s such a shame that all those bastions of indie-rock geekitude had to go in their prime. Their cries of ‘sellout’ have been forever silenced.”

16 April 2002 | 1 comment

An email conversation, in non-haiku form.

Katie: Have they broken all your fingers? Are you now forced to pound out stories with bloody stumps? Have you gone into mourning over the death of Robert Urich? For the love of God. This can not continue. Where are the posts?

Me: Jesus Christ! What do you expect from me?! 1,000 words in the last two days!

Katie: I want obsessive, hourly postings. I want to know what you had for breakfast and how many licks it takes for you to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. Updates. Dammit. Updates.

To satiate Katie’s desires: my traditional glass of water, and 1,239.

16 April 2002 | 4 comments

I had no idea what procrastinators you CDMOM people are. Today’s the last day to sign up for April. 35 people signed up in the first couple of weeks of the signup form being posted, then a sudden rush of 14 more in the last couple of hours before the midnight deadline. (If you miss out, there’s always May, or June, or July, or…you get it.)

Just got back from Austin. Unbeknownst to me, some government official declared today Don’t Secure The Random Objects On Your High-Speed Vehicle Day on Interstate 35, and I was dodging things great and small all the way down and back. The highlight: a pickup truck that for some reason had a full gallon of milk in the back, tailgate lowered. An untimely bump sent it smashing to the asphalt, about five feet from my car. Was I concerned? Hell, no. That’s what rentals are for.

Julie and I went to the Texas State History Museum. It’s impressive from a purely museum-science point of view: cogently assembled and filled with nice graphics and signage. My inner historian, though, kept noticing what was left out or glossed over. (One might include the Kennedy shooting, for instance.) Since it was my main area of interest in college, I was mostly turned off by the near complete absence of race as an issue after, oh, 1876.

Southern historians/apologists too often get away with framing the race issue thusly: Some bad Southerners owned slaves. Then there was a big war, where everyone was very heroic. But in the end the North won, and times were hard here for a while. But look, we elected a couple black people to the legislature in the 1870s! The whole race issue was pretty much solved, okay? Get off our backs!

It’s a convenient way for a museum or a historian to put all the blame for racial wrongdoing on people who’ve been dead for 150 years. There’s no mention anywhere (that I saw today, at least) of the violent means whites used to take the vote back from blacks, the way Reconstruction’s race-blind laws were replaced with Jim Crow, and basically the way white supremacy returned, triumphant, to power in the 1880s-1910s, almost as if the Civil War had never happened. If you believe the museum, we all pretty much got along after 1876.

(Texas isn’t alone in this; there’s an African-American history museum being built in south Louisiana now that got community funding only after essentially promising it wouldn’t deal with anything racially charged from the 20th century. James Loewen goes into this issue in his two books, which are quite fascinating and only rarely lapse into the leftist rhetoric you might expect from a historian of his views.)

I suppose I shouldn’t expect complete honesty from something state-run that serves as a rah-rah postcard for the state, and it was certainly more honest than it could have been. And to be fair, Texas’ record wasn’t as bad as some other Southern states during the period. But it does remind you of the power of history, historians, and museums. What they say happened is what people learn, and in this instance, revisionist Southern historians did a job on the truth.

15 April 2002 | 1 comment

I’ll be in Austin again Monday, so a quick post to tide you regular readers over. (Wouldn’t want you to think I was dead or something after a four-day no-posting streak.)

Went to see Best of AV Geeks 3 at the MAC Friday night. It’s a highly amusing traveling roadshow of six “mental hygiene” films, of the sort shown to bored schoolkids in the ’50s and ’60s. The films all had important messages to communicate, but sadly, the roadshow may not be coming your way anytime soon. So, as a service to my readers, I summarize the important moral lessons I learned from each film:

More Dates for Kay (1952): Girls, if you want to get dates, make sandwiches for boys. You can choose the boys and the type of sandwich at random. Have as many dates as possible so you won’t be tempted to see the same boy too many times and have sexual intercourse with him.

Teeth (1970): Dental care can be hip! Kids, if you’re in one of these new rock and roll bands, your future will be determined by the brushing patterns you make on your incisors each morning — after breakfast, not before. Girls who take care of their teeth are hot. (There was also something here about former Pres. William McKinley, but I couldn’t quite make it out.)

The Lunatic (1972): Try not to get V.D. Guys with beards and slightly shaggy hair have V.D., so you should avoid having sex with them. (Hey, wait a minute.) Men in turtlenecks are to be avoided. If you get V.D. and are ever on camera, look terribly depressed. All the people who work at the local clinic are either sweaty bald men with freakishly large love handles or nice black men with glorious Ben Wallace-style afros.

Purely Coincidental (an ’80s industrial-safety film): If there are metal shards mixed in with your dog’s food, he could die. Don’t drop spark plugs into barrels of ground meat. If you urinate on your hands, you should wash them, not run them through a vat of baby food. If your dog has died, the only appropriate thing to do is drink heavily, then shoot guns at smaller animals.

Parent To Child About Sex (1967): Masturbation is a perfectly natural thing. If a four-year-old asks how babies come out of their mommies, make the having-sex gesture with your hands and use the word “vagina” a lot. If the child doesn’t understand, she’ll probably just lose interest and move on to some other, more enjoyable topic. Sex education comes best from curt 60-year-old men who look like extras from Oliver Stone’s JFK.

The Huntsman (1972): If a bunch of Canadian hippies get your cowboy boots wet after stealing two golf balls from you, you have license to push their car into a river. But you’ll probably feel guilty afterward.

Not that you needed to be told that.

14 April 2002 | 1 comment

Ohio’s dirtiest politician finally gets nailed, and it’s about damn time. (Plus, if you look at the story now, you can catch an error common for quickly-filed stories that are written beforehand: “Throughout the xx-week trial (began Feb. 5)…”)

11 April 2002 | No comments

Truly amazing video for a great song. (If my band was still together, this is roughly what we’d sound like — loud and raw, with croaky vocals. I love songs whose guitar parts even I can play.)

On Monday, I have to have lunch with this handsome devil.

11 April 2002 | 5 comments

In Canadian media news (there’s a phrase that’ll drive the readers wild!): Saturday Night, Canada’s oldest magazine, relaunches Saturday after a several-month hiatus. A few years back, I’d heard great things about the magazine and the writers and editors it had produced (most notably for me Paul Tough, late of Open Letters and still of This (North?) American Life and the New York Times Magazine, which is the closest American analog to Saturday Night at its best).

I enjoyed reading it online, and when I spent some time in Nova Scotia in 2000, I loved it in print. Great, crisp writing, but the editing was just astounding, from story selection to the front matter to layout. Its owner, CanWest, shamefully shuttered it last year to cut costs.

I must say I greet the relaunch with some trepidation, since it’s been sold off to a company I know nothing about, Multi-Vision Publishing. Multi-Vision recently bought up Shift, another former favorite that seems to have lost a step. (Although the economy’s probably more to blame for that than anything Multi-Vision’s done.)

And most sadly, Saturday Night’s going from being a weekly included in the National Post to coming out only six times a year. And it looks like it won’t be available online — they’ve cut staff from 40 to eight, and I doubt any of those eight is web-dedicated. Plus, it’s evidently still going to be distributed solely in the Post, which means I probably won’t even be able to subscribe.

(I’d check the web site to see if subscriptions are available, but the old domain name just returns the cryptic tautology: “The domain saturdaynight.ca does not currently have a web site. As a result there is nothing to see at www.saturdaynight.ca.” Same for Multi-Vision’s site.)

But despite the dark signals on the horizon, here’s to a grand old magazine struggling yet again for breath. May it be as great in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.

10 April 2002 | 7 comments

You know what I hate? I hate it when, as a reporter, you know there’s a 95 percent chance someone is lying to you and cheating the public — but you know you’ll never be able to prove it. It just gets you into a funk. I got into this business to tell the truth, not to be a conduit for frauds.

10 April 2002 | 2 comments

Just got back from a local high school. In two places, the smell of pot was overpowering. It was like the dorm room across from mine freshman year. Not exactly conducive to education, I imagine.

I was there to meet with my Little Brother, who continues to not do so well. A suspension, referrals to the principal’s office, falling in sleep in class, not doing his work — I don’t have the highest of hopes that he’ll be a sophomore at this time next year.

In less depressing news, I figured my prize money for the Headliners should be spent on something less than critical, so as soon as UPS works its magic, I should be the proud owner of a Canon PowerShot A40. Who knows, this may be just what I need to expand my interest in angry weasel photos.

10 April 2002 | 1 comment

Hey Toledoans, it’s opening day at the brand new Mud Hens stadium. Watch it on MudHensCam!

09 April 2002 | No comments

I had a middling story in today’s paper, on the University of Texas’ efforts to attract minority students.

My boss is off this week, and we’ll see whether that will translate into my usual slackerly behavior. I hope not; I’ve got way too much work to do for that to happen. So, since I’ll be busy, a few stories far more interesting than mine to keep you entertained:

An interesting (okay, to me) repudiation of the broken-windows school of policing theory.

A slam on alternative medicine.

Lefties aren’t nearly as cool as they think they are.

Taki on what if the Germans won WWI.

An Australian on the lessons of American history.

09 April 2002 | 3 comments

Why it’s never a good idea to register domain names while drunk: About a year ago, my coworker Colleen dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of Survivor 2. At first, I was strong and resisted. But Colleen sat next to me, and her constant discussion of Outback goings-on was eventually too much to take. I had to watch. (To my credit, she was never able to drag me into Temptation Island, The Mole, or the myriad other “reality” shows she was and is addicted to. Also, Elisabeth was really all the motivation I needed to keep tuning in every week.)

Anyway, when the final episode came around, our local Dallasite Colby lost to an undeserving Tina. At a party a few days after the final episode, Colleen’s husband Eric and I were discussing the injustice of it all, when Eric had a brilliant idea for taking advantage of the media hype surrounding Survivor.

We should start a web site, he said. A site that claims that Colby deserved the million-dollar-prize he was unjustly denied — that indeed, Colby had already won in the eyes of Texas and the eyes of the world. The site would accept donations from like-minded folks who believed that Colby had made the show the success it was, not mousy Tina. The money would be donated to Colby (with, perhaps, a cut for us) to make up for his loss. We figured it’d be easy enough to get the Survivor-mad media to write about our little site. It was a sure-fire path to Internet stardom.

Colleen immediately pointed out a problem with our plan — if Eric and I were the front men for this little endeavor, we’d clearly appear to be obsessed with Colby in more than a television-fandom sort of way, if you get my drift. So she volunteered to be our female spokeswoman for media calls. So about four beers into the evening, I found myself giving my credit card information online and registering a domain.

Needless to say, this went nowhere. The shell of a dummy page was put up, but the idea was quickly forgotten. The media lust for all things Survivor faded.

And now, all that’s left is an email in my inbox telling me that colbywon.com will expire in another month. If you want to snag it after May 20, feel free.

Why it’s probably a good thing I cancelled my cable on Friday: See above.

08 April 2002 | 2 comments

Today should be another excellent day — opening day at The Ballpark, then an evening with the ponies and Willie Nelson at Lone Star Park.

In case anyone’s wondering why I was so happy yesterday, I found out I won a 2002 Headliners Award, which is the biggest honor in Texas journalism every year. (No link to a list of winners yet, so you’ll just have to trust me.) My coauthor Roy Appleton and I won in the Best Explanatory Journalism category, for the five-day dropout series we wrote last May.

05 April 2002 | 14 comments

Back from Austin. I am so damned happy at the moment. Borderline deliriously happy. Joy joy joy! Oh, what a beautiful evening! O happy day!

04 April 2002 | 5 comments

To all Cajuns and/or wannabe Cajuns in the DFW area: Need some crawfish? Some live, creepy-crawly, delicious melt-in-your-mouth crawfish? Fruge Aquafarms, just outside Rayne, has a warehouse in Grand Prairie where they keep live crawfish just shipped from Louisiana on their way to shipment across the country, and you can evidently go pick up your crawfish there cheap — maybe a buck or two a pound.

That’s a hell of a lot cheaper than what you pay if you buy your crawfish pre-peeled or get it shipped direct from the bayou. (I know all this scoop because my cousin Pam works at Fruge’s and I had some of my uncle’s 70 pounds in Rayne on Easter Sunday.)

Now I just need a big pot, a lot of butane, some old newspapers, and some Zatarain’s to make a weekend complete.

03 April 2002 | 2 comments

Forgot to link to my story in today’s paper, on fingerprinting teachers to check their criminal backgrounds.

03 April 2002 | 2 comments

Correction of the day.

03 April 2002 | 2 comments

Ooooh, literary catfight! As imperfect a vessel as Gore Vidal is for the message, it’s about time somebody called out Dominick Dunne, perhaps the most fawning, obsequious social climber in “journalism” today.

03 April 2002 | 1 comment

As much as I hate to rag on my former coworkers, how stupid do you have to be as a reporter to believe that a broadcast radio station is going to start charging listeners to hear the morning drive-time show? When it’s supposed to debut on April 1? (The original version of this story had a note from the reporter at the top saying something to the effect of, “Since it’s April 1, I feel it’s necessary to tell you that this is a real story, not an April Fool’s joke.” Here’s the radio station’s gleeful mea culpa.

03 April 2002 | 1 comment

Barry Bonds hits two homers on opening day. So, officially, he’s on pace to hit 324 home runs this season. I think that would be a record.

I’ll be in Austin tomorrow for morning meetings, but if anybody wants to do anything in the afternoon, drop me a line.

03 April 2002 | No comments

I’ll be on TXCN again tonight, but I’d advise you to stay away from what turned out to be my poorest performance to date. I do best with topics I can half-joke about, and it’s hard to start popping out the funnies when your topic is child-molesting teachers.

Of course, a measily TXCN appearance is nothing compared to my friend Juliet, who found out today she’ll be included in next year’s Best American Sports Writing. Brava!

02 April 2002 | No comments

Congrats to Byron Mouton and the Maryland Terrapins for bringing home the title. Byron had only four points and four rebounds, but anyone who saw the game could tell he was the firebrand leading the troops into battle, getting everyone charged up, playing strong defense and making the clutch hustle play when the team needed someone to.

Quoth the CBS announcers last night: “Mouton is making all the plays that don’t show up on the stat sheet.” Quoth Dick Vitale: “Byron Mouton was an unsung hero for the Terps, contributing all of the intangibles needed to win a title.”

He’s a bit of a stretch for the NBA right now, but he’s got good size and the quickness to be a two-guard at the next level — I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw him there in a few years after some time in Europe. And the stadium announcer should be shot for pronouncing our hometown as “RAY-knee” — it’s pronounced “rain,” people.

02 April 2002 | No comments

More evidence that M&M is hiding something. (For background, see here, here, here, and here.)

Kelly, who was long ago outed as a skeptic when it comes to my tireless M&M research, decided to take matters into her own hands by sending an email to the M&M junta itself:

TO:

I hope you can help with this and I hope to hear back soon. Thanks.

Despite her usual general wrongheadedness, a straightforward search for answers. She quickly got a token response (“Thanks for your Question on M&Ms®. We are working to answer your Question as soon as possible. We will respond within 1 week”). That was last Wednesday.

Then, today, she gets her response:

In response to your email regarding M&M’S CHOCOLATE CANDIES GLOBAL COLOR VOTE PROMOTION

Consumer Affairs

In other words, a token non-answer. I could play Kremlinologist and parse each phrase of their “response,” checking to see what the meaning of “is” is, but the biggest question is: who appointed Red and Yellow the leaders of the M&M pack? Let’s look past, for a moment, the naked fact that these are in fact colored candies, not sentient beings with the capacity for excitement. Let’s play along for a moment. Who put Red and Yellow in charge?

On one hand, I’m pleased to see Yellow have some authority, since I’d feared it might be the color to get the axe when the newcomer gets shoved in the pack. (Yellow just seems far too tan-like, and we all know what happened to tan.) But I wonder about Red — sent out of the pack in a Stalinist purge within my own lifetime, yet suddenly back in control. Who did Red pay off? Was it Red who took out the hit on poor, noble tan? Is this power a debt being repaid?

More questions without answers. All I know is this: I’ve registered candycoatedjustice.org. Soon, there will be an opportunity for all of us to discover the answers.

01 April 2002 | 3 comments

Lessons learned from a weekend in south Louisiana:

- It’s a shame UConn’s women’s team had to win the title last night, if only because it meant Oklahoma cutie/All-American Stacey Dales had to lose in the finals. Saw her interviewed after the semifinal win over Duke, and she seemed smart, together, charming, and by-the-way cute.

There was something in her voice that got me, that vaguely schoolmarmish lilt, that sense that she’s a higher order of being stuck explaining simple concepts to a world of second-graders. That’s when I realized the origins of that accent — she’s Canadian! Bestill my heart!

- While we’re talking basketball, go Terps! Not least because Maryland’s starting small forward and emotional leader, Byron Mouton, is from my hometown of Rayne and is by all accounts a good guy. (Not to mention the fact he has his own web page.)

Byron and I are also probably relatives of some sort. My grandmother Mazie’s maiden name is Mouton. And he grew up a few blocks from me. Then again, he’s black and I’m white, so if our families do have some sort of historical relationship, it probably wasn’t a good one, if you know what I mean.

- Boiled crawfish. Boiled crawfish is good.

- If I make a list of 12 things I’d like to get done over a long weekend, two of them might get done. Partially.

- No matter how boring the drive from Dallas to Shreveport to Rayne is — and it’s pretty damned boring — that’s no reason to try to “liven the drive up” by taking the alternate route via Houston to return. First of all, the “excitement” of the Houston route is basically limited to the Sam Houston statue on I-45. Second, it’s not worth the six separate traffic jams I suffered through last night and the extra two hours it took me to get home.

- Chocolate bunnies are nice and all, but I get a little weirded out by big chocolate crosses. Mazie gave me one for Easter. I know Jesus is the reason for the season, etc., but it strikes me as wrong to cross the faith/commercialism boundary quite so flagrantly. It’s like seeing Santa chilling in the Nativity manger.

01 April 2002 | 5 comments