My, Chanda’s on fire! And she’s even dragging Kournikova’s sorry (though attractive) ass with her! Unseeded Chanda and Anna upset the 7th seed in doubles, setting them up against the dreaded Taiwanese/Indonesian duo of Lee/Prakyusa next.
Spent last night having a very nice time out at The Ballpark (where the ironwork is deeply un-Cajun and really not all that New Orleans in style, which is no doubt what yesterday’s writer really meant). My friend said she wanted to beat traffic out, so we logically left in the top of the 9th, which of course meant missing two home runs. C’est la vie. (Gerry Fraley, the DMN’s great baseball beat writer, has had so much fun this season dissing Chan Ho Park, last night’s losing pitcher. “Chan Ho Park, the Rangers’ ace only on payday…”
29 June 2002 |
1 comment
I just took a look at that link I put up for The Ballpark in Arlington, home of the Texas Rangers. Quote:
Once inside, there’s a 17,000-square-foot baseball museum and a children’s learning center, open year-round. Beyond the center-field wall, the park is enfolded by a four-story office building fronted by wrought-iron decor with a subtle cajun flavor.
Hmm. I’m really curious what wrought iron “with a subtle cajun flavor” looks like. I didn’t know my people had even produced their own wrought-iron style, much less one capable of subtlety. Do they have little, tiny, subtle crawfish all over the iron? Is there red pepper smeared across everything? Is it all blackened? A big sign reading: “Rangers win: I gah-ron-tee”? The mind reels.
28 June 2002 |
3 comments
Teenage wasteland! It’s only teeeeenage waaaasteland! Teenage wasteland! Oh, yeah — teeeeenage waaaasteland They’re all wasted!
Sorry — it’s a Who-quoting kind of day. (Not that kind of Who.)
Had a wonderful time at Shakespeare in the Park last night with Natacha. The Two Gentlemen of Verona was marred only by poor microphone placement and a group of annoying middle-aged, middle-management, golf-shirt-wearing fools behind us who decided to get drunk on chardonnay (ooh, they’re cultured) and be loud jackasses throughout the performance. It’s amazing how a little alcohol can reduce boring old fogies to annoying 14-year-olds. Ah, the fountain of youth.
Anyway, just have to finish a story today, then it’s off to nice seats at The Ballpark to see the Rangers battle for the Silver Boot. (It’s good to know season ticket holders.)
28 June 2002 |
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The upsets keep on coming: Chanda whoops up on the 21st seed, the allegedly chunky Tatiana Panova, 6-4, 6-1. I’m going to be bold and say I think she’ll actually give Serena a good game in the next round. Serena’s been having a weak tournament, and she’s as ripe for the picking as she’s likely to ever be. Rock on, Chanda! Win one for John Entwistle!
28 June 2002 |
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For everyone who followed the Porn ‘n’ Chicken saga at my alma mater, it appears the first Ivy League porn movie will finally get made — only at Columbia instead of Yale.
And in case you’re the kind of person who doesn’t read a story’s byline — shame on you! — you may wish to check into the author of this piece. Ms. Hancock, herself a Yalie and a former writer at my old college paper, has her own quasi-porn experience. (Photos here.) And she’s even from Texas!
28 June 2002 |
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The greatest bassist in rock and roll history, John Entwistle, is dead at 57. I was a big Who fan growing up, and Who’s Next survived my general abandonment of classic rock to remain a favorite. It always sounded as if there were at least two sets of hands on the fretboard when he played; with him on bass and Keith Moon on drums, you had the greatest rhythm section of modern recorded music.
I remember in junior high playing the classic boys game, Supergroup, where you picked the best rock stars on each of the major instruments and imagined what they’d sound like together. The guitar player would vary quite a bit (most often Hendrix or Jimmy Page, but occasionally ill-advised thoughts like Ritchie Blackmore), and the drummer was usually a tossup between Moon and John Bonham. But the bass player was always John Entwistle.
28 June 2002 |
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I’ve been on a little sports kick lately, haven’t I? This may be the finale: Two kickers injured by rogue fondue pot.
Jaguars punter Chris Hanson won’t be trying to fondue again anytime soon. “We’ve already thrown out the pot,” he said.
27 June 2002 |
1 comment
No singles play for Chanda today, but she did get to do something millions of semi-literate FHM droolers would kill for: spend 53 minutes alongside Anna Kournikova. Their doubles team whooped up on some Spaniards, 6-1, 6-1. (Aside: anyone have any theories of why Anna Kournikova has been singled out to be the media-designated sex goddess of women’s sports? To my mind, there are plenty of at-least-as-worthy candidates, some of whom are actually good at the sports they play. Give me Mia Hamm anyday. Hell, Daniela Hantuchova.)
27 June 2002 |
3 comments
It’s good to know the next generation is keeping up the Ann Landers/Dear Abby snippy rivalry. (Why anyone would value relationship advice from this dysfunctional bunch is beyond me.)
27 June 2002 |
2 comments
Everybody’s heard by now, but the Pledge of Allegiance ain’t constitutional.
(By the way, what a sterling example of political cowardice by our nation’s Senators, who just voted 99-0 to oppose the court’s ruling. No matter what you think about the issue, I can bet you at least a few of the liberals in that 99 think the court’s right and are just signing onto a document (a) they don’t believe in, but (b) they know will have no real impact and (c) will make them look good for voters. It reminds me of the observation made during the whole can-Americans-elect-a-Jewish-veep debate in 2000 — sure they can, but don’t even think about running if you’re an atheist. That’s still the political third rail.)
My pet peeve about inexact reporting on this: there’s nothing in the ruling that “bans children from reciting the Pledge.” Just as school-prayer rulings don’t “ban children from praying in school.” They ban schools and teachers from leading a classroom or a group of children in the pledge. If a kid wants to say the pledge (or pray, for that matter) any time during the day when it isn’t disruptive, it’s cool.
Every once in a while, I try to convince people that my hometown in south Louisiana wasn’t that backwards. But my efforts are instantly sabotaged if they ask about the public schools I attended through grade 6. Because then conscience dictates I tell them that, after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the Star-Spangled Banner every morning, we always sang Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. And that’s when the shame kicks in.
26 June 2002 |
4 comments
Did I call it or what? Chanda upsets the 14th seed Iroda Tulyaganova, 6-3, 6-1, in only 47 minutes. (“Uzbekistan’s Tulyaganova failed to make any impact on Rubin’s serve and was clearly out of her depth on a sun-baked Court 2.”)
Up next: Tatiana Panova, the 21st seed, recently described as a “plumpish Russki countrywoman…last seen losing to somebody named Martina Navratilova who’s 45 years old.”
(Unfortunately, she’ll probably run into the Serena Williams buzzsaw in the next round, just as Venus cut her run short at the French. But this sort of performance could push Chanda back into the top 20 in the world rankings, where she hasn’t been in a while.)
26 June 2002 |
4 comments
It’s a damned shame when a legitimate news organization gives in to those trying to influence its coverage.
JERUSALEM (AP) - CNN erred in giving more programming time to the family of a Palestinian suicide bomber than to his Israeli victims and tried to rectify the mistake, the network’s top news executive said Sunday during a damage-control visit to Israel.
Since when are news media required to give equal prominence to victims and assailants? Was it bad that people were more interested in learning more about Tim McVeigh than they were about learning about his victims? Or more interested in learning about Osama bin Laden than about his victims? It’s news judgment, people, and news organizations should be free to make it. Our job is not to salve emotional wounds — it’s to inform the public. And while I didn’t see the segments in question, I can certainly imagine the public would learn more from interviews with the bomber’s family (understanding what leads people to do such a thing, what it might take to stop it, etc.) than with the victim’s family (“we’re really sad/angry/upset,” etc.).
Thankfully, most news organizations aren’t caving.
26 June 2002 |
1 comment
It’s that time again: time for the occasional What Josh’s Been Listening To update.
I can unreservedly recommend the new Elvis Costello record. I was never a Costello disciple — I thought his ’70s stuff was nice enough, but nothing I got excited over, and I gave his Burt Bacharach disc a pan in my rock critic days — but this record is terrific. The single sounds ripped from 1977, and the slower stuff manages to be moody without being wussy — a balance he’s had a hard time striking the last few years.
I absolutely loved the first album by Enon — smart art-pop with a little punk and a love of fuzzy vocals. At first, the followup, High Society, didn’t thrill me, but it’s grown on me and I can’t get it out of my head. (I’m not sure it’s this good, but it is damned good.) They’ve added a new vocalist, ex-Blonde Redhead Toko Yasuda, who adds a sort of naif Europop vibe to some of the songs. The songs are probably a hair weaker than the first album, but it’s more fun — this would make a great party record if you had a very cool crowd of people coming over. (Check out an MP3 of one of my favorite tracks, the very Dismemberment Plan-influenced Natural Disasters.)
In the late-to-the-party department, I’ve become a late adopter of Rufus Wainwright. His last disc Poses and his self-titled debut have both eloquent songwriting and great delivery — it’s really the Tin Pan Alley sort of sound that an Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach should have produced. Fun to sing along to.
Spoon’s A Series of Sneaks has become my de facto car music. I heard the more polished Girls Can Tell first (and liked it enough to name it crabwalk.com Album of the Year 2001), so the rougher-edged Sneaks didn’t jump out at me. But man, is it great — the perfect bridge between the Pixies and the White Stripes, if either of those bands appeal to you.
Other recent listens: Sea Ray’s Reveal EP still sounds great a month or two after landing in my mailbox. The new Girls Against Boys is growing on me — seemed a little too dumb-metal at first, but Scott McCloud’s club-weary vocals keep pushing it higher in my estimation. The new “back to our indie roots” Guided By Voices hasn’t thrilled me yet, although that may because I’m one of the few who liked their last few studio-heavy discs more than the Bee Thousand-era stuff. The new DJ Shadow is better than I thought from MP3s, but still no Endtroducing. (Not that that’s anything to be ashamed of.)
25 June 2002 |
4 comments
Here’s the bus crash story I helped out on yesterday.
If you read the Portraits of Grief 9/11 obituaries in the New York Times, check out this piece about Thomas Mallon’s attack on the series in The American Scholar. (For the record, that’s Thomas Mallon, the novelist, not Tom Mallon, writer for CMJ and former drummer/bassist of American Music Club, the band whose song this site is named for.)
I don’t know if I’d go as far as Mallon does, but I’m glad someone did — it’s worth talking about.
25 June 2002 |
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It’s one Swede down for my old schoolmate Chanda at Wimbledon. Some Uzbek is next before the firing squad.
After a stirring run at the French, I think Chanda’s going to work some magic on grass this year. She won the traditional Wimbledon tune-up, Eastbourne over the weekend, which indicates she’s finally back from those knee surgeries. (Video here.) And she’s always been strong on grass: she won Wimbledon juniors back in 1992, when we were in high school.
Speaking of athletes, they were thick on the ground in Las Vegas. Among the few spotted: Donovan McNabb, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Jason Sehorn (and, more importantly, his wife and fellow Dallasite Angie Harmon), and others. (Along with non-athletes like Jay Mohr [he’s short] and, yes, Charo.)
I even bumped up against Antawn Jamison at Rum Jungle. While it wasn’t up there with brushing up against Katarina Witt, for a Carolina fan like myself, it was still something to remember. (His performance against Duke in ‘98 — when he scored 35 points despite touching the ball for only 53 seconds all game long — remains one of the most amazing athletic feats I’ve seen.)
24 June 2002 |
3 comments
This site’s been not much more than excuses for not posting lately, hasn’t it? I had to spend the last few hours out at Parkland interviewing the injured. Pretty much the worst part of being a reporter, if you ask me.
Vegas was fun this weekend, even though it’s not exactly my kind of place (not being a gambler beyond $5 March Madness pools). The official slogan of the weekend was “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” so I can’t tell you about the raucous all-night chess matches, the 3 a.m. knitting circles, or the other examples of bachelor party debauchery.
My inner education reporter was amused by this.
Sea Ray fans: their show at Maxwell’s tonight will be webcast at 9 p.m. EDT.
A big slap across the face to the cretins at the Ohio BMV. I finally discovered why my car insurance rates suddenly doubled earlier this year: they somehow invented an accident I was apparently at fault in 1999. (I was in an accident then, but it was not my fault — the guy got a ticket for reckless endangerment when he [southbound] turned left in front of me [northbound].) Thanks, faceless bureaucrat!
My struggles to clear my inbox are finally meeting with success. I’m down to two emails left to reply to. Of course, one was written in May 2001, so I shouldn’t pat myself on the back too much.
24 June 2002 |
4 comments
I ask very little of you, dear reader, but I do ask that you please answer the one simple question asked by Kelly.
Mozilla users, rejoice! Thanks to the keen CSS eye of Jason, this page should work on the Moz now. So if you like your browsers clunky, ugly, and waaaay too strict about web standards, you and the other 0.6 percent can now benefit from my M&M commentary, unfettered by technological roadblocks.
Q: Why am I up at 4:41 a.m.? A: Pre-Vegas laundry.
21 June 2002 |
6 comments
It’s purple! (More inside scoop on this dastardly deed after I get back from Vegas Sunday.)
21 June 2002 |
4 comments
Anybody know if the writer or anyone else associated with The Usual Suspects went to UT? Gabriel Byrne’s character Dean Keaton just seems too close to Dean Keeton St. in Austin.
19 June 2002 |
4 comments
Oh, there is one other bit of news. Thanks to the glorious reporting skills of Katherine, yours truly will be on CBC Radio One this Saturday. It’ll be just after the 2 p.m. news on Definitely Not the Opera, the CBC’s pop culture show. I’m not sure what made it through the edits, but I’m probably talking about the Mazie Project or blogging in general. If any of my Canadian homies saw fit to tape the show, I would be, commes les Quebecois disent, toujours reconnaissant.
This knocks a big item off my life to-do list (“Have my voice broadcast to the people of my ancestral lands”). Canadaphiles unite!
One other thing I feel I should mention, if only to taunt Fiona, the friend I was visiting in Boston last weekend. Fiona’s a very, very bright woman. Just a couple of weeks ago, she got a master’s at Harvard, to add to her Yale degree and her two years spent teaching in a Princeton program in China.
Aside from her intelligence, Fiona can also be very competitive. Which is why it gets to her that she will never defeat me in Trivial Pursuit.
I’ve probably played Trivial Pursuit fewer than a dozen times in the last decade — except for those times I’m with Fiona. She always wants to play. It started five years ago, just after our college graduation, when I was spending a couple of weeks at her house in Seattle. (We were dating at the time.)
We played a few games. And I won them all. From that point on, it became a matter of principle — she had to keep trying to even the score.
Unfortunately for Fiona, it’s never happened. We haven’t kept count of how many games we’ve played, but it’s certainly into the dozens. I’m something like 38-0. Fiona doesn’t like losing. At all.
So Sunday, when I was about to get on my flight back to Dallas, she decided to challenge me again. The first game was close — but I still won. Poor Fiona — her need for a victory reduced her to begging for odd rules (like, “Let’s play a partial game I can end early, and whoever’s ahead at that point will be an official winner”). In the end, we decided to rush through one more complete game. Six pie pieces to three: it wasn’t close.
I’ve thought about throwing a game to make her feel better. But then I realize that in a couple of years, she’ll be busy curing diseases, snipping out tumors, and otherwise saving lives. And I’m still be asking stupid questions to illiterate school board members. And I figure I might as well have something to hold over her.
19 June 2002 |
6 comments
Obligatory self-link: I helped out on today’s front-page story on the Edison Schools in Dallas.
I have to crank out three stories in the next shift, so again, blogging will be sporadic. And I leave early Friday for Las Vegas and my old college roommate’s bachelor party. So consider this a fine opportunity to visit other happy blogs for a few days. “Wacky” crabwalk.com content will return soon enough.
19 June 2002 |
No comments
Sorry I’ve been such a half-assed blogger of late. Been busy. The trip to Boston last weekend was wonderful, thanks for asking.
A few random links to tide you over until I come up with something interesting to say:
- TrademarkBots. Anyone else had these guys crawling your pages?
- Glorious Noise. “Glorious Noise is all about how rock and roll can change your life.”
- Eccentric New Orleans. I’ve been on a New Orleans kick of late (also recommended).
- Acadian Railway Company. Someone please give me lots of money.
- Girls Are Pretty. There’s plenty of room for formal innovation in blogs.
- Gigposters.com.
18 June 2002 |
1 comment
For Dallasites: KERA cuts 25 percent of staff. Most prominent among the laid off is Krys Villasenor, host of the (often vapid) evening talk show, Conversations. (Kremlinologists will notice her photo already been removed from its spot on the radio station’s web page alongside Glenn Mitchell’s, mere hours after the putsch.) I was not a Krys fan, but come on, she’s been out on maternity leave for the last month. That’s rude.
Now on KERA at 7 p.m.: a repeat of Fresh Air (an improvement), followed by The Tavis Smiley Show at 8.
13 June 2002 |
6 comments
Last weekend was my five-year college reunion. It was much more fun than I’d imagined. A few quick thoughts:
- This is really the last chance I’ll have to see most of these folks while our incomes are even remotely at the same level. As they become wealthy doctors/lawyers/bankers/etc., and as I remain a newspaper reporter, the gap will grow. But at the moment, they’re all weighted down by debt! I’ll enjoy the relative parity while it lasts.
- I was talking with my old roommate Bob — the one whose bachelor party I’m going to in Las Vegas next weekend — when the movie The Tao of Steve came up. We both said we enjoyed it and its lead character, Dex. Then Bob threw in the kicker: “Yeah, [his fiancee] Stacey and I were watching the movie and we both thought the same thing: Dex reminded us of you.”
Ouch. (I think.) Bob did clarify that a bit, pointing out the two biggest differences — Dex has a huge gut and no ambition, whereas I have a more manageable gut and too much ambition. But still: ouch.
- Shame’s a funny thing. I can’t tell you how many times I had this conversation with classmates who are, by any societal measure, launching tremendously successful careers:
Classmate: Hey, Josh! Great to see you! What have you been up to?
Me: Well, I’m still a newspaper reporter, at the Dallas Morning News.
Classmate: That’s great!
Me: How about you?
Classmate: (suddenly staring at feet, voice down a few decibels, shifting weight from side to side) Um, I’m a…lawyer.
(Or insert “investment banker,” “consultant,” “going to business school,” etc. Only the doctors seemed to remain unashamed.)
13 June 2002 |
5 comments
Now this is a candidate I can get behind. Not because of his political views — because of his kick-ass website. Click around, but here are a few highlights:
- Headline: Dan tries to impress girl with “I’m running for Congress” line; Campaign loses one voter, gains fake phone number.
- Seeking volunteers: Are you spry? Interested in helping promote Liberty in the American political system and maybe padding your résumé? We are looking for volunteers and interns with strong minds, good hearts, and possibly a mini-fridge.
- Do you smoke marijuana? Dude… then you gotta put down the bong, get off the couch, and vote. C’mon, man, you can do it. Leave the house by 3:30 and you can be back by 4:20. Yeeeahhhh. And if you think you might forget why you went to the polls by the time you pull the curtain closed, write it down on your hand: Vote Dan!
- His stands on the issues: Terrorism — I’m against it, of course. The Economy — Money is a good thing for people to, you know, have. Prisons — Don’t even get me started.
I’m off to Boston for a conference this afternoon. Blogging will be sporadic, but no doubt particularly forceful.
13 June 2002 |
No comments
If you tuned into Nightline last night, you saw my desk. (The whole show was about the Catholic sex-abuse story in today’s paper. If you only pick up the paper once a year, today’s not a bad day to do it.) A Nightline crew was here shooting background shots in the newsroom Monday and Tuesday, and apparently a shot of my desk made it on TV somehow. (Not me, just my desk. I’ll have to stick to TXCN.)
12 June 2002 |
1 comment
Yep, I’m back after a week of enforced silence, caused by server shenanigans at my web host. Basically, they deleted a week’s worth of posts and comments and wrecked my installation of Movable Type, making posting impossible without screwing things up even more. (If you’re interested in wonky details, try here, here, here, and here [my solution to the mess]).
Anyway, I’m back, after recoding by hand 10 entries and 30+ comments. Depending on the speediness of your ISP, crabwalk.com should point back at this site within the next day or two. Regular posting to resume after I get some sleep.
Until then, here’s my largely uninteresting story on tomorrow’s front page. And here’s a much better story on tomorrow’s front.
12 June 2002 |
3 comments
Hey, you! You, in the corner with the keyboard! Why didn’t you tell me Heather Havrilesky has a blog? (You may know her better as Polly Esther at the late and truly lamented Suck.)
As time passes, people may forget what a stroke of genius Suck was. (Well, not all of Suck. But it had a higher batting average than most mags, and if you stripped away the hipster social crit, there was a real, beating heart of intelligence behind it all.)
And this is probably deeply retrograde, but her writing always gave me the impression that she’s the sexiest creature on earth. (Well, her and Dahlia Lithwick.) There’s just something about overeducated, lovably cynical female webzine writers that just gets my motor running. Rowr.
I leave for my college reunion tomorrow morning, so the posting stream may slow to a trickle through the weekend. You’re always my top priority, Dear Reader, but this weekend you fall to third behind Wooster Square cannolis and everyone’s favorite party game, Let’s See Who Got Fat.
05 June 2002 |
1 comment
Klan rally 70 percent undercover reporters. “Over the course of the two-hour rally, no journalists were ferreted out by the Klansmen. To the trained eye, however, some differences could be detected. Several times, reporters were seen disrupting the marching formation as they stooped to scribble notes, take photos with digital cameras, or answer cell phones. In addition, a number of lavaliere microphones could be seen poking out of robes.
“The undercover journalists were also distinguishable by their footwear. While the real KKK members tended to wear heavy work boots, the journalists were divided between sensible leather oxfords and beat-up sneakers.”
05 June 2002 |
No comments
Remember my post a few days ago about my next-door neighbor, the one who just moved out? “Dumb as a box of rocks, annoying, deeply uninteresting at every level. (Mystery Of Life #3,267: He’s unattractive, stupid, unemployed, completely without charm — but has the hottest damned girlfriend in the building.)”
I just realized I forgot to post that I was awakened Sunday morning at 4:30 by a bang on the door. Three Dallas policemen told me they were investigating the disappearance of the aforementioned girlfriend. (Who, by the way, is apparently 19. He’s in his early 30s.) I told them about all the times I heard him screaming at her. I told them I had no idea if he was ever violent. After about 10 minutes of questions, they thanked me and went on their way. On my way back to bed, I cursed myself for not remembering his name, preventing me from checking up on him.
05 June 2002 |
7 comments
Correction of the day: “In Friday’s column I wrote of Osama: ‘He may be nuttier than an orgy at Mr. Peanut’s poop party but, again, that is often a requirement for villains.’ I meant to say ‘pool party.’ Not ‘poop party.’ Indeed, if you look on your keyboard — right now! (made ya look) — you will see that the ‘P’ and ‘L’ keys are very close to each other…While not above excretory humor, I did not intend to imply that Mr. Peanut — perhaps our most respected legume-humanoid — was into coprophilic group sex. All I meant is that Mr. Peanut likes to have a good time (“Toga! Toga!” the Pillsbury Doughboy just yelled). You know: Charlie Sheen good times, not NEA grant good times. My apologies to Mr. Peanut and the whole Peanut clan.”
04 June 2002 |
4 comments
Had lunch today with a teacher from my old high school. (He’s been teaching in Dallas for about 10 years now.) It was odd to talk to someone who last remembers me at age 14.
Although he was a legendary teacher, scheduling quirks meant I never had him in a class. So his only real dealing with me came as the school’s discipline czar.
I had a 45-minute bus ride every morning, along with six or eight other kids who went to my school or its feeder. I was in seventh grade.
It was exam week, so I and the other older kids were using the long bus ride to study for the tests we had that day. Unfortunately, this little twerp 2nd grader named John decided to use the bus ride to prove, incontrovertibly, that he knew the names of all 41 presidents of these United States.
And could recite them in order. In song. Loudly. Over and over again.
Needless to say, we older kids wanted to throttle him. We kept telling him to shut up — first gently, then with increasing vigor. We appealed to our bus driver, the cool but ineffectual Tim, but he did nothing. Finally, when he progressed from singing the president’s names to screaming them — I believe it was Chester A. Arthur who set me off — I reached over and punched John in the jaw.
He looked at me, stunned. And he shut up for the rest of the bus ride.
Being the little twerp he was — his twerpdom would be more conclusively proven in five more years of bus rides — he tattled to mommy. Mommy called my school, and I got called to the discipline czar’s office.
I was a good kid, too geeky to ever get in trouble. The czar was a little unsure what to do.
“I hear you punched this second grader on the bus.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hear he’s really, really annoying.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, the next time he’s really, really annoying, try really, really hard not to punch him.”
“Yes, sir.”
That was that.
04 June 2002 |
2 comments
Q: How do you know the guy you’re interviewing on the phone is going on waaay too long about issues of absolutely no interest to you?
A: When you start blogging in the middle of your conversation.
03 June 2002 |
No comments
If you’re interested in Pitcairn Island (the remote rock in the South Pacific where the descendants of the mutiny on the Bounty reside), be at the Arlington Convention Center at 2 p.m. Friday. Tom Christian (3rd from left), the island’s elder statesman, is in Dallas and will be talking about Pitcairn life to a group of ham radio buffs.
Regular readers may remember me blogging about Pitcairn before; I spent a week there in 1999. I wrote a few articles about it for my old employer.
I’ll be out of town for Tom’s talk, but I’m going to interview him sometime this week. Should be interesting, given all the stunning controversy going on there.
03 June 2002 |
1 comment
My very favorite book of all time appears to finally be coming to the screen. I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to it or not — in the right hands, it could be great, but the stakes are awfully high. The risk of my pyloric valve slamming shut at the sight of it is significant.
(To give you an idea how deep my devotion runs to A Confederacy of Dunces: the two partitions of my hard drive are named Ignatius and Gonzalez, my external hard drive is named Mancuso, and my laptop is named Miss Trixie, all characters in the novel. For a geek like me, that’s love.)
03 June 2002 |
10 comments
Here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the much-anticipated crabwalk.com weekend update:
Friday: After a dull workday, spent the evening out with Laura, starting out at the MAC to watch the Texclectic Radio Hour, a wannabe improv/music/variety radio show under development by KERA. It was a very entertaining time, although I’m not sure how it’d convert into a weekly hour of radio. Improv is by its nature hit-or-miss, and an audience is pretty forgiving of that in person. You’ve paid good money to attend this performance, after all — you’ve invested in it, you’re not going anywhere, so you might as well laugh, even if the joke’s a bit too obvious. I’m not sure that’d work as well over the airwaves, where the trigger finger’s always on the dial.
The guest on the Texclectic when we saw it was Little Jack Melody, Denton’s own Kurt Weill disciple, who put on a fine performance. But I couldn’t focus on it, because I kept wondering if Mr. Melody was really just Tom Daschle moonlighting. (I’m serious: check out Jack and Tom yourself.)
Also present and of interest to KERA listeners, familiar voices Abby Goldstein and Kim Corbett. They look roughly like what I’d expected. Kim Corbett didn’t seem to understand that radio is not a good visual medium and kept doing his Foster Brooks-as-mime imitation in the background of the show.
(By the way, KERA is, as of this date, still promoing the Yiddish Radio Project prominently on its web page, weeks after it concluded.)
After the show, we went to the newly-opened 2900, which was terrific. Best food I’ve had in a while. (My dish was written up thusly in the linked review: “Red bell pepper ravioli ($14) featured flat pasta packages stuffed with meaty portobello mushroom and smoked Gouda cheese in a thick pistachio cream sauce. Though the ravioli was just a touch undercooked for our tastes, we loved the juxtaposition of the dense, nutty sauce and smooth, creamy pasta.” I had no undercooked complaints — it was deeeelishus.)
Plus as you can tell from that review — and the fact I live one block away from 2900 — I live in what is “fast becoming the city’s most cosmopolitan community.” Take that, Plano.
Saturday: Slept until 2:30 p.m., thus throwing off my sleep schedule for weeks, I’m sure. This is my last restful weekend for a month (I’m in New Haven, Boston, and Las Vegas for the next three), so I didn’t do a damned thing all day. (Well, except watch Chicken Run on DVD.)
Sunday: Had dim sum at Maxim’s with Dena, Natacha, and some of Dena’s friends. Mmm, dim sum. I’d been jonesin’ for sesame balls for months. I loved them so much that I didn’t even feel bad about the castrati sesame wandering the veldt, contemplating their fate.
For those of you with an interest, Mazie was admitted to the hospital on Thursday down in Louisiana. She was having trouble breathing, not to mention her usual ornery trouble taking the medication she’s been ordered to by medical doctors trained in the prescription of medication. She’s gotten a lot of rest and is doing better; she should be back home sometime in the next couple of days.
02 June 2002 |
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