Pavement fans, rejoice.
CNN, Home Of Journalism Standards Dept.: Justin Timberlake: I Don’t Make Out! (On the site’s front page!)
Since his breakup with Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake says he hasn’t been making out with women in bars as the tabloids report. “That’s the thing I laugh at — and sometimes I cry about it too,” the ‘N Sync singer told Us Weekly for its September 9 issue.
For those wondering how Chanda Rubin, Official Tennis Player of crabwalk.com, is faring at the U.S. Open, she’s rockin’ like a Rock’em Sock’em Robot.
Her first victim was Jill Craybas, who made her habitual first round exit, 6-1, 6-3. Then came Anca Barna, who went down 6-4, 6-1. Next up is Lisa Raymond, who should be dismantled into her constituent parts tomorrow.
Here’s a nice profile of Chanda detailing her recent successes, along with an interview from earlier this week.
I’d be very confident about Chanda’s chances of hitting the semis or quarters, but unfortunately, Venus Williams is waiting in the fourth round. Then again, Chanda whooped up on Serena a couple weeks ago, so anything’s possible. (If she makes it past Venus, she’d likely face either Seles or Hingis in the quarters, Capriati in the semis, and Serena or Davenport in the finals.)
I’m off to Rayne after work for a long weekend. (It’s Frog Festival weekend — how could I resist?) I’ll be back in Dallas Tuesday night.
This evening’s six-hour drive will be the first long trip I take in my car since my air conditioning went out two months ago. Pray for me.
Very short story today, on what local schools give students the best chance of getting into Yale, Harvard or Princeton. Coming in first place: Greenhill.
(Not that it helped Greenhill’s most famous blogging alum, who had to settle for some little known Pennsylvania school, where she resorted to writing advice columns under animal pseudonyms.)
Sadly, the copy desk changed the story’s lead, which was originally: “Hey, ambitious parents! Want bragging rights at the law firm?”
Close readers will also notice that I ordered the schools as “Yale, Harvard or Princeton,” contrary to the misguided (though more common) “Harvard, Yale or Princeton.” Hey, I might as well use what little power I have here, yes?
Happiness is finding out you get to spend two autumn days at a Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie house.
Links to while away your empty hours today, mostly cribbed from Arts & Letters Daily:
- Chess hotties. Move over, Polgar sisters!
- A nice critique of Putnam’s Bowling Alone.
- Calvin Trillin on wine snobs.
- Umberto Eco on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
- Ron Rosenbaum on journalism and pastries.
I’ve been kicking the tires on Jaguar the last few days, and I’m impressed. Maybe not $129 impressed, but impressed nonetheless. The OS is more responsive and the polish is impressive — the Finder in 10.1.5 always seemed a couple clicks off. And of course, the stability’s still rock solid. That said, here are my only three complaints:
- Disabling command-tab for app switching, which LiteSwitch X handled much more logically than the OS did. Now command-tab can’t be taken away from the OS, and I’m stuck option-tabbing through apps.
- My cheapo laser printer doesn’t work anymore. Samsung says they’re working on a new driver. Perhaps they’re too busy with other tasks.
- My broadband connection now drops every time I put the ‘puter to sleep. I can’t figure out anyway to get it back other than restarting. Which is no fun at all, since the ease of low-power sleep in OS X was perhaps my favorite feature of the system.
Anyone with suggestions on fixing one or more of these problems should email me, yo.
Remember my next-door neighbor, the one the cops were looking for a while back because his jailbait girlfriend had gone missing? Well, I spotted the two of them outside the TABC the other night, apparently no worse for wear. So you can all stop your worrying — I know it’s been keeping you up nights.
Today’s nominee for Word That Shall Never Be Repeated: webinar.
Alex Rodriguez hit a home run off an eephus pitch today. That’s a hell of an accomplishment: the eephus is notoriously unfriendly to power hitters. (An “eephus” pitch is a high, arcing pitch thrown at very slow speed — only about half the speed of a regular fastball. Some can go as far as 30 or 40 feet into the air; they drop right over the plate.) They’re hard to hit far since they’re thrown so slowly; Rip Sewell, who invented the pitch, gave up only one home run using it, a famous shot to Ted Williams. Just one more sign that A-Rod is beyond human.
Two stories of mine in today’s paper, neither of particular interest to most: one on a boost in algebra test scores and one on federal transfer law.
Congrats, you crazy kids. (Or, as they say in Switzerland, félicitations, gosses fous.)
Since I promised it back on Monday, a brief recounting of the Northern Tour 2002:
- Landed in Boston Friday night. Had a nice time at ex-roomie Bob’s wedding. He’s Catholic, she’s Jewish, so the merged ceremony had something of a priest-and-a-rabbi-walk-into-a-bar feel. Bob forgot to kiss the bride at the appointed hour, but other than that, a lovely event.
- Rented a car Sunday and drove west. Hertz gave me a Hyundai Sonata, which was a pleasant surprise — fun to drive through the backroad hills of upstate New York. Made a couple-hour stop in Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame, a pleasant diversion in a quaint little lakefront town. Learned of the existance of the Rayne Rice Birds, a minor-league team in my Louisiana home town from the 1920s to the 1940s.
- Hit Toronto around 1 a.m., after a border guard checking my NAFTA motives asked why I was visiting Canada: “You seeing some girl you met on the Internet or something?” I hastened to point out I met her at a party in Austin, Texas, thank you very much. Had a very nice time touring alt-Toronto and the area around UT (not to be confused with UT or UT). Even got to dine at Aunties and Uncles, which I insist is the inspiration for the Flashing Lights tune of the same name. Also: walked past many Portuguese people, watched the finest Canadian vampire movie of the mid-1990s, and consumed bad sausage.
- After a couple days, mournfully headed down the 401 to Detroit Rock City and my final destination, Toledo. Hung out with the old Blade crew and got to see some bloggers. First, Tam, who is getting honest-for-true married tomorrow at BlogCon (!) in Vegas. Then it was finally getting to meet the very funny Kelly M. And of course, got to see my favorite Toledo blogger, Kelly L.
Another plus: got to see Molly, who some may remember labeled me a burritovore in the pages of some crappy rag. Saw two drive-in movies and watched The Paper for the first time (a crime for a newspaperman like myself). And thanks to my host Ryan, even scored a t-shirt.
The plane didn’t crash on the way back to DFW, so the trip must be judged a success.
At the end of a date, a woman looking around my apartment once told me: “You know what I like about you? You’re not one of those guys who play guitar. You know the kind of guy I’m talking about.”
I pointed to the guitar case sitting not 15 feet from her shoes. She quickly backtracked. Perhaps it was good enough that I’m not one of those guys who play guitar well.
If I were interested in getting beyond the 12 or so chords I know, I can think of few better teachers than Television’s Richard Lloyd, whose solos on Marquee Moon are still blowing minds 25 years later. (A more recent vintage of music fans may know him for his guitar work on Matthew Sweet’s 1990s albums.) His lessons look too technical for me, but no doubt are essential for any budding art-punks in the crabwalk.com audience.
Music alert: the new Interpol record is well worth your money, if you’re into that Joy Division-y, Smiths-y sound.
I’m looking for an easy way to create a bookmarklet that, when clicked, would open multiple, pre-defined web pages. Anybody got a good idea?
Chanda Rubin, my old high school classmate and the Official Tennis Player of crabwalk.com, is seeded 14th at the U.S. Open. (See the May-July archives for previous Chanda coverage.)
I haven’t been keeping all you Chandafans as up to date as I should since her terrific runs at Wimbledon and the French. Ten days ago, she won the JP Morgan Chase Open in Los Angeles. And it’s not like there wasn’t any competition. She beat Serena Williams (!) 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 in the quarters, ending her 21-match win streak. In the semis, she destroyed world No. 4 Jelena Dokic 6-0, 6-2, then beat Lindsay Davenport 5-7, 7-6 (5), 6-3 in the finals. I tell you: Chanda’s on fire!
I’ve been on a Spoon kick lately. James, himself quite the Spooner, gave me a copy of a two-disc rarities comp when I was in Toronto. While zipping across the backroads of upstate New York last week, windows down and sunroof open on my little rental Sonata, I put A Series of Sneaks into repeat overdrive. I’m eagerly anticipating their 9/10-11 show at Rubber Gloves. And yesterday, their new album Kill the Moonlight came out.
I was looking online for the lyrics to (perhaps) my favorite Spoon track, “Quincy Punk Episode.” Great, rocking song that never fails to get my air drum attack launched. But I had no idea the song title is based on an actual, bizarrely moralistic episode of Quincy, the Jack Klugman vehicle from the early 1980s. (Synopsis of the episode here; audio and video clips here.) Much fun.
Here’s my story from today’s front page, on how the feds say Texas’ dropout problem is actually several times larger than state officials claim it is. For reasons utterly invisible to you, Gentle Reader, I’m quite happy with it. Not that it still won’t be a boring read.
Went to the Tipperary Inn last night for a trivia contest. We finished one question away from victory, alas, out of 19 teams. My highlight: being the only one in the bar who could answer the question: “Why is Pierre Omidyar famous?” Of course, considering the readership of this site, lots of you probably know.
Also had the unique experience of being recognized in the bar by three crabwalk.com readers (Dave, whom I’d met at SXSW when I noticed his Good Records t-shirt, and two CDMOM traders, Mike and Tony). Since I’m not in the habit of posting photos of myself here, I’m still not sure what it was that gave me away — perhaps the way I would speak every couple hours, pause to mention the exact time in the Central time zone, then plaintively say, “no comments?”
One hopes they will all attend the DFWblogs.com happy hour this evening.
Media whoring alert: I’ll be on TXCN through the evening. Haven’t taped it yet, but I’m curious how it’ll turn out. I’ll be talking about a wonky, stats-laden topic — differing dropout data methodologies! — but it’s also one of the few topics I actually know something about.
One audio artifact of my Northern Tour was a CD-R from Katherine of her CBC radio piece on blogging. (Yes, observant long-time readers, that would be the piece I blogged about a couple months ago.)
So, for your audial edification, I present Katherine Parrish on blogging (warning: 11.5 meg download). If you can stand the wait (and the host’s odd elocution of the word “blogging”), you’ll hear yours truly right before the end.
Harry Potter fans: check out a book just issued by a friend of mine from college, Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody. It’s a laff riot — guaranteed!
“Personality test: When you hear “Singing in the Rain,” do you envision Gene Kelly or Malcolm McDowell? If you picture Gene Kelly, don’t date someone who envisions Malcolm McDowell. Good sex, but it’ll never work out, so start every relationship with this question.”
Two of my cultural heroes complain about their vegetarianism at the same time!
First, Ira Glass, host of This American Life, in dialogue with a reporter: “The food was vegetarian, but the couch was leather.”
Reporter: “You’re a vegetarian?”
Glass: “Yeah, and I hate it.”
Second, Travis Morrison, lead singer of The Dismemberment Plan, on a recent tour in Spain: “Any pretense of vegetarianism went out the window when I was confronted with a Serrano ham sandwich, and for six weeks, I was a crazy omnivore. I mean, you’re in Spain, you gotta eat pork. I ain’t no Islam.”
Here’s a nice piece in Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger on The Long Winters, a very pleasant band from Seattle. The piece is fine, in the usual too-long alt-weekly way (don’t those people have editors?), but the real kicker comes on the third page of the story. That’s where the paper, in the spirit of full disclosure, details all the ways the paper and the band are intertwined. Some highlights:
Not noted in Jeff DeRoche’s fine feature on the Long Winters are the numerous CONFLICTS OF INTEREST that may have colored the writing and editing process. Indeed, the very selection of the Long Winters for a feature article in The Stranger smacks of favoritism. To facilitate the drafting of outraged letters to the editor, I have been asked to identify each instance of COI.
Mr. DeRoche’s article is about one JOHN RODERICK, lead singer/guitarist/songwriter for the Long Winters. Mr. Roderick has, in the past, been an occasional contributor to this paper. The Stranger’s film editor, SEAN NELSON, is also a member of the Long Winters, and Mr. Nelson was once the lead singer for the band HARVEY DANGER, which featured EVAN SULT on drums. Mr. Sult, like Mr. Roderick, has occasionally contributed to this paper.
Additionally, Mr. Sult is the co-owner of 10TH AVENUE EAST PUBLISHING, a local publisher that recently released a book by Stranger calendar editor BRIAN GOEDDE (This World Is Yours, $10). Continuing along the Mr. Nelson vein, Mr. Nelson once worked at Metro Cinemas with BRADLEY STEINBACHER, with whom he now works with at The Stranger. Mr. Steinbacher’s former ROOMMATE used to date John Roderick who, readers will recall, is the subject of Mr. DeRoche’s article. Mr. Steinbacher’s former girlfriend, STEPHANIE PURE, went to high school with BO GILLILAND, former member of Western State Hurricanes, Mr. Roderick’s former band.
Additionally, Mr. Nelson’s grandmother, the late Evelyn Barrows, was a Polish Jew. POLAND is a country in EUROPE, and Europe is the continent that Mr. Roderick WALKED ACROSS; Mr. Roderick’s walk across Europe is the central metaphor of Mr. DeRoche’s article. Mr. Goedde studied in Madrid, a large city in Europe, and Harvey Danger toured Europe, but did not play Madrid. The drummer for the Long Winters, MICHAEL SHILLING, a Jew—like John Roderick, a Jesuit-educated Protestant, and Evan Sult, also a Protestant—has written for The Stranger.
[long entertaining section snipped]
Finally, the aforementioned Mr. Gilliland, who is, as already noted, a former member of Western State Hurricanes, is currently the boyfriend of former Stranger contributor (and current associate editor at the Seattle Weekly) LEAH GREENBLATT. Ms. Greenblatt has a pretty sweet ass, as does Mr. Roderick.
The crabwalk.com Northern Tier Listening Tour 2002 has been successfully completed. Much fun was had. Several beers were consumed. Wedded bliss was witnessed. Canadian rock knowledge was imparted. More details than you’d care to know will soon be typed, posted, and ignored by all the people Google’s been sending me lately on “serena williams naked” hunts. A special interim thanks to the folks who provided me with couch/futon/dungeon/bed of nails space, Fiona (Boston), Katherine (Toronto), and Ryan (Toledo).
For those of you who thought I was joking about that Cheap Date post a while back, Saturday’s paper contained evidence otherwise. Keep the ideas coming; I’ll need them.
I’m in Boston. And here’s my story from today’s front page, on the failure of a new school choice law.
Blogging may be sporadic next week, since I leave in a few hours for vacation. Still should have email access should you need to reach me.
To be clear: when I say my blogging will be sporadic, I mean in quantity. It’s pretty much always sporadic in quality.
Note to self: Continue to avoid writing here about the issues I cover there; continue keeping any opinions on education topics to myself; try to avoid becoming this guy.
Tuesday’s Salt Lake Tribune: The 2002 U.S. Army Soldier Show is coming to Dugway Proving Ground on Aug. 16, with top entertainers performing for soldiers and their families. Artists who are to perform include Destiny’s Child, Brooks and Dunn, Whitney Houston, Faith Hill, Mary J. Blige, ‘N Sync, Alanis Morrisette, Pink, Alicia Keys and Jennifer Lopez.
Correction in Wednesday’s Salt Lake Tribune: Soldiers will be impersonating top entertainers at the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground on Aug. 16. A brief in The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday misstated the identities of the performers.
A quote I need to remember to use more often in conversation: H.L. Mencken on the writing of Pres. Warren Harding: “It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.” Seems like a quote with many uses.
Actually, Mencken’s entire passage merits quoting, as so much of his work does:
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
In case anyone’s wondering, my grandmother is under strict orders to stay inside. One of the recent West Nile deaths was about 20 miles from her house, and there was a confirmed infection about eight miles down the road.
Not that it takes much convincing to get her to stay inside. It’s August in south Louisiana — she’s not stupid.
I promise this site will soon stop be about my media whoring and be more about traditional crabwalk.com subjects, like M&M color controversies and how to impress a woman on less than $30 a night. But I’ll be on WBAP AM 820 at 10:06 a.m. tomorrow, after my appearance on KLIF this afternoon. (Dedicated crabwalk.com fans outside the Metroplex will note that both stations stream their audio live online. And I’ll be on TXCN at 4:10 instead of 4:20 this afternoon, repeating through the early evening. Really, this will all be over soon — it’s very unseemly, I know.)
I generally try to avoid potty humor on crabwalk.com, but I’m inclined to move to Michigan and vote for this guy just for giggles.
For those wondering what else has been keeping me so damned busy the last couple weeks, here’s another answer: the DMN’s back to school section. As U.S. News and World Report would say, “It’s news you can use!”
I had four stories in the section: one on the federal rights guaranteed to special ed students, one on how to be a geek and research your school on that newfangled Internet, one on the state’s early reading test, and one on education acronyms.
On top of that, here’s my story from today’s front page, on the new, tougher state standardized test, the TAKS.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks.
Also: I’ll be on Greg Knapp’s talk show on KLIF AM 570 tomorrow afternoon at 6:43 p.m. (Oh, the precision of the electronic media!) Mom always said I had a face made for radio.
For those wondering what’s been keeping me so damned busy the last couple weeks, here’s one answer: The Dallas Morning News’ new education page. (And yes, I know there are a couple layout screwups — I’ve been trying to get those fixed for days, to no avail. I did code the thing, but a few things were out of my control. Harrumph.)
Bad luck is wearing a vaguely loud, two-sizes-too-large patterned shirt to work, then being told you’re going to be on TV that afternoon. Live TV, no less.
Those seeking excuses to taunt and giggle at my expense should know I’ll be on TXCN every day this week, live, at about 4:20 p.m. This is along with WFAA tomorrow morning around 9:20 and a couple radio talk shows. I’m getting overexposed.
Richard Roeper has some interesting thoughts on the identifying rape victims issue. (He makes reference to an Omaha column in the story; here it is.)
Good morning! Here’s my story from today’s newspaper, on how a local Catholic school is asking all of its parents to undergo a criminal background check.
Classic journalism, about the fact Giants RHP Livan Hernandez wasn’t traded before this week’s deadline:
San Jose Mercury News: Hernandez happy to stay after hearing trade talk.
Contra Costa Times: Distraught Hernandez would have liked trade.
Newspapers routinely publish the names of people who’ve been murdered, or assaulted, or kidnapped, or had any number of other horrible things done to them. But when a woman is raped, most have policies banning the use of names.
This came to a head yesterday, when the two teenaged girls who were kidnapped in California were found. CNN and the rest had been running the girls’ names and photos all day (in the absurd overkill way we’ve gotten used to — but that’s another complaint). Then, when the girls were rescued and they told investigators they’d been raped, suddenly their names and photos disappeared.
(For instance, this is today’s New York Times story — no names. Yesterday’s, which included names, seems to have been taken down from the web site. This is the AP story after the girls were rescued but before they said they were raped — complete with names; this is the story after — no names.)
Anyone else think this is absurd? To me, this just dates back to the old premise that a woman who’d been raped was somehow spoiled and shamed, that she was somehow at fault. Is being raped somehow more shameful than being beaten or murdered? Not publishing the name (and thus treating it like every other crime) just increases the stigma attached to being a victim of the crime.
Here’s my story in today’s paper, on the new school ratings released in Texas yesterday. Another snoozer.
Lo, vast is the reach of the CD Mix of the Month Club. Just did a sort on the Word file that holds everybody’s address. As of the July trade, CDMOM discs have made their way into 28 states (plus the District of Columbia), three Canadian provinces, and three other foreign countries (Australia, Austria, and Ireland). Close to 500 CDs have been swapped in total.
Fright-Show Alert: I’ll be TXCN all night, talking about school ratings. And, in the interest of informing the easily frightened early on, I’ll also be on Good Morning Texas on WFAA next Tuesday.
And no, I won’t be talking about any Cheap Dates.
While I’m posting about WFAA, I’ve been meaning to post this little whirlwind tour through television past: WFAA at Fifty. Really interesting stuff — and I’m not just saying that because the people who own them write me a check every two weeks..
Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)
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