Ah, the good old days — when people who hijacked planes were romantic heroes fighting the evils of colonialism! John Grimonprez’ “DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y” is a documentary of the revolutionary impulse and how television covered it in the ’60s and ’70s. Check out the trailer — the last segment is priceless.
From the same company: I’ve been meaning for years to track down a copy of The Rainbow Man/John 3:16, the doc about Rollen Stewart, the guy who used to wear a rainbow wig and hold up those “John 3:16” signs at football games in the ’80s. He didn’t turn out well. Trailer here.
Actually, if you’ve got the bandwidth, check out all the DVDs from Other Cinema. They’re great — I love this one.
30 June 2004 |
2 comments
Remember that Orange County gang rape trial I’ve been writing about? (Here, here, and here.) The one where the defense attorney seemed to be relying on the most gruesome tactics imaginable, claiming an unconscious (possibly drugged) 16-year-old girl was such a big slut that she basically deserved to be raped by three asshole boys?
Well, the sickening defense efforts appear to have worked. The jury has deadlocked and the judge has declared a mistrial. According a juror, the panel was leaning towards not guilty. All this despite the boys’ videotaping themselves in the act. Amazing.
If you want to know what sort of Boy Scouts we’re talking about here, check out this video of the rapists. (Oops, make that “alleged” rapists. Old journalism habits die hard.) I guess that’s the way they do it in the O.C.
29 June 2004 |
6 comments
I haven’t the slightest idea who Thad Povey is, but he’s a cool dad. He:
(a) turned his six-year-old daughter Isabel on to the Decemberists;
(b) took her to their show in San Francisco last night; and
(c) made a music video, starring Isabel, for the carnival-themed Part IV of The Tain, their recent Celtic epic.
Someday, I’m going to turn my kids into little indie rockers, too.
Update: Actually, a quick Googling lets you know that Thad Povey is an experimental filmmaker. Among his techniques: Finding random snippets of film and handpainting or otherwise doctoring each frame individually. Here’s an example. Here’s an interview.
28 June 2004 |
2 comments
Have you been keeping yourself up nights wondering: “I wish I knew what music Josh has been listening to recently”? Caught yourself thinking: “Man, I love that crabwalk.com, but I just wish Josh could make it a bit more self-involved”? Is a window into my recent musical forays the only thing standing between you and true self-actualization?
I present to you this page, which reports the last 20 songs I’ve listened to on iTunes. Since I typically keep iTunes on random, it should be a pretty good sampling of my collection. The page is courtesy of iTunes Watcher, an app by Michael Simmons. If all goes well, I may soon be able to flow all that song info onto this page.
Speaking of my MP3 collection, it’s approaching the 19,000-song mark. I’ve been ripping old CDs like mad these last few days, and I should hit 20,000 shortly. I’ve finally reached the “M”s in my collection, working backward — halfway home!
Speaking of shortly, a redesign — the first in this site’s nearly-three-year history — should be popping up on your screens in the very near future.
27 June 2004 |
4 comments
Kelly points out this interview at Gothamist with “Liz Penn,” a.k.a. Dana Stevens.
Liz/Dana is the proprietor of The High Sign, this site’s preferred independent movie-crit site. She was also the subject of a massive two-part investigation (here and here) by yours truly into her real name. She finally explains the name switcheroo in the Gothamist piece, even advancing an argument that makes a degree of sense. (She confirms this site’s findings that she’s a Dana in “Liz” clothing, not the other way around.)
Anyway, that winning Liz personality shines through in the interview. She reveals herself as a shy, cheap, geeky homebody — in other words, my perfect match! Plus, we get more visual confirmation that she’s cute cute cute. Dana, call me!
25 June 2004 |
5 comments
The new location of Dallas’ best restaurant, the La Duni Baking Studio, opens today. Should you ever, you know, ever need to eat or something.
24 June 2004 |
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You know, with all the hubbub about the Olsen twins of late (their crappy movie, their turning 18), a few business pubs have written about the marketing challenge the twins face as they try to shift their fan base from 8-year-olds to adults. One of the biggest problems: Getting people to differentiate between them, since people have thought of them as a unified MaryKateandAshley unit for so long. Much was made of the fact that, in their movie, one of them was supposed to be the “wild,” irreponsible one and the other was supposed to be practical and collected. (Which was which? Hell if I know.)
So then it comes out that Mary Kate is anorexic and canceling some public events to seek treatment. And the first thing I think of is: I wonder if this is part of her people’s attempts to differentiate the two of them. Instead of MaryKateandAshley, people will now think of “Mary Kate, the anorexic one” and “Ashley, the…other one.”
And hell, maybe they’ve got some new identity baking for Ashley. “Ashley, the one who only dates Latino men.” “Ashley, the one with an interest in Moroccan food.” “Ashley, the one with psoriasis.”
The fact that my mind went immediately to such cynical thoughts means I am a very bad person.
In related news, bad person and Friend of Crabwalk.com Jane is selling these eminently tasteful t-shirts.
24 June 2004 |
4 comments
An interesting piece on how the newest team in the NBA, the Charlotte Bobcats, selected their team name and built their brand.
The most disturbing part of the article comes when writer Darren Rovell discusses why focus groups liked one of the other naming options the team considered, the Charlotte Flight:
Another favorite on the list was the Charlotte Flight. When asked about the sources of local pride, interview participants often mentioned the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
So let me get this straight: One of the biggest sources of local pride in Charlotte is the airport? If you ask residents what’s so great about Charlotte, they actually respond: “We’ve got a nice airport — it makes it so easy to leave”?
How pathetic must a city be if the highlight of a trip there is picking up your bags at the luggage carousel?
24 June 2004 |
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The lineup for the Austin City Limits Festival looks downright insane. Among the many bands of interest: Broken Social Scene, Calexico, My Morning Jacket, the Pixies, the Roots, Sloan, Spoon, and Wilco.
22 June 2004 |
4 comments
Another early end for ChandaWatch: Chanda loses in the first round, 7-6, 6-3. She started out up 5-0 in the first, but (I presume) those knee problems kicked in. At least the writeup is a very nice pro-Chanda piece:
Rubin is one of those players who seems to have been around for decades, and indeed it is 14 years since she made her Grand Slam debut at the US Open, at the age of 14. Much of her career seems to have been a tussle with injury, and her ranking has see-sawed correspondingly. Yet she managed to finish 2003 on a career-high year-end ranking of number nine at the grand age of 28, which makes her, Martina Navratilova aside, of course quite an old lady around the lawns of SW19. Today she was giving away the best part of nine years to her French opponent.
Moreover, Rubin is certainly one of the most lauded players in the game, having won no end of gongs and prizes for being a jolly worthy person. She has been named the Player Who Makes A Difference, won an Arthur Ashe Leadership Award and an Outstanding Celebrity Award, been pronounced one of America’s Most Caring Athletes, and even had her face on a stamp issued by the US Postal Service in 1996, which makes her something akin to royalty. Certainly tennis royalty, in any case.
22 June 2004 |
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Texas to set up WiFi at rest stops. It’s sad that I’m as much of a geek as I am, but this will probably mean I’ll stop once or twice on the drive to Austin or Houston or Shreveport.
Those interested in Cajun issues may want to check the comments of this post, where Reese Fuller and I are having a discussion on the future of Cajun identity. This crabwalk.com post will no doubt some day form the backbone of an anthropology dissertation.
Saw The Decemberists and The Long Winters last night. Much rock joy was had, particularly when Crutchy McGee strapped on a big marching-band-style bass drum and started wandering the audience in a black Rasputin beard.
22 June 2004 |
1 comment
Quick question for you domain-registration junkies: There’s a domain I really, really want. For the purposes of this post, let’s call it Acme.com.
For the last 10 years, it’s been owned by a company called Acme Corp. It made sense for them to own it. But about five years ago, Acme Corp. changed its name and brand to something new. Since then, Acme.com has just been a placeholder page, with a few lines saying “Acme Corp. is now Blahblah Corp. Visit our new web site at Blahblah.com.”
Did I mention I really want to own this Acme.com?
So today, on a whim, I go to Acme.com. There’s nothing there. Not a 404 error — just IE’s standard “We can’t find www.acme.com” error, the one it throws off when you go to an unregistered domain.
So I ran a quick whois to see what’s up. Turns out that Acme Corp. — on purpose or by mistake — has let Acme.com expire. It expired on June 3.
I immediately try to register it. But alas, my registrar (Dotster) tells me the domain name is taken! I try another couple registrars, and they tell me the same thing — it’s taken. But the whois entry (verified at several whois servers) clearly says Acme Corp.’s claim on the domain has expired, and the site is clearly gone.
What can I do? Is there some sort of rule on a window of time after a domain expires when someone can renew? Do I need to jump through any special hoops to get this domain? Help me out, people, I’m dying over here! I need this domain!
Anyone who can help me get this domain gets $20 and a six-pack of beer.
21 June 2004 |
5 comments
The return of ChandaWatch! Chanda Rubin — professional tennis star and one-time high school classmate of your proprietor — is getting ready to start another run at Wimbledon. You may remember from recent ChandaWatches that Our Hero is having knee problems, which has dropped her down to the 17th seed — the lowest she’s faced in a major in recent years. But she’s fared well on grass in the past (winning Wimbledon in juniors, winning the Eastbourne tuneup the last two years), so there’s hope as long as her various hinges remain operational.
Anyway, she’ll face Francophile Marion Bartoli in the first, with Maria Elena Camerin and Ai Sugiyama likely to follow. If the knee is holding up, she can beat the higher-seeded Ai, no problem. Then would come Dementieva and probably some trouble.
21 June 2004 |
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Hey, children of the ’80s! Did you while away childhood hours watching You Can’t Do That On Television, Canada’s greatest export south of the 49th parallel? Did you ever, even once, in elementary school giggle when someone said “I don’t know” because your youthful imagination pictured a bucket of green slime pouring down on his/her head?
Well, if you’re still living in the first Reagan administration — and after this month’s hagiography, who isn’t? — SlimeCon 2004 is for you! Yes, you can finally (a) have an excuse to fly to scenic Ottawa, (b) see what comedic genius Les Lye looks like with white hair, or (c) ask Christine “Moose” McGlade what her motivation was in some random 1983 episode.
Hey, I loved YCDTOTV as much as the next kid. But it’s been 20 years. Perhaps it might be time for some people to move on. Check out this clip of the “best” of SlimeCon 2002. Gotta love the awkward intros of past cast members, particularly the guy who you can tell is thinking: “I wonder if anyone will notice I’ve gotten enormous in the last 25 years.”
21 June 2004 |
1 comment
Just because I never linked to it, here’s my story from Thursday’s paper, about network security problems in Texas’ research labs.
21 June 2004 |
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Can I give a shout out to Kris Cox? Kris and I went to school together, he two years ahead of me. Now he’s two shots off the lead at the U.S. Open.
I’m telling you — between him and women’s tennis star Chanda Rubin, my small town Louisiana high school (enrollment 240, grades 6-12) has produced more than its share of athletic talent.
18 June 2004 |
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John Roderick’s tour diary:
This version of American history is very popular among high-school sophomores who love Jim Morrison, Antioch dialectics-majors, Germans with “Crazy Horse” tattoos, and New York fashion models whose boyfriends’ friends read “Dude, Where’s My Country?” I guess it’s a more enlightened view than the old ’50s grade-school history version, wherein the Cowboys and Indians shot cap guns at each other and then, poof!, everyone went home to dinner and Eisenhower built the Interstate Highways, but this ‘new history’ where Uncle Sam has dollar-signs for eyeballs and is crushing Indians and Blacks under his jack-boots is worse than false, it’s dull and false.
This is to remind you that John Roderick is an interesting person, and that his band, The Long Winters, is an interesting band (even if their last album was only so-so), and that the Long Winters will be opening for another interesting band, The Decemberists, at Trees Monday night. All right-thinking Dallasites should be in attendance for what promises to be a show of great import.
Long Winters tour diaries always make for good reading. They’re a bit more comfortable with the magic of prose than most bands. Although it’s a year old, keyboardist Sean Nelson’s diary from last year is a personal favorite, filled with great tour-bus mise en scène. Sean’s Day 21 entry is also where I first heard of The Loser’s Lounge (“The Lounge is a loose collective of New York musicians, artists, and actors who get together once a month and pay tribute to a great songwriter who somehow fits the banner of loser” — including the Bee Gees, George Harrison, Rod Stewart, and Harry Nilsson). Also liked this quote from that entry:
With a couple of hours to kill before the first show (8 and 11), I browse the little independent record store in Cooper Square that’s right across the street from the big ass Tower Records. Browse browse browse. There was a time when I would go into record stores on tour just to have an interaction with the clerk, to prove that life was actually happening. And then, the process became so refined that I would go just to have an interaction with the records. It was like visiting friends; bands I knew, bands I liked, bands I didn’t. The records I bought were like souvenirs of my visit. Now, the refinement is complete. I just go into these stores and look. A wise man I know makes a physiological distinction between shame — a tingling, burning sensation around the scalp precipitated by something that has already happened — and dread — a bilious lump sinking into the chest as a harbinger of things to come. Either way you slice it, record stores are problematic for me.
18 June 2004 |
1 comment
The MLA Language Map tracks the linguistic makeup of American places. In other words, it is a database, derived from census data, of who speaks what languages where.
Regular readers of this site know I’m a proud Cajun and very interested in all things related to language persistence. Just a few decades ago — until World War II — Cajuns were almost entirely Francophone. (Some spoke English, too, but only to talk to those damned Anglos.) The rise of a national popular culture and a host of economic factors have since pushed French to the sidelines.
(To put this in my family’s context, my great-grandmother, Oureline Dugas Mouton, died in 1988 without knowing a word of English. My grandmother Mazie grew up speaking only French and didn’t learn English until grade school — but she barely spoke any French in her last few years. My mother knows enough French to get by, but hasn’t used it in conversation for years. And by the time I was a kid, French was the language the old people spoke when they didn’t want you to understand what they were saying. So while I took French class in school, my language skills are mediocre.)
Anyway, I used the MLA site to run a few numbers for Louisiana. This is the sad result.
You’ll notice that there are still 194,314 French speakers in Louisiana — the largest total of any state and more than one-tenth of all French speakers nationally. That’s still a lot more than the second-largest minority language in Louisiana — Spanish, which has 105,189 speakers.
But look at the age breakdown on that chart. Among children aged 5 to 17, there are 16,395 who speak French at home. But there are 20,689 who speak Spanish at home.
In other words, among today’s children, French isn’t even Louisiana’s secondmost popular language. And this is in a state with a relatively tiny Hispanic population.
Depressing — particularly with all the evidence out there about the benefits of being bilingual. At some point, folks Zachary Richard — who tie concepts of Cajun identity with the persistence of the language — are going to have to realize that battle is already lost. If a Cajun identity is going to persist, it’ll have to do so separate from the language.
16 June 2004 |
5 comments
Just because I have to get back to regular posting someday:
- Announcing Mumkin, the newest addition to the clipfile.org family of weblogs. It’s run by the lovely and talented Abby Wood — Harvard Law student, crabwalk.com reader, ex-Dallasite, and one-time-long-ago blind date of mine. Abby is working at USAID in Egypt this summer. Remember that sunscreen, Ab!
- JustConcerts.com, the CBC’s online catalog of recent Canadian concerts. Mostly indie rock, including crabwalk.com faves like Calexico, the Decemberists, and the Weakerthans. (By the way, the Weakerthans’ Left and Leaving is absolutely wonderful. Couldn’t stop listening to it last week. Track 11, in particular.)
Anyway, combine the RealAudio streams from JustConcerts.com and something like Audio Hijack and you’ve got lots of new good material for your iPod. (Audio Hijack rocks. Great for recording This American Life or other NPR shows for a long drive, too.)
- Sorority Girls From Hell, a fast-talking blast from the 1980s and the 1950s — at the same time!
- Pitchformula.com, in which a data network engineer tries to algorithmically determine what Pitchforkmedia.com wants in an album.
- My column from last Monday, since I didn’t get a chance to link to it then.
- Beulah is breaking up. Glad I caught them a couple weeks ago.
16 June 2004 |
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I’m back in Dallas. Thanks again to all of you who have called or emailed. I really appreciate it. Something approaching regular crabwalk.com life will return soon.
14 June 2004 |
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A thousand thank yous to those of you who’ve called, emailed, sent flowers, or in some way let me know you were thinking of Mazie and me. I’m doing about as well as I could be, I imagine. Funeral’s tomorrow. Tomorrow night will hopefully bring a long night’s sleep.
Hopefully I’ll be up to writing more about Mazie sometime soon. But in the meantime, I want to point out that Howard Swindle died a few hours after Mazie. From 2000 until he entered hospice care a couple months ago, Howard sat across the aisle from me at the Morning News. Let me tell you, that man was a hell of a journalist. Overhearing his phone calls was a journalistic education — he could get anybody to tell him anything. And he was an honest man with an underdog’s spirit. These three grafs in the DMN obit tell the story:
“One of his secrets to getting information was that he was so likeable,” said Eric Miller, a former colleague. Mr. Miller, now an investigator in Washington, said he learned from Mr. Swindle that the soft-sell works. “He never talked down to people, and treated everyone with respect, whether they lived in trailer parks or mansions. I marveled at how he could get anyone to talk.”
[Managing editor Stu] Wilk said he, too, was struck by Mr. Swindle’s ability to befriend even those he investigated.
“His reporting sent many people to prison over the years, but, remarkably, some of these guys continued to regard Howard as a buddy even after they were in the slammer,” said Mr. Wilk. “I don’t know many - actually any - other reporters who could pull that off.”
09 June 2004 |
1 comment
Mazie Benton died peacefully at her home today at 12:58 p.m.
Arrangements are being handled by the Duhon Funeral Home in Rayne, Louisiana. Burial is tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning.
08 June 2004 |
16 comments
I’m in Rayne. Mazie is dying. She’s lying unresponsive in her recliner. The last 72 hours have been a sleepless hell. Feel free to send whatever positive vibes/prayers/what have you her way.
FYI, if you need to reach me, my cell phone has picked an excellent time to decide Rayne is out of its usable range. So if you need to reach me, the home number here is 337-334-5475. But since it’s the only phone in the house — and since, in her true neo-Luddite style, Mazie never got call waiting installed — there’s a good chance you’ll get a busy signal.
08 June 2004 |
7 comments
Pitchfork takes a big crap on Travis Morrison’s newest online-only track — a cover of Ludacris’ “What’s Your Fantasy.”
But hell, I dig it. Unlike most of the white-boy-with-acoustic-guitar-covering-rap-songs microgenre, this one’s clearly coming from a place of love.
For Travis’ previous movement in this direction, check out his version of LL Cool J’s “Around the Way Girl,” taken from this KEXP in-studio. (That one made it onto the January 2003 CD Mix of the Month.)
In other news, the new Tahiti 80 mini-album is aces. Aces, brother. Overpriced (at $14.99 for eight songs, although it does come with a bonus DVD), so you may want to grab it at eMusic.
04 June 2004 |
No comments
Here’s my story from today’s front page, on the increasing perils of being a Texas fifth-grader.
(In the print edition, this story accompanies a full-page chart with the TAKS test results for 54 of our area districts. This chart has been the bane of my existence for some time. It is complete. Hosanna, hosanna!)
04 June 2004 |
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This post will be funny to any Boing Boing readers. (The comments are funny, too, ‘tho in a different way.)
03 June 2004 |
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Last month, when I was in San Francisco for work, I borrowed friend Lisa’s car for a day and drove up to Santa Rosa, home of the Charles M. Schulz Museum. (I am not ashamed to admit I kept tearing up as I walked the halls. I mean, seriously, dude died hours before his last strip ran! I’m such a softie.)
Anyway, in the gift shop, I picked up a copy of Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, Chip Kidd’s gorgeous collection of strips. It made for great reading on the flight back to Dallas — it’s one of those books you want to treat as a work of art in itself.
I didn’t know at the time who Chip Kidd was, but he’s probably the top book-cover designer in the world, along with being perhaps the world’s top patron of the graphic novel. (He edited Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Daniel Clowes’ David Boring.)
Here’s an interview with Kidd in this week’s Onion AV Club.
Here’s a book about Kidd, by Veronique Vienne.
Here’s a blog devoted to the art of book-cover design.
02 June 2004 |
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It must be tough being Perry A. Farrell, Detroit Free Press sports writer. Your Pistons are going to the NBA finals, but everybody still thinks you’re the nutcase ex-Jane’s Addiction singer.
Plus, the Freep’s P.F. should, by all rights, have dibs to the name — the singer was born Peretz Bernstein. (Which would explain why he DJs under the moniker DJ Peretz.)
Which reminds me of my all-time favorite Explainer on Slate: Is there any relation between Marty Peretz and the Meretz Party?
Which reminds me to congratulate Friend of Crabwalk.com Jeremy Kahn, who was recently named managing editor of Peretz’s The New Republic.
02 June 2004 |
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