Zip code magic (and yes, there is such a thing): zipdecode.
And what happens when you play connect-the-dots with the nation’s Zip codes.
I’ve got two stories in today’s newspaper. First, on the front page, is this fun one on the creative ways schools try to improve their state ratings.
None actually claimed a dog ate their homework.
But the Texas schools that appealed their subpar state ratings this year offered up a remarkable variety of explanations and excuses — some sensible, others more notable for their creativity.
Schools blamed their performance on everything from an errant fire alarm to a student going into labor — and, in one case, parent sabotage.
“There are certainly some appeals that we think have very little merit,” said Criss Cloudt, the associate commissioner for accountability at the Texas Education Agency. “But we look at each one closely.”
The second was this obituary for one of my coworkers, Diane Hamilton.
Ms. Hamilton and Mr. Whittemore lived together for a decade. They decided to marry two weeks ago, after she had received discouraging news from doctors: The cancer had spread to her spine and she only had a few months left.
They had planned to wed yesterday morning at the Ellis County Courthouse. “We got the license, but we didn’t have time for the ceremony,” Mr. Whittemore said.
I’m also obliquely mentioned in this piece on online backup mechanisms for your computer. One sentence of the story, written by my friend Crayton, was inspired by this dorkalicious post.
…some savvy consumers have learned how to use Amazon.com Inc.’s online storage service aimed at businesses.
Those of us of a certain age — I’d say 27 to 35 — remember this commercial like it was yesterday.
Actually, before you click that started: “Remember me? I’m the kid that had a report due on space.” Memories flooding back yet?
Six things I did not know about that commercial:
The kid is named Donavan Freberg. More interestingly, the narrator is his dad, legendary satirist and voice artist Stan Freberg. (The elder Freberg was a huge influence on a generation of comics, notably the Firesign Theatre and, yes, Weird Al.)
Donavan voiced Charlie Brown and Linus in the 1970s.
He had no first name until he turned five. Before that he was called “Baby Boy.”
And he really, really likes porn. (NSFW, obviously.)
Hello Gawker readers! Since you all came here from a post on John Hodgman, it’s only fair that I direct you toward my own Hodgman connection.
WFMU brings us word (just in time for the holidays!) of the Damião Experiença, an outsider artist from Brazil who, well, seems to embrace his outsiderness. “Q: Is Damião a beggar ? A: Not, but frequent people confuse him for the skill deloused of his dressing.” “Q: How did Damião afford recording his LPS ? A: With Pimpering money.” “Q: Does Damião like women to beat him? A: Yes. I am masochistic (still today).”
Now, I love 98.5 percent of Brazilian music, but Damião is proof of that 1.5. Check out the MP3 of “Cheirando Alho No Planeta Lamma” (trans. “Sucking Green Sugar Cane and Smelling Garlic on the Planet Lamma”).
I couldn’t quite place what it sounded like, then it hit me: It sounds exactly like 10 MySpace pages open at once.
Here’s my story from today’s front page:
Dallas Catholic school students will get a day off Feb. 7 – and not for an early Ash Wednesday.
Schools will shut down so students and teachers can go to Austin for a rally in favor of school vouchers, which use public dollars to send students to private and religious schools. Other Catholic schools around the state are joining the effort.
The move is a sign that new leaders in the Catholic Church — which would probably be the biggest beneficiary of any voucher program — plan to be much more active in lobbying the Legislature than in previous years.
“There are a couple new archbishops,” said Charles LeBlanc, the Dallas Diocese’s director of schools. “We have a new director of the Texas Catholic Conference. And I’m impressed with the energy.”
I’d also like to point out that Charles LeBlanc used to be the principal at the Catholic high school about seven miles from where I grew up (and where I almost went). And that by quoting both Charles and (the unrelated) Nicole LeBlanc in this story, I have ensured that there are three Cajuns involved in this particular piece of prose.
I’m telling you: We’re taking over.
A great collection of found photos from the late 1970s. (Although they almost feel like 1981 to me. Maybe that’s because everyone looks like someone my mother hung out with I was about six.)
One last way Leander Perez screwed Louisiana.
Ol’ Leander was one of the first political figures I was ever interested in — he seemed to be about as pure a distillation of evil imaginable. He ran the two most southeastern parishes of Louisiana, Plaquemines and St. Bernard, as a dictatorship for a half century.
Through it all, he had two overarching goals: enriching himself and keeping the black man down. The two intertwined; hating blacks built the support that made the theft possible, and the money funded the decades of payoffs and dirty elections that kept him in power.
He accomplished the first by setting up shell companies that milked mineral-rights money that should have gone to the government, becoming an extraordinarily rich man. He did the second by becoming one of the South’s most virulent segregationists, in an era where competition for that title was fierce.
Nationally, he was a great ally of Class-A bigots like Wallace and Thurmond; in Louisiana, he teamed up with racists like Willie Rainach and John Rarick to play the Longites against the reformers and keep segregation institutionalized. You can read for yourself some of the astounding things he said about blacks and Jews, but his actions spoke louder than words — pushing mobs to burn desegregrating schools, or repurposing an old Civil War prison for any outside “troublemakers” who dared to argue for civil rights.
He was so bad that the Catholic Church ended up excommunicating him for being too racist — in the South, in 1962! (Praise to Archbishop Rummel for that, although the Church got cowardly after he died and let ol’ Leander back in.)
When Perez died, his fiefdom passed down to his two sons, Chalin and Leander Jr. But in Shakespearean style, they ended up feuding with each other and finally lost control around 1980 — sixty years after their dad took power. The main throughfare in the area is still named for him — in popular perception if not in reality.
The Perezes may have lost political power, but they still have all that money. Plaquemines and St. Bernard were essentially destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but my colleague Scott Parks tracked down the family in the days after the hurricane. Leander III and his wife apparently evacuated to the Dallas area.
Their daughter was marrying a young banker with the impossibly New Orleans name of Clé Dabezies. Scott quotes Clé talking about he had become desensitized to the racial divide in the city. “I think everyone has just ignored the crime problems and racial divisions. That’s a big part of the equation. Do I want to go back to that? It’s all come to fruition.”
I have no reason to doubt that Mr. Dabezies is a decent fellow. But you’ll excuse me if, when looking for racial wisdom, I turn to someone other than a man marrying into one of the greatest fortunes ever generated by southern racism. It’s all come to fruition, indeed.
If you’re looking for some holiday tunes, may I suggest a jaunt to “209 Tracks to Take With You on Your Holiday Killing Spree, Part 1”? Some classics (Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, the Drifters), but mostly the weird and wonderful.
Of special note: two Buck Owens tracks (Buck Owens = genius), Andre “Bacon Fat Mister Rhythm Jail Bait Greasy Chicken” Williams, Tiny Tim aiming low (“Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year”), R2-D2, some particularly tuneless Sonic Youth (“Santa Doesn’t Cop Out On Dope”), Augie Rios (“Donde Esta Santa Claus?”), some disastrous late-period Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eazy-E (“Merry Muthafuckin’ Christmas”), John Denver and the Muppets, De La Soul (“Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa”), and three different versions of “Santa Clause Go Straight To The Ghetto” (by Mojo Nixon, James Brown, and Belle & Sebastian).
Also, in a similar spirit:
I am so updating my resume.
Seriously, what a bunch of crap. Next year’s Person of the Year: Carbon, for all it does to constitute organic matter. 2008: Puppies!
Here’s my cheating story from today’s front page:
Nearly 600 Texas public schools have been cleared of suspicions of cheating, state officials said Thursday, leaving 105 other schools still under investigation. Texas Education Agency officials cited the clearing of 592 schools as evidence of the integrity of the state’s influential testing system.
“It is imperative that Texans trust our test results and have confidence that they are valid and reliable,” Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley said in a prepared statement.
But some question the thoroughness of the agency’s investigation, which relied heavily on self-reported questionnaires filled out by school officials a year and a half after the 2005 tests in question.
“I don’t know how accurate a set of responses you’re going to get from sending people a questionnaire,” said Jason Stephens, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut who studies cheating. “That might be expedient, but if there is something going on, nobody’s going to go out and admit that.”
Ian Jack is stepping down at Granta.
As much as I love the magazine, I’ll admit the last few issues (even the travel one) have sat mostly unopened. It’s felt muddled and boring for a couple years now.
While the new owner apparently thinks the Bill Buford era was “shockingly masculine,” there’s no arguing those were its golden days. (I’ve mooned over it before.) The book compilations of ’80s Granta (here and here) feel more immediate and visceral than the new stuff — even if their invocation of Sendero Luminoso and Timisoara peg them to the Reagan-Bush years.
That said, Ian Jack is a great writer and he’ll be missed — particularly if the article’s hints of the owner’s interest in “activist non-fiction” aimed at feminist and environmentalist causes prove correct. Jesus, one Mother Jones is enough.
There was a hint of this change in that travel issue. (How they could make that boring I’ll never guess, given that the magazine virtually invented the modern craft of travel writing.) Instead of the usual great reportage, the issue was packed with moralizing about carbon emissions.
I like a melting polar ice pack as little as the next guy, but I don’t want to read about it in a great literary magazine. I want to hear about it in art-house cinemas, from failed Democratic presidential candidates, like a normal person.
A great class-based profile of the first President Bush, written by Walt Harrington while Bush was veep in 1986. With a W cameo.
I went to see Our New Orleans Saints destroy the Cowboys at Texas Stadium Sunday night. Glee doesn’t come in much bigger packages than that, let me tell you. I was hoarse from screaming for two days, and there was something absolutely beautiful about the way the Cowboys fans all left mid-spanking and left the stadium to the thousands of overjoyed Saints fans who remained. I was near tears.
(I think I’m manly enough to note that the Saints have drawn more tears out of me over the past 30 years than any other institution. And in the last four months, too.)
Anyway, this Cowboys fan apparently lost a bet with his Saints-loving buddy and, as a result, had to sing this ode to America’s New Team, “A Who Dat Christmas.” The player names (Hebert, Hilliard, Swilling, Mayes) let you know the song is taken from the last time there was this much excitement about the Saints — 1987, when the team broke its 20-year-run of losing records, went 12-3, and got to the playoffs for the first time. (They got killed by the Vikings. Here’s hoping this year’ll be different.)
Strange addendum: The leading rusher on that Saints team, Rueben Mayes, is now a dean at the University of Washington business school.
O, for the days when drunk driving was viewed as a selling point for malt liquor!
Although anything that includes the genius of Redd Foxx can’t be all bad. One of the great joys of life is running across archival boxing footage from the 1970s and hearing him doing color commentary ringside along guys like James Brown. Foxx used to run with Malcolm X when they were young. Redd Foxx was an underacknowledged king of black America for about 20 years there, from his comedy albums in the late ’50s up through Sanford and Son.
Here’s my story from today’s front page:
Barely a year after receiving a clean bill of health, the North Texas charter schools run by the Belknap family are in trouble again.
State education officials are investigating allegations of financial impropriety, employees are being laid off to cut costs, and the schools are at risk of state intervention. Officials say the schools should be able to finish out the school year; beyond that is less clear.
“We don’t know how bad things are because they don’t have a good set of books,” said Karen Case, a former Texas Education Agency official who was hired by the schools Tuesday as the new part-time superintendent. “But they are in serious financial trouble.”
I must admit I’m somewhat surprised that Greg Norton’s bio on the web site of his Minnesota restaurant makes no mention of the most notable part of his career: bassist for Husker Du.
(Despite his handlebar mustache and persistent rumors, Norton was the heterosexual member of the band.)
Here’s the perfect gift for the person on your list who can’t stand his side brushing up against his main dish. (A group which includes an alarming percentage of the people I know. Me, I’m a food desegregationist.) Also good for observant Jews who love steak and cheese fries.
Food for thought from WaPo-ex John Harris:
We live in an entreprenurial age, not an institutional one. That’s been true of many professions for quite a while, and increasingly (and perhaps somewhat belatedly) it is true of journalism. The people having the most satisfying careers, it seems to me, are those who create a distinct signature for their work — who add value to the public conversation through their individual talents — rather than relying mostly on the reputation and institutional gravity of the organization they work for…
…in general organizations like The [Washington] Post or The New York Times have been insulated from the spirit of the age — precisely because they were secure and prestigious places to work. Once people got a job there, they tended to stay for years and even decades. Most of the people in those newsrooms are creative, and in my experience they tend to think of themselves as individualists and even iconoclasts. But the reality for many (including me until two weeks ago) is that they have careers that are more reminiscent of the 1950s, when people got hired at General Motors or IBM and stayed put. I believe that for people who want this type of stability, journalism is not going to remain an attractive profession for much longer. But people who adapt will thrive and end up having more fun than in the old days.
And another wise nibble:
I have long puzzled over a phenomenon about many reporters, one that I am sure is true for me also. They tend to be more interesting in conversation than they are to read in the paper. I think one reason for that is that the typical newspaper story continues to be written with a kind of austere, voice-of-God detachment. This muffles personality, humor, accumulated insight — all the reasons reporters tend to be fun to talk to. When it’s appropriate — not in every story but in many — we’ll try to loosen the style and in the process tell readers more about what we know, what we think, and why we think it.
Speaking of Christmas specials, here’s a nihilist-approved alternate ending to everyone’s favorite Charlie Brown half-hour.
You’re a good auto da fé, Charlie Brown.
It’s December, so here’s some Christmas cheer for you: Karen Carpenter and Kristy McNichol on the 1977 “The Carpenters At Christmas” ABC TV special:
What could be cheerier? Well, maybe pointing out that Karen ended up dead of an eating disorder, or that Kristy dropped out of acting because of her bipolar disorder — each one a problem arguably sparked by the public personas they put on display across the above Burbank soundstage.
(Seems I’ve got a little bah humbug in me.)
In any event, below is one of the great pieces of censored American art: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. It’s a 1987 film by Todd Haynes that told Karen’s story in true DIY style. Quoth the wiki: “An unusual facet of the film was that, instead of actors, almost all parts were played by modified Barbie dolls. In particular, Haynes detailed Karen Carpenter’s worsening anorexia by subtly whittling away at the face and arms of the “Karen” Barbie doll. Sets were created properly scaled to the dolls — including locales such as the Carpenter home in Downey, Karen’s apartment in Century City, restaurants, recording studios — including minute details such as labels on wine bottles and Ex-Lax boxes.”
A lawsuit by Richard Carpenter led to a judicial order to destroy all prints of the film. All that remain today are a few bootleg copies floating around the Internet. I’ve had one squirreled away on my hard drive for a few years now that’s better quality than this one, but this’ll do. (Warning: It’s slow and relatively Barbie-free for the first few minutes. And it’s intermittently extremely weird after that. Guest appearance by Herb Alpert around the five-minute mark.)
Obviously, you should buy this bit of electronic joy for yourself or someone on your list this holiday season. At 33 bucks, that’s, like, three mills per belly laugh.
(Update: Hmm…overnight, the price went from $33 to $55. A shame. But still a deal.)
A while back, I stumbled across this terrific video of Elis Regina, one of the greatest vocalists of the bossa nova era. It’s Elis (with husband César Camargo Mariano on piano) singing Tom Jobim’s “Águas de Março,” which was voted by a 2001 panel of journalists and artists to be the greatest Brazilian song of all time.
(By the way, I love that the international airport in Rio is named for Jobim. More airports should be named for musicians, I think. Other than Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, I can’t think of any.)
Anyway, I can’t properly communicate my joy at finding this — a version of the Regina/Jobim original performed (?) by Marco and White Debbie on the Cartoon Network’s old Sealab 2021:
I don’t know Joe Hagan’s byline, but he really did a fabulous job with his profile of Henry Kissinger in New York. (Speaking journalistically here, not ideologically.)
Addendum: I go 31 years not reading a word by the guy, then I stumble on two Joe Hagan pieces in different publications in one day. It’s Joe Hagan’s world; we’re just living in it.
Best opening to a newspaper story evah:
The Army will not seize power in Fiji this afternoon because of a rugby match with the police.
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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